I love NYC because it is just the right amount of unpleasant.
It is a city that will keep you on your toes by throwing curveballs at you—thus, forcing you to pay attention to how fractally interesting it is.
It is also a city that will floor you with the prettiest skyscrapers while simultaneously giving you the largest, ugliest rats you can think of — and lots of them.
I got off after a fifteen-something hour long flight from a different side of the globe. After clarifying with an immigration officer that yes I'm a Tourist in your country and even though I may come as a suspiciously single-unit youthful foreigner I intend not to overstay my welcome illegally. I walked out into the departures section to see my brother who was huddled in a corner talking business to his laptop, before I realised he is plugged in through his glasses which have earphones, mic and the like.
I waited there and took in the sights of the new country I found myself in for the first time. This is America, I thought incorrectly, as I were to learn later that New York City is not America by any stretch.
I was walking across a really long passageway to change trains at the Times Sq-42 St subway, one of the busiest subway stations in the world.
Among the usual informational boards, I see a peculiar message.
After having spent over a decade in Marathahalli, I decided I wanted to live in Bangalore1. So I found myself a 3BHK flat in central Bangalore2 a couple of months ago. Of my two flatmates, one of them got a new job that required them to move cities. This meant that two months into my stay, we had to find a new flatmate to replace him.
This was an interesting situation because I happened to be on both sides of the hunt in a short period. I will thus split this into two parts. The first is my experience in finding a new flat with flatmates and the next is finding a flatmate when you have your own flat already3.
Advice I would have given myself 10 years ago.
A lot of people don't attend to “the internal lever” enough when dealing with life. This lever exists in you and not out in the world. It's easier to operate on you than it is to operate on the world (even if neither are easy).
A friend recently pointed out that I have a discernable vocal fry. I had to look it up—a short description immediately made me understand that I had it.
Vocal fry is the lowest register (tone) of your voice characterized by its deep, creaky, breathy sound.
It's the casual, rolling and mildly gritty register that my voice takes on at the end of my sentences.
This mundane discovery was astonishing. I can't pinpoint where I picked up this habit. I couldn't help but catch myself frying up my vocals, reliably pulling me out of my conversational daze to the brightness of the present moment. These days, I find myself mentally noting how fried everyone's voice is.
“No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.”
I recently bought this book which is a graphic explainer in the style of a zine. It explains how the interplay between the state, market and society affects all of us and how we, the Indian citizens can play a part in it.
The best kind of advice I have received in my life is so obvious that it feels stupid to say it out loud. Advice like this is often ridiculed online for being simplistic (and thus useless). I used to share this sentiment. But I don't anymore.
In memoriam of the year that won't exist anymore.
It was value education period (shortened to V. Ed.), sixth grade. The format deviated from the usual years where a teacher would be assigned to make us open our V. Ed. books to imbibe ourselves with holistic values to become good citizens.