A few days ago, I lost my first and oldest cat to an accident.

Years ago, K saw Nagma⁴ abandoned on the streets of Malleshwaram and picked her up. Both she and I were not really cat people, but eventually became so. Over the years, Nagma became a part of our lives, our family and we developed a special bond.

It is probably a sign of privilege that I really did not experience any major sense of loss or grief until my 30s. A few years ago, K and I parted ways after 12 years (including few years of marriage towards the end) and that was painful. A lot of things from that time are unclear to me even today. But I’d just see random flashbacks of our life together for months. With time these went away, as I worked towards moving on emotionally.

Now, with Nagma’s passing away, I found myself in a similar situation once again. Memories of having Nagma in our life - all beautiful ones, but now they hurt too. It will take time, of course, probably a long long time.

Here's a problem for you:

My roommate and I manage our expenses like this: both people take care of their bills individually and at the end of the month, we split the difference.

This month, we did the exercise and he owed me 1500. But after a few days, we realised I had actually paid 9400 that was incorrectly marked as paid by him. So how much does the other person now owe me?

If you wish, take a moment to think about this before we continue. Done? Okay.

So, I can see two ways of thinking about this:

One evening, around the time I was 8 or 9, I was super excited for my birthday party. That is when a slow realisation hit me that Bombay was flooded on that particular day. No trains were running, there was water-logging everywhere and probably no one would turn up for my birthday. I think that day, I decided it’s better to just sit by the window and read a book while sipping hot coffee as it rains, birthday or not. But this was just a phase. Over the year, my thoughts around celebrating birthdays did vary quite a bit.

Just after high school, there would be the drill of getting on a video call on a friend’s birthday, and everyone would catch up with what’s new in everyone else’s life. But with time, everyone got busy. The group calls turned into individual calls. Sometimes into texts.

Later, during the early years of when I was in college, people would delegate remembering birthdays to Facebook. Back in 2011, I bet my friend that if he made his birthday private on Facebook, very few people would remember to wish him. Wishes from folks who still remembered your birthday and wished you would be the best ones, right? He was amused when turning his birthday private on Facebook did actually reduce the incoming birthday wishes. He keeps it private to date.

That day, both of us had realised something about how birthday wishes worked socially. Later, whenever he would call me on my birthday he would just rattle off:

The following is from Rituparna Ghosh's newsletter:

Here are three stories that we tell. The first, the story we tell ourselves. The second, the story we tell others. The third, the story others tell about us.

I couldn't help but think of this as a 2 x 2 framework. There are two components - self and others. So, there are four possibilities of communication.

The kind not mentioned above: the stories others tell us.

Don’t do it. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. 

Ok, but why do I say so? Since you asked:

One of the most common things you’ll hear about India and Indians is their eagerness to give unsolicited advice. My earliest memories of experiencing this were of train journeys. People would give you tips about how to ‘crack’ the civil service exams or why you should try your hand at the NDA exams that would get you a job in the armed forces. 

Now that I think about it, the most advice (from what I remember) is about jobs and careers. Even then, no one from middle-class India would advise you to become a cricketer or actor (that could have been possible in elite circles, perhaps). It was always engineers, civil servants, and doctors. Forget about writers, fashion designers, entrepreneurs or filmmakers. But I understand why - no one would even consider these as career options.¹ 

In college, during the first-year ragging rituals at the start of the academic year, it was common for seniors to ask you to showcase any talents you had. The default option would be to make you sing because, as one particular senior put it, “गाना और रोना तो सबको आता है” (everyone knows how to sing and how to cry) ¹

After many rounds of singing, re-enacting scenes from movies and other such activities, I got to know seniors with interests that matched mine. I found people who also enjoyed interesting music, books or movies. A discussion on reading would sometimes lead to writing.

While I had written essays in school, I had never written to tell a story, explain a complicated idea, argue a point, or even just for fun. Later, I started journalling to note down things I was thinking. In fact, calling what I did journalling would be overselling it. It began as a blog on Blogger with all of my bad poems, ones I did not want anyone to read because I knew they were crap. So the blog was set to be private, and I would dump these poems and some stray, unconnected notes (aptly titled something cringy like ‘Random Thoughts #5’, painstakingly collated from old notebooks that I later discarded)

Through those years, writing never seemed to be an essential communication tool to me. Still, it was an excellent side-kick accompanying the main act: conversations. I would sometimes write to my then girlfriend and a few friends. However, with time, writing was restricted only to the private blog mentioned before, but the nature of the notes evolved.

"How are you still at it?"
"I don't know, I'll have to think about it."

This is me thinking about it.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a curious person in the possession of good skills must be in the want of a PhD", said no one ever. Someone asked me how I was still engaging with my problem in my sixth year working on it; I did not know what to say.

On a recent episode of the Seen and the Unseen, in an interview with Paromita Vohra, the following came up in discussion:

"A lot of men can appear to be feminist with their daughters but not with their wives". ⁴

Such a hard-hitting line! While I could fathom the existence of such men, I feel even such men are a rare minority. Sadly, the men I saw in the society I grew up in would never appear to be feminists, neither to their daughters nor to their wives.

Have you heard of Narrative Fallacy? Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes¹:

The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them.

We love weaving stories because it makes it easy to remember facts, so a lesser cognitive load. It helps give us a sense of order, a sense of meaning even; but the question is: is that underlying order possibly an over-interpretion of facts?

Disclaimer: I am only a person feeling things who googled to understand what they meant. Please consult a trained psychologist or mental health professional for information or to discuss any ideas/queries about your emotional state or mental health. This post is a follow-up to my earlier post on therapy

I recently discovered that working with emotions is also a skill, like knowing how to use Excel formulae, make Focaccia bread or pet a cat.

I had previously heard terms like processing or channelising emotions and never fully understood what they meant. Even now, I don't think I fully understand what these terms mean, but I have some idea about what these practices involve.

Context: I wrote this for a friend as an introduction to the process of therapy based on my experience

I want to tell you my experience with therapy, with the hope that if you're feeling a bit off about something maybe therapy could help you as it helped me.¹

Over the course of my 20-odd therapy sessions to date (and counting), this is one idea I had to unlearn: A therapist is not supposed to solve your problems. A bad therapist will (probably) give you solutions, a good therapist will listen, and a great therapist will ask you pointed questions forcing self-reflection.

In the last few months, I pulled the plug on social media: I deleted my Twitter account, removed Reddit from my phone, and blocked Google News on all my devices. I wanted to buy back my time from the pawnbrokers of the Internet I had mortgaged it to. It was a brutal fight. Muscle memory would trigger, and neurons would coordinate and command my fingers to type in URLs that would not load, bringing in the awareness that I had blocked them. Or sometimes, the same fingers would be commanded to go to the location on the phone screen where a now deleted app used to be, bring a post facto realisation in a second that the mind is fighting back.

I was not used to having time to pause, the thehraav (ठहराव), and my mind was utterly confused. It brought back memories of older and recent times, emotions of embarrassment, shame, surprise, and weird and funny experiences.

I decided to speak to my therapist about this. When my therapist asked me if I regretted something, I went on and on about how I don't think of it as regret, and I usually had no regret; I would simply take note and move on and bank up the experience.

I was reading Leaf Storm by Gabriel García Márquez and found these lines in it:

The newcomer clicked his heels like a military man, touched his forehead with the tips of his extended fingers, and then walked over to where she was. 'Yes, ma'am,' he said. But he didn't pronounce any name. Only when I saw him clumsily shake Adelaida's hand did I become aware that his manners were vulgar and common.

There is so much meaning we attach to a handshake. But the act of shaking someone's hand is so $^%@*%!

For me, it will always be Bombay. I grew up in Mumbai too, but first in Bombay, which was what stuck with me, and a bit of it remains in my mind even today.

Bombay has now become home to first-generation migrants to the city, like my parents. My father came to Bombay in the mid-80s. He was not different from the so many men already leaving Kerala for the Gulf. It was in some sense expected from the young people of Kerala at that time because Kerala could not offer them employment. My father probably had no choice but to move outside Kerala and look for work. But for my mother, her world changed when she moved with my father to a new city, which was so different from where she had grown up in so many ways. Recently, I asked her about it.

I asked her how she felt when she first came to Bombay, and she hated it. The language was not much of an issue because she had learnt Hindi in school and had the company of other Malayalees who had come to Bombay earlier. She said she initially hated the food. No amount of sugar in the Gajar ka Halwa could comfort her; she was reminded of the food she had left behind. Pooris and Rotis were avoided at social gatherings before she finally gave in and learned to make peace with them.

Punjabi music has come a long way from the days of Daler Mehndi to Siddhu Moose Wala. For me, the present-day voice of Punjabi music "clicked" when I heard Amrit Mann's song, Difference and looked up its lyrics. In Difference, the first few lines go:

Munda malwayi goriye \ Charche sade Mississauga \ Suneya jine manak howe \ Nai sunda Lady Gaga,

Hey girl, the guy is from Malwa, \ But famous even in Mississauga \ One who listens to Kuldeep Manak’s music \ Never listens to Lady Gaga

First, the connection to Mississauga. I find it amazing that the name of a Canadian city can be used with the expectation that most listeners will get the context.

So, thank you for checking out this blog. Here are some thoughts about what you'll find in here and a disclaimer of sorts:

First, I have changed my mind on many things and my stand on issues today may not be in line with what I have written about quite some time ago.

As of the time of writing this post, I have completed more than a year at IISc. This post tries to sum up what I have seen, known and (somewhat) understood about the culture here at IISc and in Indian academia in general.

Do bear in mind that this note is a reflection of my views as a first year PhD student. My opinion is probably coloured by the myopia of a beginner's lack of understanding of how the system works.

Or better stated, this is like reviewing a movie right after getting out of the theatre. Your first impression is that the film was a three on five. Next day on your way to the office, you remember that funny joke or the well-shot scene to conclude that it was a good movie after all!

Often, I get emails from juniors (final year undergrads mostly) asking about Computational Materials Science or about joining a PhD program in India. And I am always happy to share my thoughts because when I was making a decision during my final year of bachelors program at NIFFT, I was confused too and did not have anyone with whom I could discuss this!

Between a job and a PhD program, choose a job

Disclaimer: In my entire time of high school/college i.e. post class 10th and till date, I have never been a topper or in other words I have no track record of being great at coursework. I have been an average student for most of the part. Why am I telling you this? Because, cognitive biases{:target="_blank"}, that's why!

As a part of the PhD coursework, I have to take a total of 24 credits which translates into 8 courses. Here are some things I noted while taking courses:

I feel many courses don't teach you how to actually solve a problem. The core concepts are taught and an exam is conducted to test your problem solving skill. Working your way through assignments is supposed to teach you how to solve problems, but if you solve the questions yourself the way you have been always doing, how will you learn new methods of problem solving?

Over the last few months, I spent a significant amount of time trying to automate repetitive tasks with the hope that it will save me time in the future. The automation has two aspects - first, usage of macOS Automator which makes things easy but is not required for automation as such and second - using shell scripts which is the backbone of all of the stuff I have worked on until now.

My initiation into the world of shell scripting was via a class I took in the January semester of 2017. The course was called "Computational Modelling of Materials" and was taught by Prof. Abhishek Singh.