Pens and Pages

Diary Entry : 21st April 2022 I had a feeling I wanted to go check out Deer Park Institute in Bir, Himachal Pradesh. I booked the hostel closest to it. I ended up extending my stay for one day and then for another and so on for a week. I am lucky to find a good dorm-mate here. She is 24 years old and a fellow traveler with a backpack. No, we are not tourists devouring each and every place we have to see. We are doing what we are supposed to be doing and that's "be"-ing - simply being. "Il bel far niente" - Italian for the beauty of doing nothing, also called "dolce bel far niente" - the sweet beauty of doing nothing. We are never not doing anything though. We are visiting cafes, working, writing, meditating, talking, joking, teaching and learning. A new discussion arose yesterday and it's a personal favourite enough for me to talk about. In a nutshell: "We want everything that the rich people have but our roots and surroundings are middle-clas...

" The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving." - Elizabeth Gilbert (Liz) I always have a tough time letting go. It's either that or just this that I see things differently. I don't let go of things because I often look inward and wonder if I can change something in me to make things "okay". Everybody else seems to be pretty fine with how things are. How could I be a special case to ask for something different, something beautiful?  You see, I would rather blame myself and change myself than to simply state that I deserve something better. When Liz wrote this quote in the Eat, Pray, Love she wrote it for a marriage that was difficult to stay in and so much harder to let go of. It's always tough to let people go, especially people who care for you yet in their own ways which are more harmful than beneficial. I have had my share of toxic relationships like this when I would recall this q...

  This is not the first time that an article is being written about emotions at the workplace. However, this article has nothing to do with preaching you to manage your emotions at the workplace but everything to do with how you perceive those emotions at the workplace – yours and others’. If you are a working professional with a little experience, you must have at least attended one corporate session by now on how to perform better in your organization or how to succeed in what you do or anything to the likes of learning to be better. And if you are a woman, you must have thought of or heard some other woman standing up in such a session and asking the question, “How do I convey my message assertively rather than aggressively?” In my short years of working at professional organizations, I have heard this question plenty of times. However, I have heard this being asked only by women. This has nothing to do with the workplace environment but more to do with our subconscious beliefs....

Most evenings tension lines form on my forehead. Most nights I can’t sleep well. I make sure the door is locked, I make sure the windows are closed, the curtains are drawn, and one or two lights remain turned on. I don’t know if growing up means living in fear because you know too many truths about how the world works. I am not sure if I can call myself very practical or a little paranoid. They say a child knows no fear and they only acquire it as they grow up through various environments. It would be fair to blame it all on my environment- toxic, untrustworthy, full of criminals. But I seldom find any solace in being blame-free. I would blame my own fearfulness as much as I would blame the environment. It was easier as a child to forgive myself, mostly because I thought when I’d grow up I’d be perfect. That there would be no mis-happenings, if that’s a word. * One really cannot blame a thirteen-year old coming back from school in public transport, wearing a decent uniform, ...

It’s been more than a year now since I have joined my first organization after MBA. However, the days have gone by pretty swiftly especially during the second-half my year-long tenure in the organization. Having previously worked in cities like Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore I had never actually pondered about the meagre ratio of females in organizations. Having worked as the only female ASM, a ratio of 1:9, in the unit, in a Tier II city now, for a sales-driven organization, for more than 7 months, I do realize all the challenges and the changes involved. For a change, no one has made fun of my accent yet- or at least not in front of me. I remember how in my previous organization or in college, my accent was pretty much imitated and laughed at; often, I would laugh along. When in Mumbai, the Assamese accent of mine was identified as “Fake British Accent”- something that often annoyed me when discussed in extent. People working in Bhubaneswar cannot be fooled that e...

People I usually meet in person first, often come back to me with this statement later – Oh, I didn’t know you write. Some acquaintances have often declared that I don’t look like someone who would write. I don’t ponder upon such words much but I am slightly bothered by the one I heard last week – “Why did you stop writing?” I was taken aback. I never stopped writing. Who said I had? So I went back and looked at the source she was referring to- My blog. The last date said October 2017. It’s indeed been 5 months; maybe I did stop writing after all. The last time I wrote something I was in Rourkela, a peaceful city in Western Odisha where life was as slow as it could get. I moved to the capital, Bhubaneswar in late November where every morning I would wake up late but still manage to write a short poem while rushing on my way to work. Within two months I found myself loaded with responsibilities that made my shoulders bend. I would wake up as early as 6 in the morning, I would...

A tribute to the Nirbhayas of this world, to those who did not get justice, to Jyoti #IndiaFailsNirbhaya They were my sisters- Those two poor daughters of an Indian village, Clad in what they call decent clothing for women, Found one morbid morning, Dead and hanging from the branches of the tree, The same tree around which you and I had played once. Yesterday I saw my mother, with tears in her eyes, When she said she saw no hope Of justice in this nation where once I lived. “Avenge my death,” I had once said to my friends, To the people who once loved me; Maybe they still do And fate must have silenced them. Maybe the sticks they were beaten with While protesting against what was wrong, Have put lashes on their hearts, and locks on their mouths. The same juvenile lad who had once Watched me writhing in pain, Probably, with a smile on his face, as I moaned, I heard he is now going to start working soon. And have a “career”, I heard t...

It’s difficult to cope up with new words being added on to our dictionaries as we grow up – some we use, some we do not, some we understand, some we ignore. It was in 2009, when I started my B.E., that a new word was added to my vocabulary – “Maal”. To reach the bus-stop, that was only around 500m away from the College building, you need to walk past the boys’ hostels lined up on the way adjacent to the building. And if you’re alone (provided, you’re a girl) or with a bunch of other girls, your ears are sure to echo with the chants of the word “maal” coming from those hostels. It was scary on the first few days, so scary that you feel like running to the bus stop as fast as you can. After a few days it became more embarrassing than scary – you feel like you’re being noticed, you feel conscious about yourself, you wonder if your clothes are revealing your contours, you cover yourself well with your dupatta and walk on. Eventually, we started taking a “Tempo” (sort...

First published on Springtide on 12th December 2014 Perhaps it is not the right time to share what I faced in Delhi, not after “the Uber incident”. But then, there’s never a right time. And no matter what hour it is, reality is always the invincible truth. I’ve been staying in Mumbai from the past one year. I’ve been to Delhi before, but from Mumbai my first visit would be only last week. It was at around 4:45pm when I took a train from INA metro station to Kashmere Gate. I had to transport my luggage from my friend’s place at Yamuna Vihar to another friend’s place at Katwaria Sarai. It was my first evening there in Delhi and I did a quick imprecise calculation and assumed that I’d reach Katwaria Sarai after picking my luggage, at around 7:00pm. I assumed that dusk would fall at around 7:00pm like it is the case in Mumbai. I was a little disappointed to realize that by the time I reached Kashmere Gate it was almost dark although it was only around 5:30pm. ...

When I packed my bags to shift to Hyderabad for my job, I was eager to meet new people and gain new experiences since it was the first time I was moving out of my home-town, Guwahati. I, indeed, met some really great personalities, made some great friends; I learned about their hardships and I told them mine. But in the short period of time that I was there, I failed to make friends with a few; one of them is Nirbhaya [ name changed ]. As soon as I reached Hyderabad, I rummaged for a PG near my office. I found a two-seater room, adjacent to two other rooms where four more girls stayed. The next day I checked out from the Hotel I stayed the previous night, to begin my stay in the PG. In my hurried search for a PG, I failed to notice the fact that the road that led to the PG I selected is always dark and deserted and hence, unsafe. I decided to move out the succeeding month itself. Those were the days when our training at office had just begun and we, the freshers, were...