Blast from the past!

I’m not going write anything today. Instead, I’ll share a little note I wrote 9 years ago!
It’s so pleasantly surprising to come across a piece of writing from years ago!

I resonate with most of the things I wrote in the note above except the part where I thought I wanted to become an engineer. Probably one of the reasons I was so unsure about it back then was because it was never my true calling. :)

22 lessons

I’m turning 22 really really soon! Can you believe that? It’s not really one of those milestone birthdays but that doesn’t stop me from being OTT. So, I’ve decided to document a few things that I’ve learnt in almost 22 years of my life. I actually want it to be 22 lessons but I’m not promising. I’ll try really hard to be consistent!!

Also, I just wanted to put it out there that I started my own Instagram account where I post doodles, mandalas and a lot of other fun artwork. Once again, I do it only for fun but a little appreciation never hurt nobody. I started it in 2016 and well, I’ve been more or less active in putting up posts. My handle is @blackinkpot.

Without any further ado, let’s begin the first lesson out of twenty two (hopefully)!


TWENTY TWO to 22 

Lesson 1: Change is the only constant

I probably have used this phrase a billion times on my blog. But this time, I’m not talking about external changes. I’m talking about the changes that happen within. Four years ago, I was fresh out of school, raised by two sets of helicopter parents, completely oblivious to the struggles of every day life and ignorant of the grim realities of our society.

In hindsight, I believe 2014-16 was the period when India (and the world in general) noticed a paradigm shift in ideologies. The world grew just a little bit larger to accommodate new ways of thinking and living. It’s still growing...

So, back in 2016-17, my ideas and my opinions on some of the issues were very different. I called myself a feminist without seeing a need for the existence of such a movement, without knowing what it really meant and without understanding what role are we supposed to play. It sounds weird to say it now but I feel like I was just following a “fad” back then. But the last four years have changed me. Today, I know what it “really” means. In a country, where everyone finds it so easy to find faults in a movement that has only just begun to grow, I try to play my small part by trying to make them understand that this wave of feminism has got nothing to do with eradicating the male gender. I don’t want to make this entire post about feminism so I think I’ll pick up this topic some other time!

I also didn’t really understand what it meant to stand for the rights of the LGBTQ community. But, here’s a thing that I’ve learnt as I’ve “aged” (to perfection, of course) that you can’t have an opinion on someone else’s basic human rights. There, I rest my case.

So, a lot of times, people are very stubborn to change their views. They’ll debate with you without any good argument to support their claims (citing other idiots don’t count). And if you give up, they think that they managed to shut you up. But that’s not true. Sometimes, it gets mentally exhausting to reason with someone who’s stubborn and/or delusional! Which is why I wanted to say that just like we have changes around us all the time, it’s okay to change your opinions and thoughts. There’s no shame in accepting that you had the wrong notion about a particular thing or that you were unaware of a few things and then changing your stand.

I feel like this post has turned way more serious than I intended it to, haha! So there you go, my first lesson in a series of 22 (once again, I really hope to be consistent with this!).

Hello there!

It took a pandemic for me to resume blogging...

The last time I wrote, I was 18 years old, sharing some of my very random, late night musings. Today, I’m almost 21, in the final year of my med school, at home because my college shut down and in the middle of what seems to be called “The worst year ever” (insert cries of everyone comfortably at home and cribbing). It’s time to break this very long hiatus (it’s not as if you were waiting though).

Sometimes when people talk of something from the past, they say, “Oh, wasn’t it just yesterday when...” or “I can’t believe it was 5 years ago”. However, when I look at the posts on this blog (even the ones from 2017), I feel as if eons have passed. There is a stark difference between the 18 year old version of me and what I am today. The change may not be apparent on my blog because I definitely still write like a 13 year old. But that was never the point of this blog, was it?

I started writing years ago when my aunt told me about the whole concept of blogging. Back then, I was a little kid, posting every random thing that comes to my mind, looking for appreciation from my 20 odd readers which included my family, friends and some random strangers who somehow managed to stumble across my posts. Some things never change, do they?

I named my blog Life is Beautiful because there can only be so much creativity in a child and also because I loved the movie that goes by the same name(or La vita è bella). I remember seeing it with my father on one lazy Saturday afternoon when he was at home. Back then he would have his Saturdays off. So while mom would go to work, we’d watch movies, visit parks and create a mess in the house.

(Also if you haven’t seen it already, please do!)

I know it’s not a very easy name for a blog for a variety of reasons. And no, I’m not sorry for being a naive teenager. Also, it’s not like a lot of people were blogging back then. There were no guides on “How to run a blog and gain readers” and even if there was, I was clearly oblivious to its existence. Today, I believe, there’s an app for Blogger as well. I’m still using the good old fashioned browser for “penning” this down.

So, I decided to visit my blog by pure chance. And started writing without any agenda or any fixed idea (and I wonder why this blog didn’t become famous in 2012). But like I mentioned before, as a kid, I didn’t really expect this blog to become a “thing”. I used to write because I felt like putting my thoughts out there. And even if not a lot of people come and see it, at least I can come down every once in a while and wince when I look at the whole load of baloney I wrote years ago. Haha! To be fair, it’s good to come back and see how we’ve evolved and grown. And while I might be criticising this piece 5 years down the line, I’m glad I’m creating something to reminisce about old days.

I hope I’ll be writing more in the coming weeks.

Ciao, for now!