A Trip Down The Memory Lane

and exams...

I feel lost, distracted, and worried lately. I’ve had good days in between but mostly it’s just exams and inevitably the stress that comes with these unwanted days.

For the past 4 months or so, the highlight of my life has been exams. Honestly, i’m tired of them. Even my gallery has become full of notes rather than all the other beautiful things in the world.

I’ve lost all time and will to do something creative. However, my creative juices flow inside with no place to go and block my study juices. So, here I am- writing, after an awfully long time. So that my creative juices can be let out, and study juices can flow easily (hopefully), because I have my exam tomorrow.

Today was a weird day. I do not know why, but I just felt it was weird. Presently, I’m lying on my bed, daydreaming about painting again, making art, and writing a nice poem along the lines of- “December is about longing…”

You know what, let me write something on the spot, right now.

Because why not?

December is about longing and I, the voyager lost in the loop of time

longing for the year to come, longing for the year to go.

December is about remembering, the times you had, the times you lost, the times you will have.

December is about looking back on the year and having a bittersweet realization that school is coming to an end, and those 12 years will be tied up into a single day- the farewell.

December is about longing-

for endings, but also for beginnings…

-by me:)

Anyhow I just went with my feelings, decipher the poem in your own way!

(to each his own)

Anyway, do you know what I like about winter? Except for laying down in a soft blanket each night?

The old Christmassy movies, with the reds greens, and whites as the theme, the autumny series that give off a yellowish-goldish feeling, the scented candles, baking (even if you don’t know how to), and the endless cups of coffee.

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed, A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;

Blinks but an hour or two; and then, A blood-red orange, sets again.

- R.L Stevenson

Also, I am a little (quite) worried about boards, it’s crazy how your entire life , you are told that marks do not matter, but in the end mostly it’s the scores that decide what you are going to do with your life..the CUET SCORES, IELTS, BOARDS, and the list goes on and on and on. I don’t really like anything that has numbers, but these scores are what I ultimately have to achieve to get into a good college,to get a good job, and then to earn in (huge) numbers, again.

It is crazy how our lives revolve around mathematics in one way or the other and.. mathematics, itself, revolves around the alphabets. lol

That’s why I prefer literature. English over maths any day.

Talking about English, I have my English pre board tomorrow. Ideally, I should be studying but I had this intense need to get things off my mind, absolutely random things.

I just opened my notes app, to find something I wrote and put it here.

Turns out that in the past few months, my notes app has turned into a bedlam of to-do lists and deadlines, instead of poetry and thoughts.

I don’t want to lose my art- my writings, and so here I am despite my exam tomorrow, writing thoughts and anecdotes that make me feel better and anyone else who reads my blog(maybe:)).

(December is for longing for your own form of art)

After a lot of scrolling, here is an old piece I wrote.

From the vaults of my mind during the Diwali time. ( I know Diwali has already passed, but December is for longing for festivals that are long gone.)

Better late than never, at least it’s still 2023…

It's that time of the year again.

For Americans, when we say “that time of the year”, it usually means Christmas, and for us, Indians, it usually means Dussehra-Diwali time. Every day I look out from my balcony and a new house has put up fairy lights. Reds, pinks, yellows. There is so much colour marking these cold and dark times when nights befall a little early.

It's certainly a very cozy and festive time. Everyone seems to enjoy its nuances... The vrat food, dandiya nights, pujo, pandals… Sometimes we get so lost in celebration that we forget "why" exactly are we celebrating the time.

However, for everyone, it's such a wonderful period of the year. It’s like the surge before you're dying

(ABOUT SURGE: there's a time when patients feel so happy and energetic as if they're going to get well but it's the last time they'll be happy like that because death comes next. It's a science thing, google it.)

It’s like the bright side before the year ends. The light before the darkness. And interestingly so, Diwali is the festival of "lights."

---

Also, the weirdest, most disheartening, most “Sherlock Holmes meets the Saddest movie” kind of thing happened yesterday.

Context: A lot of aunties were fighting about a cat in a known group, that cat was a stray one and pretty harmless, she used to roam around on the ground floor of our society. On 3rd December, I don’t know how, came in front of my house, I live on the 16th floor. And that cat and I, we had a nice time.

However, some people expressed intense hate towards that little creature of god, on the WhatsApp group and day before yesterday night someone sent a YouTube video titled “Which smells kill cats : how to get rid of cats.”

Consequently, or not? , the cat was found dead yesterday evening.

where is the humanity? I don’t know if that animal was killed or the ill hopes of people sent her to a different realm.

However, all I can hope for is that the cat is at peace. I on the other hand am extremely, utterly, disheartened because whenever I went downstairs I met her, and now I won’t be able to…

I won’t leave you guys on a sad note though, so here are a few other thoughts: Nice ones, Nostalgic ones, and Funny ones.

Here is a piece from my diary entry which I wrote while I was coming back from Lucknow, a few weeks back:

It's 6:07 pm, I'm listening to ‘Dil Jhoom Jhoom Jaye’, legs up my car dashboard, and coming back from my hometown once again. The smoke-filled air is blocking my airways but everything must come to an end, this smoke will too. Hopefully. For 3 days, I was in Lucknow to celebrate Diwali with my extended family and if I were to use a single word to describe it- I wouldn’t be able to.

I will use 2 words; funny and nostalgic.

Let's start with the funny part.

1. I saw a big chicken hopping about on the main road. Just imagine a road full of moving cars and suddenly you see a big chicken running from left to right, hopping about, escaping the clutches of his future eater. And a little boy matching his pace, with hands in front trying to catch it. All across a mundane road on a mundane Tuesday afternoon.

Now I know why the locals say: Muskuriaye aap Lucknow mai hain…

(I didnt complete the entry then, but let me tell you about the nostalgic part:)

2. i saw actual working walkmans and handheld radios that were used by my nana and mom when she was in college. The moment I put in batteries, it started to work and I was absolutely fascinated as to how such an old piece of work was working perfectly, then again I realized old is gold.

   The working walkman was like reviving a part of the old days, an insight into the past through the technology and batteries of the present. And people say time travel isn’t real…

   

   

   

   On that note, I have so much to say about time. Time is a complex thing. Past, present, and future all exist together, all at once, you are the past, the present, and the future, and time is a social construct. (but that is a story for another time)

until then, keep longing…

goodbye sayonara

have a nice day!

- Janhavi :)