The Rebelle blog

I am sitting by the window in this computer lab, at 10 in the morning. Certain things never change. We get enamored and distracted by life and its extravaganza. As I think about what to write here because I do have a lot of things to share, I am taken back to days of summer and winter holidays when the thoughts from my head would find an easy outlet here. I could hardly contain my typing speed as I juggled to put everything on this screen. Lately, especially more in this year I have begun feeling a sense of loss about a lot of things that I did casually with an ease, perhaps, it mirrors my anxiety of not doing things too well. It's a certain reminder that things happen for the best no matter how hard we try to keep things organized and sorted. I always look at things from a very wide perspective or so I believe, and yet today morning as I sit here, there's a feeling of dread which threatens to change me. Can we ever get ourselves to become what the images in our head keep proje...

As the day dawns nearer, I have some butterflies in my stomach and I feel like a nervous wreck. I spent three consecutive days doing absolutely nothing. My body and mind welcomed this break of nothingness. At times, I exhaust myself too much beyond repair or rest. This weekend was to reclaim some peace and health, also being back here! I have been reading consistently thanks to a books app, Anybooks. It's easier when the phone is always within my reach. There are always a lot of books that go half-read and abandoned midway because I get distracted by new ones. However, this phase is one I don't mind going through. It's always great to have too many books to read. And, because we are serious readers we get inundated with lots of reading for work or academia apart from the pleasure-seeking reads. I, for one, have been ignoring my serious reads for a while. Before I leave, I hope I shall finish these book drafts, abstracts, and tonnes of research papers that my thesis stude...

Finally, after a long, long time I'm writing here. Last weekend, I attended and volunteered at a four  day brilliant pop up exhibition of second-hand books at Twice Told at Cowrks in Worli. I met friends, fellow readers, and avid readers. My excitement and energy were all over the place as I interacted and had long conversations with people who devoured books like I do. We exchanged ideas and philosophies that ranged from Rumi, Sufi saints, Architecture to cities and urban planning. It was a sheer pleasure to spend my waking hours in the company of people who read and ruminate. This was about last weekend.  This weekend, because of the terrifying rain scare, I spent it indoors at home. There wasn't any electricity for a good part of the day, but I ended up reading. Went through newspapers and the book recommendations, reviews, also rearranged my shelves, took a look at Goodreads after a very long time. Realized that I hadn't updated it with any of my reads from this...

And, my long absence in March here made me long for April. Because somehow as I always feel and say, April transforms the mood magically. Something beautiful turns over and brings a vitality to the season. I don't mind the heat at all. My first Murakami is from a kind fellow reader with whom I connected after reading his short story revolving a cat. I immediately sensed my friend is a Murakami fan. And thus began my Murakami reading. For years, I have postponed reading Murakami under the pretext of doing it later.  ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ So, I wrote a year ago here and left the writeup as a draft. I am back now to this post after a year and let me see how I look at what I was writing back then.  I finished a couple more books by Murakami over the past year, indulged in passionate, euphoric talks of his writing style, appreciated his witty and sardonic remarks. Listened to Norwegian Wood more than I had ever...