The Rebelle blog

Sometimes I’m afraid I’m happy, but because I expect it to be something else, I question the experience. So now, when in doubt, she shrugged with true bravado, I’ll assume I’m happy.     ― Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge. Something happened and all the happiness and positive spirits I was feeling are drained now. Sometimes my mind scares me with the dire things it thinks. I cannot give up. I don't give up easily. I mustn't now too. It helps to ponder over things that trouble us over a span of couple of hours. A few hours earlier I felt extremely dejected at my failure of attaining something I was confident I had in my kitty. Then, I started talking to myself about the futility of unnecessary freaking over the unoccurred and voila! I feel fit as a fiddle, not drained emotionally nor depressed at all. This only makes my resolve to seek the higher transformative powers of creating change within myself and embracing it too more stronger than ever. It's true th...

I just got some news about something I was eagerly awaiting for since the past few months. I am supposed to be happy but I am not. Clearly the focus and attention from the said news has lost its value for me. Isn't is quite common to find that something we long for loses its prospects after sometime? Especially if these prospects are regarding employment. Career shift. I can't quite fully fathom in what terms this move will reward my future. Will it tie me to a stagnant post or will it truly let some practical issues be sorted out and declutter the existing chaos? I wish I had an idea about everything that happens the way it does. Right now, my brain is in a frenzy. There are times when I wish I had a more diplomatic bone in my body so that I could not let everything get by so easily around me. Once we get comfortable about a position, chances are we rarely lead ourselves to experiment and step up further. It's like the classic life move for women; study, graduate with go...

Snakes! I dreamt of snakes last night. One of the many incoherent dreams I have had recently. My hatred for gliding reptiles goes way back to my childhood when I remember seeing one of my Dad's relatives have a fit after being chased by a snake through cotton fields. He had almost died from the shock and poor man lived with mental imbalance for a few years. My Dad's mother used to jump and be afraid of Discovery TV channel each time us kids tuned in for watching shows like Deadliest Catch or Survivor man. She couldn't bear looking at snakes, tigers, lions- the fierce species. It didn't help that she had spent all her life in a farm house surrounded by tall crop fields. She was even wary of light. Darkness had been part of her most adult life. She found that change difficult to embrace. As a child, I remember seeing small field snakes during monsoons around the quiet bungalow we lived in, surrounded by a large plot of uncut wild grass and trees. The terrace provide...

Fever and cold has me stomping with a rave rage crushing my healthy and happy spirits I've been carrying for some time. A mad cold fury tears my insides trying to understand why a minor sickness drives me to the wall with such misery. I feel terrible about lugging behind deadlines, though people can be really nice about it sometimes. Melancholy and sleep engulfs me in its embrace spiralling me into an endless slumber, with vivid dreams manifesting into my fears thus projected clearly. It's a wonder that our nerves do hold us steady otherwise the chaos that would rule our psyche would destroy people. I realise how November makes me feel all responsible and accountable for the year so bygone. In good ways, nowadays I have accepted peace as a long term reign in my life. I would rather be surrounded in a clear calm mist than be pinned to unclear intentions.  Alas, we will come across events and people that shatter our peace and aggravate us to the point of feeling utterly inc...

Some books never leave us. They remain fixed in our minds and psyche. One such that remains in mine is A Tree grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.  The title of this novel refers to a tree that grows persistently up through the concrete and harsh conditions of a poor tenement neighbourhood in early 1900's Brooklyn. It also symbolises Francie Nolan's struggle through her life. When I first read it in 2010, I was going through a very important academic submission- an Architecture  thesis. As I read through the pages, I looked at Francie as myself. I grew up with her along the pages. She lived in me. I remember sobbing, and crying while reading her plight but she also gave me tremendous courage and filled me with an undying fighter spirit. The book was written in 1943 and describes a turn of the century story of the Nolans from 1900-1919. I recall reading and visualising Francie sitting in the Fire Escape harbouring dreams of an education and better life for her family and herself...

I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I've been a resident of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina and strolled down Swann's Way. It's a rewarding world, but my second one is by far superior. My second one is populated with characters slightly less eccentric, but supremely real, made of flesh and bone, full of love, who are my ultimate inspiration for everything. Said Rory and I say the same! I've missed ME- my former self- my happy spirit, my cherubic laughs and go-get-it attitude'. I really have!  I wish someday years later when I read this post I'll realize I've always been my own person! I believe that it takes a lot of courage for any person to be himself- all with his eccentricities, his unfailing fighting spirit because everyone is fighting their inner dem...