The Rebelle blog

I was going through an emotional turmoil last night and used this blog to vent out my grief. Sometimes, well, only a few times, I wonder if my understanding of grief, misery and sorrow is the same that everyone goes through or I am severly meddling these confused emotions I can't seem to word out. Whichever way it is, I felt incredibly better after writing everything here, and I am trying to assert my mind into believing that THAT which hasn't happened yet and perhaps won't take place shan't worry me and cause me distress or unncesarry panic. I suppose I already should be alert at the use of such negative energy bubbles into my conversation here. I am throwing caution to the wind and deciding not to think about anything at all. My heart goes into a ballistic mode once I conjure too many multiple scenarios in my brain and then as if ticking on a machine, it starts weaving these elaborate sequences I deem fit only for fictional accounts. Hemingway wrote A Moveable Feast...

मला उगाचच पटकन मनाला लावून घ्यायची सवय झालीय. फार लवकर वाईट वाटून घेते मी. यात तोटा माझाच होतो शेवटी. प्रचंड मानसिक तणाव राहतो मनावर बरेच दिवस, कधी कधी आठवडे देखील. मागच्या वर्षी तर खूप महिने प्रचंड दडपण आलं होतं मला. अभ्यासात देखील मग मन रमत नव्हतं. त्यामुळे एक फायदा असा झाला कि इथे मी ब्लॉग मात्र नियमितपणे करायला शिकले तेवढ्या अवधीत. आज घरातला पुस्तकांचा आणि वर्तमानपत्रांचा पसारा आवरताना मला बरीचशी जुनी कात्रणं सापडली. मी पार हरखून गेले सगळंच अधाशीपणे वाचण्याच्या नादात. लोकसत्ताच्या लोकरंग तसेच चतुरंग पुरवण्यांमधले अगणित लेख, टिपणं, आणि संग्रही केलेले भरमसाठ विशेष पुरवण्यांचे गठ्ठे! माझी आई नेहमीप्रमाणे मला ओरडली कि सगळं टाकून दे, गरजेपुरतच आता संग्रह आवरता घे. तेवढ्यात माझे डॅडी घरी आले आणि मी काढलेल्या मासिकांच्या गट्ठ्यांना ढूंढाळू लागले. मग काय आम्ही दोघं त्यात गर्क झालो तासभर. शेवटी हो नाही म्हणता म्हणता परत मोठा ढीग झालाच परत. मग जेवणानंतर मी मला वाचावेसे वाटणारे कात्रणं नि पुरवण्या हाताशी धरल्या आणि गुंगून गेले सगळ्यात. खरंच! आपण आयुष्यात किती गोष्टींचा संग्रह करतो. कधी आनंद...

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way. So wrote Seamus Heaney. This sweltering heat is making me go nuts. I have just come back home today after yet another two days of continuous travelling to a city I love with all my heart except the heat makes me want to slither into a cool cave and wait there until summer ends. I have also been strongly fighting against the urge of not being able to churn out words lately. Seems like my brain has melted all the thinking nerves. Right now, the news on TV is running a reel on water shortage and drought in villages not far from Mumbai's peripheral areas. Water from rivers and dams located in these villages was supplied via pipelines to the Greater Mumbai and Thane suburbs. Now, the residents there travel for miles and often into other villages in search of a pot of water. Borewells and groundwater reserves have long depleted and the only visible proof of an existence of a river are the remnants o...

My Dad misplaced some medical records in our house and we spent pretty much the entire day looking for them. Almost searched every nook and crany of our newly renovated house. It has been a taxing day more so for me because I had been travelling for two days straight in one of my  most uncomfortable & harrowing train travels ever prior to landing up in this search mission. Now, I've caught an allergic cold from all the dust and still no success in locating the records. So, it has been a very unexpected gift only because I was proudly boasting last week about my immune system and how healthy I am while my family fell ill with allergic cold and from the heat. Life has a way of getting back at us. Is it Karma? Who knows? I certainly don't believe in it. May be, a tiny part of my brain dwells on it but never with full faith. Another unexpected gift has been the surprising retrieval of two design manuals I'd misplaced and thought lost. One of them is an Accessibility Desig...

Penguin publishers first came up with a set of 80 books in 2015. Then, they published more and now the boxed set of poetry/prose/short stories has gone to 120. Today, on Instagram, while admiring another fellow reader's Little Black Books (LBB) collection, I lamented how in Indian currency the box set is still expensive. She gave me this wonderful idea to ship it from Book Depository and I promptly looked up the website. To my utter disappointment, Indian Currency transactions don't exist. There's Indonesian Rupiah but not Rupee. I got so excited at the prospect of seeing an entire boxed set for affordable prices, and would have bought the entire set but alas! These are just some disappointing moments and yet there are far greater trivial issues we need to address. One of my closest friends is miserable and battling depression. She texted me about symptoms and the likely causes she's experiencing this. I hope to be able to help her out of this self-imposed misery....

My first post in March after such a lull and it has me ranting. I'm an Architect with no experience in Residential Architecture. So when we decided to remodel our house, I knew my parents would be looking for my inputs. I started by searching Home Designing websites and some blogs written by practising architects with more than 20 years of field experience. I have to say that redoing involves a lot of stress and lot of fact crunching. I have been looking at samples of flooring and wall tiles, kitchen designs and bathroom fittings and fixtures. All the building services lectures come back flitting to me. I was almost tempted to retrieve the building services drawing sheets and go over details. It's no wonder that building construction is in so much demand everywhere. Interior designing is way too overrated and over-hyped. I have witnessed as a layman prior to my architecture education, the enormous amount of treachery that goes with unassuming people who are conned by contract...

I have always given book recommendations to friends and cousins, even strangers I've met at bookstores or during train journeys who have approached me after seeing books in my hands. So, it's still always amazing when I hear my newly-acquainted-with-reading-and-loving-it friend to thank me and share her book buys via text messages. It gives me immense pleasure to go back into my memories and relive the happiness of our shared book reads.  Having spoken to a number of readers, mostly women, I have come to a conclusion that women tend to read more classics and go by reading lists recommended by book sharing websites than men do. It is slightly oddball that there is a category called Women's Fiction but none that is called Men's Fiction. I wonder why? Also, the fact that women tend to keep a track of other books mentioned in novels or generally note down a list of books in fiction and memoirs gives a perspective on the reading patterns of men and women. A few years a...