Blog

A conversation with an old friend recently revolved around how they could not believe that I had grown up so fast. It is a little hard for me to believe too – how in a few days I would be stepping into what will be my last year in school.

I have conflicting emotions about this – I feel like time should slow down a little and yet I look forward to growing up, this is a part of my life I am standing at the parting junction with and I don’t want to say goodbye. I want myself to have new experiences and I want to hold my childhood’s hand for some more time.

I am someone who does not really want to live through a certain time again, even if those are moments of pure happiness, I like to see things remain as they are. But there are certain memories that are so special for me that I like to be reminded of them again and again, that maybe I do want to relive that time again, that if by some stroke of luck, I could turn back time, I would. As I enter the last year of my school life, I feel it is fitting to write about a time in school that is the most special for me and I am certain that it will always be that.

I have made a lot of conversations in the past few years and my favourite ones are the ones that start with, “Yaad hai jab 8th mein” (Remember when in class 8th). I have been trying to figure out why that time holds such significance in my life. Maybe because I miss how I was able to talk to my friends without the undertone of this certain gravity that now takes over all that we talk about. Maybe because we only realise the value of some moments after they have passed. Maybe because there was a last time that I heard a group of carefree friends laugh like there is no tomorrow; a last time I heard laughter so infectious that it could bring a smile to anyone’s face. Maybe because I was not aware that it was the last time.

There was a last time when that group of five, sometimes six, seven friends sat together and shared lunch. There was a last time we looked straight into each other’s eyes and confidently lied about “maine kuch nahi padha” (I haven’t studied anything). There was a last time I said I am in class 8th. There was a last time I shared notes with someone. There was a last time I talked to someone I thought I would be friends for life with. There was a last time when all of this was not a memory.

Maybe I want to find a glimpse of this time again, to recognise it in a crowded room, to see it walk up to me after four years, to see it shake hands with me again, to meet it again, just once. For once, I want to relive a part of my life.

Four years ago, on 15th March 2019, I stepped into a new school for what I recall to be the 8th time and in all honesty, I wasn’t expecting it to be different. Two new admissions stepping into class where everyone knows everyone except for them, where two new kids try to navigate through a new school. My expectations this time weren’t the reality. There were eight new kids trying to navigate through a new school, which would eventually become an entire section with such new kids.

On my first day of class 8th, there were eight of us, only similar in the fact that we were new students feeling confused, tried to talk to each other several times, an endeavour that ended with everyone repeating their names and staring out of the window. This was probably the most ordinary first day I had in my school life, the year that followed, however, is something I would not describe as ordinary. One of those eight remains a dear friend till this day, and that dear friend gave me writing advice which I hope to follow someday.

My twin sister was made the class monitor and both of us were given the charge of being what was termed as “cupboard incharge”. This gave us the opportunity to know whoever was joining the class next, we were the ones that every new student talked to first and we would know their names which probably scared them.

Anyone who joined was first apprised of any gossip that was being discussed in our class (a friend and I spent quite a few free periods observing people, an exercise that I believe should only be called observing and not gossip) and then of the rules of the school and nobody ever objected it, because most people would agree that giving side eyes to a girl and a boy talking to each other is a more interesting activity than knowing how many registers you have to write work in.

I believe that my liking for this time is influenced by the fact that the next two years were spent in isolation, the activity of going to school daily being put to rest, handshakes were replaced with video calls and texts and people I met daily now talked to me once every two months. But all this has made my heart only grow fonder of those memories.

I also think it is dear to me because of the people I met and the anecdotes that happened. There was a notebook which was almost on a plane to another country, there were birthday chocolates that went missing, there were people determined to form a fictional universe, discussions were held in the library (seemingly defeating the purpose of one), there was an aspect of a certain person’s life that was followed like a news report, there were moments that were almost movie-like.

I have had experiences that have shaped up the person I am today and I have also proofread love letters that spell love as luv. I have understood the importance of certain things in life and I have seen my friends discuss recently released break up songs with a profundity that is usually missing from their temperament. Class 8th showed me, in a true sense, a glimpse of what life is.

When I think of this certain day four years ago, I think of memories of shared laughter, collective heartbreaks after the loss of a favourite team in a cricket match, packets of a very popular and beloved potato snack, a dance performance in a birthday party. I think of friendships that started with recognising someone from their profile picture, started with talking about a certain book, over a phone call enquiring about the holiday homework, over sending pictures of several notebooks, friendships built with a certain respect and warmth that is difficult to find anywhere else, friendships built over phrases from memes, over thermodynamics and catchphrases like, “it is good you know”, over observing people, friendships that are certainly impossible to replicate.

A very dear friend once told me that the past haunts as well as comforts you. I am looking at the comfort knowing this brings: that behind all this seriousness and weight that we carry now, we still share the warmth that we did four years ago, that conversations beginning with yaad hai jab 8th mein can still light our faces up, that no matter how many of these four years pass, these memories would be looked at with the same fondness.

Vuong, as Little Dog, the narrator in his novel, writes a letter to his mother. He writes, “Dear Ma, I am writing to reach you—even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are.”
Voung tells us that he is writing to break free.

Words, I think, are a step towards the freedom we are so desperately running behind. Maybe, a step that only moves in the forward direction. Because a word is something that can disappear into the air yet hold more weight than possibly anything else in our lives.

While reading the book, I felt that these words that all of us possess, seem more meaningful, more personal and effortless when they are a part of Vuong’s writing. How, throughout the book, he handles those words with an elegance that is rarely seen.

The book is also a testimony to the power of words and language. How words are one of the few that are not necessary for our survival but ultimately add value to our survival. And language plays an important role in a survival that is as hard as what Vuong and his family had to go through. Vuong writes, ““I took off our language and wore my English, like a mask, so that others would see my face, and therefore yours.”

Written in the epistolary format, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous navigates through the life of Little Dog and his family, Vietnamese immigrants, and their struggle to forge an identity and a new life in America after the Vietnamese War.

Voung weaves a narrative in which he recounts heartbreaking memories of war, abuse, dislocation. We also find the themes of inter generational trauma, a complex American identity, race and history. Along with this, we also see themes of love, loss, friendship and memories.

Vuong’s prowess lies in writing to ‘you’. Though you are aware that he is writing to his mother, you often feel like he is telling you – “Listen, this is what I feel like, this is what I felt like.”
His address to his mother, and in extension to you, offers glimpses of his literary talent.

For me, the most significant part of the book was the importance given to language. It’s a letter written to a mother who can’t read, as her school was destroyed in a napalm raid when she was five.
Language, for the family, can’t be that bridge that it intends to be. Voung has his English and the family, their Vietnamese.
He writes, “The Vietnamese I own is the one you gave me, the one whose diction and syntax reach only the second-grade level.”
Yet language, through Little Dog’s words, is able to give an outlet to the family’s struggles.

One of my favourite excerpts from the book is “In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Con nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me? ” I miss you more than I remember you.”

In the Hindi language too, the word याद ( yaad) has similar connotations. It means to both miss and remember.

The book is a graceful exploration of race, identity, sexuality, masculinity in the life of a gay Viatnamese immigrant in Hartford, Connecticut.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is certainly a gorgeous account of the brevity of our time here and a fresh, humane and compassionate account of this window of time we call life.

My favourite excerpts from the book

You once told me that the human eye is god’s loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn’t even know there’s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.

I am writing because they told me to never start a sentence with because. But I wasn’t trying to make a sentence—I was trying to break free. Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.

Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.

All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty. Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence – but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.

To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.

In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly.

I’m sorry I keep saying How are you? when I really mean Are you happy?

I envy words for doing what we can never do– how they can tell all of themselves simply by standing still, simply by being.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bhavya Singh (@bookswithbhavya)

I was recently reading an article about how friendships can end, even in the best of circumstances because life happens, and not everyone can be in contact with their friends. I was thinking about if a friendship can ever end, people can remain out of contact but I have seen friends talk to each other with the same familiarity even after months of not talking to each other.

My friends and I, as well as most people of our age are at this juncture of deciding whether we are grown ups or still just kids. Most of us have now jumped to the other side of the road, where we are thinking like grown ups, getting more serious. All this leads to one thing: our lives are changing.

I associate change with time, because all of us change with time. When you spend time with friends, there seems to be no sense of time between you and your friends, because even six hours seem like five minutes, and we just want time to stop, because we want to spend one more moment with our friends. Does a friendship change with time? It does. All friendships evolve, as our personalities change over time. We literally grow up with our friends.

Does a friendship ever end? It is possible, but

[Ocean Voung writes, “Some people say history moves in a spiral, not the line we have come to expect. We travel through time in a circular trajectory, our distance increasing from an epicentre only to return again, one circle removed.”] (An excerpt from his novel.)

I think a friendship can be like a circle, it doesn’t end, when you move around in a circle, you end at the same place you start. We are taught that if you end at the same place you start at, whatever might be the distance moved, the displacement is zero. I believe a friendship can be like that, even if you move across distances, you end at the same place you started at, the level of comfort being the same.

As someone who has moved all their life and as someone whose friendships are very tight knit in nature, I also view friendship as a miracle, something that maybe in slight shadows, is close to magic. I see my life and my friends’ life as parallel tracks, and it does take a twist of fate to make our lives intersect so that we can meet at some point.

I have realised that it is relatively easier to start and end friendships than continuing them, most of our friendships start in school, where it is in a way effortless to start a camaraderie because you meet everyday at school and spend a lot of time together, so you forge a close bond with a few people.

In March 2020, I had very excitedly told my parents that I will make a lot of new friends in the new school year. That did not happen, because for me it is a little difficult to make friends from behind a laptop screen.

For a period, albeit not a very long one, I was not talking to my old friends and not making any new ones, and I was very worried, something I rarely am, about if I would have any friends or not. My earlier writings revolve around the theme of friendship, one day a friend called and said, “sometimes we write about things we don’t feel very strongly about, for example, you aren’t really that worried about your friends, are you?”

These two years behind our screens, in isolation, at home, without meeting anyone, has changed my perspective about friendship but I remind myself that:

Friendship is like the ocean; boundless, unfathomable, infinite, astounding. It transcends all barriers, giving you that rare tranquillity in this chaos. You can’t put a magnitude to a friendship; it is horizonless. I wonder that when we swim in the ocean, in that singular moment of peace; we leave all that weighs us down there and the ocean welcomes it all; all our weight, without any question. In a friendship, you are given the crushing responsibility of someone’s trust and you welcome it; limitlessly.

I am also fascinated by how randomly we start a friendship, how we choose a random person to be friends with. How you make a friend when you are just sitting in the classroom, a person walks up and sits beside you because no other seat was empty, how you strike a conversation with the person sitting behind you because the topic being taught in class doesn’t make sense to both of you, how you form a very close bond when you share your lunch with someone, how you start a friendship when you eat your bench mate’s lunch because they don’t like it and a friend once told me that their friendship with their best friend started when both of them were making motorbike noises as they were looking for seats in the classroom on the commencement of a new school year.

I think friendship is driving up a road without any map, hoping you don’t get lost; you don’t know if the road ends; mostly you don’t know where it starts. You enjoy the journey because the person on the passenger seat makes it worthwhile.

Most of my friendships are a direct product of sharing notes and registers and the birthday party that my sister and I host every year. I don’t know if these are common or uncommon ways to start a friendship but they work quite well for me.

My most recent search on the internet reads “friend meaning.” The result defines a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection. I have been mulling over how I define a friend and how I see friendship for quite some time now. I also think about whether my perspective of friendship changes if I think about different friends of mine and does it change with respect to the time I have spent with them. Do I have this perfectly thought about the definition of a friend? To find a definition of a friend, I asked around 38 people, “how do you define a friend?” and these are the responses I received.

I think you are not really fond of your friends, you like the version of yourself you can be in front of them, you can be your unfiltered, real self in front of them, you give up the act of pretence in front of them.

I am yet to find my own definition of a friend, it might be a mix of all these definitions, or something entirely different. I believe to define is to limit, and Thoreau believed that “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.” For me friendship is maybe not something that can be expressed in words but through memories:

• It is a Sunday in summer, my sister and I are cycling with our neighbour, moving in circles around our colony, laughing loudly and the heat has no effect on us as we finish cycling and head towards our home to drink ice cream soda.
• My friends and I are sitting in the classroom, the bell for recess has just rung, we take out our tiffin boxes at an instant, share and finish the lunch, and then fight with each other with shapes made of foil.
• The first time my friend visited my house, we had a lot to eat, and there were three of us. Three plates of snacks were entirely eaten by the said friend.
• In the colony park, where the grass was cleared recently, twelve children gather, play cricket and badminton, exchange their school stories and then eat ice cream together.
• Now that we have made a WhatsApp group, after two years, our phones will not stop buzzing until it is 2 am and everyone is sleeping, we will repeat the same cycle for many days.
• We have met after two years, a lot has changed, but we meet with the same sense of warmth, think a lot about what to order and eventually end up eating each other’s food. All of it.
• Both of us hosted a birthday party. It was a good evening, and the people invited were good. It was enjoyable for all, so let’s start a friendship now.
• We were close friends four years ago, we moved and were not in contact very frequently, you changed schools and we ended up in the same school and in the same friend circle, again.

I am the designated listener of the group in my friendships, I am the person who knows more about someone than anyone else in the group. I am the person who is called at 2:00 a.m. in the night to rant about things. I am the person whose calls with their friends last a minimum of fifteen minutes.

As much as I think that friendship has a sound of laughter and the undertone of joyous moments, as much as it is about sound, it is also about the absence of sound. Friendship is a comfortable silence, it is being able to sit together in complete silence without an exchange of words. Friendship is also about vulnerability, to be able to cry in front of your companion as easily as you can laugh in front of them. It is about knowing a person completely and still having the same respect towards them.

Friendship is happiness, it is feeling the sun on your face, it is listening to your favourite song after a long day, it is finding a chocolate when you thought they were finished.

Friendship is sadness, it is the melancholy you feel when your best friend leaves for a new city, it is the distance between you that no amount of messages can bridge.

Friendship is confusing, it is eating pizza with a fork, it is ordering a lime soda with only salt, it is chewing the straw instead of drinking from it. It is the confusion created during bill splits.

Friendship is the sense of familiarity. It is knowing your friend’s house as well as you know yours. It is knowing that your friend will wait for you if you stop to tie your shoes while walking.

Friendship is annoying because your friends will click embarrassing pictures of you and make WhatsApp stickers out of it. They will remind you of your most embarrassing moments.

Friendship is suddenness. It is finding your friend in the traffic jam and saying hi to them, it is your friends turning up at your house without prior notice, it is your friend giving you a surprise. 

It is every emotion, and with all emotions, you experience every aspect of life, good or bad, in a friendship.

I am good at sustaining friendships, over ten or three years, through letters or without talking for months. I have sustained friendships through knowing the fact that I will share the same sense of warmth with my friend, even if we meet after six months.

I often think about telling my friends that we should talk more frequently, but we are too busy figuring out our lives, we are too busy being humans, which sometimes takes a lot of strength. I am worried sometimes, about if it will all remain the same even after a lot of time. So I remind myself:

Friendship is like the ocean, with calm and violent waves but it is boundless, unfathomable, infinite, astounding.

The extra chocolate your best friend gave you at their birthday.

The smiley you got in your notebook in kindergarten.

The card your classmate hastily made after they got to know it is your birthday.

The first flower that blooms in your garden at the beginning of spring.

The friend who wishes you a happy birthday at 12:00.

The silly bet you won in class 4.

A page of the diary you wrote.

Hope.

Life in all its forms.

Your smile.

Things to hold onto; today and everyday.

• Instagram

I woke up to the news of the Nightingale of India, Lata Mangeshkar Ji, passing away. This loss, as much as it is national, is also a personal loss.

My parents are music lovers and my house has always had a musical atmosphere. My early memories include, me and my sister waking up everyday to the sound of the radio, with mostly Lata Ji’s melodious voice filling the room. A tradition that continues to this day. Lata Ji’s melodious voice playing in the room as I type this.

I remember, when my sister and I were around 6-7 years of age, we watched one movie with a lot of dedication; Hum Aapke Hai Kaun, almost daily. We were completely enamoured by the music album, the life of which was Lata ji. We listened to it daily. We were two seven year olds completely in love with Lata Ji’s voice.

That was the magic of her craft, the timelessness of her music, that she could make the listener very deeply feel the emotion with which she was singing.

Her voice mesmerised everyone, and will continue to do so for many, many years. Heaven will be melodious now.

Rest well, Lata Ji. 🙏

I am anxious, about my career, about how life is going to turn out, about if this all is going to be fine. The point is I am anxious and you must have been anxious too; at some point of your life.

Setting of the story

Set in Sweden, Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (translated to English by Neil Smith) is a story about a lot of things. It is about a bank robbery turned into a hostage situation. It is about an apartment viewing. It is about relationships: between couples, between parents and children. It is about the beauty of literature, about bridges. It is about kindness and strangers. But, most of all, it is about idiots; like you and me.
~
Anxious People has an unusual plot because it is about strange people landing up in extremely unlikely situations. Well, you see, the bank robbery is not really a bank robbery.

Clever Construction

There are a lot of situations with several characters in those, which while writing can more often than not go the wrong way. But trust Backman to do it right.
~
With so many things at hand in the book, I was worried about how all this is going to turn out, but it was a pleasant surprise to see how cleverly the book is constructed. Every element of the story fits perfectly, like a well knit sweater.

Realistic Characters

The characters are an eccentric bunch but each one is written with equal thought. They are very different but find something in common with each other, probably with me and you too. The character development is done throughout the book and keeps the story moving.

I loved the dynamic between the police officers, Jim and Jack, who are a father and son duo. I loved how peculiar yet how real every character was. You would find pieces of yourself in the characters too.

Backman’s masterful storytelling

The plot, the characters are all important elements of the book but none of them shine as much as Backman’s writing. It is simply brilliant. With his trademark wry humour and intelligent writing, a myriad of emotions and characters are handled exceptionally well. The unique point of the writing is that it is both humorous and poignant at the same time. The translation by Neil Smith is very precise as well.
~
Anxiety, depression and loneliness, all very sensitive feelings are handled in a delicate manner with utmost sincerity. Not once does the book sound preachy when talking about vulnerability and helplessness.

I want you to read this book because compassion is above all things. I want to you to read this book because it made me realise that we are going to be fine; you and I. We are going to get through all this if not all at once then; one bit at a time.

Sharing some of my favourite excerpts below:

“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”

They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.

That’s the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people’s.

God doesn’t protect people from knives, sweetheart. That’s why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.

We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.

We’re just strangers passing each other, your anxieties briefly brushing against mine as the fibers of our coats touch momentarily on a crowded sidewalk somewhere. We never really know what to do to each other, with each other, for each other.

We can’t change the world, and a lot of the time we can’t even change people. No more than one bit at a time. So we do what we can to help whenever we get the chance, sweetheart. We save those we can. We do our best. Then we try to find a way to convince ourselves that that will just have to…be enough. So we can live with our failures without drowning.

One of the most human things about anxiety is that we try to cure chaos with chaos.