Hashtag Sad Face

"And at once I knew, I was not magnificent."

If you want to know someone, really know someone, listen to the songs they talk to you about. Watch them listen to these songs and notice their faces and their bodies change with the music. People might go really quiet and close their eyes and just sway. Or get on top of the nearest table and sing into a hairbrush. Watch them. You'll learn a part of them they wouldn't be able to outrightly display. People come to terms with themselves through their favourite music. Whether it's Carly Rae Jepsen or Sufjan Stevens, they find something in the melody, or in the words, or in the memory it provokes. Don't disregard their love for a song you can't stand; it made them feel something they probably can't even really explain to you.

Which is why I fucking hate music. (saying this only for dramatic effect)

Recently, Bon Iver made me stay up till 6 am and cry for reasons I'm entirely unsure of. How the hell are you supposed to go about with your day when you hear a sound that makes you sit up for a second and notice the goosebumps running down your back? And how is it that the new Coldplay song, in one play, had got stuck into the very recesses of my brain and refused to leave for the entire week? I'm humming it all the time. A screen capture from the video is my desktop wallpaper. You don't get it. It's a disease.

Hey Chaos, stay around.

Love,
Kanika

Reasons why I'm a fail

I'm disappointed to say this (because I feel like I've done it too many times before) but I can't keep up with Astonishing August.

There are 80000000 things that contribute to my having to say this. They are all important and must figure higher on my list of priorities than blogging everyday, and I feel terrible about that. Half of these reasons are to do with my diploma project, and my failure to keep up with so many things at once. As Ze Boyfriend put it when I complained about AA, "You take on more in an attempt to prove you aren't procrastinating, but you are." And he's right. In those moments of immediate and intense inspiration, I don't focus it on the small things but rather create a multitude of other commitments I must share my mindspace for. And it's not a good idea.

Of course my diploma project needs to be the attention whore in my life for the next 2 months, and it's safe to say that concentrating is not my strong suit. I keep trying to think back to how in hell I was able to sit for hours on end doing integration and differentiation back in 12th standard: the answer is I did not have a goddamn laptop of my own, I did not have a phone that could access wifi, I don't think the internet at home was even wi-fi enabled at the time. And now it's all just "yeah lemme just quickly check pinterest and tumblr and twitter and 9gag" and when I feel I'm procrastinating it's "lemme just check some design blogs and get lost in the brilliance that is graphic design so much so that I feel demotivated."

Apart from that, being sick for almost 2 and a half weeks is by far the most tiring thing. Can you imagine coughing so hard that you get dizzy and need to sit down for a minute? That's been happening to me too many times in a day. And it's all just a common cold/flu. It shouldn't have taken it so long, it's almost kinda settled in my chest and every morning my throat is burning in all kinds of different ways. How fucking sad is that. I should be able to handle myself better, because this is very scary actually. And I need to focus on this too, because it's coming in the way of everything else.

The third giant chunk is being at home, which was necessary for a variety of reasons, mainly that I have working parents and my grandparents are almost too old to be able to handle household stuff on their own. It's tons of responsibility and I'm super glad to be there, but it takes a huge amount of time and to balance this on top of everything else is becoming a chore of its own.

I'm really really sorry to everyone who wanted to participate, and a special sorry to Akanksha because she was participating nearly every single day and now I'm a dick to cut this short in between. I don't think I should start this kinda thing up again until I'm absolutely sure I have the time to devote to it (since this is the third time I'm cutting this venture short). However I'll be blogging still, once I'm over being ashamed.

Love in embarrassment,
Kanika

p.s. I've reverted all the AA posts to drafts, so they're not deleted. Maybe in a while when I don't hate myself so much I'll put them back up. :(

Of Love and Other Drugs

Being the douchebag that I am, I missed my blog's third birthday. Three years! My blog is three whole years old! I cannot believe in its existence sometimes. That there is this portal I created for me to talk to myself. And I've ignored it, been angry with it, wanted to shut it down, but I come back to it anyway, because on days when everything else is trying super hard to make me feel terrible, Chaos is what's left behind.

Happy belated birthday Chaos, you are loved! :)

In other news, I've fallen horribly sick and everything feels morose. Every inch of my body goes up in flames of pain when I try to move. This means I can't do anything but rest my laptop on my stomach and scroll through endless distances of tumblr and pinterest, because this is as good an excuse as any to not work. I'm being force-fed a multitude of medicines which leads to long periods of hazy things.

I've come to realise that this diploma project is bringing out the most powerful waves of self-doubt and under confidence. Ze Boyfriend and I are trying super hard to lean on each other and keep our chins up. It's difficult when you look at it head on, but having someone to cry and complain about it with you makes it feel 1235126387% do-able. Fascinating how love can fill up all your gaps.

I'll be back once my nose isn't threatening to fall off.

Love,
Kanika

Beginning / End

Over the past week, I had to pack up my Bangalore life into cartons and suitcases. Somehow shut 4 years of memories & love and happiness and relationships into boxes and send them back home. And then I had to leave too.

Of course it did not hit me till the taxi driver called and asked for directions, & suddenly I was blubbering and tearing up over the phone. I spent 4 years waiting to leave this place and when I was at the end all I wanted was another day in that house, making maggi at 3 am and drinking quietly in the balcony so that our landlord wouldn't get to know and watching Friends with Ze Boyfriend while sitting on the same cartons I had just finished packing, holding his hand really tightly because I knew in a few hours I'd be too far away.

[it's not like I won't see him. I still have my final diploma project left to do, I just chose to do it in Delhi. I'll see him soon. :)]

I hated leaving, and last minute my friends decided to drop me to the airport; one showed up with his car, so the taxi left with other people with flights at the same time. I cried quietly all the way to the airport, I cried when I had to hug everyone, I cried when I got to the check-in counter (thinking about it right now is forming a lump in my throat) and I realised it was harder to leave Bangalore than it was to leave Delhi 4 years ago.

I've been home for a couple of days now. Sorry about the silence. Just lots of things to miss.

The very sweet Anjali has given me a blog award and it requires some do-ing; give me a day or two to adjust to all this upheaval and I'll be back. (:

Lots of love,
Kanika

Punctuating

Happy birthday to a very tired-sounding mother.

Speaking to my family is not a regular deal for me; we probably have a 15 minute conversation every two-three days. It makes me miss home horrendously, even after 4 years of being away from them. I always know what'll be happening at home when I get a call; I can hear people talking in the background and I can hear my father's old hindi music blasting from the speakers and I can hear my grandmother asking how much rice to cook and my sister's interjecting from the back and asking if I heard that particular song she sent me and my mother tells me about family get-togethers and everyone always asks me when I'm coming home for my next vacation...it's an overwhelming amount of things to suddenly miss and just after the conversation ends I feel weird for a while. As if being there amidst all that chaos would somehow give me the peace of mind I'm craving right now.

Summer vacations are being planned, and I think my parents have forgotten the FINAL PROJECT I AM SUPPOSED TO BE STARTING IN JULY ON THE BASIS OF WHICH I WILL GRADUATE (OR WON'T, DEPENDING ON WHETHER I MAKE A HASH OF IT OR NOT). But the plan is to go to our favorite kind of holiday destination, a secluded hill-spot, where the pine trees are too tall to look up at and the drives are long and beautiful with Paul Simon singing along, so I refuse to crib about it. I need that kind of de-stressing sojourn so desperately.

No more whining. Let's beat this Sunday.

Everything's Not Lost

There it was, I had it, my moment of everything-just-hit-me-all-at-once-what-am-i-doing-everything-sucks, and I handled it better than I ever thought I could.

And best of all, I had a friend to help me along, in that 10 seconds of silent chaos.

Everything is okay, and it will be, because the universe will always turn itself back up again and the sun will shine again new.

I will be okay, come darkness or light, the lows of loneliness or the highs of the contentment. Coldplay will always be the answer to questions that are woozy, with some added herbs and spices.

Everything is okay.

:)

The (Highly Beautiful) Fault in our Stars

Last night at 2 am, I was reduced to a blithering, sobbing version of me, just because of some words written by this guy I hadn't heard that much about, about people I hadn't met but knew and understood completely (just marveling at the fact that a book can make me feel as shitty as it did. I'm always surprised by how much books can mean to a person if you give them time and space and love.)

I reached page number 260, curled up in bed with my fairy lights on, almost too aggressively involved in the story but still in control of my heart....and I was crying before I got to the end of the paragraph. It was the sort of sadness that didn't announce itself with a lump in the throat (I find that's a polite introduction to the little crying child you're going to be reduced to). I was reading, gradually getting sadder, and then, BAM, TEARS.

I don't want to tell you anything about this book. I hate it. I hate it so much that I love it like a lunatic, the things it told me and the conversations Hazel and Augustus had, and all I really wanted to do when it ended was just cry into my pillow and want a long, warm hug. That book has taken all my rosy dreams of the future and basically thrown them to the dogs.

It's the feeling when you read something so true that everything else you've known to be true until this moment seems like it was building up right to this point.

I'm so happy I decided to read this book.

John Green, it was a privilege to have my heart broken by you, and this pain demands to be felt.
Thank you.

Love,
Kanika