Image

I know you have an image of me

In your head, that I am this way or that way. 

Let me tell you, keep it with you

I don't care what you think

Of me as long as 

You don't brandish it in front of me 

And pretend that you know me 

Better than I know myself. 

I am a fool according to you

"Falling" in love all the time, 

You think I even fall in love with 

Random lamp posts on the street. 

I am coward, according to you

Becuase you think I never 

Muster up the courage to do things 

Which are branded brave. 

I am a disappointment, according to you

Because I failed to confine within your norms.
Your image apparently depends on my image,
I say that's bad!

You take it for granted to yell at me
That I need to do "self evaluation",
Delve deep into my soul and search for it,
And make me look like a psycho
If I stand up against a wrong thing
You said or did.
Yeah it's your image of me.
What should be my image of you?

You think I am a damsel in distress
Needing to be saved
So you take it for granted that I need you!
And jump at every occassion
To "save" me!
Thank you, but no thank you.

And I am an angry woman,
According to you,
With no insight or farsight,
Incapable of thinking about consequences.
You think I am about to explode
The next moment with anger
When all I am doing is keeping calm.

You see my photo on social media
And comment, "this is not the person we knew",
"What has happened to you?"
"Where has that old you gone?"
As if you knew me very well.
All I can say is, a haircut is not the standard
Of determining whether a person
Is the same or not.
Transitioning from salwar to jeans to
Palazzo too is not.

So you take it upon yourself
To judge me and tell me
Who I am and who I should be!
And even tell me who I was in the past!
When I think, "well this is news".
And wonder if you are taking out
Your insecurities on me.
Because, your image of me might be
That I am a door mat,
Ready to take dust off your mind!

I am amused by what you think,
And what you feel about me.
You think you know me fully
That my life is an open book.
Well the truth is you don't.
Neither do I about you.
Your life is yours,
My life is mine.

So it will be better if you kept
Your image of me with yourself
Stopped pretending that you knew
Me inside out.

When you haven't seen my life
Through my perspective,
Experienced things as me,
How can you claim you know me
Better than I know me?

You are deciding things for me
And trying to impose attributes on me.
The question is, don't you have anything
Better to do in life?
May be you are worried about your own image.
You worry about yours, but don't try to tell me
And impose your beliefs upon me.

You see the problem with an image is,
That if one starts to live for it,
Did everything they did just for it,
Everything would become a mess and
Life will become a hollow process.
You could become untrue to yourself.
No. Don't put others' image of you in front of you
When you really want to find yourself.
The world calling you a "genius" does not make you one,
The world calling you "a loser" does not make you one.
So just don't go around giving attributes to people
Claiming that you know them better.

When you make an image of someone in you mind,
Just remember, images work both ways.
Like I could also have formed
An image of you in my mind,
That you are an mcp or a creep
Untrustworthy, cruel or cunning,
Or just a person obsessed with your own image,
The list can go on.

So don't bother about who or what I am.
Keep your image of mine with you
And live your life
And I will live mine.

Mixed feelings

Day dreaming, I am day dreaming
With my eyes open.
I see you, I see you, smiling
When I close my eyes.

My heart beats fast,
A little bit fast,
When I see you.

Butterflies fly in my belly.

When I look at you.

I can't take my eyes off you,

Who are you? I am day dreaming.

Mesmerised, I am lost, 

In my world of dreams.

But, reality might just have 

Knocked on the door,
Wrenching me out of
This day dreaming mode.

They say that you're not

Who I think who you are;

That you may not love me back

And love my kind; 

I want to ask you, if it's true.

But you are someone ,

I never want to lose. 

Should I give my heart to you?

Or not, I wonder.

Because this time if it breaks 

I am afraid there is no comeback...

I am sad that the buds of my love 

Will wither before they bloom.

Should I just have told you 

And lost you, or lose you silently...

If you can hear me, if you can feel, 

Listen to the sound of my heart, 

There is a feeble voice which says

"I love you"...

A sexist "joke" and it's consequences

This post is going to offend many people. But this needs to be told about whether someone is willing or sensible enough to see what was wrong with the said "joke" and the severe problem which was the root cause of the so called "joke" and the reactions of some people towards it.

Disclaimer : I don't intend to change anyone, it is upto everyone to decide to believe in what they want to themselves, as long as they do not cross the line and bully someone online and possibly IRL for poiniting out the obvious sexism in a "joke".  Don't change if you don't want to, but do not cross the lines.

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The origin of all these is a "joke" shared in a group, which consists of members of all ages, all professions, students, retired people etc. I am quoting the "joke" as I got it :

"Child      : Why Gandhi has no hair on his head...?
  Mummy : Because he speak only truth...
  Child      : Now I understand why ladies have long hair..."


To be honest I feel disgusted even by the fact that I have to quote it and read it again to quote it. The only one emotion which comes to my mind when I read this is disgust. So I felt disugsted and pointed out to the person who posted it on whatsapp that this was sexist. The reaction to my pointing out that the "joke" is sexist, and standing my ground with the fact that the "joke" is sexist no matter how many ever people try to demean and vilify me (with comments like "you need to do some self analysis, shut up, be quiet, be silent, stop lecturing, I would like to know what is bothering you")  made me write this post. Majority of the people who defended it are women and one boy much younger than me. (Now in India everyone hypes about "respecting" people based on age, so how come the millenial involved took it for granted that he can give orders to a woman much older than him?!! Just asking.) I do not want anyone to keep me on a pedestal and worship. But these people who got so much into verbally attacking a woman forgot that there are lines which cannot be crossed no matter who you are of one another.

Before I talk about the verbal bullying I had to face, let us look at the "joke" itself. I spotted it as sexist. Why? The primary reason is that I am a woman and as a woman I felt really bad about the "joke". Secondly that was a mean "joke" no matter whether is was for a woman, transgender or a man.

1) It is very clear that someone with a very bad view of women had written this "joke". If it is a man then he is a well pampered product of patriarchy and if it is a woman then she is obviously a life long slave of patriarchy. It frames a premise premedited to paint women in bad light. It does two bad things to demean women.

   a) It calls all women as liars because they have long hair when a person who spoke truth has no hair! The writer could have used "people with hair"  (even that would have been mean). But hell no! They deliberately used the word "ladies" which also stereotype women as having long hair. (Ironically all women who have short hair are questioned by society and treated by society as if something is wrong with them if they cut their hair short. May be society wants to brand all women as liars? And all men as truthful, so men are never allowed to grow their hair? Just wondering!)

2) Not only does this "joke" degrade women as liars and demands that all women should have long hair but also body shames a person for not having hair on his head. The joke speaks about a person who spoke truth and makes it look like speaking truth is harmful for your physical appearance!!

3) This "joke" is written as if  a child is saying this. I can't even start to imagine what kind of family environment does this child live in. Obviously if a child has to say such vilifying things about "ladies" or women then this child must have picked it up from somewhere around them. That speaks a lot about the society and the homes they live in and their fathers and other relatives. Does it not?

Obviously the "joke" is not written by a child, but some deeply misogynistic adult who took it for granted that it is ok to have a "laugh" at the cost of vilifying a gender, if the gender happens to be the female one. And the "joke" gets forwarded and "enjoyed" by unsuspecting adults including women and a millenial adult male who cannot identify that it is blatantly sexist and jump in immediately to defend it. (No! They do not spare any effort to accuse, verbally assault and even paint the whistle blower as mentally unstable and the millenial freely says that the whistle blower woman (i.e. I) needs to do some self analysis, because she can spot sexism.)

Before I self analyse or anlyse the bullying I was subject to, I would like to analyse a few other things. Why couldn't these people identify that the "joke" was sexist and was demeaning women including them?!! How can people close their eyes to an obvious fact and pretend that nothing is wrong when everything is wrong and the proof is as plain as daylight? How can people not identify sexism as sexism? So will they be ok with rape "jokes" if someone forwards it to them tomorrow saying that "oh there is smiley emoji in it, so it is ok"? Or it is that they are ok with themselves being deemed as liars because they are women? Or do they feel that this "joke" was not even that bad as some of the other sexist remarks they may have to deal with on a daily basis? Or do they only have a problem only if the "jokes" were extreme? Or do they feel that if they say that a "silly thing" as being called a liar is sexism they will look less cool or less liberal? What is the difference between a "joke" which deems all women deliberately as liars and some hard core conservative ideology which discriminates women for having menstruation? There is no difference. They are all ultimately the same.

There are only a few explanations about why these women and the millenial male defended this blatantly bad portrayal of women. They were born and brought up in extreme patriarchical conditions where they were taught to tolerate every kind of verbal, physical and mental abuse, in all forms, subtle, moderate and violent forms and be a slave to the men in their lives and serve them no matter what happens. So they will not take the act of being called liars seriously and will brush off subtle sexism (until it all accumulates and causes severe damage) and do a disservice to themselves and other women.

It is absolutely unimaginable for me, how someone can be discriminated and be vilified for their gender and still defend the absuer (person or the idea) and pretend like "this does not pertain to me, it is other women who are being called liars". Seriously? Some other women would have thought like you and for them you might be the other woman who is a liar. Is that ok with you? Is it really ok with you if all the women start thinking so and women themselves deem each other as liars and bad people because a misogynist crafted a deliberate "joke" to abuse women and pit them against one another?

If tomorrow someone comes and beats you up and say it is out of love and care you will say that it is love/care? No I don't think so. (Asking since so many protests are going on about a certain movie and its director's crappy ideolgy about women.) So how is being deemed as liars because you are a woman ok with you? The attitude behind both are the same - that anybody can call, say and do anything to a woman.

How can you say and vouch that a "joke" calling all women including you do not apply to you because you don't have long hair or you don't feel vilified? It is not the question of the length of your hair or whether you feel it or not. It is like global warming and climate change, just because you are not feeling the heat while sitting inside the AC does not mean that it is not 40 deg and over heated outside! You are sitting in a building which is situated in the 40 deg overheated area, the moment your power supply switches off you will feel the heat too!!

 The question of whether you "feel" like a liar is not the real issue here. What matters is that someone took it for granted that they can portray women in any way they want and demean us. Would you tolerate it if someone portrays you as a bad woman, makes rumours about you and denies your opportunities in life and brands it as a "practical joke"? Will you tolerate if someone comes and calls you a "liar" and a "cheat" in the middle of the street or to your house and says bad things to you? Do you tolerate if someone calls you with really bad cuss words? (Obviously you know what kind of person you are so, the cuss words won't make a difference but that does not make it ok that someone took it again for granted that you can be abused verbally because you are a woman.) So how can you justify a blatantly sexist "joke" which calls you, your mother, your daughter, your sister, your aunt, your grandmother or any woman in your life, a liar because you and they are women? How can you justify a mean "joke" like that?

These are the direct questions which that "joke" invokes.

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Now the discussion aka bullying which followed raises another set of serious questions. The set of questions will start from the question "who gave you permission to cross the line with me?"

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An accommodation issue and what we might be doing to our planet

This post is out of the extreme experiences I went through in search of an accommodation after being forced to vacate from the institute hostel in the name of water shortage and reconstructions of other hostels. The time was extremely stressful. So stressful that I realised that I have never been in such a situation before. It was too mcuh that I felt going numb and indecisive everyday. Several people were trying to offer solutions, several people were judgemental and made it look like I was making a fuss out of a silly situation. Several even said that we were inefficient at fighting the injustice of being evicted from the hostel. But the only think that can be said to those who judged and accused is, "unless you are in that severe situation you will never understand the gravity of it and why a certain person acted stressfully which you are being judgemental about". But this post is not about that. May be that will be fodder for another post. This post is about the revelations which came out of the 1.5 months long accommodation search in the city I thought was familiar to me.

Now a certain section of the people will think "what is there to be written as a blog; we already know about all these". But hey this is my experience and I am sharing it.

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This search for accommodation took me to places which I thought never existed - not exotic, but dingy and unimaginable for a person who has always had the comfort of a roof over the head. The experience was humbling as well as thought provoking. Humbling because there are people who can only afford to live in those places, the people who get the manual labours done in our daily lives and make it comfortable. A big salute to all of them. Thought provoking because I was hit by the way buildings or structures were constructed.

So the lesson I learnt was that if you have a terrace or free ground, you can make 4 walls, fix a door, and window like structures, make a random toilet and bathroom and rent for high prices and viola you are rich!! Those structures exist in dingy alleys with many buldings together and no air circulation or sunlight coming in. People pay rent and live in these places because real estate is practically not available in a city. So the overall picture you get is that real estate is not available. But what does that imply? It implies that there is no ground which is spared from being claimed by buildings.

If you live in a fancy high rise (with a fancy rent to match) light and air would be there, but the high rise itself is built on some land. If you live in a clustered quarters there also the buildings are occupying some land. That means there is no space for trees to grow! Trees must have been cut down for the city to expand and creep into these occupied spaces. Without trees, there won't be shelter for small animals and birds. Without trees actually there is no relief from the heat of this city which poor people with no ac are forced to bear. But then with ac we would be generating more heat which is released into the atmosphere!!

 Then comes the water issue. The most grappling issue in Chennai. It does not rain, it does not cool down. Nothing can bring any rain to this land! When Chennai floods occured, I heard that there were constructions made over water bodies which added to the severity of the flood. :( So we are not only destroying water sources and adding to the water shortage in summer but also causing floods by constructing in every possible bit of land available. So this goes on in a loop. Contructions are made everywhere including those on water reservoirs because more and more people need accommodaiton in the city. But the same contructions cause shortate of water to the people who live in those contructions!!

The water issue is very serious. Especially if you are a woman. Imagine a woman living in the aforementioned dingy situation without water. People worry about safety of women while they have to live in a city. Forget safety the women and children living in these places may not even have access to water which is a basic necessity. But no you cannot imagine unless you have seen or been to such a place all by yourself atleast once.

The thoughts go on. There is no water and you rely on tankers which bring water from god knows where. You have plenty of sea water but the ocean is polluted with plastic. To know the amount of plastic pollution in the sea all you have to take a stroll to Elliot's beach and try and stand in the waves and have plastic and thermocoal washing over your feet. :/ If makes you feels so filthy that it defeats the whole purpose of going to the seashore and standing in the waves.  Land is polluted, air polluted, sea polluted...

Combine these realisations and stress with the heat in which you were forced to go and search for accommodation. If you didn't believe in global warming and climate change you would become a convert! It is so unbearably hot outside. All these experiences make you wonder, "what are we doing to our planet"? On a social basis, people come to cities to fulfill their dreams or to get better paid jobs. But cities also happen to be the most polluted and lacking proper hygiene when so many people cluster together. We cannot snap away half of the people from cities like Thanos did. But we should serioulsy think about controlling population, or providing better life and job opportunities from places where people migrate to the cities. Otherwise there will always be the tug of war between the obvious right to have a good life and the way people end up actually living in search of a good life. Obviously the way cities are now, majority of people who do not earn well are forced to live a not so good life (but may be compared to the rural settings where they come from these bad city conditions may be much better for them in terms of a job). And the many buildings built to accommodate the people coming to cities in search of jobs are not doing any justice to the environment and the planet.

That we are nearing an inevitable future which involves calamities caused by climate change is scary. Either it rains too heavily or there is no water. It is high time to think and find solutions where everybody gets justice. We need to have solutions to save the environment and our planet.

The whole search was for accommodation, a roof over your head and a place to sleep and live safely. But what it taught and reminded me was a serious lesson. The lesson that unless we pay real attention to the condition of our planet now, we will not have our primary home left in our immediate future.
If you don't believe, you are welcome to walk through the city during day time and search for accommodation...

Life after 30 - Part 1

I wanted to write this blog just after I turned 30 but my grandmother passed away and I postponed it. Had I written it back then it would have been an optimistic one, but now almost three years after I postponed it my life in 30s is looking very depressing partly because I am stressed and worn out and partly because I am being subject to unnecessary tortures. But ofcourse I should always remember that I am a woman and that too single at ~33 and independent and many people including my own parents have trouble digesting it.

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1) Parents : Let me give my first impression of  life after 30. Life after 30 brings you a lot of stress not because you want it but mainly because your parents are aging. This is a stress which you have to come to terms with and will make you lose your sleep wondering if they are going to die soon out of their ailments and how you will cope when they are gone. But then despite all the care you give them in times of dire necessity like them being admitted in hospitals for weeks or months, the same parents take you for granted and hurl all kinds of hurtful words and actions at you that you come to a mental limbo of it is what it is. According to (atleast some Indian parents) them their children are their eternal slaves who have no right to live independently. Even if they are 30+ individuals the lives of their children is in their hands. You are doomed if you are woman - unmarried and do not depend on your parents at all for anything. Your parents' "reputation" and "social status" obviously rests upon the "slender shoulders" of your marital status.

An unmarried woman in her 30s is considered as god knows what - harming their reputation by her parents, disobedient by others and a loser by members of the society who don't even have anything to do with you!!! Things will be worse if you happen to pursue a career in research. Imagine how it feels if your mother has been hospitalised for 2 months continous for CKD, the first major stress in your pre-30 life and post 30 life. Next year your father gets hospitalised for a month. The second major stress in your 30+ life. Both affect your peace of mind and you lose sleep. You rush off both times to take care of things back home, and they get ok ok and everyone adjusts to the new equilibrium, the toll is solely on your health and sleep. And who gets the blame for not sleeping at night? You.

You can't sleep at night. And who blames you first for this? The same people about whom you are concerned. Well that teaches the lessons that you should not concern yourself over anything or anyone. People are in general ungrateful and tend to forget what you have done for them, very soon.
You are taken for granted for ever. The loss of your three months of your academic career is forgotten, because well people think that women go to higher education just for name and fame and social status. You, out of fear for their health do not apply for any foreign post doc (which is an unwritten criterion to secure a job anywhere in India) and join an institute with an admin system which is beating the hell out of you and what do you hear from your parents? "You should have applied for a pdf abroad while you were doing your first pdf", as if none of the hospitalisations or near death experiences happened!! Who is the fool here? And when you actually get a pdf abroad you are forbidden from going there in the name of god knows what and out of concerns especially for the health of the same parents you do not go there but are left to struggle in your institute which after 1.5 years of confinement in hostel orders you to find an apartment outside the campus when you have only 6 months tenure left!! As if one's life didn't have enough problems.

On top of all these stress there are hurtful words and behaviours to handle when you come home once a while, because of course you are unmarried. That is the only thing eveybody including your own parents see about you. (When I was a child all people could see was that I have an extra tooth in my front row and all people ever saw about me was that one odd tooth which is obviously not aesthetically pleasing. They never saw that I was class topper or district topper or decent in my studies. All they could see was my tooth.) Similarly, all everybody including your parents can see now is the "negative/sad/depressing" (according to them) that you are unmarried! Even young doctors in a hospital cannot digest the fact that a 30+ woman is unmarried. :/ Nobody sees the fact that you have a PhD in high energy physics, have 3 years of post doctoral experience, can do photography, can write a blog and are not depending on anyone for my livelihood. No. All they see is how "unfortunately" single you are!! And what is more ridiculous, your father thinks that if you stand up for my own rights, you am harming his reputation, because he is an undeniable product of the male chauvanist society. Your mother thinks that you should not speak against any atrocitites you have to face verbal or mental, because speaking against anyone who attacks you is un-PhD-PDF like!!

I want to say "What the hell."

How is one person's reputation the responsibility of their daughter? What has it got to do with her marital status? Apparently "people" are asking them both if a woman has "settled" somewhere or if there is any "progress" in her "life". Note the "". Those are words for which these "people aka society" has some stupid definitions gauged according to their standards. And your parents are stupid enuogh to tolerate these bullies and believe that you are a loser becasue you are unmarried and ruin their "reputation/social status" by being well you! Why can't your parents ask in return what those bullies are doing in their lives or what their children are doing in theirs apart from getting married and reproducing (no offence to anyone who do so, but please stop gauging other people's lives with your uniform scale)? People should understand that marriage is not a mandatory thing especially for a woman!! It is a choice! But then people have trouble understanding the meaning of that word espeacially if a woman makes it. Like the young doctor I met 2 days ago in the hospital had trouble understanding that I am single by "choice" and had to reiterate twice that it is my CHOICE; a lady doctor who gave unsoclicited "advice" that after marriage my responsibilites are going to go up (as if I don't have any responsibility in my life right now), there will always be someone or the other who will have trouble digesting the fact that a woman in her 30s is unmarried and still has a life of her own!! It is your choice whether to let the bullies into your head and take it out on your sole daughter or be proud of the fact that she has a PhD and has 3 years of PDF experience, at times other than when you want to accuse her of something.

But you cannot obviously change any of the mindsets of stubborn people. Even if you stay away from home most of the time, minding your own business and go home only once or twice a year, all you get is ungrateful behaviour from parents who take you for granted and hurl all kinds of abuses and accusations at you because you are single and they can't digest it. Sometimes this makes me wonder about parents who commit honor killings. Nobody - even your own parents have the right to accuse you, staying away from home minding your own business, of ruining their social status and "reputation". To everyone outside your life may be perfect, especially if you are a single child, others thing you have everything. The truth is, you have nothing. You never knew happiness in your childhood. It was always filled with fights and quarells and unnecessary gossips by gossip mongering old women inside and outside the home. Now that you have become 30+ and your parents have retired and have nothing better to do in their lives than to eat your head because of some stupid bullies in the society, you are being made a scapegoat of their pointless accusations.

As much as you hate your parents for fighting you also love them and hope that they would one day (atleast for a minute) behave normally. But they never understand this. According to them you love them only for their money or whatever material wealth they might have amassed. They believe that they "let" you do your PhD because they are "broadminded". Well to go for the entrance test of the same PhD you had to stage a protest locking yourself inside a room for 3 hours. Infact you had to fight for everything right from your first cycle to, MSc project to PhD entrance with your family just because of your gender. And now you are 30+, your own body is slowing down and is unable to handle stress, but are accused by anyone and everyone including your parents who fail to see the good things about you but brings the worst version of you out.

If someone brings out the worst in you, they are not the ones who really love you or care for you. Your parents' love for you was always based on how well I performed in exams, whether you scored first or last in school or in college or whether you followed their "life plans" for you. Since you have not followed any of their plans, you have become an unacceptable daughter in their eyes even if you are the only one who will fly down to take care of them while they are hospitalised in near fatal situations. Wait! According to them you flying down in the moments of dire necessity was nothing worth being grateful for, because you are unmarried. And since you are unmarried, your actions and life have no value. So much for gratefulness. If they wanted a son instead of a daughter they should have abandoned you as soon as you were born and should have adopted a son.

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2) Non-parents : "You have had enough education. It is high time you got a job. You could have done a PhD back home." According to some people in your life your PhD is an ornament to find a groom because ofcourse you are a woman. According to them there is no difference between the PhD you do back in some place locally and nationally! Afterall it is an ornamental degree according to them. As soon as you get that degree you should milk it for benefit. Post doc is unnecessary according to them and passion does not have any meaning! Oh yes. Passion. The sole reason why you went to pursue a career in high energy physics. Your sole aim is to study till you die. You cannot afford to stop at any time. But what use is it telling these to people who cannot understand the meaning of what passion means? For them you doing PhD away from home, in another state was your parents' fault because they didn't put you in shackles and did not make you the slave of their insurmountable wills! (Oh yes! The world thinks that it was because of the broad mindedness of your parents that you did PhD. Not because you staged the 3 hour closed door protest to write the entrace exam and passed it and worked hard for the next 7 years!)

Sometimes you can't figure out the reasons why people churn out statements like these which ridicules "passion" and that have studied enough and should get a job somewhere. Your entire career is a research career. So where will be your career if you abandon it for some teaching job (teaching job is good, but teaching alone cannot satisfy you if you really want to do research all your life)? Are there enough number of colleges in India where proper research happens? In university centers research is there, but what about your subject in your state? Not many places have it. (The main reason why you did your PhD outside the state for which you are hearing accusations! Your field was nowhere in your state when you were applying for PhD!) What people who give these kinds of "advices" don't realise is that, the 30+ woman to whom they are saying these things to, knows very well what she wants out of her life and would appreciate if they stopped these kinds of uncalled for statements about her career. Oh! And to these people the fact that women in STEM are very few doesn't make any difference! Because their reality is different and they are trying to impose it on a 30+ woman because she is unmarried.

Now you can see that the major problem a woman faces after her 30s is being unmarried. As if she has committed a horrid crime by being single!!! Even her institute had stupid rules that unmarried post docs won't be given HRA, at some point of time!! (The same rule which the institute used to make the post docs stay in hostels from where they are being forced to vacate now!!)

What I cannot understand is the following. What problem do have people including one's own parents have with an unmarried woman? Nobody is asking for respect (oh yeah as if these people will ever treat a woman with respect - men and women included). All one is asking is non-interference. Parents cannot solve grave problems like accommodation problems of a person in her 30s. If people cannot solve a problem they should not blame the ones being made the victim of that problem. You complain about being evicted from hostels and the dean's refusal to meet and hear your side. What your parents tell you is completely irrational. They blame you. That you had not put enough effort to meet the dean who is throwing you out!! Then why don't they pick up the phone and call the dean and tell him not to evict you from the hostel? That nobody does. If people cannot offer any help or a solution to the problem at hand the least they can do is not to indulge in victim blaming. This blaming and rude behaviour becomes sharply visible when you are 30+. When you need moral support from someone that is the one thing especially your parents fail to provide to a 30+ person.

You are dead worried that you will be thrown out of the hostel with your things. People laugh at you for being concerned about this. Well they are not being thrown out of any hostel so they can laugh. You have 1.5 years worth things in a room. You are blamed for getting those things!! What is this? A 30+ woman cannot buy things for herself? If she buys novels it is a problem, if she buys text books it is a problem, if she buys a camera it is a problem, if she undergoes a health check up it is a problem. Please tell me what is not a problem according to you? People should keep their delusions aside that a woman whether 30+ or - is obliged to "obey" the crap you ask her to do. If is her life, she can think for herself. And if you cannot offer moral support, at times when it really is needed, please keep quiet.

A 30+ person, especially a single woman pursuing a research career realises that her family are not her actual supporters but only and only her friends are. Many of the problems 30+ single women in research face are the same. Accusations of being single, illogical questions and comments by people who have no clue about the stresses you have to deal with, real health problems (uterus is not the only organ in a woman's body) even if they are unmarried, work load etc.

In the midst of all these harshness to 30+ single women with a research career, what the people who are being rude to them are deliberately choosing to forget is that these women (including me) have a career which they love. And there are so many things about this career and the environment of the institutes where they pursue these careers which puts a lot of extra stress on them. As if ailing parents is not enough stress. A person who has crossed 30s is like a bird learning to fly. It has been harshly thrown out of its nest to be taught flying. Flying we will learn ofcourse but the path is stressful for sure.

Yes. Stress is a word which was not there is the 20s even during PhD days. Sometimes when you are 30+ you find that your body is unable to handle it. The world can blame your inability to sleep at night, that you miss breakfast, that you are becoming obese because of your habits, but nobody is doing anything to understand that you are stressed by various things in life and your body cannot just shut down because you are worried about your career, where you will live ultimately and in the near future you are going to be evicted from your hostel and has to find a house immediately or else you will be forced to quit your career and live back home with people who will make your life a hell for the rest of your life. But well, these blamers did not deal with what you are dealing with in their lives, chose to tread easy paths and may be content with their life choices which brought them to their present lives (where they are accusing you of ruining their reputation :/ ).

The infinite loop

Every moment in life feels like a struggle
Every cell in the body seems to stuggle
Every inch of the mind is struggling
To not be bored with the monotony
Which makes it presence felt severly.
The same things being done,
The same things not done;
Life feels like a sum of would have beens, could have beens,
And never have beens.
Losing lustre,
Headed nowhere.
With the nagging feel of monotony,
Always playing at the back of the mind..

Life is stuck in an infinite loop,
Doing the same things over and over,
Again and again and again and again
And again and again and again and again
And again and again and again and again
And again and again and again and again...
Ah! The monotony of it.
The never ending, never breaking loop;
Making you forget the goals,
And the places to go;
Stretching the limits of patience
Ofcourse "patience is a virtue",
But even virtues have expiry dates.

The infinite loop - it has invaded,
The body and the mind.
I am stuck in a limbo,
With no way out.
It's not dark, but it's grey
It's not terrifying, but it is taxing,
Extremely taxing.
The feeling of being stuck,
With no way forward.

Even hope does not work here,
It has all been sucked out,
Pulling me to the depths of despair,
Will I ever climb back up?

"Slow and steady wins the race"
Says the old wisdom.
Then why is patience not winning this race
Patience streched to its farthest limits?
This race against monotony?
It is gradually eating me up.
Nothing to look forward to,
Nothing to hope for, the world is grey,
Has lost its colour, lustre, everything...

It is an infinite loop,
Slowly but steadily,
Consuming everything,
Every bit of mind,
Every bit of me.