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.

Tangible

If I reach out for you,
Would I ever touch your heart?
If I chase after you,
Would I ever meet you somewhere?
If I spoke to you with silent words,
Would you ever listen to my voice?

If I never open my heart,
Would my love still be tangible?

Faceless

I forfeited my face to the social media,
Immersed in the LCD screen of my smartphone
So have you, you, you, you and most of you
The "smart" generation; lost in the virtual world....

I was in a restaurant with my (now) ex-best friend
Four years ago we met; to chat and exchange pleasantries
All he did was to glance at his phone every now and then;
So much for best friendship....

I am talking to you, but you are looking down,
Looking at your screen, waiting for a message
Which will never come,  from someone far away
Completely ignoring me, pretending that you are listening.

Yes I am addicted too, to that screen
Which emits blue light; we all seek it
Like insects seek the light...
Yet the sight of myself or someone else
Looking down at it annoys me...
"Social" we are on the media,
Outside it islands looking down
Blocking out sights, people, life....

The screen is an excuse, to escape
And not face the world,
When I feel timid and lonely
In a group of people
Or just because I feel bored or left out
From a conversation everyone is having
Or just because there is no conversation at all...

My head is held low, not out of shame,
But I am trying to find a way in the world,
Staring at the Google map, instead of  looking out
Of my window seat at the sights on my way....

I see a person opposite me; I don't know who that is,
'Coz they are too "busy" browsing on their phone
Looking down, their face barred from sight.
I see another person, again faceless,
Busy posing for a selfie.
May be I will find out who it is on FB or instagram...
The places where I redeem my narcissistic ego....

I am eating delicious food, got to click it before I eat
Because no matter how good is the flavour
Click I must before I savour....

I have to "live moments" and "show" the world how cool I am
So I take selfies in places, infront of monuments...
But the frame is full of me and me alone,
But just believe me I was there just that the camera wasn't wide enough.
Adventures don't seem so without a phone video, a selfie or a groupie..
So obsessed am I with looking at the phone for that adventure selfie
That I can't see that I am falling off the cliff...
Oh wait I will go "live", hashtag this #freefallbeforetheskullbreaks...

Addiction, addiction everywhere, eyes kept open all the time,
Too much info all the time, relayed and relayed and relayed....
Never ending stream of pictures, lectures, opinions, news, controversies...

Makes me guilty of this OCD; of having to check that screen at times
Of having to feel "incomplete" without that droid, ignoring all the real humans,
Alive and around me...

So immersed inside that screen and the numerous apps,
I forget the sights and sounds of real life...
Would we be needing a handheld LCD device to understand
Smell, taste and touch too? Wait touch is already there,
The monotonous touches and swipes which make the addiction easier...

Addiction so severe, that makes me think,
Why can't I watch the sunset, without the urge to click
Without the urge to go online and share immediately
When I am missing the whole beautiful sunset
While I am busy sharing just one picture?
No a video won't help, because there are certain
Things like sunset or the moonrise which have to be "watched"
And "experienced", a snapshot won't help....

And there are other things like the feel of the wind
Against your skin; the feel of standing in the waves,
Which pull the sand beneath your feet away...
And the feeling of being in the rain....
Thank goodness I don't want a phone to experience them.

So addicted am I to the radio and electronics enabled technology
That I have forgotten about the EM spectrum and the electrons,
To gaze at the night sky and remind myself how much I love them,
To "see" the sights the visible range can show me back down on Earth,
To "hear" the real sounds around me; to come out of the 2D world
Into the 3D real world, savour it, love it and live it....
Am I a faceless addict or is this all part of human evolution?

Why I hate love : the story of mathematical induction...

I have been wanting to write this post for a long long time, deterred only by the hesitation that people may feel bad because of certain of my views. I apologize prior to proceeding any further if I have unknowingly hurt anybody's feelings. This post doesn't involve those who have found real love (real as in genuine soul to soul) and is only for those who have been hurt a lot because of love.

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The reason why I came to this issue was all the questions from different quarters "when are you getting married?", "why don't you want to get married?" and so on. Honestly speaking the only reason I won't wed anyone is just because I cannot marry someone whom "I" do not love. And I am a failure at love. If there is anything I cannot achieve with my own hard work it is to gain someone's romantic love, just because it is a two particle system and then the other particle also happens to be a human being with a will! So I have kind of given upon this and probably this is the only thing I have ever given up in my life and probably will be the one thing I will continue to give up in my life. I no longer want to love anyone ever again in life :

1) Because I cannot take the stress of heartbreak because it is very time consuming and too much labour for your tear glands.
2) There is no guarantee that this romance will last forever.
3) It is emotionally taxing to have a heartbreak if the other person breaks your heart and
4) Your realization that you were naive enough to believe that you need a partner because everyone else has when you actually didn't want one at all and deep down you are not someone made in the mold to love someone romantically.

   Love is an extremely overrated emotion. Atleast romantic love is. Because it is so fanciful that it sells well and people buy it because they want to escape the issues of their daily lives and who doesn't love the floss of a candy floss romance movie at the end of a tiring day? The images projected to us by movies (and other media but majority by movies and tv) make us believe that romance is an inevitable thing in life! And that those who do not have partners are weirdos or losers or "frustrated". As teenagers we start believing in these ideas, for, as being human beings we are gullible to these things. So in teenage you "love" someone but that someone turns out to have a "lover" and this knowledge probably brings  your first heartbreak. You cry over days on end, pray, plead to God and wish upon everything possible for this person to love you back. But no! Life is not fair; you will never be loved by this person no matter how hard your heart is broken. What choices does one have at this time? Will you commit suicide because your first love doesn't appreciate your love and has eyes and heart only for someone else? Or will you cry for the rest of your school days and ruin your studies? Or will you get depressed and fall into the dark pits of sadness that it is impossible for you to get back to your normal self? The choice is yours. But the choice has to be wise. I have gone through such a phase in my teenage (for which many of my friends still believe I am stupid enough to still think about that one person from school!!) I too did cry, I too did fall into the pits of darkness. My heart was torn apart. I endured watching the romance of the person on whom I had this feeling with pain and cried silently. But one day I stopped crying and pulled myself back. That was all by myself and I did not give up on my studies and stood first in school. That is something which I am always proud of doing. Had I took a knife and cut my vein or hung on a piece of rope, 15 years later I would not have been able to laugh at it and pat on my back for enduring this suffering (great suffering at the age of 15) and coming out as a stronger person.

      So much for teenage "romance". This teenage romance continues with age and as people grow up from 15 to 20s one can always hear stories like so and so ran away with so and so and all. So and so will run away and then end up in a messed up situation. Which used to make me wonder why did girls have to run away with someone and risk their life, education and a prospect for a good livelihood. Because sometimes you run away on adrenaline and then endure domestic violence, lack of job and so on for the rest of your life. That is not something good. So personally I used to dislike the prospect of running away with some random person just because of adrenaline burst. I cannot comment anything about what happens between 17-20 since I was in a women's college and had no chance to witness romance and such things!! :)

       When a person reaches the tweens they become more mature and probably the "romances" they pick up are mature too. But from my own experience I will call tweens also pretty silly. People do all kinds of stupid things in their tweens - like honestly believing in the spoon fed dreams of "happily ever after" and even "love" people whom they have not even met!! The other major heartbreak in my life came from such a friendship (the person was real but ironically it was a gmail/talk "love"). Now you can either call me stupid for "loving" a guy whom I hadn't even met. But now that I rethink about it, the guy also entertained and misled me because he could just have told the truth that there was another girl (makes you wonder why people think that telling the truth that there is another person is going to hurt you a lot. Is that because they think of you as immature as themselves?) That person could just have told the truth and I would have just accepted it and lived happily (ofcourse this person had to behave odd and drive me crazy:  a) because I was taking all this love business seriously (now I wish I hadn't wasted my time on this idiot; EW :/ ), b) because he probably had a screw loose and was not a straightforward person. It broke me very hard. I even felt depressed to a certain extent. And was really really sad and almost lost myself. Too many tears were shed, heart cut deep when pain flowed out of eyes like blood. It was hard to keep track of my mind. I felt I would never be happy again. But one day I just stopped crying because I had reached my saturation level and it had literally become boring. It was not an easy process to pull myself back, I had to read a lot, watch movies, clear my mind, write dairy, write a blog and had a PhD to do. But eventually I forgot this person and the associated people who criticised my character saying that "you chose a guy and expect them to fall for you"? Which actually made me think and this question always bothers me a lot. Is it not exactly what men/guys do? Don't they "mark a woman and make her fall for him"? Why does a women get called as a stalker but a man doesn't when he ceremoniously stalks a girl/woman and acts like a predator going for the kill? Then how does it make any woman who chooses a man and expects him to love her a creepy one when all she is doing is to sit and wish and probably express it with lot of tears (because she sincerely loves this person at that point of time) and have to undergo great emotional turmoil? Why does a girl gets told that she has to accept if a guy rejects her but she cannot reject a guy if he proposes her? This is complete inequality. The girl who churned out (I am ashamed to say that it was a girl, a member of the female gender) this bit of knowledge (and used the word "fall for" (which was very cheap) was probably very cunning and cruel. That's all I can think of that person now.

 Anyway after this painful ordeal of the second major heartbreaking I was extremely relieved. I again pulled myself up and got on with my research life which was more important. It was not a great experience, my heart got broken, a random person who doesn't even mean anything in my life insulted my character (as if I was a man hunter! EW GROSS!) But the good thing that came out of it was that I emerged as a very strong person. Infact I am thankful that the first one also broke my heart, the second one too and rejected me, because if they had accepted my "love" I would have been a divorced person or a jobless wrecked person by now. Look at my fate, I used to curse it that "there is always another girl". But now I can say happily, "thank goodness for my fate because I am not in a life threatening or heart wrenching mess right now, thanks to my being rejected by those people at that time!" :) Eventhough it caused me enormous pain back then, I am really grateful that I did not have to interact with them in any way looking what their lives evolved into as a result of their choices.

 Two minor heartbreaks occurred after these, but they were not so life shaping in their respects but again there were other girls!! :) But I am not sad now that those things happened to me. In a way it is good that my heart was broken because everytime it broke, I became stronger and stronger. To the point that I realized that I do not need a partner to be happy. It is not like the fox who said that the unavailable grapes are sour!! It is more like the fox doesn't want grapes at all. Because being fixated on grapes only will ruin its prospect of getting other fruits to eat. Just like grapes is not the only edible fruit out there, love is not the most important thing in life. And that none of these "loves" came true is a boon to me because men have a habit of showing their ugliest faces when a woman loves him and he doesn't love her back (in other words is fixated on another woman and wants to "get rid of" this woman who loves him). And that makes you wonder how well does this person treat women in general and what kind of a person he is.

 It is good that I was "rejected" by those people (moronic mcps)  because:

1) My love is not to be wasted on some random misogynistic person who does not know how to respect all women in the world.

2) But romance/love itself is a commodity to be sold as movies and novels and nothing else.

3) Makes you pity the women for whom he rejected you because there is no guarantee that he won't reject them for another person and so the chain will continue and in the end the world will reject this person!

4) It made me really actually realize my true feelings that I do not believe in love. I was stupid enough to buy the commodity called love thinking that it was inevitable in one's life and think that it will suit me and I needed it to be someone in life.  But it does not. Neither does suit me nor is it inevitable. I was the kind of person who did not believe in romance to begin with. The problem was that I was stupid enough to force it on me thinking that it is needed for a happy life in a person's life. It did not work also because deep down in my heart, I do not like the idea of "belonging to someone" ("What? Belong to someone? Am I an object that I belong to someone? And who is this someone anyway?!!")  The only person I truly belong to is me and me only. This is true for all people. Everyone truly belongs to themselves only. Everyone else has only partial rights on your "belongingship". If that is the case why can't I be single at all?!

            Honestly I don't understand the idea of a being "double". :D People say that you may feel lonely in your life. I have tackled enough lonliness in my life that I have come to terms with it and I know exactly well how to tackle it. Thanks to all the lessons I learned from my heartbreaks. It is better to be alone rather than to try to belong to someone who hurts you and brings you immense pain no matter how truly you love them. It is also better to be alone to avoid heartbreaks because it is a waste of time and you are not young any more to indulge in silly stuff like that. You have only one life and your aim should be to make a mark in what you do best and be remembered for that. Nobody remembers people for romancing someone. And as far as being lonely in life is concerned, how can anyone feel lonely if they enjoy their own company themselves. If you have enough books to read or enough things to do in life when will you ever have time to feel lonely? Loneliness is just a perspective. You can be lonely in a madding crowd and be sad or be alone and be perfectly happy.

           Everybody loves the idea of love; probably even more than a person itself! When you get rejected by a person it raises a lot of questions in your mind. The first thing which you think is "what do I lack"? Because rejection hurts your ego. Sometimes more than not "getting that person's love" it is the injury to your ego which makes you sad. This is to all people who might have gone through such a situation. There is nothing wrong with you. Either something is wrong with them (in which case it was good that you were rejected in the first place which means that you don't have to carry this burden around for the rest of your life). And in the case where nothing is wrong with anyone, it is just a person's freedom to choose whom they love or not. (The irony being, I have to reiterate, that if it is a guy who rejects and if the girls cries all her eyes out sincerely he will call her extremely bad names and the girl "must accept it" but if it is a girl who rejects it he will prey upon her, abuse her, assault her and try to impose his will on her because she "must accept his love". :X :X :X How unfair?!! This makes me hate love even more. Actually most of the time people don't gain anything other than useless feuds and heartaches in by loving someone. I still wonder how romance works. Is it logical? Is it predatory (most of the times when a man romances a woman I feel it is predatory : he prepares well, plans well and circles in on the girl, it is pretty predatory!Whereas women are very decent and love sincerely and get hurt by MCPs. :/ :/ :/ )

         It is not because my heart broke so many times or that I was a failure in love (ofcourse because there is always another woman and I am so decent as to give up my love for the sake of not hurting other women) that I have come to despise love as of now. It is because of the fact that it being treated as a commodity has caused so much pain to people who actually believe in it. (When people find true love it is not glossy or anything. It is based on mutual respect and real love.) But most of the time people have severe heartbreaks from which they find it difficult to recover. Sometime I also wonder what would have been my fate if I had given into such heartbreaks over a person who doesn't even care but flutter from women to women in a go!! Wouldn't that have been a real tragedy? Because we have so many other things to do in life, like have a good career, have a job and be independent, have moral values, have creative hobbies, travel, be kind, be responsible etc. If a so called "love" makes you possessive and negative and makes you cry everytime, what is the point of having it at all? In life we should have things which makes us better, not worse. That's exactly I hate romantic love. Why would anybody ever keep a love if it makes them a worse person? It is definitely not worth it. Even if it is "love".

 Also if you happen to be in a love "triangle" where there is always another person this whole love business will ruin your social relation with other people for no reason. Why should people do that? Everybody fancies over the idea of love because it is is soothing. But having complicated "loves" (simplest being a triangle) is terrifying.  And sometimes even when you don't want to love anyone and keep yourself away from lovers, one of the lovers may get suspicious of you for no reason at all and then it will create unnecessary social tensions between you and that person because they suspect you of loving their lover when you don't even want to look at the so called lover. :/ :/ :/  Obviously you hate love because you cannot be normal friends with people for fear of offending their lovers!!!

These are some of the small problems which causes me to hate love. But the major problem is the misogynistic aspect of most of the relations. Like I mentioned earlier a man's love has to be accepted where as a woman has to forget her love because she is a woman and the man is not interested. This is a real injustice! If you really believe in love a woman has equal right to "find a man and expect to love her back (in decent words)". As long as the disparity between the value of a man's "love (which may tend to be abusive)" and a woman's love exists, I refuse to love anybody. As a human being I have every right to wish that the person "I" love should love me back when I love that person. Just because a person is a woman doesn't mean that her choices have no values and that she can be called names and be branded as silly or bad. Then men who really prey on women in the name of romance should be punished aptly.

And most of the time when a woman is "bestowed" with love, in all the cliched cases (especially in movie field) she gets married and her "loving" husband forces her to quit her job citing that he can earn enough and it is "enough". As if his wife/girl friend is all a reproducing machine come full time maid who doesn't require a salary and does not have a brain or any other talent. Is this not a means of restricting a woman's potential? How can I not hate the idea of love/romance when I see such trends where a woman cannot have a career if she has to keep her love?!!! This is totally unfair. Why would any woman in her right mind keep such a love? This is not even love to cry out aloud. Would anyone who really loves a person do this? NO. So men not only prey upon women in the name of romance but use it as an excuse to limit a woman's true potential. I don't understand why would a woman choose such a man over her ambitions and live with him for the rest of her life. Will she even have a life is another question and if she does will it be a really happy one is something which I don't know the answer of.

Plus with age you actually gain enough wisdom to look back and laugh at all those heartbreaks that happened and contemplate how silly all those who made fun of you for loving someone were. Because their hearts were so narrow that they didn't know the true meaning of love and just took it to hurt another human being for being sincere. (But anyway such people are a text book of what not to become and how insecurities can make people narrow minded.) And you feel how stupid it was to cry for some moron! (That you can call them a moron now means that you have become witty.) Those incidents were some phases in your lives when you learned something. And it is even possible that those morons whom you loved at that point of time were just stepping stones which had a good effect on you at that point of time. Nobody carries stepping stones on the way to the top. They have to be left behind and there is no point lamenting over them too. They are just stepping stones. I am very thankful that these were all one sided and those people were "kind" enough to reject my "love" because I never had to endure any complication which people usually face in relationships. My life is very simple that way and looking at the current state of those people's lives I feel very grateful for not having been "loved" back. Infact I have made a decision never to complicate my life with "romance".
So I am not going to waste my time "loving" anyone, I hate love and I will hate love for the rest of my life. Nobody will ever be able to change that. (Unless someone redefines romance.)

So the whole point of baring so much about my (virtual/non-existent) love life was to tell people why I personally hate love/ have come to a point where I don't believe in love anymore and why people should not be sad at all if someone rejects them or some others make fun of you for loving someone. None else knows how much pain you go through when your heart breaks. Heartbreak or loving anyone is not a fault. If someone chooses to mock you behind your back and make fun of your love for them, that only means that they have no emotional range at all and are just insecure. Heartbreak happens, but it is not worth spending your time and energy and especially the health of your eyes and
mind brooding over it. If you find love it is ok. If you don't find love then also it is ok. Your merit is based on your talents and achievements. Not on whether you have someone or not in your life. It is just a matter of choice. Everyone may want to buy that fancy product called love once in a lifetime. But that doesn't mean that that product is inevitable. It can be done without. So I urge anybody who may be heartbroken and reading this post not to think that they are losers because they couldn't find love and ruin their career for love. Women especially, think twice when in love. If your love undermines your independence as a woman and your rights as a human it is not worth it. Just hate such loves and love yourself. No love should be so breaking that you wouldn't be able to look back at it years later and laugh at it and be proud of who you are now, because you emerged as a strong person out of it.

 PS : People can mock/laugh behind my back/ think bad of me as a person who was a love maniac in the past (!) after reading this blog. Just sharing some thoughts I have gained as a 30 year old person and especially for all those who may be feeling unbearably sad. :) Don't worry this too shall pass. And most of the time it is not the other person who makes you better in life, it is your own efforts to become a better person for someone else that makes you better when you are in love. Then why can't it be done for you and you only even without someone/ some love in your life? Life is to be lived for yourself primarily and then for others (I don't mean that you have to be selfish, cruel and greedy). Also if you cannot live for yourself you will not be able to live for any other person. (Because life is a perspective of yours resulting from the fact that you are alive.) If you forget yourself there is no life left in your life. You don't need to have someone else in your life to be happy! It will make you happy to have caring people around you and people to care for. But our happiness should never depend on who is there and who is not there in our lives or who stays and who leaves.

I personally want to thank all those people who rejected my love, because my life would have been a hell, had you accepted it when I was love sick! Thank you for not being part of my life (except for those time periods in the past ) and being the reasons why I have become stronger and stronger over the years. :) :) So by mathematical induction, I always failed in love, but each of those failures was eventually good for me. :) :) And it says that it will be true for n+1 also. So I am happy that I get to be alone and do not have to bother about someone else in my life!! Enough with all the melodrama! :D

PPS :  One thing about romance is that 99% of the time it is business like. That is probably one more reason I failed in love. I don't know how to like this businesslike love. I thought that love was like poetry or a painting or like a pleasant breeze or like the moonlight... But ofcourse it is obviously not. Hence I hate love. :) :)

Dropped dreams....

Not another set of dropped dreams,

Not another set of despair,

Not another set of endless places, 

With no light in near sight....

Dreams dreamt, actions done, 

There was a cheerful time, 

When everything went, 

Seemingly smooth, in a flow,

Until came the blow, the deliberate one....

So hard, so painful, so selfish,

And so misconstrued... 

For personal gains and benefits, 

For their fifteen minutes of fame, 

Out of their ignorance and callousness...

So against the thirst for knowledge....

So many believers to follow, 

So many to oppose the light of knowledge,  

So many to fall for the dark temptations 

Offered by the opposing ones....

Many a word said, many an action done, 

The opposing ones are trying to blow out the light;

A light so dearly lit, a flame so delicate 

Yet warm and enlightening. 

The devious ones called it dangerous, 

Misled the ignorant to more and more darkness 

Far away from the light of knowledge, 

To enslave them and exploit....

The dream light is wavering, will the flame go out?

Or will it survive and become a blazing Sun?

Hands tried to protect it, kept faith that it will be there,

What if hands are withdrawn? Won't the devious ones win 

In putting out the light?

It cannot be put out, at any rate, many might be running ahead

With brighter flames, finding new knowledge.

But who knows what one is going to find, no matter how 

Feeble the flame is? 

Or what it will throw light upon? 

Fallen in the darkest trench, the heart aches, 

Thinking that another dream will be dropped,

If dreams are to be dropped, why dream?

Why bear pain, why believe against all odds?

Because, it is harder to live with the guilt of not trying, 

Harder to regret having not tried and given up,

Harder to let go of earnest dreams and aspirations, 

Harder than being crucified with false allegations,

Harder than giving up the battle for knowledge to the treacherous....

It is hard not to dream....

Because, dreams are meant to be dreamt, 

Even in the darkest hour, in the farthest corners of the heart, 

There will always be that voice "atleast you tried your best",

"You gave your best, and stood your ground

No matter how hard it was, you still dreamt that dream"....

May dreams come true and aspirations realities....