Cheers to Champagne Problems

When I meet people infrequently, whether its family, friends, or family friends, there are a few stock conversation starters.

How are you doing? What are you up to now? What is next? 

Once those socially acceptable, non-prying, safe questions are answered, and the ice that had formed from whenever we last saw each other has been broken, most people tend to feel comfortable enough to ask about...my personal life.

While these conversations about my "love" life have always been present with my closest confidantes, in this past year, I have been asked about my romantic prospects in a greater frequency than I have ever experienced before. 

Someone even asked me, "Are you going to get married before we die?"

While that is quite morbid, I understand their impatience.

At the same time, I must admit I am not actively trying to meet their expectations (sorry).

There are multiple people I know who are my age from my school-years and even college who have gotten engaged in the past year and/or said yes to the dress just in time to have a summer wedding post-graduation. 

Props to them. 

I admire them and if I am being completely honest their actions also scare me. Probably because social conditioning has led me to believe certain ages are more suitable for certain steps in life. I definitely had the thought scrolling through Instagram: didn't we turn 20 two days ago (read: two years)?

I closely know people who are in relationships from a few months to a few years. Some will be in a long-distance relationship for the foreseeable future. Some will be making their next move together. Others are staying in the same city, but have decided not to live together until they are both working and have graduated.

In my casual chats about relationships and marriage with friends and family, I quickly realized that marriage is not the only future being considered.

Cohabitation. 

Long engagements with marriage in the (very) distant future. 

Marriage, but only with a prenup. 

So we're all on the same page here are the definitions I used to distinguish:

Cohabitation: A living arrangement in which an unmarried couple lives together in a long-term relationship that resembles a marriage.

Engagement: the state of being engaged (pledged to be married : betrothed)

Prenuptial agreement: an agreement made between two people before marrying that establishes rights to property and support in the event of divorce or death

These types of conversations were already happening before the pandemic, but I do think the lockdowns catalyzed us to further evaluate the concept of the nuclear family and explore other forms of relationships that could achieve the same goals.

From the Atlantic and the Nation to the Washington Post and the New York Times, the early pandemic days saw numerous publications surrounding the nuclear family.

Here are some of the headlines:

The Atlantic (13-Feb-2020) By: Joe Pinsker

If the Nuclear Family Has Failed, What Comes Next?

The New York Times (30-March-2020) 

Opinion | The Nuclear Family Is No Longer the Norm. Good.

The Nation (24-Feb-2020) By: Nicole Sussner Rodgers

What Comes After the Nuclear Family? 

The Washington Post (16-Feb-2020)                                                                                         Opinion|An unlikely cause of our bitterness:The nuclear family

Full disclosure: I come from a nuclear family. Two parents. Two kids. Classic (no longer...?). Tried and tested: a million times over. Success rates: varying. 

My parents also both grew up in nuclear families and their union is an arranged marriage. Despite that, my parents are progressive. They have straight up told me: marriage is not for everyone and we will not set you up in an arranged marriage like ourselves (even though they are happily married).

A close family friend also brought up a fantastic point: the older we get to find someone we want a serious committed relationship with, regardless of its form, we became more jaded. We become choosy. Our expectations rise. Since we rely so heavily on our previous experiences to inform our next relationship, sometimes our practicality can become a curse that does not even let our new relationship bloom.

So, what about me? Well...I have some thoughts. Since I can't simultaneously cohabitate, have a long engagement, and get married with a prenup, I will wait and watch my friends' trial and error and make a decision accordingly. I'm kidding. Unless...I get my own multiverse. Eventually, I might need to decide one way or another, but not right at this moment. While I do not think one path is better than the other, I do hope that everyone can live in a way they feel most comfortable.

The next time I see you I will probably keep answering (dodging?) questions about my future with a smile on my face so bear with me :) I still love all of you (I promise!) <3 Thanks for reading!

The Summer is (almost) Over/Wow, I'm (almost) feeling 22 Playlist:

1. Vienna- Billy Joel (Album: The Stranger)

2. California Dreamin'- The Beach Boys (Album: Stranger Things S4 Soundtrack)

3. BTBT - B.I. x Soulja Boy ft. DeVita

4. Doobey - OAFF, Savera, Lothika, Kausar Munir (Album: Geharaiyaan)

5. Saigon- Luke Hemmings (Album: When Facing the Things We Turn Away From)

6. Vegas- Doja Cat (Album: ELVIS)

7. Older- Alec Benjamin (Album: (Un)Commentary)

8.  Mon Amour- Stromae, Camilla Cabello (Album: Multitude)

9. Te Felicito- Shakira, Rauw Alejandro 

10. Silk Chiffon - MUNA, Phoebe Bridgers (Album: MUNA)

11. Champagne Problems- Taylor Swift (Album: Evermore)

The Art of (maybe) Moving On?

It's weird being a senior in college.

I think part of the weirdness is how different it is from being a senior in high school. In high school, all of your friends were there and everyone was mostly heading towards the same direction of applying to colleges and then attending X college. We all went to prom, signed each other's yearbooks, walked down the stage thinking don't trip the entire time, and graduated together. 

However, in college, that couldn't be further from the truth. Some friends are graduating a semester early. Other people interned last year so they won't be graduating next spring. Others are interning this year so they also won't be graduating next spring. People are applying for jobs or graduate school or exploring gap years or still deciding. We might have all started out as the Class of 2022, but that's not the reality. 

It's scary thinking that my family of friends will never be in the same place anymore. At least, not like this. The nights where each of us takes our comfy spot in the common room, eating (always eating:), existing together, and talking for hours. At the same time, it's super exciting getting a front-row seat to each other's lives and seeing where everyone ends up pursuing their passions.  [I might be more excited than them, can you tell?]

I honestly love my friends and I am so grateful to have them in my life. With every high and low these past 3 years or so and even with the pandemic marring more than half of our college experience, we've made the best of it together.

You end up taking a lot of classes in college. Sometimes you wonder why you're taking them. Usually, they're only a semester-long so you forget about it and get on with your life. College is great at teaching you to move on with your academic life. The semesters fly back so quickly, you barely have time to process what you even learned when you're signing up for the next semester.

However, college doesn't do a good job of teaching you how to move on with your life personally. There's no class on the art of moving on from semi-adulting to being an actual adult. Living away from your parents and living completely alone in a new city with no more college friends is not in a syllabus. It's sort of like when people throw babies into the pool and expect them to swim because chilling in your mother's womb is totally the same. In college, they give you your diploma, you take the pictures, and then it's over. You're probably back in your parent's house for a hot minute in-between whatever you're doing and that's when you get a moment to think: what the heck just happened???

No more emails from clubs you signed up freshman year, but never participated. No more weekly COVID updates. No more campus emergency texts and phone calls at 3 am. No more having your friends down the hall to give you a command strip when your poster falls for the hundredth time. No more late-night baking sprees with Taylor blasting and second dinners of ramen.

And yes, this hasn't happened to me...yet. I'm still a "senior" so I guess we'll see how that pans out. I hope everyone's doing okay while the weather figures out whether it is finally fall or still summer. [Personally, I think Starbucks started their pumpkin spice campaign too early this year and I'm in Ohio.]

The ~Moving On~ Playlist:

1) Clean-Taylor Swift (Album:1989)

2) Mood Ring-Lorde (Album: Solar Power)

3) Swan Song- Saweetie & Niki (Album: Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings)

    

              4) Eternal Sunshine-ATEEZ (Album: Fever: Part 3)

5) Renegades- One Ok Rock

Epitaph

I have avoided posting on here for so long. I knew that if I wrote it here, it would really be the end. As the death count increases so do the memories that burden my heart. The list keeps growing and I wonder if it will ever stop. 

There are a couple things that have not changed since the last time I posted. 

-If I am being honest, phone calls from my family still scare me, especially from my brother. I started calling first. Consciously or unconsciously, I am not sure.  

-When I see people die on screen, it hurts me so much more than it used to. Spoilers: I watched In the Heights in theatres last weekend with a close friend and I once again realized I was not over them.

-There are sudden moments in time when the emotions take my breath away. I smile for no reason or feel down and cry for no reason or get stuck in the memories. 

^But like every other moment in time, it passes to the next moment. I continue living slowly through this life that is made up of moments in time.

In less than a year, I lost three of my grandparents, close great aunts and uncles, and precious family friends. My relation to death in March of 2020 is far different from my relation to death today. Naively, I thought I understood death and dying. It is not like this past year is the first time someone I knew passed away. 

I underestimated the toll death takes when it is people who are more than fuzzy faces in your family or acquaintances.

I underestimated the toll death takes when it is someone who is definitively a part of you. Someone whose words, actions, patterns, and mannerisms have played a part in influencing the sum total of your existence. 

I will always remember how my paternal grandmother, Tham, would tell me stories of her childhood during the partition, how she taught me to braid hair using old shoelaces, and how to eat rice and debone fish without ever dirtying the palm of my hand. In her bedroom, I would sleep next to her and hear her breathing laboriously. A constant witness to her struggle with asthma and the consequences of bouts of pneumonia. I wish I could have asked you-were you happy? When you smiled, were you really happy? That time when you watched that Bengali soap opera or when you secretly ate a sweet or when you waited for us to arrive in the depths of the night alone? I hope you were happy.

I will always remember how my maternal grandmother, Didani, would never stop moving. From the break of dawn, she was always doing something: talking on the phone, hanging up clothes in the balcony, reading short stories or novels or newspapers, and cooking. She was always cooking. Didani embodied living life like you were running out of time, but she always made time for me. She'd tell me stories of ancient kingdoms and talking animals and adventures of lost treasure from pure memory, be my make-up model, and make me tok dal. I wonder if I ever eased your daily anxieties. Back then, if I had known, I would have called to say good-bye. I am sorry that I couldn't that time, but I'm even more sorry that I didn't call more often. Will you forgive me?

I will always remember the first time my maternal grandfather, Dadai, taught me how to castle in chess sitting on that divan. Conversations of every topic under the sun used to enchant the divan that lies empty and silent now. You were a walking encyclopedia. If I had even a fraction of your knowledge, wouldn't that be nice? I have inherited your dreams and made them my own. They live inside of me every day. I know that if you had the same opportunities I did, you would have done so much better. I wish I could have seen you even though you would not have been able to see me; at least I would have heard you call me sahajadi one last time.

I could keep writing memories. Memories of my grandpa's best friend who would play pranks on me every time we met and his smile filled with unbounded joy every time he succeeded. Memories of my best friend's mom who treated me like her own daughter. Memories of my great aunt and uncle who passed away barely a week apart. 

I could keep writing, but it would not change anything. 

From my 04/14/21 Playlist:

Marjorie-Taylor Swift

Homura [炎]-Lisa

If you could see now-The Script

From my 08/21/20 Playlist:

                Let It Be- The Beatles 

Spring Day-BTS

Lemon-Kenshi Yonezu

From my 04/03/20 + 04/12/20 Playlist:

                                             Remember Me (from the movie "Coco")

The Last Goodbye (from "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies")- Billy Boyd

    

 Eight-IU (Prod.&Feat. SUGA of BTS)

Midtwil Musings 201023

I wonder if

The sky will let me borrow her tears,

Because there's a drought in my heart

And there's no end in sight;

Inside, its easy to forget-

Ethanol drowns the voices here

Hearing silence on my playlist lately

Does it help?

No One asks, but

Our hidden smiles wear thin 

Crumbled and chapped

Just like careless

Steps on the hearts of leaves

Fall, 

        fall,

                fall

 

We keep falling 

Didn't learn how to brake in school

So help us now

As we break once more

Frantically, duct taping what we can

Restarting fixes everything, right?

 

Just shake ourselves a couple times

And the connection will be back

Color will return

And life will stop freezing

As silence turns to static...                                                                                                                                       I wonder what's on the other side

 

1. SHAUN-Way Back Home (ft. Connor Maynard)
   

 

     2. Wonho- Losing you

 

 

     3. Shawn Mendes- Wonder

    4. Marshmello,Halsey- Be Kind

    5. Burnout Syndromes- Fly High (Spring Version)

Just in July

Her life is not bad by any means

He is privileged in many ways

People tend to minimize their pain

In relation to other people's valid wails

Perhaps to cope,

Perhaps to deny

A cycle of comparison

Where we say "we're better off"

Better off, now than before

So it's okay, right...

We should be happy, yes?

Once again, she smiles, unconsciously

As doubts flood his mind

In her reality,

There is a swing, over there, 

Can't you see it?

Beyond the horizon, where the sky meets the sea

As the fiery sun leaves begrudgingly,

Moonlight quiets her world

Is there more I could be doing, she asks 

Witnesses of the night, stars

There is a swing, in the corner of 

His beating heart, can't you hear them

The thumps-

Between frustration and calm

With every twilight moment,

He slowly loses power...

Stuck in a waiting game

He didn't sign up to play

What else can I do, he pleads

Tell me, 

before I give up

Tell me,

before I stop caring

Tell me how to get off

I won't get on it again,

I promise

And they collectively realize, 

A truth

Swings can stop flying~ 

Alone.

Summer Vibes Playlist:

1) Wait For It-Hamilton

2) SUNMI-pporappippam (Shining Purple Night)

3) Sine from Above-Lady Gaga ft. Elton John 

4)Blind to You-Aimer

5)Contradiction-KSUKE ft. Tyler Carter 

6) Banana Pancakes-Jack Johnson 

"Something in the Rain"

Can anyone relate?

The last couple of days of "actual" Spring Break (though, nowadays, the days are bleeding together), I felt super lethargic. I slept a lot, but no matter how much I slept or what I did, there was a sense of inherent tiredness that I could not seem to shake off. I did not really want to do anything either. A couple days ago, I  went running outside to run without my backpack and not because it was raining, cold, or because I was about to be late to something. Just, to purely run.

There were a lot of people considering the weather was cloudy. Any moment, it seemed like the clouds would burst like pricked water balloons. I did not know any of them. Who they were, why they were biking, walking, running. I wondered if they had felt as claustrophobic as I had felt. I wondered if they were also wondering how to spend their time. I wondered if this was their answer. The thing about running is-I am not very good at it, but maybe because I am not that good at it. I can't think about anything at all while I'm doing it. I'm too busy trying to figure out how to breathe. How to move my legs forward-one stride at a time.

It did start raining eventually. Refreshing droplets urging me to run faster so I didn't get trapped in the rain, but by the time I got back to my neighbourhood-I was tired. Recently, they added swings in our neighborhood playground. I've always loved swings. It's the closest you can get to flying while being tethered to the ground. As the rain poured, I kept swinging and listening to music. There was no one else in the park and no one outside ambling about. It was pretty much the same as inside my house where it felt like the world was disconnected and society was somewhere else. Each and every one of us in our own worlds living in parallel lines.

But, that moment in the rain, while I stretched my legs out as far as I could, swung higher and higher, raindrops streaking my face, and the music started to hit the chorus, I felt completely alive. More than I have in a while. Ah...the world is still going. Even though it seems like it has stopped. The world is still going. The earth is still turning. Regardless of me-if I stop living or keep living, or don't do anything at all. My actions are non-consequential. The world will still keep going like it has done as far as I can remember and history can recall with or without me. It was something I'd always known, but at that moment I felt it acutely in the form of reassurance.

There are places more affected and places that are still in relative calm. Everyone deals with crises differently. Fear and panic manifest through words and actions or lack of in everybody. Be kind to someone who is dealing with it differently then you are. Be understanding and continue to live your life to the best of your ability within the constrictions.

If you just want to talk to someone, please feel free to message me or video me on Facebook or Instagram or wherever :)

Right now, I'm trying to live like this: 

"Everyone is given time, but the depth of time varies by a person" (Itaewon Class Ep4) [we may not all necessarily live the same amount of time, but what are we doing with the time that we have?]

"Gotta go insane to stay sane"(BTS-ON) [I interpreted this as you have got to go "insane" for something-pursue something insanely to stay sane otherwise there's always this emptiness, this why of what am I doing?]


I am trying to fulfill my time wisely for practical commitments but also doing things that make me smile for my own sanity.

Quaranteens Playlist: 

I'm Coming Home-Skylar Grey

BTS- 00:00 (Zero O'Clock) 

Itaewon Class OST [there are so many good songs, it is hard to choose one!]

Start Over-Gaho [turn on ENGSUB]

Sweet Night-V

From Sanju-Kar Har Maidaan Fateh 

Clocks-Coldplay

Houses & Homes, Forests & Gardens

Can anyone relate?

If I had to definitively pick a “home”, I would not pick the house in Houston.  Out of the 15 or so houses I’ve lived in so far, Houston has been the longest. There are many memories attached to that house, but they are all from a very specific period in my life. A time I’m glad I went through, but I would not want to return to. If I did have to pick a time/house to return to, it would be, without a doubt, Balikpapan, Indonesia or PMC (Pantai Mentari Compound).

But, what is home? And what makes a home, a home? I am a strong believer in "people make the place" which is why I still retain fond memories of Indonesia. But adhering to reality's timescale, Indonesia only covers a slice of my life that would be less than half the size of my Houston slice.

The only place where I retain memories of any given time in my life would be my grandparents’ respective houses in Kolkata. My mom’s side shifted houses around 2002 and my dad’s side shifted in late 2004. I don’t remember the previous house on my mom’s side at all, but my dad’s side I have some vague memories supported with photographs and stories I’ve been told. However, their current houses have definitely become constant fixtures in my life where the variables are always changing. Every year I come to Kolkata in the summer, sometimes we come twice a year, winter and summer.

And like every year, this summer, once again, I have traded in the dry humidity of Houston for the sweltering monsoon humidity of Kolkata.

Everything and everyone feels stuck in time-myself included-in the city of joy (Kolkata). It takes little to no effort to recall my younger self playing with my aunt’s makeup on my grandma, rolling the dice for ludo or snakes and ladders, playing chess, organizing the spice jars in the balcony cabinet, watching Power Rangers or Galactik Football, standing between the handlebars on my grandpa’s motorcycle and begging him to please let me drive it, or hearing stories about clever and wise yet flawed animals and princesses and kings and carpenters, and of course the unique food.

The food hasn’t changed while how I spend my time here has gradually changed because of the inevitable consequence of time: age. I’ve gotten older and it’s not like my grandparents have gotten younger and we are meeting at a halfway point.

I don’t know which year it exactly happened, but one summer I came and it just felt different. Suddenly, I wasn’t a kid anymore and I couldn’t do kid things because there was no one to do it with and I didn’t know how to talk to my grandparents otherwise. I didn’t know what to talk to them about, however, they’d become sad if I didn’t spend time with them. For a couple of years, the gap between what our relationship was and what it had become was personally frustrating and it really hurt me because I was extremely close to all 4 of them in my own way.

I thought the relationship between grandparents and grandkids should be what we had before and I loved that “us” so much that when our relationship changed, I liked coming to Kolkata less and less. Unlike my parents, who grew up in Kolkata, went to school, then college, got married, and then moved out, I don’t have that kind of deep attachment to this place where certain roads and street shops fill me up with nostalgia. For me, the love of this city was and always will be because of my grandparents. There was no one my age in the summers at either apartment complex. Other family members live scattered across the city or state or even the country, but I see them maybe once or twice during the summer. Day in and day out, I would spend time with my grandparents. There was no one else to talk to, but as a kid, I didn’t mind it because it was so much fun. As I grew older, that changed and I wasn’t as happy anymore and coming back "home" became a burden rather than something I anticipated.

At some point, I realized they were just happy that I was spending time with them and I had to change. I had to take initiative for our relationship to work. I had to talk to them first. If not, this home too would become another house and we’d live our lives skating by each other without getting to know each other all over again each summer. After all, each year, I was the one who changed not them.

Hi everyone! How is everyone doing? I hope you enjoyed this post :)
(I wrote this post over the summer, but I ended up never posting)
Once again, I'm back with a Spring Vibes playlist

Spring Vibes Playlist:

1. Red Hot Chilli Peppers- Otherside  

1.      2. Lauv, BTS-WHO

3. Aimer-April Showers

4. Selena Gomez ft. Kid Cudi-A Sweeter Place

5. Winter Flower-Younha ft. RM