Category: Life Ordinary

  • I Would Prefer Not To

    I would prefer not to

    This is one of my favourite t-shirts. It is based on Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”. Set in the 1800s, it’s Bartleby’s response to the world, and has a tragic ending. I have to admit, I bought it intuitively because of a mindset, before I went around figuring out the origin story.

    What mindset? I am hardly the first person in middle age to come to the realisation that one should spend more time on things that actually matter to one’s life, rather than what the world dictates. That is, of course, easier said than done. But that, I think, is also how one loses character.

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  • A home less

    On the Wednesday of the week this happened, I went through another loss – the house that housed the room. With a feeling that fittingly mirrored what I realised late about Achan – deep in me there was an understanding that just his being around, even as a frail old man barely able to get up, meant that someone unconditionally had my back. 

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  • Uncertainty’s Principles

    Though I have approached the subject in many ways, the immediate inspiration was the title of this post – The Allergy to Uncertainty. As is my wont, I projected it onto myself, and began (over?)analysing. 😀

    Reasons & Seasons

    Why do I have the allergy? At one level, I could answer that I am (at least partly) a product of my past. I think I had a lot of uncertainty in my formative years – change of schools and friends, change of homes, change of what I’d call a security system. And as a child, I think certainty in the context of academic/ singing/ quizzing results brought validation and less punishment. It created the “false self” constructed to survive childhood – something I learned from this excellent book.

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  • The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding

    by Hugo Mercier, Dan Sperber

    ‘The Case Against Reality’ was among my favourite books last year. As almost an aside somewhere, it goes, ‘we did not evolve our ability to reason in order to pursue the truth. We evolved it as a tool of social persuasion.‘ Quite a statement to make, and I was intrigued. The Enigma of Reason expands on this, and with the rigour of scientific reasoning (no pun intended) has me quite convinced.

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  • Mutual favourites, ok?

    Dear N,

    It’s been a week. Thanks to you and your acha, I had a viral fever almost the entire week. You can keep your ayyo to yourself. 😠

    But I not really angry with you. It seems your amma told D that you used to say I was your favourite cousin. I don’t know if that is true. I do know that I don’t deserve it. But you were easily my favourite cousin, and I know that I gave you less than you deserved.

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