Bad News From India

The stream of bad news coming out of India keeps growing in size. The latest is ritualistically brutal gangrapes in Uttar Pradesh, the pit of hell for women, lower castes and Muslims. I tell anyone who will listen that India is a failing state and the majority of its population a giant cult. But no intellectual analysis can lessen the shocks of the incessant stream of bad news coming out of the country. maybe it is time to put some emotional distance between myself and the country. I am clear that I don't want to move back unless forced by circumstances. So, there is little reason why its descent into hell should occupy so much space in  my head, especially since friends and family back in India are not immediately under threat. Maybe I should make a conscious effort to not follow the news that is coming out of India and get outraged sitting here in England without a support network to cushion the impact. I will start by unfollowing the people I follow on social media for news from India, with the exception of economic news. Let us see how that goes.

Helplessness and Humility

 I have written before about having nothing to offer a friend in trouble but love and empathy. Yesterday, I spoke to a dear friend who went through a pretty messy family situation a few months back. Today, I spoke to a friend who has been in jobs hell for the past few months and in a purgatory for the past two. I had been pushing her to take better care of herself by exercising and eating better. Today, after hearing about her latest setback I was left speechless. Not being able to help or advise is both a helpless and humbling feeling. Sometimes advising someone to practice "self-care" or being "kind to themselves" feels like telling them to stay on a treadmill that keeps going faster. I feel like I am fortunate that my treadmill is coasting at a manageable pace. If it went faster all my talk of self-care and emotional resilience would go out the window. I know there are people who can take withstand with grace and fortitude blows that would fell most people. I am not one of them. Sometimes kindness to oneself or self-care does involve not pushing yourself to do both when life mows you down. You will get up, but in your own time. But, there is a chance that you might not, or worse, someone dear to you may not. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Better At Letting Things Be?

 Am I getting better at letting things be or is it just a passing phase of stoicism? Over the past few days I have felt a flicker of irritation on a number of occasions, but have managed to consciously tamp it down by telling myself to let it be. It helps that I have post-it notes to remind me both at home and in the PhD office. If this is just a passing Zen phase, I will know soon. One of my housemates, who had disappeared for a month, is back and I can hear him through the walls talking on the phone. My other housemate--the bumptious randy one--has also been strangely mellow these past few weeks. The house felt quite peaceful with just the three of us and no one giving trouble. So much so that I even began to consider staying on after my PhD. If I was mistaking a swallow for summer I will know soon enough. 

Birthday Wishes to Build Bridges

Birthdays are a perfect occasion to build bridges with someone you may have fallen out with. A minor fallout, not a flaming row, in which case you wouldn't give two hoots about their birthday. Birthday wishes can be an excuse to reach out to someone while protecting yourself from the possibility that your overtures will be rebuffed. Especially, if you believe you have been wronged and the other person should make the first move to build bridges. Some years ago, I would have let bygones be bygones and made the fist move, irrespective of who was at bigger fault. I am not that person any more, for better or worse. I have also stopped making the effort to keep in touch with old friends who make little effort themselves. Maybe it is pride, maybe it is increased self-respect, chances are it is a bit of both. But, sending birthday greetings is an innocuous gesture that let's you show you are prepared to move on while keeping your dignity in your own eyes. 

Moments of Happiness in a Burning World

The next few days, weeks, months and years will be difficult. But, in between, there will be moments of happiness, peace, tranquility, and I daresay, even joy. And, those moments should be fully embraced. I had a very pleasant evening today even though my working day was not very productive. After returning from uni early, I took a short nap, spoke with my parents and did my exercise routine. And, I might have finally discovered the exercise that is going to put my shoulder right. It involves simply hanging by my arms. There have been other exercises which appeared promising, only to turn out to be duds, but today I am feeling happy so I am going to mention this particular exercise at the risk of jinxing it. It might not be the "one" but among all the calamities that tomorrow may bring, discovering a promising exercise is a dud would be relatively minor one. After exercising and showering, I met my other friend in Bristol over drinks. We get along quite well, and with passing years it has become increasingly difficult to find people I get along well with. 

Last Weekend of Socializing

Covid infections are spreading faster than anyone imagined and we could soon be back in a lockdown. I am a new friend tomorrow and an old friend over the weekend. This is the most active my social life has been this year, as this could be the last weekend socializing is permitted. I was prepared for a locked down winter but the pace at which things are moving we could be in lockdown sooner than that. The season is also turning--since yesterday it has become noticeably colder. We might still have some more warm days, but as the days get shorter the warmth will dissipate faster and the nights will be cold. 

We might be under lockdown for most of autumn and winter but it will still be an eventful few months for me. My PhD is the crunch phase and I will also be applying for a job in my university. Today, I got confirmation that the job ad will be posted which sent me into a bit of a tizzy. A friend over the weekend said I will only finish my PhD when I am forced to by circumstances such as an upcoming job or the expiry of a visa, etc. Till then, I will continue to be paralysed by the quest for perfection (my words, not his). But, today, I felt a little paralyzed by the thought a juggling a job application and my PhD. Things seem to be moving a little too fast, even though I want them to move fast to spur me to finish my thesis. Be careful what you wish for. But, I guess I just have to rise to the moment. 

Elbow/Shoulder Saga Continues

Today, I decided to do a semi-intensive workout even though my elbow/shoulder pain hasn't gone away. I usppose it was more out of frustration than anything else. If my shoulder is going to ache anyway why not at least enjoy an endorphin release and the confidence boost seeing myself a little bulked up. 

And, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Yoga is great, but sometimes a nice old-fashioned endorphin burst is what you need. And, it felt amazing to work out to Bollywood music after ages, and dance between exercises. 

My shoulder has not fallen off yet, but I have no clue how it will feel tomorrow morning. Curiously, I am not very worried. If the pain gets worse, it will force me to see a professional. If it stays the same, I might eventually see a professional, and if it improves, Hurray! Maybe the lesson here is to stop trying so hard to fix the shoulder. I have flitted from exercise to exercise to find a quick fix for my shoulder pain. It is quite possible that some of those exercises made the problem, and some improved it, but I don't know which one did what. So now I am going to try to take it easy and not don anything more intense than shoulder shrugs for my shoulder pain. Let's see what happens.

Labour Deserved to Lose

 Every week, I feel relieved that I left the Labour Party when I did. Today, the current leader of the party said it deserved to lose the last election in a direct attack on Corbyn's ladership, as he sought to burnish his patriot credentials. The man did not even wait for the bus to stop before throwing Labour members of colour under the bus. He is intenet on turning the party into a club of white, middle-class home-owners and I want no part of it. I don't even know if I will be in this country by the time the next election rolls around. And the world and the country will be such a different place in four years that it almost irrelevant what the Opposition leader says and does today. Except show his true colours and engender a deep distrust of himself among all progressives. 

Shoulder Update

 What do you do with a elbow/shoulder pain that has been persisting for months but doesn't feel painful enough to see a health professional during Covid times. (Whom am I kidding? I am just cheap and lazy). You try a bunch of exercises off YouTube, changing them up every few days, and hopefully you will find something that fixes the pain. Th next best solution is you find an exercise that stops the pain but makes some other body part pain, so you can then try for the best solution on it. I have been trying a new exercise since yesterday, and did an intense workout this evening, so chances are I won't be able to move my shoulder tomorrow. Well, Que sera sera.

India vs US

 I had a long discussion with a friend over the phone about which country's future is darker. The topic came up in the context of him thinking about moving back to India and me trying to discourage him. As you would expect, it was a thoroughly depressing exercise. Sometimes, the reality is too grave for it to be marshalled in arguments and arguing over a hierarchy of atrocities and instances of institutional collapse feels pointless. In fact, engaging in any intellectual exercise at this point feels facile. Reason will not our salvation, only love and kindness will. 

I encouraged him to see a counsellor,  and in hindsight, I am not sure it was sound advice. I am obviously discouraging him from moving back and want him to examine whether he is unhappy because he is living in the US, or due to some other reason. But, he has never said he is unhappy, he has only been saying he doesn't want to live in the US, for various reasons. Suggesting someone see a counsellor because you don't agree with their decision (and an emotional decision, at that) is not great advice. Pathologizing an emotional decision you disagree with doesn't sound like a ethical thing to do, especially to a friend. But, then again, men are not great at vocalizing when they feel depressed. They often attribute their blues to a specific set of circumstances or people, rather than something deeper. So, maybe I was right after all. 

Perfectionism

 Today, as I was talking to a friend who has a PhD, I realised I may be aiming for an unreasonable standard of work. At the moment, I am aiming for a finished product that would clear peer review. But, maybe I should start treating my PhD like a super-long assignment rather than book which will be published. Because my PhD will not be published. I might be able to turn it into a monograph and also spin some articles. But, I will have months and even years to refine my arguments to bring them to publishable standard. My PhD thesis will just sit in a repository catching dust, and might not be read by anyone else other than my supervisor and examiners. This is not an argument for turning out absolute garbage, which I couldn't bring myself to do even if I wanted to. Any work I turn out must, first and foremost, satisfy my own internal standards. But, maybe I should try to lower my own internal standards and treat PhD as a practice run rather than the finale. A practice run to make mistakes in and learn for my subsequent academic career. I might be unconsciously aiming for a work that matches the standard of the article I published, forgetting that a) it was co-authored with my supervisor who is smarter, a better writer and has much more experience than I do whereas a PhD is an individual piece of work b) a PhD is much longer, and it is much harder to achieve the same level of refinement for a work of this size c) my PhD won't be published. 

I am not going to pretend that I can lower my standards overnight, but at least it is something to be conscious about and mull over. 

This Thesis Will Write Itself

 This thesis will write itself and in its own time. How is that for a radical idea? After another minimally productive day of writing I am coming around to the idea that this thesis will write itself, sometimes in trickles, and sometimes in waves. All I can do is show up regularly and keep my spirits up on bad days. I can berate myself about my slowness, laziness, lack of discipline, lack of smarts, etc. etc. I can rue another self-imposed deadline missed. Or I can choose not to. 

The other day the thought cam eot me that writing a thesis is like climbing a high-altitude mountain. I am not a mountaineer but I have been high enough to feel the headaches, slight breathlessness and lethargy that high altitude brings. I had read somewhere long ago that mountaineering is not pleasant in the moment. Nothing pleasurable about the bright blinding sun, screaming eyes, every sinew telling you to stop and turn back. Mountaineering's pleasures are experienced through one's memories of the experience not the experience itself. Is thesis writing similar?

I am pretty sure I will look back on these days of near-absolute intellectual freedom with fondness. The freedom to wander, meander, luxuriate in new ideas. Feeling my way from idea to idea, developing my own concepts and tying existing concepts together in inventive ways. Moving imperceptibly but inexorably towards the finish line, and admiring the view even as I grunt under the weight of the intellectual strain. in a world convulsed with fear and panic, rising above the din to engage in a higher intellectual effort. And even if I can't enjoy it, at least being conscious of all aspects of this experience, not allowing myself to be overwhelmed by the unsavvoury bits. 

Barometers of Bile

 There are two people on Facebook, one British, one Indian, whom I treat as barometers of bile. The former  is a racist, sexist pro-Brexit Tory voter, and the latter is a casteist, sexist Modi supporter. The first one I don't know personally. He did his PhD in the same department as me but was a part-timer, so we never met. When I looked him up online, as one does, I discovered he was a hard-core Tory. The second one is an acquaintance from school. I am filled with nger whenever I visit their Facebook pages, but like a moth to a flame, I keep going back. A right-winger's social media feed is a scary but fascinating sight, a seamless combination of gullibility and hate. These two are my barometers of bile. They are representative of how the average lumpen rightwinger who is not politically active thinks. If they turn against their leaders, I will no the right-wing project is faltering. Of course, that is the optimist in me talking.

Practicing Not Panicking

It just struck me how many times a day I have to tell myself not to panic/feel dismayed about Covid/my PhD thesis/my injured shoulder. The second wave of Covid is looming on the horizon and I feel I don't wash my hands enough; my shoulder injury is healing so I would feel silly going to a chiropractor, but not as fast as I would like; and I am in a critical stage of my PhD when on some days it feels like all the ideas buzzing in my head and are all coming together into a coherent argument, while on other days it feels like they are flying further apart. But, the good news is I feel like I am getting better at telling myself not to panic/feel disheartened. The post-it notes I wrote about yesterday are helping, as is regular Yoga, as is blogging. I have also tried to reduce as many stressors as I can from my life. I have banned myself from online dating for the next few months because I am getting my fill of disillusion and dispirit from writing my PhD. I have also decided not to apply for a prestigious post-doc because it would distract me from my PhD. So, I would say I am doing well to plod along, ignoring as best I can the prospect of catching Covid or getting thrown off the PhD writing track by a job application that I expect to land any day now. 

Let It Be

 I stuck a new post-it note in front of my desk today, which simply says "Let It Be". I ahve two other post-it notes on my desk saying "Breathe" and "But, I'm here". I have already written about the significance of the latter, and the former is self-explanatory. The "Let It Be" is for all the times when people get on my nerves, and if you know me, you know it doesn't take much for that to happen. Sometimes people don't even have to say or do anything, their mere physical presence, even in a space they are fully entitled to, can set off sirens in my head. So, the 'let it be' is to put the situation in to perspective, and remind myself that chances are all these people will be out of my hair in a few months. It is working so far. The other day |I worked myself into a paroxysm of rage just because one of the guys on the PhD group said he is planning to work from the PhD office going forward. I have become quite territorial about the office, enve though I share it with a bunch of people, most of whom stay away. But Covvid rage took over and I began to conjure up scenes in my head where the said person behaves abominably even though he hasn't done so before, or at least to my knowledge. But, I managed to calm myself down, and tell myself he might not even turn up. Sure enough, he hasn't turned up yet. Dragging yourself to office comes easily for some people like me, but not for many. 

Counselling Yourself

 It is widely known that you understand an idea much better when you explain it to someone. I wonder if its the same with counselling. When you are counselling someone, you might see something from a different perspective, you might try to find words to articulate a thought you didn't find the need to put to words before. It is easier to see harmful behaviour in someone else, and compare your own behaviour than to turn the mirror on yourself. Likewise, sometimes one offers words of solace to another person, and takes solace from those words for their own personal situation. Learning from the mistakes of others, learning from the experiences of others, is a great human ability. Being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes enables us to empathize with them but also gain insights that we could use in our own lives. 

9/11 And Covid

 Two years back, I wrote about how 9/11 was THE watershed event of my and my parent's generation. Since 17 years had passed since 9/11, I seemed confident with this pronouncement. Sure, there were other contenders, such as the global financial crisis (which was not a single event) or Trump's election victory, but they all seemed to be connected to this moment. 

Now, I am not so sure because of Covid. Its still early to say how the world will look like after Covid, but it seems difficult to imagine that it will be the same. Add the rise of fascism and the cliamte emergency to the mix and its safe to say the world may be unrecognizable in 2025. 

Making Life Easier For Yourself.

Today, was a bad day work-wise because I barely wrote a sentence. It still feels like a constant struggle not to panic when I have a bad writing day, but I am slowly getting better at it. I have set myself an ambitious writing target for the end of the month, and I am planning to work six days a week till I reach it. Naturally, I am going to have off days. I have realized that the thing to do when I am going through a lean patch is to go easier, not tougher, on myself. This is Covid-time advice but I am starting to think that its suited for normal times as well. I have already decided not to apply for a fellowship since I am currently not in the frame of mind to do justice to the application. I have also decided to spend a little less time at the uni over the next few days. As it is, general levels of stress are rising because of a recent increase in Covid infections. One's priority should be to try to stay in good spirits, eat well and exercise. Over the next few years, most plans that people make are going to be upturned, so there is no point in being too hard on yourself for failing to progress on a task according to plan. 

 Today, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to think of ways to improvise a foam roller to open my shoulders. That activity was interspersed with looking up the price of new foam rollers and whether ti was worth the money and space investment. And, feeling guilty about being so thrifty. I kept oscillating between these three activities, to the point where I felt I was going a little mad. Finally, it struck me that I could use two steel bottles taped together, and I felt a wave of joy. Nothing pleases a miser more than the prospect of saving money. 

I often feel guilty about being a cheapskate and I spend buckets of time wondering whether I am being too cheap.  But, today, it struck me that I am much more generous when it comes to spending money on other people than on myself, and that is something to be proud of. There are plenty of people whose generosity swings the other way. As someone who is or at least tries to be very self-aware, I have a tendency to pathologize every aspect of my personhood that I am not proud of. It is easy to see it when others are doing it to themselves, and more difficult when you are doing it to yourself. One can feel guilty about an imprudent purchase and feel equally guilty about being a cheapskate. Or one can practice fighting guilt and have faith in one's mind and emotional self to do what is most useful at that point in time.

Everyone Is A World

 This morning, as I was cycling to uni I passed a little girl walking the other way with her Mum. She was grinning from ear to ear, possibly because it was her first day back at school after lockdown. When she passed me,her smile widened and she waved to me ecstatically, as though I were Mickey Mouse (or whoever drives kids crazy). I have written about this before, and unfortunately, I can't find the blog. There are few things more heart-warming than a child smiling at you. If you are fortunate enough to get one in the beginning of the day, the memory of it is enough to keep your spirits up for the rest of the day.

But, after that aside, coming back to the topic at hand. Every person is a world by themselves. We are only conscious of our own world and others appear as objects in them. But, each of those objects is a world by themselves. When we interact substantively with someone we are entering their world, and they ours. We are altering their world, and they ours. I have an image in my head of people with globes on their heads which meld when they speak. Of course, some globes meld more than others depending on the closeness of the relationship. Would we interact differently with others if we looked at them as other worlds rather than just as objects? I realise that this is an extremely abstract post, but that is what a personal blog that no one reads is for, right?

How India Treats its Women

Today, I came across an illustration of a young women dressed in a white top with small pink flowers printed on it and her hair tied up in a ponytail. She is being pecked from all sides by TV channel mics in the shape of vultures. The picture portrays the girlfriend of a Bollywood actor who died by suicide nearly three months ago. There was nothing to suggest any foul play or abetment,, but the ruling party int he actor's home state wanted to curry favour with member's of the deceased actor's caste, and the media readily obliged. There is nothing that Indian men and many women like seeing more than an independent, good-looking women being torn to pieces. I haven't caught any of the TV coverage, but even accounts of the coverage have been nauseating. All ethical rules have been broken, nothing is sacrosanct. And media ratings are through the roof--the public seems to be watching it with the rapture reserved for porn movies. And, I am sure some men are getting off on this. A toxic cocktail of misogyny, envy, voyeurism and asexually repressed upbringing sexual repression. Just when you think India couldn't hate its women even more, it manages to surprise you. 

Post-PhD Life

 The question of what to do after my PhD isn't looming over me yet, but I can see it on the horizon. Today, a friend asked me I planned to apply to a prestigious post-doc in Florence. I told her I had considered it, but dropped the idea because I couldn't find any faculty member whose research interests matched mine and could mentor me. It turned out she knew of a faculty member who works in the same broad research area as me. I am not right up her alley, but close enough to at least explore a mentorship. 

The thought created a bit of a flutter in my head. By all accounts, Florence is gorgeous, the post-doc is very prestigious and it would be great to be a part of a scholar community, which I have sorely missed during my PhD. I like Bristol, but I haven't been able to build much of a social life here. With my closest friend due to leave soon, my social life is likely to become non-existent. That doesn't really bother me so much--I have a PhD to finish and a pandemic to survive. But, it doesn't change the fact that there is nothing holding me here. Many of the major changes in my life have come  about as a result of me running away from something or some place, rather than running towards something specific. I jumped into journalism to get away from engineering, and I decided to do a Master's degree to get away from India and journalism. My PhD is something I actively chose to pursue, and I will be eternally grateful that it worked out in my chosen field and chosen supervisor. being clear about what you don't want is possibly as useful as being clear about what you want. But, wanting to run aay from something is not a good reason to run towards something specific. As today wore on, the Florence idea began to lose its lustre, not least because I don't want to divert my energies from my PhD towards the post-doc application. I don't know what to do, so I will sleep on it and see how I feel tomrorrow.

Cold Showers

 I have been having mostly cold showers for the past two months or so now, but today I may have taken it a bit too far. I washed my hair with cold water, and two hours are later my feet are still cold. Through most of the summer, I showered with hot water post exercising to relieve my sore muscles, especially my stiff right shoulder. I didn't realise that the reason I was so stiff was because I was doing something wrong while working out, and eventually the shoulder and elbow pain caught up with me. But, that is another story, and it will be a long and whiny one. 

I recently discovered that cold showers are better than hot showers to relieve post-workout soreness. Also, since it was summer I thought I would get in the habit of cold showers and carry it on through winter. Boost my immune system and shorten my shower duration. Hot showers also dry my skin out. So cold showers seemed like a win-win all around. Until I took it too far, of course. 

David Graeber

 David Graeber, the anthropologist and activist, died today. I first heard of him as the guy who had come up with the siren slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement "We are the 99%". Shortly after, I came across his magnum opus "Debt: The First 5,000 Years", which is as the title suggests, a history of debt and a reflection on the nature of money. While some sections of the book went into more technical detail than I cared  for, it opened a new world to me. I read it at a time when I was bored of my job in Mumbai and was trying my best to move overseas. One option was to go abroad to do a Master's, possibly in Economics. It would be an exaggeration to say that the book inspired me to take the plunge, but inspired me it definitely did. It sparked an interest in economic anthropology in me because anthropology seemed to have a broader and more interesting scope of vision than economics. I even considered doing a degree in economic anthropology before discovering heterodox economics.

But coming back to Graeber, I then came across an article by him on "Bull-shit jobs" which got me thinking about my own previous job as a financial journalist. While I tell people, somewhat pretentiously, that doing the job taught me a lot about how capitalism actually works, that, in itsel, didn't make the job socially valuable. That article inspired me tow write a post for the ISS blog. I was rpetty happy with the post, but when I went back to it today, I found it underwhelming. Hopefully, I have higher standards, now that I am a PhD student. 

David Graeber was one of the greatest intellectuals of our time, and had an influence on fields far beyond his mother discipline of anthropology.  And, debt was the only book I lugged all the way over from India to the UK when I moved here. 

Hot and Bothered

 Over the past few months, I have realised that when I feel animated--usually with anger but sometimes with excitement--I get hot and even start sweating. The most recent instance was about an hour ago while watching a particularly gripping scene of a TV series. This didn't used to happen to me. I'm not worried about it but just curious. Is it that I have become more emotive, and if that is the case is it due to the pandemic or is it because of my emotional and spiritual awakening over the past few years? I have always thought of myself as a sensitive person,but someone with a sensitive head rather than a sensitive head. That emotions would roll around in my head, but I wouldn't feel them in the body. Of course, my brush with anxiety was so distressing because it was such an intensely physical experience. Feeling emotions in my body is something I have become used to, and the occasional wave of anxiety doesn't bother me much any more. I have also become conscious about the possibility of using physical responses as a guide for action. How doing something makes you feel in your body as a barometer for whether you should continue doing it or not. For an over-thinker like, who spends a lot of time in his head, listening to my body is a novel experience. Yes, there is a risk of reading too much into fleeting sensations. Or mistaking physical illness for emotional distress. There are no easy answers. Trying to keep an open heart and an open mind is all we can do. 

First Day Back and Renewed Sense of Urgency

The uni felt like a ghost town as I cycled in today, and our building was no different. Some empty buildings grow larger when empty while ours seems smaller (it also seems smaller on the inside than it looks from the outside, so I guess that's says something about the architect). I had budgeted for not being able to work in the first half as I got acclimatized,but it still felt weird sitting in what felt like an empty building. The weirdness dissipated as some people from my office came in. Our officious grad school head conveyed the social-distancing instructions to us with great fanfare, taking 20 minutes to show us our seat allocations, which is 16 minutes longer than she should have required. She then treated us to coffee at the starbucks in the main building, and to pay for it we had to listen to her prattle on about some really random subjects for close to an hour. I remember being annoyed but also conscious that I needed to get used to being around people again. In other words, to get used to getting irritated.

I dropped by my supervisor's room and we had a short chat in which she told me that there might be some job openings soon. That news zapped away any lingering weirdness and animated with a new sense of urgency to finish my PhD. I have been animated by a deadline once since the pandemic began but I struggled to meet it and ultimately gave up. Its not even that I finished after the deadline, I didn't finish and just submitted what I had. I didn't get into trouble but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I have set myself another deadline, and hopefully I will be able to meet it. Again, the world won't end if I don't meet it, but I am getting impatient now. yes, I want to enjoy my PhD, but I feel like I will enjoy it if I move faster.