Cliques

I have only been part of a clique once in my life, when I was in journo college in Chennai. For the first time in my life, I was among people I felt fully at home with. My friends tend to be few in number but close, and I am a different person in the company of close friends. It didn't feel like a clique then but years later a friend who was part of the clique told me one of her friends (who was not part of  the clique) referred to us as the Mafia. All of us in the clique were smart, well-spoken and good at academics, (and the other males had a train of female admirers). We would also hang out a lot together so maybe a combination of all those things must have made us come across as snobbish. People behave differently when they are in groups. There is a different social dynamic at play, and someone you get along with well on an individual level might feel insufferable when in a group.

Since then,  I have never been part of a clique or felt the desire. At my school in Holland, the cliques were mostly based on nationality, and since many of my classmates weren't fluent in English, that was understandable. There was one clique centered around an academic that would annoy me no end. Some of my good friends were a part of that clique.

Now, I am in a clique of one, but I am quite sensitive to their presence. I like to think I am good at sniffing out cliques, although it is possible I see cliques where there aren't any. There is a clique that I have identified consisting of grads from one particular "progressive" institute. Cliques in radical circles are even more annoying because the members sanctimoniously carp on about diversity and suchlike, while remaining ignorant of their own exclusionary behaviour. Maybe I am being to harsh. The line between a support network and a clique is a thin one. Unless  there is tangible evidence of favouritism, it is  difficult to accuse someone of being part of the clique. All one can do is be more conscious of one's behaviour when in a support network and try to encourage openness towards outsiders.

No Aww

How did the interjection "Aww" originate? According to Urban Dictionary--the most authoritative source I could find--it is an expression used to describe "what girls think are cute, sweet, sad, good or bad". I use it as a default response whenever a friend says something sweet, like she misses me (and only female friends say stuff like that to me). In such a context, it is a socially acceptable way for men to express affection, because it is unclear whether the affection is genuine or faux. God forbid a man express affection for someone who is not a romantic partner or family member! We need to normalize showing platonic affection and maybe one day heterosexual men won't feel ridiculous to say that they miss each other or even love each other.
I have decided to stop using "Aww" except in the faux sense--when a friend says something mean to me. Fighting the patriarchy entails examining one's own habits and attitudes, so this is my nano-contribution to the cause.

Fresh Starts

I am writing this from Madrid airport, waiting for the flight back to Bristol. For some reason, I like writing blogs from airport. Maybe because the awareness of being in transit, being between chapters, gets the mental juices going.

It’s the end of an eventful summer which consisted of four trips in three months. For a reluctant traveller, that is quite a lot. Now, the unusually hot and bright European summer is over and the new academic year is lurking around the corner. The days in England will have become noticeably shorter, which should hopefully help me sleep better.

The past month has been quite lousy, with the unexpected death of a loved one. I also moved from a grey zone to the red zone (you will have to read last Friday’s blog to know what I am talking about). Being with my sister helped blunt the trauma of both these blows, but now I am must fend for myself. I am looking to put the past month behind me and immerse myself in work. I have plenty to do, and the best way to heal a broken heart is to tax the head. Yoga and writing have been godsends during these difficult weeks and I am grateful that I can draw on these two tools pretty much whenever I feel the need.

Now, its time to press the refresh button and start afresh.

Nice By Accident?

In school, we read a poem in Hindi titled "Strength and Mercy" which was based on the Mahabharatha epic. For some reason, I still remember most of its lines even 20 years later. One of the stanzas, translated into English, reads, "A merciful nature is a virtue only for the snake who has poisonous fangs, not the one who is non-venomous and domesticated". This got me thinking about the "Nice Guy" trope--that category of men whose primary virtue is that they are "nice", unlike the womanizing bad boys who break girls' hearts. An extension of the trope is that women prefer bad boys instead of the nice ones, and it is strongly implied that this is character flaw in women.
As many people have pointed out, there is no female equivalent of the "Nice Guy". Women who don't attract a lot of male attention are labelled as "plain" not "nice",  and they are not allowed to feel entitled to male attention even if they are nice as nightingales.
And as the Hindi poem points out, niceness is not a virtue if you don't get much opportunity to be "bad". This is not a cynical argument that all men would be bad boys if they could get away with. There are many men who attract a lot of female attention and still treat the women they go out with with honesty and respect (most of my male friends, for example). But, as a Quora article I read a few years ago pointed out, niceness is a baseline requirement not just in romantic relationships but also in friendships. All my friends, irrespective of how much romantic attention they receive, are nice people, else they wouldn't be my friends. Being nice just makes life much easier for yourself and the people around you, and that is plenty reason to be nice. But, if all you are is nice, that doesn't give a potential friend or romantic partner much to work with. And, in my experience, people who are often described as "nice" tend to be touchy, needy, have a low sense of self-worth and, in the case of  men, entitled. There are some people who are described as nice because they bring love and light to the lives of people around them and these are the people you turn to in moments of crisis. They can't help be this way. But, in my experience, such people are few and far between.

Art and Collaboration

I've been reading The Philosophy of Money by Georg Simmel on and off for the past six months. There are books that appealed to my intellect and those that appealed to me on an emotional level but none--before I read this one--that appealed to both at the same time. And, yes, the intellect-emotion dichotomy is  problematic and I have written about it before, but this book's intellectual and emotional effect on me was tangible.
One of the ideas in the book is how as production has become more specialized it has become more divorced from our personalities. The products of our labour don't reflect our personalities because there are so many other people, machines and processed involved in their production. On the other hand, with art, the artist pours herself into her creations, and is attached to them like no worker is attached to the fruits of his labour. Art doesn't just reflect the personality of the artist, it is through art that the artist's personality comes to life. Art can be seen as the extension of  the artist's personality, that part of her personality which has escaped her bodily form.
And, suddenly, it occurred to me why novels or other works of arts (to my very limited knowledge) seldom have more than one author. Collaboration doesn't work with a creation that is so personal. A collaborative effort inevitable entails compromise and surrender. In research collaborations, the junior collaborator has to often submit to the will of the senior, the meek collaborator to the more assertive one. In the context of art, such a collaboration would lead to the artist's alienation from her work of art. Which is why writing a novel is  such a lonely process--because no collaboration is possible. Its the same with writing a PhD. An interesting question is why is a PhD structured as though it is a work of art rather than a work of research? Maybe that could be a topic for a future blog.

Good People, Bad People

The other day, a friend was telling me about an acquaintance whose husband regularly hit her, but who refused to leave him because her was a "good person". That got me thinking about the "good person-bad person" narrative. In Hindi, a common defense of a person who has done something wrong is to say he is "good at heart". Increasingly, I find this good person-bad person dichotomy problematic.
I am sure there are sociopaths and psychopaths and megalomaniacs out there who are unambiguously bad people. India has the misfortune of being currently ruled by one, and we are not the only ones with this problem. But most of us are not sociopaths and yet have the  capacity to cause immense harm to other people--physical and emotional. Some of that harm is caused by the best of intentions, some of it is caused by emotional problems of our own. We can be in a toxic relationship with someone who we and most people consider a "good" person. As humans, sometimes we have love in hearts, sometimes we have poison. And, if one were to categorize one's each action as good or bad, I suppose it would yield an even scatter across the good-bad spectrum.
Life is  difficult, people are complicated, and we can hurt someone badly without meaning to and for no obvious fault of ours. Personally, I don't find any merit in aiming to be virtuous in thought and deed, as many religions preach. I think a healthy attitude towards life and relationships is more effective than trying to always be a saint with saintly intentions. Why is why it is important to learn to be kind to yourself, without which it is difficult to be kind to other people. What does it mean to be kind to yourself? I am still trying to figure out how to articulate that and hopefully I will  be able to write a post about it someday.

Changing The Vocabulary Of Online Dating

*I'm back after a break. I am not sure if I am up for regular blogging yet as the therapeutic writing continues, so this might be a one-off*

I have previously written in defense of "ghosting"--the term for when someone you met online disappears from your life without so much as a by your leave. But, now I am wondering if we are ill-served by the vocabulary of online dating, most of which describes ways in which people treat each other badly. Terms like Ghosting, Orbiting, Crumbing, etc. As a social scientist, I can understand the temptation to come up with new terms for  human behaviour, but in this case, I increasingly feel it is unhealthy.
Matters of the heart are tricky. There are some people you clearly fancy CURRENTLY and there are some people you clearly don't. But between these two clearly demarcated camps lies a vast grey zone consisting of small crushes, people you could see yourself fancying in the future, people you might not make the first move with but would gladly go out with if they did, friends with whom you have a slight sexual chemistry, etc.
Online dating has a lot of insensitive jerks, and I am guessing a majority of them are men. Since I have the good fortune of not having to interact with them, this piece is based on my own experiences of online dating with women.
As I said, matters of the heart are tricky. I don't think most people are actively trying to be mean and insensitive, although I suppose such people do exist. The fact is, and especially in the early stages, people are not sure about how they feel. If someone is sending you mixed signals, chances are they are not playing mind games, but have mixed feelings about you. Whether you like it or not, you are in their "grey zone". And, that is not a bad thing. Maybe you could benefit by taking things a bit slow with someone you are infatuated with? Maybe not push for a relationship with the vision of them you have formed in your head, and wait until you know each other better?
The internet is full of articles about how online dating is a "Game" and the only way to survive is to get in on this merciless Game. It mainly refers to how people string other people along, and keep them on standby until they are sure they have found "The One". "Hedge your bets", as a financial trader would say. And, I can't help but notice the similarity in terminology between online dating and trading in financial assets, which has terms such as shorting, bottom-fishing, etc. Words matter. Adopting the terminology of financial transactions  in online dating encourages transactional behaviour in online dating, which is unhealthy, in my opinion.
This doesn't mean you should give a free pass to people who treat you badly--far from it. You are responsible for how people treat you in the medium to long run, especially in the dating world where you have the choice to remove those people from your life. All I'm saying is maybe online dating is not a soul-crushing minefield if you treat yourself and other people with kindness. Romantic and sexual relationships are tricky and there is a strong temptation to assume the worst in a situation as a strategy to inure yourself from potential heartbreak. But does assuming or imagining the worst (in any walk of life) really prepare you for that particular outcome? I don't know.