When I was making a Facebook account recently, it asked me what my Hometown was. I thought about it for a while, but didn’t have an answer. Looks like I have had such a nomadic life, I don’t have a Hometown.
This list just covers the cities I have lived in. Even within these cities, I have sometimes lived in up to 3 different places. What is my Hometown, then?
Bhubaneshwar, because I was born there, but lived only a few months?
Kolkata, because that’s where my parents are from, but lived only a year?
Gurgaon, where I lived the longest and have my own place but don’t ever plan to return to?
Thankfully, I am off Facebook, so don’t have to answer this question anymore.
One fine day, me and my roommate Whoreko decided that we had had enough of eyeglasses and we would wear contact lenses from then on. We were in second year of college then and funds were short, so we went to an optometrist at Dharampeth and asked for the cheapest contact lenses they had. He gave us 1-year hard lenses and taught us how to put them on and take them out. Happily, we were on our way, with tears streaming down our faces from discomfort.
To say that these contact lenses were uncomfortable would be an understatement. They were uncomfortable all the time & dried up after a few hours. While riding motorcycles, they would shift from the wind and the eyes would turn red. Eventually, me and Whoreko both stopped wearing them altogether and went back to our shitty glasses.
Try as I may, I couldn’t adjust to life with glasses again & was miserable all the time. Eventually, when I was visiting my parents in Kolkata, my mother took pity on me and took me to GKB Opticals at Gariahat. The optometrist was very kind and patient with me and explained to me that the cheap contacts were not meant for extended use. She also explained to me that I have Astigmatism and the cheap contacts don’t address that. She prescribed me with monthly disposable toric soft contact lenses. They were very comfortable and provided me with perfect 6/6 vision. I could wear them for extended periods of time with no discomfort.
These lenses changed my life and were probably the most significant upgrade to my lifestyle ever. For the first time ever, I had perfect vision with incredible comfort. I was incredibly happy and looked forward to waking up in the mornings to put on my lenses. The only times I had issues were when dust got into my eye(s) while riding my motorcycle. I occasionally wore them for upwards of 36 hours straight & slept in them with only minor dryness.
However, like all good things, it didn’t last long. After 13/14 years of using them, I started to experience more and more frequent spells of dryness & discomfort in my eyes. I went to my optometrist but he was of little help, just stating the obvious. Eventually, it became so bad that I couldn’t wear contact lenses at all.
I decided that I couldn’t go back to wearing glasses again and would need a permanent surgical resolution yo my Myopia.
As an atheist, I do not believe in God & I believe that religion is the the biggest handicap for humanity. I believe religion is preventing humans from reaching full potential and living in peace with each other.
These are just some recent news articles I came across in the last few weeks, actual examples are many more. Most wars & conflicts in history have been because of religion (or women). Each religion preaches that theirs is the only true god and that people following all other gods are fools. How can religions co-exist peacefully with each other when the basic tenet of each religion is that all other religions are fake?
Religion is also a very powerful tool and a weapon. We have already seen many countries elect incompetent assholes as their leaders because of religious manipulation.
On the other hand, I do believe that religion serves a purpose other than handicap for humans. Research has proven that people who believe in God are happier on average than atheists. I can understand and agree with this research. If I believed that an imaginary being in the sky would automatically solve all my problems, I would be less stressed in life, too. Maybe belief in God evolved as an anti-stress and anti-anxiety mechanism in Humans? It is a good way to offload your worries on something else.
I just wish all this did not involve waging war on fellow humans.
Black plays Dewey Finn who has just been booted from his band. He has no income and has a week to come up with rent money, so he impersonates his roommate as a substitute school teacher. Instead of teaching the kids the curriculum, he turns them into a rock band. Just a day before they are due to participate in the Battle of the Bands, though, he’s caught and makes a run for it. The kids, however, decide to run away from school anyways and participate. When the parents find out, they are furious. But when they watch their kids perform, the power of Rock n Roll melts their hearts. Finn ends up starting an after-school music program and the kids become regular rockers under his tutelage.
Even in 2003, the movie could hardly be called “realistic”, but in 2021 the entire premise is rather laughable. This is because parents these days are much more anal about school. As a father of a Primary Grader, I know. Some personal examples of the unbelievable lengths parents go to micromanage their kids’ schooling
Parents taking an AQI meter to their kids’ classroom to fight with the school administration about how polluted the classroom is. All the parents gather and scream at the school to reduce ventilation.
Parents taking a CO2 meter to their kids’ classroom to fight with the school administration about how stuffy the classroom is. All the parents gather and scream at the school to increase ventilation.
Parents fighting with the school teachers if their kid gets a tiny scratch while playing.
Woke parents fighting with the school teacher for using “he” and “she” to refer to the kids instead of “they”.
Parents fighting with the school teacher because the muffins served for snacks had “too many raisins” & “too little wholegrain”.
Parents complaining that their “precious kid” doesn’t get enough attention in class and feels sad (with 1 teacher for every 3 kids).
They enrol their kids at International Schools and complain about how the curriculum is “too progressive” and there’s too little of “traditional studying”.
It doesn’t take long for them to make a new WhatsApp group and rally other parents against the school. After all this, they also have time to fight with the school administration about how high the fees are.
During our childhood, our parents were not as passionate about our schooling. I appreciate that parents these days are more involved, but some of them have taken things to a whole new level; especially those sending their kids to fancy schools. When I went to drop my daughter to school, I would always find some parent arguing with the teachers. I felt bad for the teachers and the school administration, that they had to spent so much time pacifying anal parents.
If School of Rock were to come out in 2021, people would probably have it banned immediately.
I was diagnosed with Myopia when I was 2 years old and have been wearing eyeglasses since. Both my parents were Myopic, so the genetic gamble was never in my favour to begin with. I don’t remember how it was like, wearing glasses all the time as a 2 years old kid, but it couldn’t have been pleasant.
I wore glasses all through primary & secondary school. My mother used to be furious because I frequently broke my glasses in the playground. Funnily enough, my glasses broke most often during exams. Then it would be a mad rush between studying and ordering new glasses from the optometrist. I specifically remember enjoying visiting Tosh Opticals at Paschim Vihar. They had nice modern looking equipment and air-conditioning. I remember us waiting for them to make the glasses while mother quizzed me on the topics for the exam next day. Since we spent most of the day at the optometrist, she didn’t have time to cook. We ended up ordering food from somewhere, which I enjoyed.
In the years that followed, I also dabbled with photochromic eyeglasses, rimless eyeglasses and gunmetal frames. That being said, at the end of the day, they were all eyeglasses and sucked balls.
During high school and college, I started realizing that the glasses were not doing my face any favours. I realized that I looked silly with them and started hating them more and more. Also, their weight would leave sores on the bridge of my nose where they rested. North-Indian bullies were not very friendly with glasses, either, calling me “chashmish” or “chamakkha”. I also realized that glasses provided inferior vision, as they didn’t correct the entire field of vision.
By second year of Engineering, I had made up my mind that I didn’t want to wear glasses anymore.
Seepage is when there’s a leak in a water supply or drain pipe in your home and the water gets into the walls. Seepage has given me much grief and anxiety over the years. Just last night I had a nightmare where I discovered seepage in my flat and woke up covered in sweat.
I lived in a house with a basement when I was young. One thing I remember vividly is that the basement was always damp and smelt funny. I assumed this was normal at that time.
Seepage Woes Part-1
I remember living in a rented apartment in 2015-2017. They had recently painted it and we were the first family to live in it. Within weeks, however, the bedroom wall became damp & the paint began to flake off. This would be the beginning of our long struggle with seepage. We informed our landlady who spoke with the building maintenance who fixed something on the outside drainage pipes, but nothing changed. We continue to press our landlord and she continue to hound the maintenance team but not much happened.
In the meantime, I discovered that seepage always comes in pairs. Our downstairs neighbour started to show up and complain about water leaking into his bedroom from our bathroom. Building maintenance broke our bathroom floor twice and repaired some pipes, but the leak continued. Meanwhile, our bedroom was perpetually covered in flaking paint and PoP. Anyways, this wasn’t my apartment, so I was not too concerned.
Seepage Woes Part-2
In 2017, we bought and moved into our own apartment. We spent a lot of time, thought and effort in designing and decorating it as per our tastes. Once we moved in, to great horror, we started to notice dampness in 2 of the bedroom walls and on 2 of the bathroom ceilings.
One of the wall problems was relatively easy to repair. It was caused by a misaligned awning outside the wall which was trapping water. Fixing it fixed the problem. Within weeks, the wall was dry and I plastered and painted over it myself.
Horrible Seepage
Plastered
Painted
Easy to Fix
For the ceilings, we contacted the maintenance team who went to our upstairs neighbour. We would soon come to know that our upstairs neighbour (Henceforth referred to as Bihari Bastard) was the biggest un-co-operative piece of shit ever. At first he wouldn’t even allow the maintenance people to look inside his bathroom. After much coaxing and cajoling, when he did, he wouldn’t allow them to make repairs. After much requests/threats they allowed some repairs but it didn’t solve the problem.
Meanwhile, the paint continue to flake off the bedroom walls & plaster continue to fall from the bathroom ceilings. It was heartbreaking to see our new apartment in such a state. Eventually, I reached the end of my tether and offered Bihari Bastard to destroy and re-build his entire bathrooms for him. I would pay for the repair and building and he would pay for the new tiles. Bihari Bastard agreed.
I found a contractor and got 2 of his bathrooms destroyed and old pipes pulled out. The old pipes were in poor shape.
Destroyed washrooms
After that, the contractor put in new pipes
New Pipes
After this, the bathroom was re-built and tiles added. All through this process, Bihari Bastard continued complaining what a great source of inconvenience this was for him, completely ignoring the fact that repairing his bathrooms was not my job at all.
Eventually, the job was finished, my walls and ceilings were dry and we painted them over. We thought the process was finally over and heaved a sigh of relief.
Seepage Woes Part-3
We soon found out that our sense of relief was misplaced. One day our downstairs neighbour came up and complained about our bathrooms leaking water into his bedroom. This time we already knew what we had to do.
We called the same contractor and repeated the same process all over again. Tore open 2 of our bathrooms and re-built them from scratch. Eventually, the work was over and there was no more seepage “to” us or “from” us.
I thought our building was especially shitty, but later found out that all buildings (At least in the Delhi/NCR area) have this problem; even expensive/posh DLF ones. Turns out, the builders sub-contract the piping/water work to smaller contractors and not having any liability, they always do shitty jobs.
In Thailand, I see that the bathroom pipes are setup differently. All bathrooms have false ceilings and the pipes of the apartment above are easily accessible by removing panels. In India, all pipes are buried 3/4 feet deep in concrete and the only way to access them is to dig open the floors/walls.
I always advice potential buyers of new apartments to check 2 things:
Check very carefully (over a time of a few weeks) whether there’s any seepage in that apartment.
Go and meet the downstairs neighbour & enquire whether there’s any seepage in his flat from above.
Indian insecurity is legendary. We Indians are probably the most insecure group of people in the world. Be it our religion, our culture or our nationality, we are woefully insecure about everything. It doesn’t take much for an Indian to get butthurt. In fact it is quite possible that the derogatory term “snowflake” was coined for us.
A few examples of Indian Insecurity
Wearing a Saree decorated with flags of different countries (including our own) offends Indians.
Having a doormat with the Indian flag offends Indians. The same company selling doormats with flags of 50 other countries doesn’t offend any of those 50 countries.
Making a movie by the name of Billu Barber offends barbers. Making a movie by the name of Dhobi Ghat offends Dhobis. A song with the word Mochi offends cobblers. A movie about law offends lawyers.
These are just some examples of Indian insecurity that I remembered from the top of my head; there are countless such cases.
Overall it is embarrassing how easy it is to offend Indians and how insecure we are to get offended by little things. I am not sure where this insecurity comes from; this Quora answer looks legitimate to me.
This insecurity is something we Indians must overcome to focus on more important things.
As expected, 6 months into my stay at Bangkok, I already miss my home in India terribly. Part of this is because of the lockdown in Bangkok. Part of this is because I never really wanted to leave India and had to do so because I was unhappy with my job and this was the best option I had, then.
Although Bangkok has some of the best bars in the world, it is missing a microbrewery culture which was so popular in Gurgaon and Bengaluru. I miss drinking craft beer.
Living in my own house and doing what I want with it.
I miss Connaught Place, although, I hadn’t been there for many months even when I was in Gurgaon.
Miss Hotstar India. Hotstar Thailand doesn’t have as many shows, especially from HBO, FX etc.
Sorely miss Amazon. Lazada/Shopee are disgusting and I use them only because I am forced to.
I miss having the electrical switches the right side (For India) up.
I miss the few friends I have.
Miss the prevalence of online services like online doctor consultations, online medical test bookings & online booking of household services.
To say that I don’t like social networks is an understatement. I have used many social networks over the years and most have given me nothing but grief. In this post, I will lay down what exactly I hate about each social network.
I will start with WhatsApp, because this is the one I hate the most. I used it because it was the most convenient way to keep in touch with people. However, I had to delete my WhatsApp account in 2019 because:
Any person who had my mobile number could contact me without my permission.
Everyone could see whether I was online at any point of time.
There was no way to turn off read-receipts in group chats.
Anyone could add me to group chats without my permission. This is something my work people exploited to the fullest. I woke up to be part of a new group every morning.
Images and Videos were shamelessly compressed/resized.
Archived Group chats were automatically un-archived when there were new messages in the group. There was no way to completely ignore some groups without leaving them.
There was no way to get rid of the “Status” notification dot at the bottom.
People sending useless & unsolicited “Good Morning” and “Good Night” forwards.
People begging for things because they are too cheap to spend money
Retard!
Retarded photos & videos
More retard forwards
Beggars!
Useless and irritating WhatsApp chats
Facebook
This is my second most hated Social Network. I have used Facebook for many years but finally deleted my account in 2019. I tried again in 2021 but didn’t last more than a few weeks. The reason I cannot stand Facebook is because of the nature of posts from people, like:
Attention-seeking whores post irrelevant news that people already have from other news sources. Just for likes and comments.
Attention-seeking whores check-in to different airports to show-off to people that they are travelling by airplane.
Keyboard activism and “social justice”.
Attention-seeking whores posting photos of new things they have bought.
Parents making their kids perform tricks like circus monkeys for likes and comments.
Disgusting religious posts.
Posts insulting people belonging to other religions.
Posts cheering some sports team or sportspersons, as if they are reading these posts.
“Friends” wishing each other Happy Birthday with impersonal AI generated/templated birthday wishes.
People sucking up to the government/leaders.
People insulting the government/leaders.
Religious Propaganda
Religious Hatred
Anti-Sikh Comments
Kids being used for likes
So what? Who cares? You didn’t break this story, gandu
Retard who has left India years ago sucking up to Indian government
1 Retard showing off, another retard enabling him
Facebook Retards!
Every time I try to give Facebook a chance, I either get infuriated by any of the above posts or get drawn into arguments. Surprisingly, the only thing I liked about Facebook were the targeted ads. Normally, advertisements are irritating, but Facebook is so good at targeted ads that they are actually useful. Many times I have been looking for something specific to buy, just for Facebook to show a completely relevant ad in the app.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is supposed to be a “professional” social network, but in reality it is no different from Facebook. People post all the same bullshit things here, that they do on Facebook. And here you cannot even react negatively to posts lest some potential employers see it and get turned off.
Professional?
Personal stories
Praying on LinkedIN
Professional!
Peddling Religion on LinkedIn
Peddling Religion on LinkedIn
LinkedIn Retards
On a related note, I have never had a job lead from LinkedIn nor have I seen anyone else get a job lead there when they needed it.
Twitter
I can tolerate Twitter as a news feed as long as I am anonymous & don’t follow people I know in real life.
Telegram
I can tolerate Telegram to chat with friends because unlike WhatsApp, I can have people not find me using my phone number. I have to give someone my User ID explicitly for them to be able to chat with me.
I have documented my struggles with mental health on this blog before. Considering the focus of the media on the mental health of famous people these days, I decided to write a longer rant about my own struggles.
During my college days I was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Although I did get depressed once in a while, I was never-ever worried about things. After college, while working a job I didn’t like, I also went through bouts of depression, but got over it quickly once I found a better job.
My second job was the best job, mentally, of my career. I had friends at work, I enjoyed what I was doing and I never even thought about work outside office. It was a shift-job where you could switch off completely after work.
It was in 2012 that I realized something was wrong. I suffered from IBS for almost 2 years. During this time I also turned lactose intolerant. I did read about the close connection between the gut and the brain, but I couldn’t figure out which affected which. After 2 years, I suddenly got better and didn’t think about it again.
Things started to go south again around 2016-17, when I wasn’t able to handle non-stresses from my work. I would lay awake at night thinking about trivial things from work, lost weight rapidly and couldn’t concentrate on non-work things. I tried things like meditation and mindfulness but nothing helped much. The mind just won’t stop racing and over-thinking.
This was the first time I decided to go see a shrink, at a hospital. I was hoping for a quick solution to all my troubles, but she prescribed me with very-expensive counselling sessions. The cost of the sessions made my issues worse, so I never went back. Thankfully, the shrink did give me a diagnosis, that of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Eventually, this phase also passed and I forgot all about it.
I switched jobs again in 2020 and this time anxiety came back to attack me with a vengeance. It was clear that this time it was worse than before. It was so bad that I couldn’t sleep for more than 3 hours for a week straight. Sleeping aids didn’t help either.
Eventually, I decided to go to another shrink. This one was in a busy market popular with people I knew. I was ashamed to go see him. This doctor also confirmed the diagnosis of GAD and decided to prescribe me medications immediately. Within a few days, I was feeling much better. Although anxiety never went away completely, it is now quite under control, thankfully, to this day.
What I do
I use the following techniques to keep my anxiety under control
Medication, which I am slowly weaning myself off of.
Exercise – Even a short run helps a lot. Even walking is better than nothing.
Listen to music I love everyday, without fail.
Writing (Blogging)
Whenever I have too many thoughts at night, I write them on a piece of paper before I go to bed. Next day I action all the items on that piece of paper and then tear it away. I found this strangely therapeutic.
Stay as far away from Social Networks as possible.
I know many people have found relief with mindfulness, but for me it tended to make things worse. Maybe I was not using the tool correctly.
The Rich
On the news, I repeatedly hear stories about the struggle of famous people with mental health, especially sportspersons. Although I am happy that they are raising more awareness for mental health, the impact of mental illnesses on them is much different than it is on regular people like us.
For them, quitting means an outpouring of support and being called “brave”. For people like me, quitting would mean being called a failure, losing my house and not being able to feed my family. So no, I don’t think these sportspersons are brave for quitting. They quit because they are filthy rich & can afford to.
