I think our college campus looks most beautiful in the early mornings and close to dusk. It is the time when nature is most alive as human beings slowly trickle in and out of the college grounds in small numbers. The music of nature embellishes the silence without any noise to disturb it. I love such moments even though I have experienced it only a couple of times. As an admirer of solitude and silence, I feel most free and alive when there is more of nature than people arou

Is it possible to love someone who is absolutely so different from you? To go back to them even when their words at times cause you pain as well as joy in the blink of an eye? That was how Mary Roy was for Arundhati Roy, and how the latter was for me as well. It is hilarious how the differences in our viewpoints and opinions start from the coverpage of the book itself! My grimace at the picture of her smoking in her book cover was as real as my admiration of her. But neither

It is interesting to note how we give emotional and symbolic meanings to the things around us. How we store or associate certain feelings or memories in or within material objects, so you can experience it all over again at a later period through them. What you associate those feelings with need not be objects; it could also be some activity. For instance, I am sure that every one of us has different rituals which we do after returning home after a long time away. It could b

The past few days, I've been on the road with my family in our Toyota Cresta (Innova), visiting temples near Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh and Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu. But this post is not about the places I visited, but about how this family tradition of road-tripping has strengthened our family bond over the years. From the time I can remember, we have always enjoyed travelling by private car when going on trips, mostly in South India. The fact that my father loves to driv

No matter how much you try to deny it, waking up on Jan 1 of any year feels different. It brings a breeze of hope inside your heart, urging you to take this chance to change your life for the better. Unlike other months of the year, January brings with it an urge to set new goals and plans, even when your situation is no different from yesterday. It is as if a notification pops up, enabling you to edit your avatar or attributes. When multitudes across the world get this at t

This blog post is for me. It is my attempt to put forth something that is not well-polished or planned over a whole day. This is not going to be well-researched or overly pondered over except for proofreading and editing. It is a small but significant step in letting go off my perfectionism, which I find is making me procrastinate things in the hopes of improving it overtime and which inturn fail to debut. Over a week of intense self-assessment and learning—through personali

I am currently in my hometown and just finished attending my online classes for the day. On that note, let me confess early on that I LOVE online classes! To explain why, I need to go back to the pandemic days. It was when our special classes (i.e. extra class hours before the start of the academic year) began in standard 12 of high school that the lockdown was announced in our country. Though physical classes were disrupted, teachers and students explored virtual platforms

I came across this book during one of my desperate hunts at the college library. I was holding onto a huge book by Amitav Ghosh, which I had trouble placing back on the shelf, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to finish it before I leave for my hometown in a week. So the only way to get that book from me was to replace it with another book, which I might be able to finish reading in a week. The search thus began. It must be fairly obvious from the picture above that one

As part of our Bioregional Studies class, our Professor, Dr Samuel Rufus, encouraged us to explore the flora and fauna of MCC. We were asked to go around the campus, click pictures of the birds we spot and identify them using Google Lens. And thus began our birdwatching adventure that started with the allotted hour and extended into two days of after-class group excursions. In the book, The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place , a bioregion is defined, l

You clutch onto it— the little light in the dark. You chase after it, yet stand still when it parts. You offer everything for that presence; a short-lived moment of honesty alive. Is it a wish that craves or a need that braves, this strong faith in a passing mate. A stubborn impulse, an idealistic leap— when you mute all doubts and chose to believe. A joy that mourns, a hope that burns but still takes flight knowing well its plight. I still look up— when hope comes by, and lo

The picture is purely for fun. I just couldn't keep my imagination in check. A week back, I gradually started a morning exercise routine—following my doctor's suggestion—to manage my allergy levels. I also started putting even more thought into what I ate, since I had a list of food items to avoid for the time being. It has been a week of gradually easing my body and mind into working out regularly, and that naturally piqued my interest in understanding what my body needs

It was by chance that I came across a scanned copy of a poem I had written during my UG days, which I believed to have been lost forever. As a class, we were asked to create a class magazine that would feature literary and artistic works by the students in our class, taking inspiration from the texts we studied in the syllabus. Paintings, sketches, poems, cartoons and other creative submissions came forth, and every student in the class contributed. My contribution was a poe

Yo! Have you had these moments where two to three bulbs glowed in your mind after reading or watching something thought-provoking. When new paths of organic thoughts unfold before you like cool breezes from the sea and your mind runs after them like an excited child behind butterflies. That's how I got lots of topics to write about and finally decided on writing about writing itself! My initiation into writing, like for many, started with diary entries as summer a

No road trip requires the traveller to be constantly on the road. Occasionally stopping for fuel, rest, and repair is a must. It is also okay to pull over to check the map and reroute instead of getting lost. Similar is the case with life. Early twenties is a defining period in life. It is beautiful and chaotic; you explore yourself and make decisions for your future self...scary but true. It can be confusing to chose one option over many others based on assumptions

Today in class, our professor introduced us to a new form of poetry called Erasure poetry or Blackout poetry. We were reading the poem Refugee Mother and Child by Chinua Achebe for our Postcolonial Studies paper and were asked to interpret the poem. While everyone pondered over the words, Sir encouraged us to write our own sentences or poems from the given text, by selecting a word from each line. Erasure poetry or blackout poetry is one where "... a poet blacks out or in

The Art of Carrying Pain by Lekhaa MeenakshiSudaram and Veda Vardhini Maria Praveen Novel Interview with Veda Vardhini Maria Praveen. Her co-author, Lekhaa MeenakshiSundaram, is currently out-of-station and hence she is not present for the interview. Q) What inspired you to write this book? Was it a person, an idea, or a specific moment in your life, or a little bit of everything? A:  So usually this book was based on heartbreak and usually people face it but they don’t have

Metaphorically Metaphorise by Veena J Metanafic (Metaphor-Narrative-Fiction)- a new genre Q) What inspired you to write this book? Was it a person, an idea, or a specific moment in your life, or a little bit of everything? A: My inspiration for the book is all about children, basically. So, usually children learn poetry or poems for marks, okay. It is based on the devices that they learn, and they don’t get into the poetry or get the essence of it. Usually, the adults too do

T Thoughts by Terese Maria Broosily Collection of Quotes Q) What inspired you to write this book? Was it a person, an idea, or a specific moment in your life, or a little bit of everything? A: Actually, from the beginning itself, while studying Literature, I wanted to write, but I didn’t know what to write. So one day, Rufus Sir came to our class and he talked about writing and all. Then, some spark came to my mind, and I wanted to write. Then I sent a message to Rufus Sir,

BYE SWEETHEART! by Dhanush Kumar Novel Q) What inspired you to write this book? Was it a person, an idea, or a specific moment in your life or a little bit of everything. A: Actually, at first, I didn’t have any idea to write a novel or anything. Rufus sir told me to write something and at that moment i thought, why should i not write a novel? First, I promised him a date–I will finish my writing within 1 September. I just have only three months, I guess. I don’t know how man

Red Verses by Pearlina Gracelyn Poetry Collection Q) What inspired you to write this book? Was it a person, an idea, or a specific moment in your life, or a little bit of everything? A: The main thing was my professor, Rufus sir, because I didn’t really write the book to write a book. It was just, like, poems which I wrote when I was in school, when I was really sad about something or really happy about something. So when Sir encouraged us so much in class, it made me think,