On Imperfections...

Imperfections are one of those things that can be counted upon - no matter how identical two people/things are, there are those little kinks/nicks that exist in everything. It is these little unique features that help us understand and classify the various things we see and experience in daily life. As a biology student, I have even learnt that the cells in your body, that have the exact same set of genes irrespective of which part of the body they are found in, function very differently based on how and where they are placed. A cell individually or collectively performs a large number of functions that other cells may or may not participate in.

My point in explaining all that was that although people come in much the same basic factory made model, they are so different from each other. As with the expression of genes, the environment, the current health and state of the organism will determine how the organism is shaped, and in the case of humans, how he/she thinks, acts, behaves, speaks and perceives his/her environment. A simple example is, if you have been starved for a week, and you enter a restaurant, you cannot be expected to patiently cut your meat into little bite sized pieces and munch each mouthful 32 times - you'd probably wolf down an entire KFC chicken bucket in 10 minutes. S those who give you the stink eye literally have no idea how hungry you feel. They probably never missed a meal in their lives - so, screw them. Right?

In my point of view, the perceptions of different people differ based on what they have experienced through life, and it is these perceptions that define the individual. Think about it this way - two people could look at the exact same thing and see two completely different things. This is because perception leads to impressions, and the impressions access memories and lead to thoughts; that eventually lead to actions and reactions. When two people look at a person who has committed a criminal offense, for instance, one feels sympathy for his condition, and one feels anger at the damage caused. Yet another may feel complete apathy, because this person can't relate to the perp or the victim, so he just feels nothing. It all depends on how the person relates to the perp. The person who feels sympathy feels for all the wrong that had been done to the person, that lead to him/her making all the wrong choices - wrong friends, to do all the wrong things and to be in all the wrong things. All of the things that lead to this person becoming who he/she is at that point. A good parent or a person with really strong maternal/paternal instincts would be one who would see the good in a child/person irrespective of what the rest of the world thinks.

The person who feels anger looks at the perpetrator from the viewpoint of the victim who happened to get hurt by the perp. In this case, the amount of damage would dictate the amount of anger felt. Anger in this case could be righteous anger or, in certain cases the anger that rises out of bias and blood lust. There are a few cases where the perpetrators had it coming, but in a good number of cases, the perpetrators grew up in an environment where they were treated with an unfair, harsh and unkind manner - anger and hate was all they ever knew. They grew unflinching, hard and cold because the humanity was beaten out of them. That's why, nearly every villain has a particularly horrific back story. For most people who end up in jail, it is the world that was cruel to them first. There's a lot the rest of us take for granted. Some people have never known kindness, or compassion or even safety. They lived in fear all along, and eventually, what helps them deal with that harshness is for them to become tougher, which in this case means that they become harsh, cynical, rude, cold and unfeeling.

When they feel no fear or pain, doing something that would harm another person does not necessarily feel so wrong. To them, it is just a way to get their frustrations with life out of their system in several stages. When they have killed once, it doesn't feel so wrong anymore, so they do it again and again until it becomes second nature to them. If you ask the cannibals who existed in times of great starvation, they would tell you that they did what they did to survive. So it is eventually that - either survive or die, and to some, death does not come quickly, so they succumb to the will to survive, no matter what it takes.

Okay, I hear you - enough of the morbidity.

Look at people like you and me. I'm sure for many of us, the world was quicker to tell us of our faults than to embrace what we are really good at. It takes the will and the courage to keep fighting, to persevere, to prove that you are indeed, good at what you are good at, so that you get accepted as a dancer, for example. Now, that's just the beginning. Once you have been seen as a dancer, people will constantly expect you to outdo yourself and others. Just being talented is not enough. People always take to comparing you with others who share your talent. No matter how good you get, you will ALWAYS find someone who people will say is better than you. Don't worry - that guy who is your competition is also being compared with someone who another group of people find better than him. Maybe he can't stop hearing about you in the circles he is in. Since we don't live in a Disney movie, we can't magically switch places or marry a Prince/Princess in the other's land and go to live in the other land forever, so we must learn to just tune out the background noise and only listen to the more informed, constructive opinions.

It's an unfair system that way, but it's how the world works. You can choose to continue to feel unworthy, or you can look at how far you have come, and actually be grateful of the fact that you have had the opportunity to actually make it as far as you have. This will help you move further, at your own pace. Why I say 'at your own pace' is this - in a world of 7 billion people, you probably are not going to be the best in the world at something for too long without having someone else prove to be better than you. So why strive so hard to have your ass handed to you on a plate EVEN when you are right on top of the proverbial ladder? It would be best instead to just keep doing what you're doing, in the way you know how, trying your best to give your best when you're doing it. That way, you improve, and you are not necessarily under too much pressure. A little pressure of the good kind is good - it keeps you on your toes, but try not to let anyone get you down.

I think everyone should embrace the imperfections that make a person unique - because it is those things that help you identify a person as that person. Everyone should be allowed to be themselves. That way, there will be more love in the world, and less hate. Why are we all so obsessed with standards and categories? Cavemen never categorized. They hunted anything when they were hungry, took what they wanted, came and went as they pleased. Unless another person was interfering in their business, they never actually fought.

Now, we initially categorized so we could understand each other and the world around us better, but the more civilized and uptight we got, the more we used these categories to fuel racism, pitting us against one another.

The more civilized we got, the more unfair we got. The more we craved, the more unsatisfied we felt - we ALWAYS want more. No matter how much we already have, it just is not enough. Contentment is an attitude in my opinion - choose to look at the glass half full in every situation, and you can be happy anywhere.

If someone annoys you, just stay out of their way - let them find others like them, and do as they please. Whatever it is, just don't try to change people. If you don't like them, just keep looking for others like you.

Just a few thoughts. 

Lifestyle

I have spent the past few days thinking and reading about the various things that comprise a healthy lifestyle, and I found one thing about our lives today. It's all wrong. Nearly everything we do is eventually going to either make us very sick, or just kill us.

1. We are extremely busy. All the stress leads to less sleep, anxiety, depression, fatigue, bad choices in everything that we do - we look for shortcuts in every thing. We buzz buzz buzz around, flitting from one task to the next, like our hindquarters were on fire. No time for thought, rest, food, feeling, love, contemplation.

2. We eat all the wrong food. Fried, sweetened, overcooked, processed, much too salty or sugary, highly caffeinated, nicotine/trans-fat filled. Doesn't that sound like everything we eat? Exactly my point.

3. Our values are all completely messed up. When everything becomes a competition, how will you be able to relax and get your eyes off of your competitor's progress? Nasty, stinking, competition is everywhere, and in everything. It's disgusting - absolutely revolting. When you think of competition, picture the most disgusting thing you can think of, something that will make you puke - because that's how bad it is. All that nonsense we are fed about healthy competition is a load of crap. Healthy competition eventually transforms into that disgusting thing you pictured, and then, there literally is no turning back.

4. Our highly consumerist and industrialized lifestyle is sucking the life out of life as it should be. The environment is at risk of being seriously affected, the health of the collective is in serious jeopardy, we are all now programmed to kill or to eat each other alive if it meant that, in doing so, we are closer to success.

5. More alcohol, sodas, drugs use, PSP playing, TV watching - no time to do the real stuff, like painting or singing or dancing - or even just talking.

6. We are no longer focused on doing a few defined tasks to the best of our abilities - but Nora is trying to outdo her neighbour, Sally by taking on everything she does, even if it doesn't come naturally to her - she doesn't do it because she enjoys it, but just to tell her, or show her that she is better. It is impossible to do everything everyone else does - the purpose of community is to give each person due credit for the things each individual is good at, and to help each other out. It is definitely not to constantly try to outdo one another.

Competition is a very weird way of living, in that you are literally telling yourself that you need to outdo someone else to prove to yourself that you are worthy. Competition makes your entire life about being better than someone else. It fuels the ego of the winner, and frustrates those who didn't make it, deeming all the efforts they put in null and void in the eyes of the collective. We go from being a happy friendly world to a cruel, and unfriendly world in a second.

Research has validated the expression - jack of all trades; master of none. Apparently, when you keep switching from one job to another too many times (more than 5-10 times a day), you get dumber, meaning your IQ level literally drops over time. So in trying to become superman, you become a doorpost. It is apparently wise and productive to make checklists of a few tasks, and to give it your complete attention as opposed to taking on an impractical number of tasks - you endanger your health (physical and mental), and you become this unpleasant, tired, neurotic person that everybody hates.

I like to prioritize my work, and to give myself rewards for accomplishing said goals, irrespective of the result. I also like to work in some me time, where I don't plan what to do, but only that I give myself that time to be spontaneous - and do anything I feel like doing. Trust me, I am a happy person because of it - I reward myself for being focused and productive, irrespective of what anyone thinks. I consider myself a successful, irrespective of the results I get.  I set goals that are meaningful to me. That way I know where I am going. In my mind, I am neither a winner nor a loser - I am just not in the competition because none of it makes ANY kind of sense to me because life is subjective. Competition and examinations are not an accurate judge of talent.

The lack of time to think is a big one too, and fewer minds are trained to think about the truths of life these days. It is very important for a human being to get in touch with his/her surroundings and to assess their own progress in life. It is important for an individual to constantly look within, rediscover themselves, and to see if their lives are in harmony with their soul.

Are they doing what they set out to do? Are their choices entirely their own, or are they being pushed into believing someone else's beliefs? Are they being true to themselves? Are they communicating with their conscience? Is their conscience happy with them? OR are they constantly living life to please others, completely destroying themselves and losing their purpose for living? What are the things they are truly blessed with? Is there a way to find contentment with what they have at the moment? Is something causing them to worry? Why are they worried? Is there a possibility that the situation can be dealt with? Or is there no actual cause for worry? Are they being absolutely everything they can be?

These are important questions that an individual constantly needs to ask himself/herself and find honest answers to - not outside, not in other people, but within themselves. People hardly spend time thinking about these things. Even if they do think about some of those things, they are approached in a very selfish, opportunistic way. Only when one is truly at harmony with oneself can he/she find the wisdom to help another. This is why people do not help each other for no apparent reason like they used to. Everything is done with an expectation of profit or some sort of personal gain. That's not being nice to others - that's being nice to yourself.


Back to health now -

The lack of sleep is what is ranked highest in the cause for many illnesses - apparently sleep deprivation prevents the rejuvenation of the organs of our body, and causes serious hormonal imbalances, like the production of Cortisol (the stress hormone) and the hunger hormone (ghrelin) that leads to salt/sugar cravings that; if entertained, will lead to obesity and further hormonal imbalances. It's like a vicious circle.

The consumption of the food I mentioned above, lead to poor heart health, a dramatic decrease in cognitive function, increased risk of neurodegenerative disorders and other serious disorders. One increasing problem in female reproductive health today is the Polycystic Ovary Disease/Syndrome (PCOD/PCOS).

The toll that our high stress, consumerist lifestyle takes on teenage girls is the hormonal imbalance that leads to the improper functioning of their reproductive system. The LH (Leutenizing Hormone) surge that is necessary for the regular release of the finite number of eggs stored in a woman's ovaries is disrupted, leading to a difficulty in conception when she does decide to have children. Further, the unhealthy practices of binge drinking, the use of narcotics, stress and sleep deprivation along with the consumption of food additives in everything lead to poor reproductive health as well. Either they can't get pregnant because most of the eggs in their ovaries have been destroyed, leading to a disappointingly low follicular count. Or, if they do, they miscarry because the uterine environment is hostile - or stress.

None of what we do is real anymore. We eat fake food, we breathe dirty air, we do fake things, we, at best only tolerate people around us, and have little, if at all any time for each other. Although we have all the most convenient ways to live now, none of it is actually real. Keep this going, and it won't be a natural disaster killing all of us - this will be a different kind of deluge - this time, we will be the cause of our own destruction.
It's Armageddon waiting to happen, whichever way you slice it. Only this time, it will be a different kind of flood.

FERRERO ROCHER - The Best Way to Celebrate.

So at last now, the exams are over, and the world around me feels a little different to how it felt just a few days ago. I've always felt that the world becomes a brighter place when the exams are behind me. Food tastes better, sleep is more restful, and even the smell of paint, fresh bread and perfume, lotion and shampoo in the air makes the day feel even brighter. The textbooks are back in the library where they belong, and the papers are all neatly filed away, where they belong. The bed is made, clothes all laundered and folded away, the exam time messes all cleaned up, and I feel well rested this morning - technically afternoon, but morning for me, since my day only started a few hours ago. Also, the sunshine flowing in through my window makes me feel warmer and just happier in general. A few days ago, the world felt cold, dark and pressurized to the point of being heartless. Adrenaline was pumping, endless papers and pens and highlighters cluttering the room. Dinner forgotten, a minimal effort put into lunch and probably more tea/coffee in me than blood.

Sleepless nights, filled with the worry that the day of the exam may come and the endless chapters would not have been read sufficiently to answer the questions given to me. So I plough on, day and night, undeterred by  sleep, tiredness, headaches or boredom. I have a certain weird way of studying better when I watching a movie or listening to music. It keeps me interested in studying, as opposed to hating the idea of studying altogether. I also have this quirk where, when my brain rejects something, I can't do it. For example, I do drink, but I can only drink when I really want to - none of that bending to peer pressure n stuff. It's the same with studying - when I really have to study, and I don't like what I'm studying, I can try to make myself to study anyway, but that doesn't mean I'm studying as effectively as I can.

Anyway, when it was all finally over, I felt relief like never before - I did manage to sufficiently read what I had to, answered questions (I hope, sufficiently) and the exams, all of them, were finally behind me now. So when finally, all was said and done, it feels like I've been to war and back, all in one piece. That's what exams feel like. Leaves you tired and winded - you need the break after to catch your breath, and the time to actually sleep restfully.

This year, my exams ended on my father's birthday, so I celebrated both occasions with chicken dinner at an Iranian restaurant - chicken kebabs with a skinless boiled tomato, pan rice and chips. That, and a special box of Ferrero Rochers. Ferrero Rocher is pure magic in an even more magical wrapper. It's pure hazelnut/wafer dunked in 'chocolat' - croyez-moi, c'est vraiment magnifique pour les papilles. My taste buds always sing with delight when I 'experience' a Ferrero Rocher, so that was how I chose to celebrate both, my daddy's sixtieth and what could probably be the last set of exams I sit in a very long time. [I study in a different country, not where my parents live.]

Another way was a much-needed long (14 hour) sleep, to make up for the lack of it that I had experienced in almost 2 months. The third way, however, was the best thing I have done in at least 2 years. I bought a book, called "You're Only Human", written by a curious little critter with wisdom and a very interesting sense of humour. Now THAT's a book I will pass on to my children and quite possibly, even my grandchildren.



  

Love and other drugs...

Ever noticed how the stories and movies where there are star-crossed lovers or where there is one who is dying of cancer or some incurable disease tend to be the most genuine? In every other relationship, love tends to not feel like enough - the lovers start out happy and so in love, but that dwindles down eventually, to fighting over budgets and children and who took who for granted - oh and here's the best one ever - whose family is better than whose. Truthfully, family sucks because they are always in your face, always judging, always competing and almost always resenting. Whoever wrote that family is all about love and understanding got it so totally wrong, because there aren't that many families who can even hold a candle to these storybook families, where everyone loved each other, and truly cared for each other.

Anyway, the lovers that do end up spending the rest of their lives together transition from the place where nothing else mattered, into a place where everything else takes precedence over their relationship. It's sad, really, because there are these two people, who have a year, maybe less, to be together before one gets permanently shipped off to land of the dead, while the other haunts the land of the living, a mere shell, with no light or love left to give. These people would have eaten bugs and slugs if they could have had just one more day together, but they don't; and on the other side, people who do actually have what seems like an eternity together, and they bicker and complain every single day.

What life has become is almost all about taking the people and the things you already have for granted, while gaping open mouthed, at a close to not achievable dream. What is it about people that they always want the things they can't have? When they are in love, there is always the worry that she/he might choose someone else over you, so you constantly do new things to keep him/her. Likewise, it takes knowing that he/she will be dead in six months for you to take time off work and take her to Milan, and in general, just spend time with her. It takes the fear of losing someone for you to get close to them. Why must it be that way? Couldn't people be with each other while being genuinely appreciative of and grateful for one another?  Why must people compete? Why is there the constant necessity for one to prove that that they are worth another person's love and appreciation? I really wish that a family dinner would be about catching up with your cousins the way we would catch up with a long lost friend, that genuine sense of love and kinship, where work/achievements are almost seldom talked about because it could have been a difficult year for cousin Ed or Sally while it might have been a truly great year for cousin Seth.

Instead of extending that kind of love, understanding and sensitivity to each other, families turn into a pack of cannibalistic sharks, just waiting for one to weaken, or lose a fin, maybe, to just swoop in and devour every single piece of the injured shark. What's worse, families don't literally kill each other - they prey on the other's spirit, which is a worse form of death. When you go through life, losing faith in humanity, simply because people who live life this way, and still "love their family to bits" are considered normal, there comes this one person, who changes the way you looked at life.

You live every moment of your life, right up to that point, in self doubt, and worry, wondering if you were going insane to believe that families were about love - and in comes this one person who makes you realize that if ONE person who is that good can exist, the world couldn't be that bad a place after all. With this person, you truly see the rest of your life. After years of feeling alone and misunderstood, you see this one person who you just met, who, very surprisingly knows you far better than anyone else you ever knew for years ever did. You finally stop feeling like the eternal outcast, and BAM! Life the way you knew it is wheeled off - it's like, the Second Act of the play from this point on. It is the same, but different.

This one person looks at you differently - he/she sees you as a success, as an amazing person, and you transform, from a caterpillar, into a butterfly, and you soar and you soar into the air, and take in the sights and sounds and smells of what was once your world, but now, it looks different to you, because you are up in the air, flying off to see and experience things differently. You feel better, you look better and you magically do better at what you do, because now, you are no longer in doubt - you were right, you weren't insane. You share a relationship with this person that is better than anything you could have experienced with your family. This person shares his/her day with you - the good, the bad and the ugly, and asks about your day, and the two of you seem to never run out of things to talk about. No matter what you do, that person never hates you - he/she gets annoyed from time to time, of course, but you talk about it, and as two responsible adults, you decide on a course of action calmly and are willing to give and take without having to prove to each other that one person knows better than the other.

It is the kind of love where even when you hate each other, you still love each other. This need not be purely reserved for romantic love - it could even be friendship, where this one friend or a group of friends tend to be closer than family to you. The love, understand and care - truly. You could be in your over-sized jumper and bed head with huge nerd glasses, and they would still love you. OR you could be terribly sick, running a fever, with a runny nose, puking 9 ways to Sunday, and they wouldn't run the other way.

That's what I feel love is. It isn't about loving you on your best day. I mean who wouldn't love a person when they are a success, and is so much fun to be around because he/she is happy. It is about holding your hand when you feel utterly hopeless, and things in your life just couldn't get any worse, and just sitting with you, even if they have nothing else to say. It is about genuinely looking in your heart and saying that it's all going to be okay. It's always about the little things. In friendship, in love and in a family, it is never about the big things. It isn't about expensive gifts, and is definitely not about flattering you when you have it all right. It is about sticking around when there is no one else. When others judge you, and swoop in to tear you to bits, love is the one thing that I expect should save you. It is those friends who stand between you and the hungry sharks on your worst day that you need to remember for life, and return the favour, because people like that are in short supply. It is the hungry sharks that lurk in the shadows of every single home and work place.

Like Jamie says in Love and Other Drugs, "You meet thousands of people, but none of them really touch you - and then, you meet this one person, and your life is changed, FOREVER"

Why your life will never be the same again is because this one person is mostly enough for you to finally stop doubting yourself or trying to make yourself not matter. This person reminds you that you are important, that you count. That you aren't a big ninny to be hurt by the things people sometimes say. This person feels angry for you, in the sense that, even you might not feel as bad about what someone said, but what this someone said angers and hurts this one person so much because you matter so much to them. This one person would never have you any other way but yourself, and your true self, that you suppressed so much because people didn't seem to like it, comes out and blossoms into a beautiful plant, and you feel one with yourself at last - you get to finally breathe, and this time, you begin to look radiant and truly happy, that it is contagious. What a difference, really.

Once you experience that, no matter how hard life gets after that, you tend to be in harmony with yourself, because you have finally met your true self, and it becomes an imposition to have to change for any reason. You finally being to count to yourself. That's what all the love songs talk about when they say that their love set them free. There really is no going back from that. It's real, it makes the most sense, actually. It's like this one person held the key to your soul, and has finally released it from its cold, dank prison.

If you talk to most people who have loved, they would tell you how unique the experience actually is. It is so different from what a Mills & Boon novel describes. There is almost no predictable moment when love happens. It hits you when you least expect it, and it is almost never who you expect it to be. Then, there is that initial period where you fear how fast things are going, and you try to fight it as hard as you can. Like I said, you can't choose who you fall in love with, so you might not actually want to fall in love with this person you see because he/she doesn't fit the description of what you are looking for. So you fight it, and fight it, and fight some more. If you're very lucky or stupid or that self-satisfied, the idea of this person that makes you feel as happy, calm, safe and peaceful as this wouldn't feel like an oasis or a breath of fresh air when you're suffocating, but it you are miserable and suffocating from all the falsity in life, this one real thing tends to be too difficult to resist, and you finally admit it to yourself. You are in love.

Even in friendship, it happens where you start out being friends with one person, and end up being best friends with someone completely unexpected. However, in friendship, I like to believe that there is an element of choosing involved. However, you will notice that out of the 10 friends you started out with,  only 2 or 3 stayed.

I believe that friends are the family you choose for yourselves. The idea is to actually let them know it, because, like I said, soulmates and kindred spirits are in short supply. If you want to keep them, love them, genuinely, and let them know it. I mean, life truly is short when you look at it - you have no idea if you will be aware of who you are now in the afterlife, and life as it is, is fleeting. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow or get cancer or just fall down and die - for all you know. So, live, love and be passionate - appreciate everything while you still can. Taking things for granted and just plain nonchalance is unattractive and quite honestly, overrated. However, choose what you care for very carefully, because your 'heart' is made of glass - with the right amount of warmth, it can expand to accommodate more love, but tip it over once or even hold it too tight, and it will shatter into a million pieces. To grow a new 'heart' will take time, so I wouldn't wear my heart on my sleeve if I were you.

Happy to live in this century?

I've heard many women rant about wishing that they lived in a different time, in a previous century - directly or indirectly - all things about wanting a knight in shining armour and all that. I have been guilty of the very same, to be honest.

However, 2 hours of Sweeney Todd, and 2 more of Perfume - the story of a murderer completely showed me the error of my thoughts. It also left me with a lingering sadness and an ache for people who lived in those times. Life was horrible to them. The romance of a knight in shining armour saving a damsel in distress was only too literal back then, since every single thing was a struggle for those who were not royal, or even slightly well off. There was despair and loss all around. There was more fear, ignorance and cruelty than there is now, and there is the part where there was little or no hygiene. When people got sick, doctors prescribed vile concoctions that people drank without question because they trusted the doctor to know best. The worst I could ever imagine is being operated on without an anesthetic, only to end up in a worse state or even, dying. Today, even in the most pristine surgical wards, patients end up with post-op complications and nasty infections and have drug allergies that are carefully considered. People still die of unknown causes after an operation - just imagine what it would have been like without all the medical knowledge we have now. Imagine surgery without an anesthetic or a sterile Operating Room. There are also those morbid stories of demented physicians and psychiatrists who experimented on their patients.

The best horror stories ever told are of  haunted asylums purely because the horrors and despair were palpable. The horrible truth, though, was that many, many people with no actual mental affliction have been sent to these godforsaken places. If an employee accidentally crossed a higher-up who wanted to throw you in a place where no one would believe a word you said, in he would go, kicking and screaming - and if he didn't calm down, they'd inject him with tranquilizers to completely knock him out. Of course no one listened to his cries for help because in their minds, he was just another raving lunatic. The shock treatments, the crazy drugs and the way people treated him, like he was an animal - he would go insane if he already wasn't. Other people who got thrown in were people who weren't like everyone else - homosexuals, transgenders and other innocent victims of the cold, hard, unforgiving system. These places were dark, dank and filthy, and bred more despair than there already was. Of course those places were haunted. Even the insane among the living are infinitely unpredictable, violent and a danger, both to themselves and to others. Imagine what an angry, insane ghost would be like, if such things were to exist!


Also, apparently, the church prohibited Christians from bathing naked and in bath houses, saying that it did not approve of  the "excessive indulgence" in the habit of bathing, and proclaiming that public bathing led to immorality, promiscuous sex and diseases. They also thought that bathing warmed the body and widened the pores, allowing microorganisms in the air and the water to enter the body. Since bathing was connected to the spread of diseases, most low class citizens, particularly men, just conveniently forwent the process of bathing. During this time, people only rinsed their mouths and washed their hands and parts of their face, believing that washing one's face completely would result in catarrh or weakened eyesight! Women made a ritual of brushing their hair relentlessly every night to comb out the grease, dust and the remnants of the day, but no actual washing was spoken of. If you've read the classics, I'm sure you would have come across the line 'and her mother brushed her hair out until it shone' at least once.

Members of the upper class only took a few baths per year, purely risking the spread of disease to get rid of body odour. Apparently, King Louis XIV stunk like a wild animal because he was told that he was to bathe as infrequently as possible to maintain good health. He also managed to make a statement of the fact that he found bathing 'disturbing'. Him, and Queen Isabel I of Spain claimed to have taken only two baths in their entire lifetime. Queen Isabel actually said that she only bathed once when she was born, and once when she got married. Disgusting, right?

Some very self-righteous members of the clergy went so far as calling the Russians 'perverts' because they bathed at least once a month. So, when I hear someone of that era say 'foul breath', I tend to wonder - er, yeah, because everyone else's mouth smells so minty fresh, right? I mean, toothpaste wasn't a thing, and people only rinsed their mouths - what does that leave us with? So how bad did someone's mouth need to smell for them to consider it 'foul breath'?

If it had to be at home, bathing involved hauling and heating water, and the need for privacy made it more difficult. Not many people lived very close to wells, so, bathing was far less common than it is today. Peasants couldn't afford to waste the little firewood they collected on boiling water, and if they needed to fill a bath, they would need to haul out buckets of water and carry it back to a tent or their homes where there would be a rickety tin/wooden bath tub. Since this was such an ordeal, everyone in the house shared the bathwater, which was obviously so terribly unhygienic in itself. Naturally, even a hot bath was a luxury back then. So people just went for months without taking a bath. If they had to clean up, they took sponge baths using rags, and wore perfume and carried herbs and flowers to mask the smell. No wonder they had so many diseases that people don't even hear of today.


People used 'chamber pots' as urine collectors, that were to be emptied on the streets from time to time, sewers were open, and were commonly used as toilets and the slaughter houses left animal remains right where they were, after salvaging the bits that could be sold. So, if you were to take a walk through the streets of London, you would need to wear gumboots, and watch your step all the time, as it was not uncommon to find copious amounts of human and animal excrement strewn all over the place. How much more unsanitary could people ever get? I was taught in a history lesson that the Ancient Romans used public toilets which were a series of holes on which people sat, did their business and used public sponges on a stick that was left in a small stream of running water to clean their nether regions. Hence the spread of leprosy, and before the use of cutlery became common, people used their hands for eating, and were in the habit of cleaning their dirty fingers on their unwashed clothes after eating. Apparently this general disregard for hygiene lingered till the mid-19th century.

I was shocked when, in the movie 'Perfume', they show that the man with no smell was born to a fisher woman in the foulest smelling region of Paris, and she gives birth right where she worked, in middle of the market, and lets her baby just drop onto the filthy floor, assuming it to be dead like her four previous babies that she had lost, and threw the newborn in her growing pile of fish entrails and whatnot under the table, until people found the baby under her table, alive and well, and assuming that she tried to kill her own child, had her executed and sent him to an orphanage where, tragically, he grows up being disliked by all the other orphans, to the extent that they tried to even kill him.

What's worse, when people got sick, they got scared, and often, the fear, lack of sanitation, personal hygiene, good, clean, healthy food and correct medication killed them. That's why, you would only read/watch a person on TV actually saying that they were dying - because people nowadays know their risks, and don't usually say that they are dying the way people used to say then, when death was something that came sooner than later. People dropped dead like flies - frequent wars and the plague were the most talked about, but people also died of starvation, poor health and a million other preventable/curable diseases and violence simply because they didn't know better.

Now, just as I said that, I can almost hear a person in the future saying the same about diseases like cancer and AIDS - we still don't know how one person gets it and another doesn't and we don't know of a miracle pill that would make it magically just vanish, but I believe that one day people will.

In times when there were wars raging, times got even harder, and the lack of sanitation got even more pronounced. During all three outbreaks of the plague, which by the way was transmitted by rats, people with carts knocked on every door and collected the dead in a cart and buried hundreds of bodies together. They considered illness a curse rather than an actual disease, and so people just kept dying, and nothing could be done to stop it until the disease had run its course, and finally stopped spreading.

Lepers were locked away, and just left to die with the thought that they brought that fate upon themselves.These were also times when people resorted to cannibalism when they were starving, as explained by the Jamestown, and in other times of starvation, such as famine and shipwreck, which, by the way, also happened more often back then than it happens today. There are stories of people eating their own children, aborted fetuses and drinking blood and urine and getting diseases that are only transmitted by fecal contamination of the food and water supply because of improper sanitation and the use of public bath houses where people shared baths.

Anyway, people were less safe than they are now. First, imagine getting put away in an asylum or in a jail just because your boss, Mr. Moneybags thought you were a smartass. If someone of authority got angry with you, they could do anything to you, and just get away with it. There are countless stories where this has been spoken of. Edmund Dantes, Benjamin Barker, Jean Valjean, Pip's benefactor and so many others. There are stories of women being raped in public, and in a book that I read, a pregnant woman was actually sold in the market like cattle. Women could be blamed of practicing witchcraft and burnt at the stake at the drop of a hat, and if the Jamestown cannibalism was any testimony, it is to the fact that people even got eaten.

I remember wondering about three things as I watched Sweeney Todd. First,  Sweeney Todd killed that many people and died before people realized that he was a murderer. Second, how much desperation had to be there for Mrs. Lovett to look at Pirelli and think - 'what a waste of meat', instead of  run the other way, seeing as Todd had killed a person in a fit of rage. Third, people actually thought they could get away with selling 'piss and ink' in a bottle? That's really a testament to how ignorant people were back then.

My heart broke for Lucy as I saw the beautiful woman turn into an unrecognizable, dirty, insane shadow of a woman roaming the streets, begging in her threadbare rags. Also, if Mrs. Mooney could get away with making pies out of cat meat, and Mrs. Lovett with human flesh, those had to be awfully hard times. I literally shuddered, when Toby found a finger in his pie. Also, imagine how terrible the meat pie smoke should have smelt if people who live in squalor complained of an ungodly smell - we're talking about people whose noses have grown accustomed to faeces, urine, vomit, animal guts and the collective rancidity of people who have not bathed in months or years.

The description of the smell of the city in the beginning of Süskind's Perfume:


"In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces.The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter."

Those times were far too hard to survive in, even by the affluent people. Anna Karenina was a free spirit who made all the wrong choices as a rebellion to the uptight society she lived in. Women were trapped, and taught to only be in a certain way. Women were not allowed to study or work as freely as they are today, and when they had no money or food, they had to resort to prostitution, like Fantine. Orphans like Cosette lived at the mercy of terrible parents or were sent to the workhouses, where conditions were deplorable, of course. There really was no free will to speak of. Men were dominated by their fathers/uncles/some authority figure. The low class citizens worked to the bone and were cheated and controlled by their masters - beaten, tortured, manipulated and underpaid. Jails, hospitals and asylums were much, much worse, so when a person got sick, he/she was as good as dead.

Although the stories of knights in shining armour are heavily romanticized, Sweeney Todd gave me the wake up call I feel I needed. In spite of being a major history buff and watching movies and compulsively reading stories about those times and wishing I could actually marry a gentleman of those times, I concede that I was being dreamy, and impractical. Those may be great stories to read, but I would never envy the life they had. Never - not even for a second.

Interestingly, it was said though, that the Ancient Greeks adopted the habit of regular bathing from the Hindus, who knew about the benefits of bathing even as early as 3000 years ago.



I took some information from these links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/05/cannibalism-history-europe-famine-shipwreck

 [http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/05/why-bathing-was-uncommon-in-medieval-europe/]

Of Love and loss....

The magnitude of a loss is defined according to the value you give it. How much we love someone is based on how they make us feel. So when we lose someone depending on how much we loved them, and what caused the loss, the pain can be anywhere between non-existent to just unbearable - incapacitating even. If you really loved this person, the length of time during which the incapacitating pain is felt may vary, but you definitely feel so burdened that it sometimes even gets so difficult to breathe. Things may have been just fine before you met them, but suddenly, everything you do reminds you of them.

There are some people who start out as friends, but something about how each of us change suddenly makes them no longer relevant in our lives, or sometimes, people just hurt us so much that even if we may forgive them, we may not be able to comfortably be around them. Some friends are good company only during certain activities, and a disturbance in another. I had a friend who once told me that friends needed to be compartmentalized - you should have your "school friends", your "uni friends", "work friends", then your "gym friends" - when you have a birthday party, you can invite all of them if you like, but you can never expect one person to be there with you in everything you do. When I first heard it, I felt a little hurt, because this is one of my best friends telling me that I am her 5-6 pm 'appointment'.

However, as I thought about it, I started to realize how true what she said was. If there is any one person who never leaves, that person becomes too familiar, and just like an old married couple, we would hate each other and keep bickering because we spend the whole freakin' day together, and we don't get our personal space to do what we like to do in our own time, alone, without having someone intrude and spoil it for us. The friends start taking each other for granted, and take turns in hurting each other until one day, one will overstep some boundary and the other would just lose it. It wouldn't exactly hurt to lose a friend you really loved bitching about the flirty gym instructor to, but there would be an uncomfortable rift. You might miss them, or you might feel relieved that you don't have their annoying presence around you anymore. Either way, it would hurt for a while, but that's the thing about friendships - there will be other friends, and you can slowly move on and just forget what happened.

Another reason why it would help to have friends compartmentalized is basically this - when things get weird with Kim at the gym, and things get super weird there, you will have Kate at work to talk to, to cheer you up. The best thing is, Kate may not even know about Kim, and wouldn't bother you about it. So if you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to.

So some people, we are relieved to lose, some people we do everything we can to avoid even, but there would be one person to whom you really want to tell everything to. You really would want to hear about what he or she has to say about this thing that's going on at the gym or about something more important. That news about the college scholarship you won, it wouldn't feel the same to not be able to tell him or her about it. Of course you would be happy about it, but that nagging feeling of 'something missing' wouldn't go until you tell this person. It is the same thing (only worse) when something terrible happens.

Somehow, this person would say the exact same thing that your friend Kate at work kept telling you, but the fact that this person is saying it to you would finally make the crying stop, and you would finally feel comforted and smile. Ever heard your friend say "What? He/She said that?! That's exactly what I told you, like the last 500 times!" It isn't that you don't care about the other friend, but love is just different from like, and even though we may not like to admit it, 'I love you' is still different from 'I care for you' - you may care about the person you love, but you don't exactly love each person you care about.

This one person would be the only one you would trust with your feelings. That would either be a best friend, one who is waaaaay more important to you than Kim or Kate or anyone else OR, you would probably have the love of your life - someone who sees you for who you truly are, not like the rest of the world sees you. That's where you open up. That's who you run to. That's the person you wouldn't mind sharing your "me-time activity" with. What happens when, for some reason, you need to leave that one person? What if you're forced to get over the one thing you loved more than life itself only because you see no future there? What if, you break up, but still love too much to stay friends? Seeing them would only be a cruel reminder of what you lost.

That's when you truly know the meaning of the words "incapacitating pain". Something like that leaves you winded, and lost, and disoriented. It would be a loss so big and so catastrophic, that you just stop making plans. You feel like if you lie in bed and stay there, you would wake up one day and find the world just as it was before you met that person. However, we all do end up having to wake up and face the world sometime. We end up having to at least try to move on, if not for anything else, at least to be able to breathe freely one day soon, and not feel like there is a 100 pound weight where your heart was.


Once you get past the moments where you feel like the storm would never end, you just feel dull, cold and soulless. where once, you were light-hearted, positive and happy, you now feel like a total cynic, and you hate weddings and people who can't stop being chipper. You get through each day, living one day at a time, just feeling happy that nothing untoward happened. The pain radiates from deep within, cloaking your entire being, making even getting out of bed the most difficult thing to do. You can live normally, and no one may notice how hurt you are, but when you do see people who have what you had, that's where the anger starts. Misplaced anger - at the world, at life, at whatever caused the loss.

What our 'hearts' don't get is that what happened was simply something that was meant to happen all along. There would have been nothing you could have done to stop it. It's basically like the story of a man who had just survived a heart transplant dying of a car accident. It was his time, and so, if he had been saved from the car accident, his heart would have mysteriously stopped, even though it is brand new. If that doesn't happen, he might accidentally get electrocuted or he could have a bad fall and die of head trauma. Point is, it was this man's turn to die, so in order to preserve the balance, his death will happen, one way or another. If it wasn't his time yet, however, this man would be the one freak of nature who did have all these accidents and still lived to tell the story.

Life may play out in different ways, but the theme would eventually be the same, and all the scheduled stops would happen, whether we like it or not. We may get to a certain place in different ways, but the final outcome would always be the same. So we need to keep telling ourselves that in spite of what has happened, when you do hit rock bottom, there is no other way to go but up, so just wait for it. Hold on to your heart, nurse it back to health, because the best is just about to happen. Whether this is true or not, that is the only thing that will help you survive - hope. Because, after all, what doesn't kill you would only make you stronger, so don't run away from it. Just face it, deal with it, and hope that eventually, the 100 pound weight you carry would slowly lighten until it disappears altogether, and that soon after it disappears, your dull, cold, soulless existence would thaw out and turn into a bright and cheerful one. Hell, even if it may not turn bright pink or yellow in one burst, it would at least lighten up enough to allow you to go through your day without wishing that you never woke up.

It might be excruciating now, but one day, you will truly have gotten over it, so just believe in that day. Have hope, because no loss is ever final. It might still hurt to think about it, even a hundred years later, but you will survive the pain, and you will eventually be happy again. So just shut up and have HOPE.

On "Gray's Anatomy"

My dream job, even as a doe-eyed little toddler was to be a doctor. Something about the way my aunt (who was then studying to become a doctor) fascinated me, even when she didn't talk much about medicine to a 3 year-old me. She was the first person I adored and looked up to, the first person I wanted to be like when I grew up.

She was everything a young woman was meant to be - calm, gentle, respectful of everyone, and she had this spirit that I admired. She wasn't like everyone else. She was special - not because she was doing the near-impossible, becoming a doctor, but because of the person I saw - she was beautiful inside and out. Anyway, I grew up as a fan of biology - this time, it was not because of my aunt, who had gone away to have a successful career, but because I took a genuine liking to it.

I loved studying about plants and animals, microorganisms, and all the cool things that could be done with them - hence the choice I made, of doing Biotechnology. I always - ALWAYS enjoyed studying about the human body, though. It was my guilty pleasure. I did want to become a doctor, but I saw that it took much more out of a person than what it gave a person, which made me reconsider and take the more interesting option of Biotechnology.

People who wanted to become a doctor had to study like there was no tomorrow to get into Med School. Then, they had to pay fees like there was no tomorrow too. Then, they had to work again, like there is no tomorrow. Study, practice, work, give exams - all with good reason - they work with the lives of people. If they mess up, people could, most definitely end up dead. Then, they come out of Med School after many many years of living like hermits, and continue to live the extremely stressful, extremely one-minded life. My reason for not choosing that life was that I can't live like that - I can't completely concentrate all my time, energy and effort into only one thing - the uncertainty of it would kill me. It's like I have only one path - only one choice.



My defining feature is the fact that I do many things - it is just who I am. I LOVE change, and I love to keep changing what I do, or how I do it, and I love to keep changing the little things that can be changed. I write, I sing, even on stage, I listen to music, I study, I like to do my own laundry, I LOVE to keep my room clean and decorated, and that's just a few things that I like to do - I love to be spontaneous, to travel, to make friends, take pictures, edit them, and a lot of things along those lines. I love to be passionate about life and the various things that I can do - I like to discover new things to do as I go along. I also love to proverbially 'stop to smell the flowers' as opposed to just breezing by without even noticing them.

Besides all that, I'd like to have a life where I could disappear one day and expect to not be bothered for a little while, because I enjoy spending time with myself. I'm not a loner, but I enjoy my own company - I like to think about things - things that don't have to have any relevance to my own life. If I became a Doctor, that would be just out of the question.

I did enjoy my decision of choosing to do Biotech for my Under Grad. However, when I 'met' Stem Cells, it was love at first sight. I saw it on TV, as a doctor was explaining it on a programme as a new method of treatment. It sparked my interest, and the more I read about it, the more I got drawn into it. It made me realize that my thing with Biotech was just a fling, a sort of an attraction when compared to the sinful passion that kept me pursuing Stem Cells. I know I sound super-nerdy when I say that, and even though I am anything but super-nerdy, Stem Cells drew me to it, like a moth to a flame. It soon became an addiction. If I were a dog, the mere mention of 'Stem Cells' in the background would make my ears would do that thing where they'd get all pointy and turn all around, trying to locate the source of the sound.

Now. It isn't that I have no idea what it feels like to be like that - being 'all work and no play'. After my Under Graduation, I chose to do my Masters in Stem Cells - that was like the most natural decision...like, duh - right? It was in a field of research, in Biomedical Sciences, and more specifically, Regenerative Medicine. Here, I did get to study in detail about Stem Cells, the human body, and I used to be so charged, enthused and excited about every single day of lectures. However, what made things difficult there was how there were a set group of people I had to meet with. People get all narrow-minded, judgmental and cocky when thrown into smaller, isolated groups. Add that to competition where people would metaphorically rip each others' throats out to get ahead, or for the lecturers to throw them a bone(give them their approval) - now that in my opinion, is a disaster waiting to happen - it did happen, and I imploded in a way - that sort of brought me to reality. I fought tooth and nail too, because - hello, I was in love with the subject so I wasn't going to give up that easy. I took as much as I could until it seemed like a pointless thing to continue to fight. I had to forfeit, only with the condition that I would go back to it later, on my own terms. Life wasn't going to wait for me to keep trying like that - it was time to move on, but this was most definitely unfinished business where Stem Cells and I were concerned.

I did love the subject, and it was, an all-consuming love, but the competition and pressure was totally not me.  To me love isn't about fighting like that - I didn't want to be incessantly anxious, upset and worried. The relationship can't be 'abusive' and successful at the same time. I wanted out, at a point - didn't like anyone I was with - I really wanted to start over, and fate sometimes has an odd way of giving you what you asked for. I wanted out of the place, not the subject, but I ended up losing both, in a weird twist of fate. I was relieved to be leaving the place, but completely and utterly shattered to be leaving my subject that all the trouble only made me to only love more. I wanted it more fiercely now. If Stem Cells was my boyfriend/spouse, then he was one that came with a horrible, twisted and very complicated family that never left.

I watched a few seasons of Grey's Anatomy recently, and watching the surgical interns vying for their supervisors' approval and the way they went hours without sleep, and just studied and worked and loved it reminded me of how I loved (still do, by the way!) being at lectures when I was studying Regenerative Medicine. I'm back doing a Masters in Biotech, but my one true love, will always be Stem Cells. I will find my way back to it one day - I know I will.
 

The thing about having a profession even remotely related to medicine is that you put the patient's life before your own. Besides, the amount of work you are expected to put in is overwhelming, and every other thing in life would take a back seat, and after being constantly put off, it would eventually get so conveniently forgotten until everything else disappears and ONLY your work remains. That would mean that I would have no time for friends, no time for myself, no time to be myself or a mother or a wife. Not the way I would like to be anyway - I love to do MY best in everything that I do. So if I chose an all-consuming profession like medicine, I would end up losing myself and everyone I hold close at some point along the way, and life's too short for such massive regrets. That's exactly what I hoped to avoid when I didn't choose to become a doctor. Of course I would absolutely love to get the rush and the heady-excitement that I only get when I study about the human body, but the overall effect would be that the other parts of my personality would just fall away one day - and that, I have promised myself, that I will never allow to happen.

So although my biggest regret remains the unfinished business with my beloved Stem Cells, my perspective is that I will let it go for now and focus on what I have in hand. Maybe there was a reason why I was denied. Maybe not, but I get ONE life to live, and I sure as hell am not going to waste it worrying about what would have been when I could be making the best 'version' of the today that I am given. My point is - what will happen will happen - no matter how hard you try to stop it. So why waste time worrying and obsessing when you can just stop and smell the goddamn flowers?

Of marriage and bright futures.

What seems like a mindless occurrence in all these years, the whole practice of following tradition suddenly gains meaning when our turns are up.  Everyone I know seems to be talking of weddings, either already done or coming up, so I thought I'd write a blog entry about it.

In Indian societies, women in their 20s have all the aunties and uncles in their society to answer to, if they are still single. People try to set them up with guys they know, or they talk for hours on the benefits of marriage, which I don't essentially disagree with - I'd just rather not hear the same speech being repeated a million times over.

Besides, all girls want to be married, but we also want out Prince Charming on his white horse. Other people reminding us of ticking biological clocks and waning youth doesn't necessarily help us speed anything up, because, as with all things in the universe, our weddings only happen when they are meant to. I choose to do my own thing until my Prince Charming shows up.

Jokes apart, there's much to be considered when we think of marriage - the responsibility of being a wife, a mother, cooking, cleaning, washing, picking up after other people - it all just comes with the lot, adding to the responsibility of being a woman.

The woman of the house never gets a holiday. In fact, when everyone does get a day off, she suddenly has a lot more to do. More people to pick up after, more party messes to clean and so much more cooking to do. If she even gets an hour to watch TV, she'd probably spend it in quiet meditation, snoozing a little, with her feet up on a cushion.

The question in the mind of every prospective bride-to-be is the same - will he be worth all the work and the sacrifices that come with the new role we take on?

It isn't just about the wedding that everyone worries so much about, but the actual marriage. Will he stick with you right through? How about the times when you're the new awkward bride, tiptoeing into his family room and some distant aunt or cousin decides to be overly judgmental and overbearing?
"I mean, can she even cook?! Our poor Munna, whatever will he do when the food on the table tastes like sawdust?"
How would he react to that? Would he join them in their jeering?

What about the difficult days of morning sickness, bloating, and then labour? What about when you're trying to soothe a sick, crying baby? All the messy times of dirty diapers and the spit up? And how about teenage troubles? The whole point of marrying is so that we don't have to do it all alone, right? Will he hold up his end? Will he be supportive?

Only one way to find out, and we all still get into it, none the wiser. We know the answers to some questions, and yet, there is a lot that could be different, because we all marry different people - some have very sweet families, while some have scary parents and sniveling, complaining, annoying siblings. Will I become the regular Sue who talks about the woes of a woman, and how terrible men and their families are when I meet my friends? Or would I remain the relatively calm, reasonable, objective person I am right now?

I will not blame all men, but I still agree that if he expects her to be an angel, he needs to at least try to create heaven for her. Although some husbands are truly wonderful, a lot of them aren't. I wouldn't want to be a part of petty fights and ego battles for sure. That wouldn't just be exhausting, but beyond disappointing. An accepting, mature, kind, gracious and friendly attitude would be ideal, but would I get lucky to find a new Zeus? I mean, what would be the whole point of proving that one is superior to the other? I think that when 2 people get married, they should function as partners of a team, and should work things out without wanting to tear each others' hair out. We all want soul-mates, but not all of us get them.

I long for slower times when people compromised a little for each other to make a marriage work, instead of rushing into divorces. The divorce rates are scary high, and what's worse, they continue to climb. I definitely wouldn't want to end up as a statistic, as just another divorcee. I'm not much of a Luddite, but I wish that the world would slow down a bit. The way things are going, it's just a whole lot of uncertainty. There's so much change, so much that is not in our control, we are actually in tech heaven, which translates to us becoming couch potatoes and extremely anti-social. Competition makes more people turn into human vultures, hungry for more meat. No more genuinely uplifting, encouraging communities. They're all congregations of carnivorous birds now. Like I said, it wouldn't hurt for the world to slow down a tad. A little old fashion never killed anybody. I prefer the olden day virtue and values that made them all so human. Communities that were built to fortify the collective, instead of setting out alone. I want those things back. I want someone who would appreciate those things too.