Of (Not) Writing A Diary

Journal (Courtesy: Pixabay)

I have a bit of a storage issue. I have diaries lying around, written from the time I was sixteen till present-ish, that I don’t want to look at and don’t want to throw away either. I also have this fantasy/fear of dying before I’ve made up my mind about them, and suffering from post-mortem embarrassment when someone else reads them, if they can cognize my glorious handwriting, and laugh at my pathetic life. Believe me, those thousands of barely legible pages will not serve as inspiration for a moving eulogy.

Of Love and Obstacles

I didn’t go out and seek love….Rumi says we don’t need to hunt for love outside ourselves. All we need to do is to eliminate the barriers inside that keep us away from love. – Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

Read my latest blog post Of Love and The Imagination: https://ofopinions.com/2017/06/23/of-love-and-the-imagination/

Of Love and The Imagination

One of The Problems With Love

We see love broadly as two things – something fickle and frivolous and magnificent and fated when we are younger, and something necessary and domestic and safe and unglamourous when we are a little older. We might fail at achieving either,

Of Compliments

Compliment Cartoon

“If you were a boy, I would marry you.” – Several women, throughout my life.

It should be a compliment, but I don’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know when I was eleven, I don’t know any better now. If I had to summarise all that these women have said to justify the above hypothesis, I’d conclude – I am, What Women Want.

Of The Comfort of Strangers

An Opportunity (Courtesy: Pixabay)

Every stranger is an opportunity to redeem yourself. – Me, at various times in my blogging career.

I was going through singing apps today. Had some spare time after an insanely busy few weeks, and so I idled away with karaoke. Recorded a terrible rendition of “Inbetween Days” by The Cure, and not an altogether tragic version of “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush on the Smule app. But, I wasn’t as free and happy as on the other times I do karaoke. For I always sing by myself, for myself, because I am quite terrible at it, but this app was just too clever and social for me. I couldn’t sing with full abandon, because it kept recording my face and asking me to share my recording with the world. Why would I want to do that? Why would anybody want to do that?

Of Longing

My life is just little trails of love, drifting in and out. Friends, family, everything. Even cats. – Me, in a WhatsApp conversation.

Of Commitment

My ‘dream’ purse: Literally called “Reve”

The above, is my purse. I received it as a birthday gift. I’ve now had it for seven and a half years. I’ve had other purses in between – both bought and received as gifts. None could compare.

Of Relationships and Social Media

Survival of the Smartest (Courtesy: Pixabay)

Yet this distance, all those abysses unabridged and then unabridgeable by radio, television, cheap travel and the rest, was not wholly bad. People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. But I am a heretic, I think our ancestors’ isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed; it can only be envied. The world is only too literally too much with us now. – John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Of Love and Friendship

‘Mitwa’ is an interesting word, meaning both lover and friend. This track is taken from the 2006 film Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (trans. Never Say Goodbye).

Of Love and Respect

If you truly want to be respected by people you love, you must prove to them that you can survive without them. – Michael Bassey Johnson