maybe one day i'll stop forgetting to post. (-_-) yesterday my friend and i studied in the school library!

autumun studying challenge • 21st october - falling rain or a crackling fireplace?

definitely falling rain!

Make up your mind to study. x

I don't care what you say, recieving presents is the hardest part about birthdays! Like what do you even do when someone gives you presents? Smile? Say thanku? Tell them you love it without making an edgy face to avoid giving them the wrong impression that perhaps you're not so fond of it? Trying hard to not feel overwhelmed by the fact that people even brought you any?

my new desk setup, featuring all the books I’m reading for school

22.10.21

22nd October 2021 ||

This morning I went to the library to study physics, and I’m so proud of my notes written on notion. Then I went to physics class and it was exciting to talk about tensors. After lunch I went to Astronomy laboratory class and we worked with a program that will allow us to calculate the mass of a galaxy from its rotation curve using an interferometer. ✨

Late night study. I just started my natural science major this year and I'm thrilled to indulge in my fascination towards biology after all of these years of waiting. Even though so far the schedule had been extremely crazy, I'm feeling more alive than I was years ago. At least I want to do something meaningful, so I don't have to bear the regret afterwards.

23.10.21// woke up at 7:00 (cause i either sleep 12 or 7 hours and there’s no way to predict what comes when) but used the extra-time to finish readings for next week and do some phd research! then, i went to see a really cool exhibition at a local museum and finished up the day with some potential phd-readings and apfelstrudel :)

listening to: brave girls, after we ride

october 21, 2021

Hey you guys! This week has been a pretty weird ride for me lol. On Monday I was in a very bad mental state so my mom told me to just take the day off and stay in bed and just binge my fave shows, which I did (it helped a lot ;-;). I spent most of Tuesday recovering so it was pretty monotonous, but I at least tried to do a little bit that evening. I dunno why, but yesterday was so amazing, which was a huge relief from the beginning of this week. I was able to get a lot of my work done and still rest enough and feel great :)). 

I’ve even started using my physical planner again (I stopped for a while bc I was using Notion lol) and it’s helping a lot! I also feel like I’ve discovered a lot about myself and the type of person I am, and how I can build my routines and habits based off of those! Today is pretty amazing too, and I still feel really good! :D

I’ve (thankfully) pulled myself back together again, and hopefully I don’t have another breakdown for a long time! 

I’ve also been thinking a lot about my future and I’d really like to move to Sweden when I grow up! There are so many good things I love about it. And I’ve also been thinking of maybe starting a Youtube channel/daily vlogs in college! All of my friends have encouraged me to do so, and I really want to so I’d really like to! :)

I hope you guys have an awesome day! :)) <3

Slowly but surely getting back into the swing of things with uni!

Trying to make the most of this time when I’m not swimming in work…I can’t imagine it’s going to last too long

a little reminder from me 🌼

23.10.2021 • i went to a book fair with my friends today!! it was really nice to be in a place filled with books and people who are interested in reading! ( ꈍᴗꈍ)

23/10/2021

I woke up at 11 cuz today was a holiday and I wanted to wake up a little late! Then I ate my breakfast and did some writing part till 3. After that I ate my lunch and then few of my relatives visited my house and yeah that is the whole stuff I did today.. well also I am planning to shoot a video tomorrow so most probably tomorrow will be a really productive day!

Helloo

I hope you are having a productive day 🤍

Love you all✨

21st October 2021

An impromptu post after a very long time. The past few days I've been a mess. Let's leave it at that. Today, however' I made some progress:)

Just spent time in nature without doing anything else and actually saw a rainbow! (It's not very clear in the pic, but see if you can spot it hehe). And I also did some painting and actually enjoyed it because I didn't put unnecessarily high expectations on myself.

So I'm content with my day today💜

Hope you guys had a great day or if not great at least an okay one. Sending you lots of love💜🌻

10.22.2021 • history imitates life

good morning everyone! midterms had me swamped last week but i made it through; hope you’re all hanging in there <3 my ancient greek philosophy class started this week, since it’s on a condensed schedule, so this feels like a nice reward for surviving midterms…even if it does mean more work; i‘m a bit of a workaholic.

It is officially hot coffee and corn soup and turtle-neck weather.

Day-25 (Before Finals start)

🍓I had the eng test.....was it good? Well yeah it kindda was, but i don't trust myself with these online tests ;)

🍓I don't think I studied much after the test, but i did do some maths (integration) rev, but sadly forgot to click pictures of it :[

🍓And i was extremely sleepy in the afternoon, so here's a aesthetic pic of my study space!

🍓Hope everyone's doing well \(@^0^@)/

Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato's Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur's Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai's iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of "White Town" in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of "Muddling Through" - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

'Massa Day Done:' Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism's effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe's influence on India's culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien's Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

“Pursue what catches your heart, not what catches your eyes.”

— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart.