Posts tagged learning

The Pandemic Chronicles – The Beginning

in Coronavirus culture diaries emotional intelligence life on July 17, 2020 July 20, 2020

Hello Friends,

How have you been?

Dictionary.com tells me that a virus means an infective agent that typically consists of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat, is too small to be seen by light microscopy, and is able to multiply only within the living cells of a host.

A small molecule that cannot be even seen by the naked eye, that needs us, humans, to live and multiply, has pushed us inside our homes and have locked us from the outside.

Here are some of my observations from the months spent locked inside the house during the pandemic. I wrote these updates as a personal diary for me to look back into the events later. But then I decided to publish the journal entries for everyone. Of course, not before sprinkling a little bit of humor to the otherwise serious matter. I hope you laugh a bit. And if I upset you unintentionally, please forgive me for I am just a die-hard comic.

77 Deep Questions About Life – And Their Answers

in emotional intelligence Personal Development on June 11, 2020 July 9, 2020

Important Life Questions to Ask Yourself

I remember a quote that once said, ask the right questions. Over the years I have realized that questions are much more important than answers as without asking the right queries we can never hope for the right knowledge.

But it took me a while to even understand what questions I should ask of myself. Some of those doubts were always there in the background, hovering, emphasizing that I didn’t understand life. I had a vague feeling that I was dismaying over things that didn’t matter while ignoring the universal realities that would pull me out of my little problem bubbles. But I wasn’t sure. And I never took out time to pin those deep questions about life, and, hence, could never answer them.

The process of questioning deepened when I started writing and reading full-time. As I had redesigned my life from a corporate cycle of drudgery, I was too eager to question everything and to be better at the things I had failed at before. It was like I had found vigor again. The more I read, the more I understood, the more life questions I had, and the more incomprehensible it seems now.

As Franz Kafka once said, “Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.”

The effort continues.

I am putting down some thought-provoking questions that have hitherto found me here. I have followed a natural course and have clubbed thematic questions together.

I have answered all the questions to keep an account of my thoughts on the matter. As you will see, I have some answers, but some of the questions to life still dodge me. You can completely ignore my responses and find your own.

Along with the important questions about life and their answers, I am also putting down the books that have helped me understand the matter.

I plan to update these self reflection questions and answers year-on-year or whenever my understanding changes.

Till then, I present to you the questionnaire of life from my lens.

Work Is Not Supposed to Suck– Find What You Love (Part 1)

in culture Personal Development on May 3, 2020 June 4, 2020

Work Should Not Suck, How to Find and Pursue What You Love, and What If One Doesn’t Have Passion

Why Do We Think Work Sucks

Why do we always say that work sucks — because we are trained to think that work should be boring.

Adults separate the idea of fun and work early on for us. Since childhood, we are told that we should play all we want for we would have to work one day. We see elders going to their jobs, but they don’t seem to have fun — they say that work is something they have to do even if they don’t enjoy it.

No one even mentions having a good time as part of a profession, and we start believing that work is a dull thing grown-ups do to earn money: the more the better.

And we witness enough close examples following this idea.

My father opened his shop every day of the week except Tuesdays. He never complained about his business, but whether he enjoyed it was never his concern. He only cared that he had enough money to raise his family.

Our teachers, relatives, elder siblings all seemed to pursue a career to earn at their maximum potential.

Fun was never discussed in the context of work and even frowned upon. In his book Le Petite Prince, the French philosopher Antoine de Saint-Exupéry raises thought-provoking questions about adults keeping their things of consequence disjoint from fun.

You want to work or all you want to do is have fun? Someone would say when we created a game out of a mathematics problem.

From our younger years to adulthood, we grow up concreting the idea that something we enjoy can’t become our career.

But this belief is as real as the ghosts that swoosh in if we break the cookie jar. Let me tell you why.

Highs and Lows of 2019 – A Year of Travel Blogging, Wandering in the Himalayas, and Personal Well-Being

in travel inspiration on January 11, 2020 March 19, 2020 with 4 Comments

2019 was a roller coaster ride.

Waking up in my rooftop room that serves as my intermittent writing studio in Bengaluru, incorporating travel blogging with On My Canvas by writing throughout the year about my past and recent travels, connecting with other bloggers and travel writers, slow traveling in the Himalayas for four(4) months of summer while focusing on health and personal well-being and working remotely, writing thirty(30) long and super-researched articles in thirty(30) days in August, traveling in Karnataka on short and long trips, collaborating with both national and international travel organizations for the first time, getting my work and writing acknowledged over other media platforms, and then making my way to Myanmar via flight (after my plans to cross into Myanmar through Northeast got canceled because of the protests) and spending three weeks there — I never felt that the year was slow even though I slowed down quite a few time.

Oh, On My Canvas also won three travel blogging awards within my first year of sincere travel blogging.

Let me tell you my favorite and not-so-favorite moments from this hap hazardous list of actions and achievements. Later I will also summarize the things that I feel I couldn’t do justice to and wish to focus on in 2020.

Yoga in Dharamshala – With an Introduction to Yoga

in India Personal Development travel on August 17, 2019 February 2, 2020

Yoga in Dharamshala – Change the Way You Live

When I went to Chile in 2016, many Chileans asked me if I knew yoga. While traveling around South America for nine months, I realized the popularity of yoga in the world.

Apprehending the vast influences of yoga and seeing the craze of the westerners towards India and yoga, I became a wanna be yoga learner.

In those immature years of my life, I wanted to be a solo female traveler who also did yoga. I wished to bend myself one-eighty-degrees on the sultry Goa beaches and the summits of the mighty Himalayas alike.

After all, the social media pictures of yoga teachers and practitioners over the internet kindle enough narcissism that you forget the real purpose of yoga (if you ever knew) and only admire the overwhelming curves on the trending photos.

Yoginis look like the epitomes of Urvashi from the Indra palace. Maybe we can compare the Yogi to Shiva who is said to be the first-yogi or the Adiyogi?

Those yoga pictures look as perfect as the postures held in the frame, but remember that pictures don’t tell the entire story.

Yoga is not about a few jazzy posts on Instagram or Facebook. And I kept this in mind when I traveled to Dharamshala and practiced yoga there.

Yoga, a word derived from the Sanskrit word Yuj meaning join, means union — of the mind, body, and soul.

27 Writing Tips for Novice Writers – Write Better

in writing on May 8, 2019 March 8, 2020 with 6 Comments

typewriter notebook pen coffee flowers writing desk image for feature image for writing tips for novice writers article

I was one of the novice writers (I still am) until three years ago when I quit my investment banking job to experiment if I could write for a living. While I was over thinking about the integrities of my invisible writing career, I decided to travel to Chile and teach English there. People say that a new environment and immersive travel experiences provide you the right motivation to write.

Andean landscapes took my oxygen away, Chilean children stared at me when I enunciated the English name of their beloved palta, my host mother fed me pyramids of bread and cheese, and Spanish dumbfounded me. But during this chaos, I managed to write every day.

In the past three years, I have written (almost) daily, published regularly on my blog and on Medium publications, earned a living by writing for freelance clients, have published poems out of which one has been accepted in a book, have contributed to big and small websites, have send stories and articles to magazines and newspapers, and have become a top writer on Quora and a top Travel Writer on Medium.

Has writing been easy?

Are you joking?

Hold on Even After Your Hands Bleed – For That Is The Only Way to Succeed

in Personal Development philosophy writing on February 28, 2019 March 11, 2020 with 5 Comments

after hiking for a long time and not giving up, at the top of a hill in Taman Negara Malaysia. The photos shows that If you fight for your dreams you can enjoy the views from the top.

You would encounter sharp rocks jutting out of every mountain you wish to climb. Let me show you through my perseverant journey as a budding writer, that why do you have to keep going on even if your hands bleed. Never give up. Fight for your dreams. That is the only way to succeed.

You start. You are exhilarated. You shriek at the top of your voice from the roof of your confidence. You laugh from your stomach. You give long motivational speeches to your friend about how they need to start living. You wake up singing a tune about the morning sunshine. You look forward to Mondays because life has taken a route that you could only dream about.

People say you are inspiring. They applaud you. Your friends like and share everything you post. They read everything you write. Some of them even help you correct the grammar. You are glad as being corrected by friends is better than being ridiculed by your other readers.

You don’t worry about the money, yet, as the savings save you. Your family is appalled by your decision. But they don’t say anything this time. The last time they did, their words dug a deep valley between you two.

Your Mac is your new Nietzsche. All your philosophy seems to pour out of it.

Golden Highlights of 2018 – A Year of Writing, Love, and Nomadness.

in travel travel inspiration writing on January 7, 2019 February 2, 2020 with 6 Comments

The whistles of a black kite which is hovering above me in the light blue sky are the only sounds that break my attention now and then. In front of me, a green parrot just flew by; I see more of them in the morning, when one after another they go, searching for grains and guavas and water and, maybe, more parrots. The coffee cuckoo, similar to the one that used to visit me in my previous apartment, also flew from one tree to another in the park in front of my writing studio.

I have stationed myself in one corner of this studio on a chatayi or as we say a mat nowadays, and from here I write my heart out. In this nomadic life, you can find me on and off in Bangalore, for I always come here to be with my partner, and thus I pen down many pieces from his vicinity with a temporary feeling of home.

Having spent more than four months now as a nomad, I have realized that you don’t have to own or rent an apartment to be at home. Neither are you always on the go even if you are living a nomadic life.

At the end of the day when I think about getting back home, I imagine a quiet place, where the bathroom taps do not drip and where I cannot hear the screeching tires or intruding honks, but I can only tune into the crickets singing songs to each other. Where I can lay on a bed or in a sleeping bag in a tent, preferably tucked away in the midst of trees, with a warm cup of tea and a book to read. From where I can make a phone call to my parents and family for they worry if I disappear for even a day. I imagine a home that is a window into the world, or it has a window from where I can see the world, which I like to have at a distance. And that is all.

Such are my preferences these days. I started penning down this article to tell you about how my priorities shaped up the year 2018, and so on I go.

Most Common Spanish Phrases For Travelers – Survive South America

in culture South America travel on December 22, 2018 April 20, 2020 with 8 Comments

feature image from peru for basic spanish phrases guide

Unlike the US schools, we do not have a Spanish course or learn any foreign language at schools in India, especially in the small town where I studied. I grew up studying Hindi, English, and Sanskrit. I took a French language course during college, but a few classes and a French certificate was the farthest my foreign language aptitude took me to.

When I landed in Chile to teach English, I couldn’t even speak a few simple Spanish words coherently. I started living with a Chilean host mother who took upon herself to teach me the common Spanish phrases and words so that we could communicate. Thus began my struggle of learning Spanish in Chile.

I didn’t know then that the Spanish language would become one of my favorites, and also my third language.

Without trying to be melodramatic, I promise that if you start speaking even the most basic Spanish travel phrases when you are backpacking in South America, you would fall in love with this language; for Spanish is a passionate dialect. Spanish words and phrases cover almost every emotion; some of the feelings that can be described eloquently in Spanish are strangled by the lack of words in other languages that I speak.

Let Your Life Flow Freely – She Knows Her Course Better than You Do.

in emotional intelligence Personal Development psychology on July 30, 2018 March 19, 2020 with 2 Comments

Let life happen to you — Rainer Maria Rilke told a Young poet, Franz Xaver Kappus when he expressed his doubts about his poetry to Rainer in a letter.

Out of all the golden words that Rainer said, this advice struck me the most when I read the twelve-letter correspondence between him and Franz. Those letters are a brilliant read. But calling them a read would be undermining them.

The art that those twelve letters hold in their hearts thrives with life and hope and advice. That art is like that thunder which roars at night. That art is like lightning which dances across the grey sky. That art is like that twilight which doesn’t know any bounds.

How to Achieve Your Goals – 12 Principles I Have Stuck to Since I Was 15–Years–Old

in habits Personal Development on July 14, 2018 March 19, 2020 with 9 Comments

I was a science and a mathematics girl. Having seen my interest and capability in the sciences, my brother decided that I should compete to get into the IITs, the MIT of India, and become an engineer.

As I hail from a small town, which doesn’t offer many educational opportunities, my father took me to Kota, a city in the desert of Rajasthan, admitted me in one of the private institutions of the coaching-hub of India, and left me in that unknown town; I was fifteen years old and hadn’t stayed away from my parents for more than a few days.

At my first attempt at the entrance examination, I failed. At the second attempt, for which I dropped a year, I ranked seventy-eight (78) amongst half-a-million students.

It didn’t happen by chance. I was young. Though now it seems weird to think that I understood the importance of goals back then, I knew I had to achieve my goal. And it didn’t seem that hard at that time; I just had to crack the concepts, practice, and give exams.

How I Have Changed Over One–Year of Sincere Writing and Blogging – This Is Just the Beginning.

in Personal Development writing on June 25, 2018 February 2, 2020 with 9 Comments

I think a lot more.

I read a lot more. I scroll blogs for hours. I highlight words while I read. I note them down. I try to go through them again.

I write a lot more. I ask myself why shall I not write on a Sunday. The world goes on. So I go on describing it.

I broke up with redundant words. I perfect the Whatsapp messages and the emails I send. My scrutinizing eyes don’t even spare the responses of my friends.

When I wake up, I think about writing instead of thinking about going to the toilet. I am burdened by guilt the day I don’t write. The day I write well, I feel liberated.