Psychosphere

by Kasish Ngangom Tug at my Heartstrings, November 2017

If I have to recall how I reached there, trust me, I have absolutely no idea. The 10th boards finally ended, I had a nice long break, and the next moment I was there, huffing and puffing my way up the stairs with those huge suitcases. “No parents allowed in the rooms,” they said. I saw my mom’s eyes, worried; she had planned to arrange my stuff and get my room ready. I told them to go and come back the next day, told them I was big enough to settle everything, only to realise I was utterly wrong. There I was, sweating a bucket and crying a puddle, amidst all my belongings, in a non-AC room on that hot summer afternoon. Everything came back together – I am not going to stay at home with my family, I am going to a different school with no friends the next day, I am not going to have my usual food… and the lists went on. There wasn’t a single thing about me that wasn’t changing. I had a lump in my throat, a void in my stomach, and I felt like the Dementors have sucked out every tinge of happiness in me. And little did I know that that very feeling would haunt me every day for the following one year.  

by Divya Yadav क्रांति की तलवार विचारों की सान पर, November 2017

क्या आपने हाल की यह ख़बर पढ़ी की अमेरिका ने राष्ट्रीय संघ के एक महत्वपूर्ण अंग यूनेस्को (United Nation's Educational Scientific Cultural Organization) से अपने आपको अलग करने का ऐलान कर दिया है? अमेरिकन राष्ट्रपति डॉनल्ड ट्रुम्प ने एक आधिकारिक पत्र भेजकर यूनेस्को को यह संदेश दिया है। अमेरिका के अनुसार उसका यूनेस्को से अलगाव इजरायल के प्रति यूनेस्को का भेदभाव व पक्षपात पूर्ण रवैया है! अमेरिका के इस उद् घोषणा के कुछ घंटे पश्चात ही इजरायल ने भी युनेस्को से अलग होने की घोषणा कर दी है ।इजरायल के प्रधानमंत्री बेंजामिन नेतन्यूह ने अमेरिका के इस निर्णय का स्वागत करते हुए कहा है - "यह एक साहसी और नैतिक निर्णय है क्योंकि यूनेस्को अब बेतूकेपन की पनाह बन गया है, इतिहास को संरक्षित करने की बजाय वह उसे उजाड़ रहा  है"।

यूनेस्को की डाइरेक्टर जनरल इरिना बोकोव ने अमेरिका के इस निर्णय पर दुःख व्यक्त करते हुए कहा है -"यह बहुत ही दुखद है की समस्त संसार में जब भीषण विवाद की स्थिति बनी हुई है ऐसे में अमेरिका राष्ट्रीय संघ के उस अंग से अलग हो गया है जो विश्व में शिक्षा सम्वर्धन व सांस्कृतिक संरक्षण के लिये प्रतिबद्ध है !यह न केवल राष्ट्रीय संघ के लिये हानि का विषय है बल्कि बहुपक्षीय राष्ट्रीय सम्बन्धों के लिये भी!"

पाठकों को यह बता देना उचित होगा की वास्तव में यह ख़बर जितनी सीधी प्रतीत हो रही है उतनी है नहीँ! चूँकि अमेरिका एक विकसित और आर्थिक दृष्टि से सम्पन्न, दुनिया का एक महत्वपूर्ण देश है इसलिये इस घटना का प्रभाव भी वैश्विक स्तर पर दृष्टिगोचर होगा !इतना ही नहीँ अमेरिका यूनेस्को को आर्थिक सहायता प्रदान करने वाले देशों में पाँचवे स्थान पर है इसलिए भी इस घटना का महत्व बढ़ जाता है क्योंकि इससे न केवल पैरिस स्थित यूनेस्को को हानि होगी बल्कि उसके द्वारा विश्वहित में चलाये जा रहे अभियानों में भी शिथिलता आयेगी और वैश्विक दृष्टि से इस संगठन में जो सामूहिकता को ठेस पहुंचेगी वह तो निश्चित ही है!

अब प्रश्न ये है की क्या अमेरिका ने केवल इजरायल का पक्ष लेने के लिये ही इतना बड़ा निर्णय लिया है या फ़िर इसके अंदर और भी कुछ है जिसे जानने की आवश्यकता है!

by Tanya Aggarwal On a New Quest, November 2017

Love is a very important part of our lives. It is a pleasant feeling we all love to experience. It makes us happier people and helps us achieve more and promote good health. Every teenager, in his/her life has felt attracted towards another person emotionally. In most cases it’s exclusive to only one person. This feeling is commonly referred to as a crush or infatuation. A teenager feels smitten by a compelling person who captivates their attention for good.

i remember you - as a sunflower always looking out for the happy the bright that made you feel alive as the waves of the sea calm and yet in motion washing away the unnecessary as a butterfly flying free and filling the sky with colour as the morning dew on the gentle leaves smelling of freshness when did you turn into a wilted flower losing hope so soon when did you turn into a static lake refusing to let go when did you start wrapping yourself up in a cocoon shutting yourself down when exactly did you turn into this person i fail to recognise you oh dear what have you done to yourself did you forget of all that's within you the invincible strength the vessel of love that overflows the warmth that one can feel even when they brush elbows with you don't forget that every time you fall you stand up back again stronger and wiser don't forget how the stars collided to let you be here today how you're a constellation coming down to earth to brighten up the day don't forget that pain is supposed to change you not define you you are still a breath of fresh air making the world come alive

by Tanya Dutta Platonically Speaking, October 2017

Is your boyfriend perpetually talking to attractive girls, who he swears are “his cousins”? Are you too constantly trying to crack your boyfriend’s phone’s passcode? Has he still not deleted Tinder?

Girl, it sounds like you might’ve got a case of infidelity in hand.   

I think I should begin with the most obvious definition – cheating. When would you say a person is cheating? Is it only when they engage in a physical act with someone other than their partner? Or does it include sexting other people? Or perhaps when they flirt with strangers on dating apps or social media, pretending to be single? With the advent of all this technology, the lines really are blurred.

A firm believer of “live and let live”, I try to apply that principle in all aspects of life, to overpower the judgmental bitch that resides within me.  It makes sense to me that every relationship has its own dynamic, specific to the two individuals in it. So when certain things happen in Person A’s relationship that I am not down with, but Person A is, I tell myself to mind my own business.  

In a serious monogamous romantic relationship, staying loyal to your partner is kind of a big deal, if not the ultimate premise on which the relationship is based. The idea of sharing your life with that one special person, opening up to them and rendering yourself vulnerable, and working on maintaining that connection forged between the both of you, is the part of relationships which make them so lovely and infuriating at the same time.

However, it does concern me to see that cheating has blown up in recent times. It is so prevalent that it really isn’t that big a deal anymore. This has lead to two things: a heightened sense of possessiveness, suspicion, and insecurity; and loss of meaning and integrity of relationships.  

The spate of memes and “mockumentaries” on suspicious girlfriends (which is plain sexist, by the way, guys can be possessive and suspicious too), is testament to the first phenomenon. Due to the prevalence of cheating, impositions of constant tests to prove one’s loyalty to their partner to an extent that it stifles them aren’t uncommon.  Being afraid of getting hurt is a very real and legitimate fear, and everyone experiences it at some point or another, but trying to track every movement your boo makes, and having them justify every interaction they have with other people, becomes exhausting for you and irritating for them.

The simple fact that reality shows exist to bust cheating partners and test their restraint is thought-provoking – it makes you realize that capitalists never know where to stop, and it leads you to believe that love is dead.

Everything has gone online, including relationships. Sliding into DMs on instagram, sending (disappearing) flirty snaps on snapchat, and having the privilege to delete chats, has made cheating online… easy. I didn’t bring this up to plant a seed of doubt in your minds, readers, but just illustrate the loss of meaning in relationships, because how important could your relationship be to you, if you’re doing all of the above? Not very, it seems.

Sure, monogamy may not be natural for human beings, but you should probably consider that argument before you get into relationship like that, rather than bring it up after an act of indiscretion on your part.

Now, a big question – what do you do if you know your partner has cheated? The answer is definitely not an easy black-or-white, it’s tinged with hues of grey. Depending on the circumstances, the amount of remorse and other factors involved, one can decide to either break up, or try and work on the relationship. But a third person can never know the situation as well as the two people actually involved, so it’s a good idea to leave it to them.

by Dakshita Sabharwal औज़ार और ढेर सारा प्यार , October 2017

किस बात का बोझ लिए हुए तुम घूम रही हो इस भारी बस्ते के साथ क्यों ऐसे झूम रही हो?

दर्द किस बात का तुम छिपाए हुए हो? फ़र्ज़ किन लोगो का तुम निभा रही हो ?

किस काम की थकावट से तुम अब तक झुकी हुई हो? अकेलेपन की साँझ में तुम क्या उम्मीदें लगाई बैठी हो?

पुरानी हार को लेकर तुम अबतक रूठी हो? आसू पोंछ तुम अब भी आहें भर रही हो?

I think I saw a beautiful sky it was blue and pink and yellow with cotton candy clouds and my heart ached because the beautiful sky will be gone with the sun And it will leave a well inside the hole that already exists in a heart that used to be mine a heart once upon a time.

by Aanchal Chauhan Home, October 2017

Hope turned into despair. Childhood no longer remained the most beautiful season of life.The playful cries were no longer to be heard. Why?

by Vaishali Gautami Glimpse of Love, October 2017

by Kasish Ngangom Tug at my Heartstrings, October 2017

9 pm last night – News of lives lost in hurricane Irma and of the ones lost in the bomb blasts in Afghanistan.

11 am today – Group messages about a fellow Manipuri guy who went missing and later, out of the blue, announced to have been cremated by the police without even informing the family! “God forbid!” I exclaimed while the void in my stomach expanded. These present stories aren’t the only ones that have come to form a cloud of distress in my head, there were heaps and there will be heaps on top of heaps.

….killings, murders, suicides, natural deaths, deaths by calamities. Indeed, there are innumerable ways in which one can die. Funnily obvious, eh?

Was it untimely? If so, when’s the right time to die anyways? Who is to tell?

Hmph...Death is a labyrinth in itself.

But life… life as we know it, is an elixir in itself, of its own, in its own forms. Why not add some pixie dust in every life, every now and then, here and there?

Up and down. Inside and out. Left and right. Circles and infinities.

Life and Death, those they are.

All these thoughts of mine today compelled me to share a poem I wrote back in 10th standard in a poetry competition, for which I bagged the first prize. So much did I hope people got a bit of spark to live heartily each moment of our lives.

Inspired by Shakespeare’s Stages of Life, here it is –

THE VICIOUS CYCLE

by Divya Yadav क्रांति की तलवार विचारों की सान पर, October 2017

होड़ लगाया है मैंने बहुतों से अब तक! जीती भी हूँ कई बार! ठान लेती हूँ जब कुछ करने का, सबकी मेहनत हो जाती बेकार! दुनिया के सामने कुछ करने का जज्बा भी रखती हूँ दूसरों को पीछे छोड़ देने का दावा भी करती हूँ! जिंदगी में कुछ कर गुजरने का माद्दा भी रखती हूँ!

पर

जब बात आती है अपने आपको जीतने की खुद की कमियों से लड़ने की खुद की उम्मीदों को पूरा करने की!

by Tanya Aggarwal On a New Quest, October 2017

Each day is a new beginning,

Call it a clean state, a fresh start or a new dawn.

A world of possibilities awaits you,

Holding their breaths, until you tiptoe out,

And stamp your foot in the dew,

Leaving a trail of damp prints on the grass.

It’s all up to you.

by Tanishka Chawla Unsent Letters, October 2017

Standing on the weighing machine, the sigh of relief I let out when I see the number ticking down from a 65 to a 64, made me feel so at peace with myself. It gave me more joy than my favourite dish of pasta did. Made me happier than eating till my stomach was on the verge of exploding. Because when I reach a 60, maybe then I'll start accepting myself. Maybe then I'll see myself as more than someone who just occupies a lot of space. I still remember this one time my mother baked me a chocolate cake, and I tried to resist but I gobbled it up in the end. And how after that, I had to punish myself by running an extra 5 rounds, doing 10 extra push ups and skipping the next meal. I remember how while sitting at the dining table, the sound of the fork screeching on a plate felt better than the sound of my head constantly calculating the number of calories I'm just about to intake.

That day in class somebody talked about a body dysmorphic disorder, which is when you perceive and focus on certain flaws in your appearance. And I wondered if we were, as a society, so definite about the standards of beauty, that for people who fail to meet those standards, we actually had to invent a word of it - ugly. And fat is ugly. Being called 'fat' never offended me, until I learnt it's supposed to. So many young girls and boys starve themselves and go running if they exceed a certain calorie count in a day. After one point, your body doesn't burn fat but muscle, but what difference does this information make to a person for whom compulsive exercising is a routine? So many of them force their fingers down their throat, spend time around toilet bowls just in time before the calories get converted to fat. But who am I to point it out when I'm just one of those people who have been blinded by their obsession to lose weight? 

by Niharika Rawat Pink Freud, October 2017

As someone who runs a popular culture/psychology-hybrid blog, hilariously called Pink Freud, you can assume that I know something about both. As it happens, I indeed do (and I don’t just research a topic on Google one hour before submitting it. Nope, never happens. Not at all) and I engage in frequent discussions about it. Even when I am not, I am one of those people who will scroll to the very top of a Tumblr thread or Facebook comment feed to see what everyone has to say (or scream).

Being as I am a connoisseur of popular culture, I often follow developments in certain fandoms closely, and see how both the general public and the fans react to it. And if you are even a little aware about fandoms, you know exactly where this is going.

My very first article had been about how we fans defend our favourites to death, even when there is something problematic with them. That is natural. In the most commonsensical and psychological terms, we get attached to the things we like, and we see them as representing ourselves. So of course, we will defend them. But sometimes, we maintain this positive bias by bringing down other fandoms. And by bringing down I mean a WWE Friday Night Royal Smackdown with all that cage and ladder shit thrown it.

Yep, things get ugly.

by Tanya Dutta Platonically Speaking, September 2017

In my practical class, we are seeking the answer to a question that is as old as... gendered constructs, I think - can men and women be just friends?

We were quick to say "duh", but our teacher wasn't so convinced. We dove headfirst into research papers to prove our point and boy, our worldviews were challenged considerably. 

The one finding that's fresh in my mind still, was that when studying male-female best friendships, the researchers found that women were less satisfied with their friendships with men, than men were with their friendships with women. [Elkins, L. E., & Peterson, C. (1993). Gender differences in best friendships. Sex Roles, 29(7), 497-508.]

Then it struck me - the Friendzone exists - something I'd completely forgotten about. How can a discourse on relationships and romance be complete without a mention of the dreaded Friendzone?

The bane of every "nice guy's" existence, the Friendzone is defined by Wikipedia as: "In popular culture, the friend zone is a situation in which one member of a friendship wishes to enter into a romantic or sexual relationship, while the other does not. It is generally considered to be an undesirable situation by the rejected person."

Having defined it, I now launch my extremely scientific (read: thought up late at night or in the shower) analysis:

First off, I'd like to debunk some myths. Popular culture makes it seem like women have the upper hand at all times and the Friendzone is just us women being nasty and enjoying all the relationship perks with our poor lovesick guy friends, emotionally manipulating them, and depriving them of the ..*cough* benefits. 

News flash: Girls get Friendzoned too! Big time! Being Friendzoned isn't just about being given the cold shoulder romantically or sexually! It's no fun for anyone involved!

More often than not, it's just the classic case of becoming friends with someone, who you think is really cool; and ending up crushing on them, and after the anticipation and hesitation and the final big reveal, it turns out that they don't feel the same way. However they would prefer to preserve the one good thing you've got going on for yourselves - the friendship! 

If both parties are relatively nicer people, then let me assure you, it sucks for both of them. Maybe it sucks more for you, the person who crushed on their friend, but that doesn't negate the fact that your friend is probably having a hard time too, because they now have to proceed with caution so as to not lead you on, and they could even harbour feelings of guilt, because wouldn't it just be easier for everyone if they liked you back?

Rest assured, it is an unpleasant situation that everyone would understandably like to avoid. I wish my boundless wisdom had pointers on how to avoid it in the first place or get out of it triumphantly but I don't think the spectrum of human emotional experiences can be summed up so easily into a guiding principle that fits all. 

I do however have a thing or two to say to someone who finds themselves infatuated with a friend who’s just not interested.

Starting off with a simple but extremely important one, never forget your worth. If you go out of the way to be there for your friend/crush and they don't do the same for you, try to re-evaluate your priorities. However, if your feelings are getting out of hand, and you just can't handle it, it's absolutely fine to take some time off - I'm sure your friend will understand. Lastly, and most importantly, don't be a jerk. Don't guilt your friend into feeling like a horrible person because they don't like you back. Just like you can't fall out of love with them on will, you can't make them fall in love with you on will. That's just not how it works. 

by Chehak Gidwani The Bizarre Intricacies of the Human Mind, September 2017

Am I disabled or beautifully abled?

This question keeps reverberating in my mind.

I have been suffering from a muscular dystrophy since 18 years and now I have come to a stage where I feel nothing at all.

When people ask me the question, “Do you have any problem?” , I always answer “no”. I put on the garb of normalcy. I act like this problem has not affected me at all. But the reality is totally opposite. It has and it will. Just because I carry it off with a million-dollar smile and pretty face does not mean that it has stopped affecting me.

Eighteen years is a long time. I've forgotten what it is to feel normal. My current situation is my normal situation.

When I see other people managing everything so beautifully, when I am not able to tie my shoelaces, I wonder why I am tailored to be like this.

On second thought, it kindles in me a spark to prove to the world that my disability makes me more mature and kinder to the world.

Let’s burn brighter than the storm.

by Dakshita Sabharwal औज़ार और ढेर सारा प्यार , September 2017

Remember those 3 am chats with your friend, those late night creative outbursts, those cravings to conquer the world? This poem is something about that, about those peaceful moments under the moonlight and the fun and animation and the feeling of fulfilment at 5:00 am with the rising of the sun.

- the poem can be found under the cut -