#postcardsfrompluto

It's only been a week😫

"Tum in sabko chhod ke kaise kal subah jaaogi

Mere saath inhein bhi to tum yaad bohat aaogi"

A little over an hour ago, I was my normal self sitting on my desk chair eating tomato-flavored banana chips. I got up (like I have done countless times in my life) and started walking towards a table that is on the other side of the room. Friction, which earlier used to mostly hurt me in my physics exams chose today as the glorious occasion to break my heart again. I slipped and my jaw slammed on my bedpost knocking me over.

What followed was a pain so intense in magnitude that I crawled into fetal position and screamed in agony (I was trying to scream but the sheer pain I was experiencing distorted the sound......If anyone heard me they might have mistaken me for a bad porn star).

After what seemed an eternity in the depths of hell or as other people would call it- 5 minutes I gathered up the last ounce of bodily strength I had and staggered my way to my mom's room.

The next 20 minutes can be summarised as me wailing (and when I say wailing I mean tears fucking flowing down my neck) like a baby and my mom stopping herself from giggling all the while holding me and saying all soothing and comforting words.

At this point, I have questioned every single life choice I have ever made trying to figure out what have I done to deserve such anguish. I'm overreacting I am fully aware NOW but at that time it was nuts. In those 20 minutes, I have cursed god, felt that this world doesn't deserve good people like me, and made up my mind to make this incident my evil origin story.

In my super tiny friend circle (not by choice) I, unfortunately, have a lot of friends with a toxic sense of humor. I always used to put them in the category of "mildly infuriating" and thought of it as a part of life and I just should ignore it. But it has reached a point where I just can't.

Fortunately, those friends don't read my blog ( nice save *wink* ) so I can spill all the tea here.

A few days ago I was on a con call with a few of my friends playing online ludo (much to my dismay since I feel chess is far superior). Nevertheless, I needed to hear more human voices in my life so I complied. Oh by the way disclaimer- Not really close friends but not acquaintances either. One of our friends ... let's call him Ass for short, So Ass starts with usual flirting attempts on his best friend's girlfriend which is surprisingly fine by everyone. As long as Ass does not bother me with the sound vibrations produced by his mouth I am perfectly fine. Then he moves on to lightly misogynistic jokes which everybody laughs at (and I protest by not laughing). Ass considers it as a green signal from his phone stand-up audience and proceeds to make heavily sexist jokes and even carelessly uses the word "Rape" to praise his friend. Now I am not a person with a lot of tolerance to bullshit so I politely let him know to keep his lips shut and briefly explain to him that he should not be using these words in such contexts. Ass obviously doesn't care. Some time passes and Ass thinks it's the right time to crack an obviously sexist and offensive joke. It was so plainly obvious that I thought it would work as an alarm and finally wake the minds of my friends up but guess what......EVERYBODY FUCKING LAUGHS. At this point, I can no longer take this crap and I let him know in a mildly rude tone what he said was filthy and revolting. Guess what......MY FRIENDS CONTINUE LAUGHING and the ONLY other girl in the group asks him to forward the joke too. Like girl at least you should be on my side.

I distanced myself from them (not just for this but also other mindfuckery Ass does which is very well promoted by others in the group). I discussed this with my mom and she had an interesting opinion, to summarize what she said - I totally agree that what Ass said was wrong but there are millions like him in this world. If you break off friendships for such reasons you will never have any friends in life. I, as usual, went on a rant about quality matters over quantity and it doesn't matter if I don't have a lotta friends, even if I have one I prefer them to not be gender-biased.

I began writing this at 3 am surrounded by books, Cheetos fries, a movie, and my dogs. Sounds like a sweet Friday night for a 65% introvert like me. To spice it up I also had a healthy dose of gloom and an even better amount of maladaptive daydreaming.

After almost 3 years, I finally have my well-deserved free time. And I know I should ideally be spending it on working on myself and growing as a person but I'm happily wasting it on Netflix and junk food because I'm a young adult who is allowed to make mildly bad decisions on which I can laugh at when I'm older.

This free time has made me seriously think about my future. It is not that I didn't think about it before but now I have a more relaxed perspective. I did a priority resetting of sorts. I feel most of the distresses that we incur in adult life have an overall less impact when we have work satisfaction. Work makes you zone out from other problems and the best part- you get paid! Of course, the succeeding question for me from me was - what kind of work would give me contentment? I can't imagine my life not being devoted to the field of biology. It can be in any form- research, medicine, teaching, Pharmaceuticals, it really doesn't matter. When I'm in bio mode I forget about the world (and the only other time that happens is when I play chess). What physics is to Dr. Sheldon Cooper, Biology is to me (even though I'm in no way as smart as Dr. Cooper). Maybe that's why there has been an air of melancholy for the few days after my entrance exam. It wasn't the fear of failing, it was the fear of losing the chance to pursue a subject I truly love. I honestly never cared for the doctor title, my driving force was the lovely academia involved in the process of getting that title.

An ideal future to me would be being lost in the books of anatomy and physiology with scattered research papers and coffee cups around me. Diagrams on my walls and papers pinned to the numerous boards I would have. You might think it is nerdy but to me, it is really comforting. I'd rather have a patent than a partner.

I finished writing this at 10 am and no it doesn't take me 7 hours to write this(I just completed the last season of The big bang theory). I want to spend my time in a lab experimenting far away from the noise. Just thinking about it is therapeutic to me. Of Course ideas, and opinions change as we age but one thing I'm completely sure of that would remain constant is my passion for biology. I hope I am blessed enough to be attached to this field of science in some way my whole life.

I'm gonna start this with a pic of me and my friends on 31st Oct in a country where no one celebrates Halloween.

The reason I have been sleeping with lights on these days is too much "Horror" content consumption. I have reached a point where ghouls, goblins, monsters don't scare me, they excite me.

I'm the skeptic kind, by the way, I don't believe in the paranormal but I sure as heck wish they were true. Nevertheless, I have plenty of spooky stuff to keep me contented.

Recently I have been binging Buzzfeed Unsolved episodes (I highly recommend the Sallie house one) and I came to a realization that nightmare fuel is actually therapeutic (at least for me). They somehow make me feel "better".So I did what any other Gen Z teenager would do, I took to the internet and things got real complicated(I'll try to keep it simple).

It's a controlled environment, the story is fictional, the people aren't actually dying and the screen is separating me from all the chaos going behind it. Bird's eye view of an adrenaline-inducing world. All this explains why it's fun to watch but why has it become my antidote against melancholy.

Now I'm not an expert but I have a theory- It's a distraction.

Distraction from the "dullness" of the real world. I'm not saying my life is sad but it is sure as hell monotonous. If I look back to what was the last exciting thing I did it would be writing my previous blog post last week. Ghoul and demon stuff diffuses the mundanity temporarily. Wouldn't you wanna know about the woman in white after doing thermal physics (of course you want to because physics was mind-numbing and you want to feel human again!).

Ironically I was a "won't watch horror movies because I can't sleep for days" kid. Plus I was afraid of the dark and couldn't sleep with lights off for years. My 13-year-old self wondered what miraculous force would I require to rid me of my fears. That force is a simple realization- Real-life problems are more terrifying than demons rearranging your furniture. I would rather have a vampire feed off my jugular than to have to see my ex-bo....ahem ahem..... friend again. I would gladly play paddy cake with Annabelle if I don't have to attend botany lectures (taxonomy is worse than death). I would love to have a full-scale demonic possession than to have to undergo this two-year-long exile for prepping for a test that's due in two months.

I'm gonna end this with the immortal words of Shane Madej to justify my horror stuff-watching spree.

" We had scarcely sat down when a darkness came that was not like a moonless or cloudy night, but more like the black of closed and unlighted rooms. You could hear women lamenting, children crying, men shouting."-Pliny the younger (eyewitness of the destruction)

My usual internet surfing made me stumble upon an intriguing video-Surviving Pompeii. This video set off a wild train of thoughts and I believe the final station should be this post. (Images present for your viewing pleasure)

To give you a background-

In 79 A.D., on a fateful day, Vulcan, the Roman god of fire decided to strike his hammer on the city of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Campania, Italy. His fury was manifested in the form of a rain of fire from the mouth of Mount Vesuvius. What followed was deadly chaos and the flourishing Pompeii was set ablaze. (I could not have explained this more eloquently! )

However, what makes me so fascinated with this event is that this very catastrophe that caused millions of untimely deaths is a very significant source of getting an intimate glimpse of the past.

Ironically the blast that tore the city apart, in retrospect kept it intact. The volcanic ash that had spread across the city covered the remains of Pompeii and acted as a shield against the factors that could potentially lead to its decomposition. The living component perished over time leaving behind an intricate cast of their body thus in a way "freezing them in time". These were untouched for almost 1,700 years until the brilliant minds of the 19th century decided to pour cement into these casts and bring them back to life (sort of).

(Source- thevintagenews.com)

What makes me so drawn towards this incident is empathy. I try to put myself in the shoes of the inhabitants of Pompeii. What would it feel like to have lost everything in a snap of nature's fingers (Thanos reference woohoo)? Or did they even have the time to feel anything?.

Reading such stuff helps in occasionally breaking the bubble I (and I think many others) live in. The bubble of safety. The constant feeling that "nothing would happen to us". Pompeii reminds me of how vulnerable we really are. The realization that anything similar can happen to me anytime making me just a figment of history is both deeply disturbing and amusing.

Also what makes me so interested in this that I left work-related stuff abruptly and immersed myself in Pompeii nightmares is the awesome insight it gives of history. Let mymodernmet.com do the explaining-

It was during these excavations that archaeologists realized the ruins' remarkable level of preservation, with entire buildings, objects—including, amazingly, uncooked loaves of bread in an oven—and beautiful, polychromatic wall paintings left intact. These frescoes include some of the earliest known still-life depictions, as well as secular portraits, religious iconography, and erotic imagery.

(Source- museum-of-artifacts.blogspot.com)

I kind of doubt the "uncooked loaves of bread" part. Wouldn't the heat cook (or overcook in the real sense) the bread?.

In addition to human infants, children, and adults, these casts also include unlucky animals, such as wild boars and domesticated dogs.

(Credit- Pasquale Sorrentino/Science Photo Library)

From the minimal reading I did- since the city is still under the threat of Vesuvius's wrath, the secrets of Pompeii are in danger of getting destroyed even before being fully uncovered. So the hardworking science, history, and technology folks of Italy are trying to reconstruct Pompeii so that future generations can have better history lessons ;).

(Credit-Lund University)

Before my blog gets too boring I'm gonna end my history lecture with a quick and overused joke-