Chaotic Academia

waqt ki qaid mein zindagi hai magar

chand ghadiyaan yehi hain jo aazaad hain

inko kho kar mere jaan-e-jaan

umr bhar na taraste raho

aaj jaane ki zid na karo

life is trapped in the prison of time

but these are the few moments that are free

by losing them, my beloved

let’s not have a life of regret

tonight, don’t insist on leaving

You twirl your house keys in your slender fingers and my heart fills with envy.

I hide those keys as you rest your head on my lap. The events of the night have drained you well enough to let you notice my fingers brushing against yours. It's not mischief, I am causing by hiding your keys. I am stealing time.

You will walk away with the first set of sun rays that shall grace your eyes and I will stay here, my eyes burning with tears that will never fall in front of you. You will kiss my eyes again, insisting that I let you go.

Today, my lips won't sing the same song again. I will not plead you to stay. I am cursed to have my heart robbed and live a love that would never be returned back.

Things I’ve Read since I started my 100 pages a day challenge yesterday:

1. The Anxiety of Influencers by Barrett Swanson: “Because mostly what I’m thinking about are my students, those bleary-eyed twenty-somethings in sweatpants and hoodies who frequently appear in the doorway of my office, sad in a way they cannot explain, desperate for something they don’t know how to have. That the view of personhood produced by the economy of influence is the same brass-tacks thinking that has infiltrated the university might be the single greatest repudiation of the pixelated world that we’re now asking them to inhabit.” 

2. The violence behind outing someone by Sohini Chatterjee: “I have learned from having struggled with myself for years that there is language for my pain but no security when it is articulated, no refuge or calm when it is revealed. There is no room for rage. There is no promise of healing. Cishet civility is a hassle for queer people. It creates no safe spaces for our anger to be understood as critique and as protest against normativity. All avenues of conversation and understanding are already always closed off and rendered into various impossibilities.What we do not talk about is where our story begins.” “Silence is seldom a choice for queer people. It is always a decision externally enforced on us that we are expected to claim as our own. Silence gives us corporeal security while taking away our affective safeguards. Unjust trade-offs are the defining feature of our survival. Bigotry couched in claims of righteousness is frequently warped to disfavor us. Being queer often means getting offered conditional living in silence or being dismissed for dissidence. Like all binaries, this is also as inflexible as it is violent.”

3. Curating the Anthropocene by Jon Christenson and Ursula K Haise: “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

4. When did being busy become a status symbol? by Global News 

5. The myth of mad genius by Christa L Taylor

A desk in which there's a tiny plant in a corner in a glass bottle in which I'd had an amazing chocolate milkshake with friends the last time I was out before we were locked down.

Above the desk on the wall I've stuck a poem or lyrics from one of my favourite songs, written slowly, carefully in my neatest handwriting, to get the curves of the devnagari script just right. there's a black and white poster that says "beware of artists. they interact with all sections of society and therefore are the most dangerous". there's the first page of a really lovely research paper that reminds me of why I'm studying to be a teacher. I've underlined the text with a pencil and scribbled in the margins.

In one corner I've piled a couple of thick textbooks, a few sticky notes peeking through, old question papers and my doodle notes stuffed in the relevant sections of the chapter. On the other corner there are three books with three completely different moods, some I'm reading between study breaks, others I'm flipping through to reread passages I'd underlined during my first reading.

There's a half-burned scented candle that I forget to light, and there's a pen stand filled with colouring pencils and fountain pens and sharpened pencils and a bookmark or two. In the drawers, there are stacks of old notes and empty papers, books of mock tests. Near my feet, a cat named Custard is curled up.

𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡, 𝐲𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲.

‘a view of santi giovanni e paolo from the back’ - christian jank (1833-1888)

you have a place in my heart no one else ever could have 🍃

13.05.21// thesis work moving along slowly but surely. I love my topic and I’m so happy to be researching in this area. Working towards getting this thing published!!

May Productivity Day 7

[19.05.22]

The palace smelled of stone and paint, of people and food and beeswax floor polish.