Averagely mediocre trivialities

Glimpses into the Real: Spirituality and Psychosis Deepti Naval Deepti Naval, the Hindi cinema actress, is little known as an author and poet. For the 1985 movie Ankahee , Naval’s role involved a mental disorder. To prepare for the role, she spent two weeks in a psychiatric ward. Forced to confront mental disorder on an intimate level, the result was a two part volume of poetry titled “Black Wind and Other Poems” Exploring the outbursts of the Unconscious mind, she finds the unreality of delusions more real than reality. “ She’s mad If she thinks She’s sane” Her characters look into themselves, delving deep into pits there’s no coming out of. “ Endlessly I roam My inner wilderness.” In the process of this, they become estranged from “reality.” Their relationships suffer. They are cognizant of this fact - of their gradual distancing, but there’s a twisted joy even in this. “ Elated I sit again Amidst the debris of another relationship.” In communica...

A modernist comparison and analysis of Beautiful City by Lord Alfred Tennyson and The City by Constantine Cavafy             Constantine Cavafy an Egyptian-Greek poet in the late 19 th century at the beginning of the era of modernism wrote the poem called The City. It is a poem of helplessness, longing, one of despair and a desperate desire to escape and find meaning. Looking at this poem from a modernist theory, one can sense the alienation that the poet feels from the places that he lives in, as he is left to wander around from city to city in desperate search of meaning. We can find in the poet’s confusion as he finds himself unable to escape his dreadful reality, as he runs away from it time and again. His hopes of escaping the black ruins of his life, a place where he destroyed his years completely, are shattered as he realizes that no matter where he goes the city will always pursue him. A sense of fragmented self can ...

                                                Rita goes shopping It was warm sunny December morning when Rita woke up. Looking out into the bright blue sky, Rita thought to herself, “Oh, I ought to finish my errands today.” And so Rita excitedly got out of bed and hopped into the shower. Rita had just moved into a new house and as her parents had gone away on a trip, she was in charge of the house. Well, her granny was there but it was difficult to say who was taking care of whom.             Rita hurriedly gobbled up her breakfast and put on her favorite yellow dress for her day in the sun. She had made a list of things to do throughout the day, just like her mom. Rita felt like a grown-up to...

Aladdin The story of Aladdin as we know today is not one of a Middle-Eastern origin but written by a French writer in the 18 th century, who claims to have heard it orally from a man in Aleppo. Why this tale from Fables proves to be problematic is because for the longest time and even today, Aladdin was regarded as a representation of Middle East, this despite the fact that Aladdin was set in China. This oriental story of a middle-eastern love story between two people belonging to two different socio-economic backgrounds. The Disney movie then only worked to perpetuate these inaccurate stereotypes of the Arabs from China, as the movie which was set in the city of Agrabah features the song lyrics “From a faraway place/Where they cut off your ear/If they don’t like your face/It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home”. The hero and heroine of the movie are light skinned with American accents as compared to the dark-skinned villains and lowly status people with thick Arabic accents. This ori...

Please be Naked with me – The 1975 I wake up to the sound of the salty ocean breeze hitting the rocks. I can feel the damp coolness of the sand underneath my skin. I open my eyes as the sunrises from under the water and sets fire to the sky. A bleeding sky in flames or orange and red as the sun slowly detaches itself from the ocean to tear apart the night sky as the dawn breaks and the sky bleeds. And so does my heart. I can feel the wave wash over me and I taste the familiar salty taste on my lips, on my face. The saltiness of the tears and the sea brings with it the comfortable numbness. I turn 30 today Agnes. Remember that promise we made? That we would get married if we were both alone at 30. Well here I am 30 and alone but Agnes, my rose, where did you go?             I force myself to get up and as I get up I realize how lightheaded I feel. Agnes, is it possible to feel so lightheaded and so heavy at the same time? I ca...

               Mother always used to say, love is not a feeling or an emotion. It becomes you, you feel it in every part of your soul, such a love is raw but it is rare. Love in its true raw form, is something that our fragile souls cannot bear and so our souls to meek to seek it and too weak to find it, run away from it. All of our lives we do anything and everything to run away from love so as to prevent our fragile souls from dismantling. Piece by piece we stitch our soul back together, which tears apart with each heartbreak. With every experience, we stitch our wounded soul and we build our walls to shield us from life and love and the inevitable annihilation that comes with existing as a person. Every person you come across has their heart ripped to shreds, she said, some people chose to mop up these tears and offer their heart in its shreds, held together by the thin stretched out strings made of hope, and ...

Humans are and always have been obsessed with the idea of obsession. Our tendency to find a source of attachment and find some meaning to the different things in life leads us to project our feelings onto and external object- be it a thing, feeling, or a person. And think and overthink about it till you eventually become obsessed with it, and think and overthink it again, till you lose interest and find another object for our obsessive needs. To be obsessed with something, one needs passion and commitment. Humans however are people with faltering and fleeting interests and thus major commitment issues. We as a species have subpar attention span and focus, and so our focus keeps shifting. Our areas of interests keep changing and our passion keeps faltering and so after a while as we change so do our objects of obsession. These objects can be anything from toys to books to food to ideas and of course the classic- other humans.          ...