#tvseries

I have always maintained that Ragnarok is the best modern retelling of the norse mythology. even though that particular moniker stays with it, this season wasn’t really it.

i mean yes, it is directly in line to the stories it was supposed to tell, but something is missing this season, and that is possibly the fact that there actually never were a real villain to fear in this season.

okay, first some context: giants live amongst humans and surprise surprise they also run the heavy industries that destroys nature. magne, who embodies thor in the body of a teenager. apparently gods are born as humans in this idyllic norse town, but giants control it and without weapons they are probably better fighters as well.

hence the first two season was tight. it always felt like the giants, even though less in number always held more power with the money and brute strength. however thor gets his hammer made in season 2 end, and from there we will start.

we know that giants has lost a member so it’s technically 5-3 now. and the giants are scared of the hammer too much. and they can’t do anything at all. firstly, we all know what the hammer can do, but it never showed why is it so powerful that the giants are scared of it. anyway, that was probably never the intention either way.

i am just taken over by how much teenage life has to do with being the god of thunder. not just that, loki is also a teenager and half brother to thor, so that relationship also full of teen drama. the show makes it a point to showcase just how much thor is attached to his hammer, to the point he lets the hammer control him, even though it is the hammer that needs thor, and not the other way around. and i just think, doing it with a teenage coming of age lens has been pretty amazing to say the least.

this season gets more detailed about the lives of the gods and giants, and we generally stopped seeing the life around edda. but i can accept that, there wasn’t anything important there except the people, and we got a lot of those people.

it is quite weird that those people didn’t have much of a character arc. except for thor. and loki to some extents. the real transformation actually happens to Hodur.

i think the biggest part that this season tried to tell us is that, we are always scared of letting down our loved ones. but c’est la vie. that’s life. i personally think, that fear of letting your loved ones down or the fact that we have grief about missing them is the real proof that despite everything we loved them. and i also think it takes a real man to accept their own faults. it also takes a self aware man to understand the harm they have caused and how to not do this again or if possible correct the mistake already made. they put thor in this role, and especially the last episode is the creme de la creme of that.

in that regard, ragnarok keeps the story, as it should. i mean, is it a real story? or is it an active imagination? you’d need the last episode of season 3 of course, and in that regard this is kinda like tokyo ghoul, as in, the whole story makes sense at the end. i have certain issues with those kinda stories, as once you see it, it diminishes the mutiple watch potentials once the cards are shown. it can be done in smarter ways, but this wasn’t it.

i think cg also took a large hit. they didn’t really have to do a lot of cg before, but this time there is a mythological serpent that they needed to show a few times, and it looked absolutely awful. there wasn’t much other cg work, but some of the weapon throws were assisted and that could be visible. but that is more of compositing problem than bad cg, but all the same.

i enjoyed ragnarok. i think the first season was my favourite, but i would recommend you to the whole series. it’s 18 episodes and i doubt there will ever be another season as to me this was a perfect end, and unlike the last two seasons, this one didn’t end on a cliffhanger.

i’ll reiterate again: it is the best modern retelling of the mythology of ragnarok. ragnarok is the end of the world as we know it. i guess for a teenager that would be their school life.

there is this concept in philosophy called meta-knowledge.

it’s about the knowledge about the knowledge. what you know you know. what you know that you do not know. you also know what others need and you also know what you want to know.

sounds simple enough. but it isn’t. not all knowledge are necessary. you don’t need to know everything. if i had a partner and the partner cheated on me while being with me, even though that knowledge will give me closure or a sense of understanding, i do not think i will be mentally able to handle the confirmation. so yes, i would not need to know it.

but enough about what i do not need to. what do i need to know? i think all i need to know is about myself. i need to know who i am, when all of my identities are taken away. i want to know whether i am the person because i was born or i am the person because of the environment. i need to know about how my body works, and i need to know how can i have most control over my body. i need to know what emotions i am capable of having and how to navigate around those.

i know enough about others. i do not know enough about myself. why do i do the things i do. why do i think the things i do. why do i take decisions in certain way. why am i in a balanced emotional sense and see clearly when i am in a crisis.

see, this is the problem. i feel normal around crisis. i can make decisions clearly, i can think clearly, i can be more logical. but i can’t always be in crisis to access this mode. i need to be able to access this on call, anytime i need.

medicines help, i am on prozac, and i can do things i was not really able to. i can get off bed when i want to, i can just call and talk to people if i want to, i don’t feel as bad about my body image on meds. but meds also do not help. i do not intend to keep taking meds. i do not wanna be dependent on the meds.

i want this feeling to stay. i wanna be like regular people, function normally, function regularly. have a grasp on my emotions. make decisions in a clear and concise manner. if i had the means to make my ideas into reality, would foolish or lofty ideals stay that way? what is the price of knowing the path to execution?

Mark this day on your lunar calendar because it's when ISRO's Chandrayaan – 3 pulled off a touchdown dance on the coveted South Pole of the Moon. Yeah, that's right, humanity just scored a goal on the unexplored turf of the lunar playground.

What's the fuss about this lunar south pole, you ask? Well, it's like the Moon's “mystery zone” – a whopping 70 degrees south latitude filled with spots basking in eternal sunlight or brooding in perpetual darkness. Drama, anyone?

First off, calling it the “dark side” is a bit misleading. It's not dimmer; it's just that Earth can't peep at this side due to some cosmic lock called “Tidal Locking.” Think of it as the Moon being camera-shy, always showing the same face to Earth, except for those sneaky peeks at the lunar edges.

Why bother crashing parties on this distant lunar terrain? Oh, because Chandrayaan – 1 found sips of water chilling in the Moon's ice caps. Yeah, water! That discovery could be the first clue to a lunar version of “Where's Waldo?” – like, where's life hiding? Plus, that frozen water's got stories about the universe's wet past locked away.

And here's the kicker: this lunar H2O could be the secret sauce for future space parties. Less baggage means not lugging tons of coolants and Aquafina bottles every trip, resulting in slimmer spacecraft and less gas-guzzling. Efficiency, folks!

But, surprise, surprise, talking to this “far side” isn't a walk in the space park. Chandrayaan – 1 played hide-and-seek with ISRO back in 2009, going radio-silent around the ten-month mark of its two-year mission. No warning, just zilch communication. Cue the space mystery music.

Cut to Chandrayaan – 3: this time, it's got Vikram and Pragyan, both armed to the lunar teeth with scientific gear. These gadgets are ready to dissect everything – from the Moon's heat vibes to what rocks its surface. Pragyan's strutting at 1 cm/s, leaving the Moon's surface tattooed with India's flag and ISRO's logo – cosmic graffiti at its finest.

Stay tuned for more lunar escapades and top-secret revelations. Because, hey, the Moon's got tales, and we're here with the lunar scoop!

How can you be apolitical when the world is killing people like you?

In the last week, India has passed rules decriminalising sexual assaults against male bodied persons. Implications of this being – if you're a 18 year old boy and someone assaults you, you will not be protected by any rights. Your body is to be used for other's pleasure at ge expense of your mental and physical health and that is legally okay. If you're a gay boy, exploring the world of kink, oh honey, you are so massively, irreversibly, fucked. If you're a trans person, existing in the society as yourself, you're fucked too.

Last week India made begging illegal. Last month, India turned down petitions for horizontal reservations for trans people. If you're a trans person, you know how everything is against us from day one. If you're born intersex, you will be given away at birth. Your only option is begging, except now it is illegal. So you serve time in jail. Where your labour has essentially no value. You will be kept in bug infested rooms in extreme conditions.

Last year a man was eaten alive by bedbugs while in his prison cell. The bugs buried into his skin. The medical officer was so disgusted by the dying man crawling with bugs that they left and threw up outside the cell. That's the future they want to write for us.

And yet privilege blinds us so, we remain silent and apolitical because at least it isn't us. Yet.

Oppenheimer: What You Probably Missed When You Watched The Movie

Disclaimer: Please ignore the grammatical mistakes, I will be editing it later.

If you love foreshadowing, you will have a deep appreciation for the storytelling in this movie. I believe it is not about the atomic bomb as much as it is about what the bomb reveals about humanity. The beginning sets the tone of the entire movie. The movie starts when the lead explains how stars die to his first and only student who comes to attend his class on Quantum Physics. First, he asks, “Does light exist as particles or waves?” The answer of Quantum Physics gives is both. It is paradoxical, he concludes. So does, the very existence of a star, where it is pushing against gravity, yet it needs it to exist. The moment gravity overpowers, the star ceases to exist. This is projected in the decisions made by Oppie throughout his life. He is a star who is constantly collapsing on himself.

Time and feelings of a person not being linear is demonstrated through the cinematographic choice of putting past in colour and present in black and white then once again in colour when he is older. This is present throughout the movie, where you cannot really keep up with the fast-paced nature of the movie, where characters changed perceptions are represented in their interactions with Oppie in the past and the interactions they have with the board in charge of his security clearance. The moment you see it merge in Oppie's life is when delivers a speech stating he was proud of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the auditorium, but the background shakes, everything is in colour until he walks out. The flashes of cameras transform the screen into a black and white scene.

He used communist means to reach a capitalist end. He housed the employees, he provided the janitor and the scientist, the same infrastructure, medical care and other resources. Furthermore, he used his learnings from his network that educated him about much required policy changes to create a town that could serve his capitalist goal of building a bomb and destroying the competition, which in this case is Japan. Sidenote: War is capitalist and if you disagree, just pay attention to how America, a capitalist country, built its nation on selling weapons. War has always been a way to destroy the competition.

Nolan transforms the ideologies affecting world politics as stages. 1. Socialism (the government funds the town of La Almos) 2. Communism (everybody has access to basic resources, there is collective ownership) 3. Capitalism (the dropping of the bomb)

Of course, every stage is incomplete as it abandons itself before moving onto the next stage. It also represents how Oppie had the capability to have these opposing ideologies exist in his mind, creating conflict and affecting his ability to make decisions based on what he perceives to be the gravity of the situation.

There is an ongoing dark joke throughout the movie, where other characters think the very demonstration of the negative impact of the atomic bomb will instill fear and stop war. This is proven wrong as soon as Oppie tries to use this as a justification for his action of supporting the bombings where his colleague points out, “Until someone builds a bigger bomb.” This then becomes the real threat in the movie where he constantly tries to soothe himself claiming the Hydrogen Bomb Project is just a theory. He mocks the possibility of it happening by claiming that the ideas of the colleague researching about this on his team if implemented, would result in delivering the bomb in an ox cart and not a plane. He knew it to be possible, but he refused to accept it. Not only that, but he has internalized the idea, “How far can theory go?” And he underestimates the impact of it. Just because he was proven wrong by his colleagues in the first half of the movie where mathematically it is not possible to split the atom but in reality it had already been achieved. Despite his mockery, he continues working with theory, hoping for impact. Such dissonance must paralyze a human, but it is not Oppie's dissonance, it is those who are studying him and trying to appeal to their audience's views that Nolan weaponised and presented to the watcher.

The regret he had in real life came later after seeing the impact of his actions, but the movie tries to show that it happened right after the bomb being dropped itself. In fact, it tries to imply it when he quoted Bhagwad Gita during the trial run of the bomb on indigenous people's land they had occupied and built their town on... He later requests the President that the town to be returned to the Indians but we do not know if it actually happens. It is observed when he is walking out after his speech at La Amos and he hallucinates people's faces burning, stepping in a body of a child burnt to crisp, his colleague puking and a happy couple that was making out initially immediately mourning the death of their love/child cowering in a corner. Everybody makes eye contact with him and that is what makes it dreadful.

Paraphrasing the dialogue, “You cannot commit a sin, then expect us to feel sorry for you that it had consequences,” is the moral lesson repetitive throughout the movie. Kitty, his wife, said this when she discovered Oppie's affair resulted in Jean, the communist he was having an affair with, committing suicide. It is also implied she may have been killed where you can see a hand pushing her down in the bathtub but we do not know if it is because she was a communist and the people watching Oppie were watching her and killed her, or it is Oppie manifesting the guilt he felt where he believes he killed her because she asked him to stay, and he chose his wife and children.

Nolan does something different in this movie, where he does not punish Kitty for breaking down. Instead the only few women who appeared, seemed to have been right about everything. The colleague who starts a petition against the bombing, where she tried to bring attention to the possibility of it affecting the reproductive system of women. She gets angry at the male scientists for not taking her seriously, and she exclaims, “Your reproductive systems are more exposed than mine.” While the bomb is being taken away, she is seen delivering a speech where she points our how pointless it is to drop a bomb on Japan after Hitler is dead.

She is once again not taken seriously. When Kitty points out how, Strauss is behind the whole fiasco of Oppie's security clearance being threatened because he mocked him publicly, she is ignored as a woman having a breakdown.

She does not break down when she is a witness to the board of inquiry set up by Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) trying to frame her husband for being a spy on the grounds of him having attending communist parties meeting and having his family and friends part of the party. Plus his contribution towards the refugees in Spain. Before her testimony, everybody seemed to breakdown under pressure, but she handled it well.

The chain reaction ignored by men was noticed by women. This is what is subtly suggested.

Strauss when he concluded that his trial is a trial about a trial, we know both the instances whether it be the inquiry to take Oppie down or the inquiry about Strauss's unjust scrapping of security clearance, did not follow the rules of a trial and were solely in place to punish the accused. Strauss's opinion about Oppie in his monologue where he concluded that he gave Oppie exactly what he wanted, martyrdom. He wanted the guilt that comes with being a self-important man, but it is him projecting, just like Oppie was...

The movie ends with the conversation between Einstein and Oppenheimer where Einstein draws a parallel between himself getting an award and Oppie being rewarded for his achievements after his punishment is over. He will get a medal, he will be celebrated but that dance will be more for people who betrayed him than himself.

Oppie is not satisfied, he tells Einstein, how the possibility that the world's atmosphere could be burnt due to a chain of reactions and the entire world could be destroyed, has happened.

Just like a star, he gave the world a means to fight itself and keeping surviving against the gravity of situations, but he also created a series of chain reactions that will eventually lead to the demise of humanity.

for a long time i thought i am a hater. i complained about things. everything. i would pick fight with people. if you’re thinking me as an adult, no! me as a pre-teen.

i was full of questions. i wanted answers, if i didn’t get them i’d have a breakdown. but as i grew up, i soon realised adults do not have answers. not only that, most adults do not even wants to know. i have tried to see whether they know already so they don’t care, but that is not true. they just do not care about knowing.

i was also a problem child. food and sleep both were extremely deregulated for me. nobody in the village cared. it is normal, it gets okay when they’re an adult. takes time, for some it takes longer time.

i think neurodivergence is common in our villages, in that lifestyle, neurodivergent people always find their places. i mean, nobody really cares if the kid who goes with the goats to the meadows is autistic or not. that kid will be taken care of. if that’s all they can do, they will do that all their life. i think there is safety in that lifestyle. safety some neurodivergent people badly seek. something i desperately seek.

this however did not fit with an urban lifestyle. so i struggled. i had to wake up early. my grandma would shout for waking up at 8, but here i had to wake up at 6 or so. we went to sleep by 10 pm.

when i went to the hostel, i had some amazing teachers. but i had a problem with authority. i would reject whatever they taught and i wrote whatever i thought of the works. write how this name is perfect for the story: and i would write how it is far from perfect. this was never punished, but encouraged. even if i wrote shit stuff. this got quite a bit of attention and i got to participate in shit like recitation, oratory, theatre etc.

however, in 2007 i got outed as gay in front of the whole junior high. that made me not get selected for these events. and others would come over to my bed at night, regardless of i’m sleeping or not. i even got a very bad case eczema owing to this. i was so out of my fucking mind, i would put salicylic acid all over my genitals and later peel the burnt skin off. it didn’t prevent anything, just the itching.

i hated myself too. i embodied the hater. this hatred stayed with me. i was not a good fighter, i can’t fight, but i learnt to hurt people with my words. and i got very good at it.

i did get a lot of creative freedom here. not all directors would allow someone with my surname to be cast, so i learned technical things of the theatre at this point. light, audio, etc. i made wall magazines, i made audio dramas before podcasts were cool. back in 2008/2009.

i returned home one month into class ten with my parents. my mother had a surgery. i handled all homemaking and also caregiving for others in this time. we eventually got a cook, but that cook was so bad, we had to cook anyway. it is at this point i started learning cooking, feeding, taking care of a bed-ridden person. something that i had to do again for my grandfather in class 12 again. he needed intense physiotherapy. we used bricks as weight for that shoulder pull.

home was full of hatred. i have tried to run away, i have been put on meds to force puberty out of me, i was having an emo phase and smoking black cigarettes in the bathroom. we had constant fights. it is at this point i got very badly manipulated by a married woman. my parents got to know, they blamed me, and took away any access to phones and computers. i was using my father’s nokia, mostly for songs and videos. but yeah. i wanted to apply to isi calcutta. she said she’s a professor, who knew people. anyway, this woman would play with my time and make me question my worth. i did not know what boundaries are, i experienced things i never thought was possible. no one prepared me for that. it felt like hell.

i went to college as hater but without boundaries. i did not care about interpersonal boundaries, but i was snarkier. i’d insult people and they wouldn’t even realise. but college was another kinda hell. in my previous schools, they have discriminated against me, yes, but they didn’t fuck up with the marks. college did. i haven’t really faced discrimination like this before. it took years to realise what was going on.

nobody told me about sc-st-obc-general categories. nobody prepared me for anti caste atrocities. nobody prepared me how colleges are hell for both queer and neurodivergent people.

i got assaulted two weeks into the first semester in a room full of people. some dude came and kept grinding on me and wouldn’t leave me alone. i got assaulted more later, but that’s after i came out as a tranny.

i hated here also, questioned authority, tried to went out of the prescribed notion, and i was promptly punished. it was not that i was ever wrong, to be honest, my profs preferred me early for external no-mark reviews because that would generally be praised, yet i kept receiving the lowest marks in the class. snarky wasn’t helping me. they didn’t get it in the first place. i started asking for answers and eventually write a letter asking to show reason, and that’s when i’m told i'll never be allowed to pass here.

i tried to fight, but i wasn’t prepared. my shit has been stolen before, i was jobless. i had to quit uni, went back home, get support from parents. they unwillingly provided, but that soured our relationship further. me coming out as a tranny didn’t have much effect. i did some work, and then left before the pandemic.

just before the pandemic i got into a relationship with this person who only wanted to keep me as an entertainment. the token tranny. it was a roller coaster. he broke up with me and hooked up with this then cis person who was transphobic towards me.

that fucked me up. but it is then i decided i will love. when i came out as non binary in 2017, i had a hoe phase that ended with surprise surprise, assault again. but i met some wonderful people with big hearts. it is then i decided to be kinder. but in 2020 i realised i love people by caring for them. that is how i love. that is the only way i know how to love. i also give my body. as a token of my love. i do not know what else to do.

so i decided i will give love. i have the capacity to. i do not wanna love one person as a partner, but i wanna share my love, in different ways, via different connections. i of course want a partner and i knew i would devote to them.

i know how to take care of others. i don’t know how to take care of myself. but that is okay. i will learn. i am only 29.

my love is mine to give. my hate is consuming. i want to learn to love myself so that the hate doesn’t come out all the time i feel threatened.

i am running on autopilot. i don’t recognise my body. i don’t know what is going on with me. i don’t know what i feel. everything is jumbled in my head. i don’t remember events unless i try really really hard. all memories from the last couple years seem fuzzy.

i have been tired as long as i can remember. i couldn't sleep as child, as a teen, as an adult. i couldn’t eat, i couldn’t do a lot of things. but i could recite whole books from memory by age two even before learning to read, which meant the people around me took it as amusement rather than a sign of lack of development. i had so much issues that are so clearly neurodivergent. i spoke too soon getting out in the world, i had issues with food, took my mother a few hours to feed me anything. i wouldn’t sleep at time, i would stay up all night. i wouldn’t allow touches. so much so that i would even cry and kick people if i was transferred to someone else. i didn’t try to run away from my parents always tho. however, i hated their touches as well, eventually i deeply hated touches from my parents also. to show affection, they’d often hug me or cuddle me without any notice and that made hella uncomfortable. so much so that sometimes i get that flashback in relationships. trust me it’s not fun. i don’t know how to talk about that. i wanna be touched by my partner, but i can’t tell them certain touches reminds me of certain things i am not so proud about?

i sure have adhd. i can never keep attention. like as a kid i got marks deducted from papers solely for “silly mistakes” teachers kept saying if i only paid more attention. but i’m literally unable to. i can’t control it. i have learned to pay more attention to things, but i still get distracted.

i think adhd makes me more tired. it is like the brain is constantly on work. i am trying to get to a routine so that some of the work gets automated, and i do not have to worry about those maybe. that is why i want a routine badly. i am already doing things on autopilot but they’re not predefined. i want to do regular tasks that i need to do daily to be automated.

but yeah, i’m burnt out. i have been taking care of others for some time now. my house had been full with people. i didn’t have to always cook for them, but i absolutely had to clean up after them. also, i do not like touches, a 2 bhk full with 7-8 people means touches are inevitable. i didn’t have space for relaxing or my own privacy.

privacy is a huge issue in my life. i have never had any. in the village i share the bedroom with grandparents/parents/cousins. with my parents, i shared it with my younger brother. i have lived all my life in hostel, and people would come over to my bed at night to force themselves on me. i crave for privacy. i want closed doors. i can’t share bed with anyone but the person i trust. i DO NOT wanna share my bed. it makes me uncomfortable, vulnerable, and i feel like i can’t breathe. i do not wanna share the house also. I am never gonna get unknown roommates. i don’t trust people.

you know, people call me a genius. i don’t think that’s true though. i feel everyone sees what they want to see. i do catch information and process them faster, but that’s mainly because i used to be a voracious reader so i read a lot of books and i can just connect the topics. to people it seems like a huge thing, but i feel this comes natural to everyone. idk, i’m just making connections between things. but people wouldn’t leave me alone. they just assume i know things. and if i do not know, it gets stressful. i do not want that. i can’t know everything. that is not possible. to be honest there are things i actively try to not know. not all knowledge is necessary. sometimes ignorance is great.

i have been taking care of people as long as i can remember. i have been managing home since fifteen years old. i can make perfectly round rotis, and amazing alu-posto. no one in our house cooks khichudi as good as me. i can help people with their work, i don’t have a degree, but trust me i can just learn how to do your work, and help you out. i can hold conversations in any topic, i can clean, i can get your friends snacks, i can mix amazing cocktails. i can pack really efficiently, i can fold clothes, make bed, i can do all homemaking stuff. and i offer it for everyone i love.

i am not complaining. i want to do this. i want to care for people i love. i just wish that you see me. you see me doing all the labour. all this service for you so that you don’t have to. i want to take up on the mundane so you can focus on doing what you do best. all i wish is that you come back to me, put your arm around me and put my head on your shoulder and tell me how much you appreciate me for taking care of the small things. but that never happens, ever.

like homemaking is a huge chunk of work. you spend most of your time in your home. homemaking is the primary job there. we need to keep our houses a favourable environment for us. even on a depressed lonely day with low productivity, it is at least two to three hours worth of work to manage a home. a well running home with everything organised and cleaned with multiple meals is whole days worth of work. and there is literally no vacation. i have been talking to fellow homemakers, and all of us are complaining about not being seen for the work we do.

i feel this is not done. we make homes a loving home, we make homes a safe space for you to heal. we provide unconditional support when external stressors affect you. we want appreciation, validation, we want to be seen. for the silent labour we put in our homes. we don’t want our love’s labour to be taken for granted.

this year, i couldn’t fall asleep even if i tried very hard. i was exhausted, yet i would stay up for 28-30 hours non stop. i couldn’t sleep. my shoulders would get numb and i couldn’t move them. it felt like millions of needles piercing my joints, yet i couldn’t sleep.

i now know that i was burnt out. i still am. i still am struggling to sleep. i have nothing to give anymore, i am completely empty. my brain is blank most of the times. sometimes i do not even recognise what my body parts are doing. sometimes i do some things and then i take note of what exactly i did. i say things and i don’t even understand what i meant. life has become reactionary. instead of planning beforehand what to do, i am waiting for things to happen to react to that.

i have been fulfilling other people’s needs so much they have started expecting things from me that violate my personal boundaries. i feel like i have turned into a doormat for other people who just demand care and withhold love if i’m unable to meet it. i have felt so lonely managing everything and not having anyone to talk to, i feel like i’m going mad. i am tired of always standing on the edge of a cliff and be feared of messing up.

i want attention. i don’t wanna be a silent worker. if i do work for you and you don’t appreciate it, it makes me feel small, like you expect me to do it anyway, like what ever i had or wanted doesn’t matter. i exist for your work only. i hate that. i want you to see me, i want you to see the small things i do for you.

i would like to rest. i can’t go on anymore. i’d like to take a pause. i would like you to take care of me, but if you can’t, i understand. my purpose in your life is over now.

i want my partner to be here. i want my partner to tell me, “i see you, you can rest now, i can manage things” but that will never happen. i want to be babied, fed in the bed, taken care of, to be read stories to, kissed on the spine, and lots and lots of cuddle with his body weight on me. i want him to love me, kiss my forehead, wipe my tears and tell me he won’t abandon me just because i am difficult to love right now. i want him to squeeze me as i squirm to get out of his touch while secretly wishing it never ends.

is it too much to ask to be taken care of?

Today on our regularly scheduled family phone calls, my mother said, so casually, as though as an afterthought: Oh tor bon {redacted} der sathe {redacted} geche (your sister has joined a cult named {redacted} and has gone to {redacted}).

Mom went on to talk about the neighbours and their leaky pipes and the damp walls. All I could do was nod and smile.

My 19 year old sister has travelled to {redacted} with a cult. My 19 year old sister, who has never gone to school by her own has travelled halfway across the country with a cult. My 19 year old barely out of school sister with no financial independence has gone to some remote cult compound by herself.

The religious fanaticism in our society is so pervasive that no adult thought to stop her. My parents said it's not their place to comment because she is my cousin sister. So? I would do something even if she was my worst enemy's sister. Yes, even if she was my 6th grade English teacher's sister. The fact is that she is young, impressionable and vulnerable.

She had turned to religion to deal with grief like most adults in our lives guide us to. At what point did God turn from a loving, ethereal being with infinite knowledge and kindness to a crusty old shirtless man who sees no harm in indoctrinating emotionally vulnerable people (let's be honest, people means young women) to tend to his whims? When did God go from omnipresent to living in a shitty ass cult compound in some ass crack of the country?

My sweet, amazing, naturally green-fingered little sister is in a cult. And no one seems to comprehend or care for the dangers that loom ahead.

(Update: I have contacted her, she's coming back home next Saturday, tickets have been booked. I have hidden the name of the cult and the place she's travelled to because I don't want undue attention on her during this time. She is living in a compound with 50 other women. My sister is neurodivergent as well so it's difficult to tell if she actually is okay but I'm hopeful. I will also be contacting local women's NGOs near the compound and the office she was indoctrinated at once she's home safe.)

Three days up, three days down: DAY ONE

The morning sun scorches my skin through the large window beside my bed. The sun burns; burns through my skin, makes its way to my brain, tipping it to a boiling point, like a fire devouring my gloom, destroying all my attempts to resist waking up. And just like that my mood shifts. The slumpy slumber is broken with heat and sweat. I feel the sun is magick! I feel ready. I feel up. The world feels bearable. The world makes sense again. The world feels kind. The world feels beautiful. The world feels wonderful. I feel motivated. I feel upbeat. I care about the world again.

I prance up and glide through my room, metaphorically of course. I look around and I see all the pending to-do things that have been piling up for the last three days. My double bed only has a small spot clean to fit my crouched body to rest, there are a few wrappers and too much of crumbs from my stressful binge eats, a few packets of cigarettes, a few sweat-reeking clothes, my journal and an array of academic books, notebooks and story books and my laptop, scattered around. The dishes in the sink have become a stinky hill of metal and glass. The bathroom rack is a hay short of all my used clothes falling into the mud-footprint-stained floors. I pour a dollop of cat food into the bowls for my cats. I only wash my coffee mug and a spoon to make my morning coffee. I savour it, each sip with a puff of smoke. My procrastinating for half an hour delays my mental to-do list for the day, but better late than never, right? I want to daydream because it’s such a good day because I’ve found a good song to groove to because I feel amazing and I want to enjoy this moment; yet I push and put on my chores playlist and scrub my heart out, scrubbing the dishes to perfection, taking a minute and a half for each item, scrubbing hard water stains, scrubbing through fungi, and making sure they smell good and are up to the proper hygienic standards. Twenty minutes pass by as I realise that my gown is damped from water splashes and that’s exactly when I think “I need to clean the iron silted taps!” Hence, I do what I do best, go take a smoke break as my gown dries up from the fan fuelled wind.

The music switches to indie-rock and I almost fall back into dreamland, BUT I can’t rest. I cannot daydream in peace on a garbage of a bed. My routine is easy and I am efficient, at least sometimes. But the hardest part of making a bed, is changing bedsheets. I am very particular about it. While removing the dirty bedsheet, the dust should not fall back into the mattress; the way to prevent this is to tuck out the corners carefully and then folding the bedsheet in from four corners and then lifting it off the mattress. My neurotic brain perfects the act with every change. Now, when it comes to placing a new bedsheet, I want the sheet aligned properly without creases like they have it in hotels. This particularity of how things should be, do not bother me today, I do not hate it today, I enjoy it today and pat myself for being almost a ‘perfectionist’.

Now what shall I do? After the thorough sweep and mop of the entire furniture-less apartment, I do feel tired but I also need to catch up to three days’ worth of productivity. I end up deciding to do more chores, sort the laundry, dust a bit and arrange the things back at their right place. Today, I am convicted to go home; my parents have been wanting to talk to me and spend some time for a while now.

I completed my post graduation in 2021 and thought I wouldn't have to look back at academia ever again. End of last year I got diagnosed with ADHD and ASD. Although the doctor refused to treat me for it, it made sense that I am neurodivergent. I had been craving the structure of student life for the last two years so I took the leap and applied for a MBA program. It's a pretty chill degree after hardcore Physics for 5 years. I had always been told I'm smart and academically prone to excellence. I always took it with a grain of salt. I know my worth is not all hard work. A lot of it is privilege. I stand wham in the middle of the wheel of power and powerlessness after all. Mentally ill, lower middle class faggot with no generational wealth but a pretty surname, a suburban upbringing and a fluent vocabulary in Inglis. Talk about centrists, eh?

In my undergrad, I raw dogged my depression, possible neurodivergence, anxiety, OCD and whatever else doctors fancy I am afflicted with. It obviously caused my grades to fall majorly. The only time in my life when I wasn't at the top percentile. Today while finishing admission process for the MBA, I applied for a scholarship awarded based on merit and I was told I don't qualify because my bachelor's marks were low. I have a decade long academic performance data to draw from and I don't qualify because one year when I contemplated jumping off the train on my way back home from class every single day, I slacked a little, prioritised healing over hieroglyphs on a piece of paper. Because for the first time in 20 fucking years on Earth, I listened to my body and did my best and not the best I was supposed to do. I don't mind not qualifying for a scholarship. My point is that merit which seems like such a well defined term is not based on any rules. It's whatever the one determining it chooses it means. How can you quantify anything when you pick and choose your input data?

Merit is a scam, a buzzword made up to pander to the status quo. When UC people get handouts, it's called scholarships and grants. When marginalized castes, religions, genders get the same scholarships and grants, we're called beggars, exploiters cheating people off their hard earned money with “emotional blackmail”. We're called out for monetising our identities as though our identities exist only for the consumption, romanticisation and distortion by the oppressor groups.

This is a PSA. If you're a minority, you're not void of merit. You just aren't the ones we'd like to give a boost in life. You were meant to never do great things and if you somehow manage to still do something with this wilfully broken system, well the least we can do is make it horribly, cruelly, unnecessarily difficult.

Hot and Sour Dumpling Soup for the middle class Indian.

What makes a good recipe? Everything and nothing. To me, it's one that keeps things simple with just the right ingredients, easing the load on my neurodivergent brain. That's why this dumpling soup is the perfect blend of elegance and ease – a quasi-fancy creation for when you're motivated to MAKE something but dread the fear of failure.

(⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)

Ingredients:

• Ginger and garlic, chopped.

• Veggies (carrots, beans, or frozen vegetables), one gree chili (split in half)

• Button mushrooms for umami flavor (optional)

• Salt, sugar, soy sauce, red chili sauce, and vinegar (adjust to taste)

• Dumplings (momos from your locality is the way to go, but I'll also provide a short and easy homemade method)

• Cornflour and pepper powder slurry (cornflour mixed with water to thicken the soup)

-a pinch of MSG (optional)

-coriander stems (optional)

Instructions:

1. In a pot, sauté the ginger and garlic until fragrant.

2. Add button mushrooms and cook until lightly browned, then add the rest of the veggies and cook them until they're slightly tender.

3. Pour in water or vegetable broth to cover the veggies, and let it simmer for 5-6 minutes on medium high flame.

4. Season the soup with salt, sugar, soy sauce, red chili sauce, and vinegar. Taste and adjust the seasonings according to your preference. Add the coriander stems too and simmer for 3-4 minutes.

5. Carefully taste test the soup to ensure the flavor is to your liking before adding the cornflour and pepper powder slurry. Adjust the seasonings if needed.

6. Gradually add the cornflour and pepper powder slurry while stirring the soup until it reaches your desired thickness.

7. Once the soup is at the desired consistency, you can add the dumplings and warm them up.

8. Optionally, you can garnish the soup with julienne-cut veggies for a fancier presentation.

I bought Momos from my locality for Rs 45, which turned out great match for this soup. Alternatively, here's a simple chicken dumpling preparation.

Instructions for Wrappers

Ingredients: – 2 cups all-purpose flour – ½ teaspoon salt – ½ cup warm water

Instructions: 1. Mix flour and salt in a bowl. 2. Gradually add warm water and knead into a dough. Coat it with vegetable oil. 3. Cover and let it rest for 30 minutes. 4. Roll the dough thin, then cut into squares. Alternatively, make a long log and cut it into small pieces, then roll it into circles.

For stuffing: – 500g ground chicken – 2 cloves garlic, minced – 1-inch piece of ginger, grated – onions, finely chopped – 1 tablespoon soy sauce – 1 tablespoon oil – Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. In a bowl, mix the ground chicken, minced garlic, grated ginger, chopped onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, and pepper until well combined.

2. Lay out the wrappers on a clean surface. Place a small spoonful of the chicken mixture in the center of each wrapper.

3. Moisten the edges of the wrapper with water and fold it in half. Press the edges firmly to seal the dumpling.

4. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the dumplings. Cook them for about 3-5 minutes or until they float to the surface. Alternatively, you can steam or pan-fry the dumplings if you prefer.

When I moved away from home to a new city at the age of 21, I had no real life skills. I knew how to make black tea (don't ask me about steep time, that'll be another blog someday when I have picked up tea as my next hyper fixation) and maggi. And honestly none of them were very good. One day I wanted to eat fried maggi because baby steps. So I purchased some onions and a 30 rupee serrated knife from the store. I didn't know what it mattered if it's serrated or not, I just found the cheapest thing and grabbed it. The next morning, my roommate bought some bread and some butter and I thought to myself, time to add another dish to my ever growing list of culinary prowess – buttered bread. Revolutionary, I know! I learnt so fast that serrated knives cannot double as butter knives. This led to a well set up rabbit hole dive into knife physics. Well, I don't know if that's the official name but that's what we're calling it.

When we think of a knife, the first visual that comes to mind is a stainless metal blade with one side tapered down to a sharp edge while the opposite side remains dull, ending in a handle made of wood, aluminum, titanium, bone, carbon fiber, stainless steel, resin, etc. Otherwise known as a regular kitchen knife. By definition, sharpness is the cutting ability of an edge. So, basically the sharper something is the better it is at cutting. So what does that mean to me? Jack {redacted}. So, down went the rabbit hole and I found a blog that explained sharpness in terms of force. And it made sense. Finer the point, higher the pressure – force per unit area. Extend the point linearly in one direction and you have the outline of an edge. So the same knife will apply more pressure on it's pointy side than the duller side. That means that sharpness depends on not just the edge thickness, but also the force applied to do the cutting, and the weight of the blade and the handle.

Once we have understood what makes a sharp knife, we need to understand what to do with it. Chop and slice are the 2 most basic things we do with a knife. And it all begins with a cut. A cut begins with a crack – the cutting edge of the blade makes a crack in the object you wish to cut. We then apply a force to drive the knife further down into the crack in the object. The edge concentrates this force due to its lower surface area and that's why you can slide down with a sharp knife easily while you'd have to put a lot more effort (force) trying to achieve the same with a duller knife.

Another thing to realise is that the cut that the knife's cutting edge makes is a smaller volume than what the non-cutting edge can fit into. This is why it's best when the taper to the cutting edge is really gradual in a knife as opposed to an axe, where your application requires more hacking than cutting. The thickness of the non cutting edge is also of interest. The taper has an optimal angle ranging from 17-22 degrees. This way you're not breaking the object along the initial cut line when your blade moves down beyond the cutting edge. You're using the rest of your blade to gently coax the two sides of the cut away from each other.

Another important factor is weight. Heavier your knife, less force you have to apply to achieve a similar result as with a lightweight knife. You can just let it slide down and thank Gravity for being just right on your home planet. However, a heavier knife will exhaust your wrists faster. So here comes something every idealist dreads – the tradeoff! Do we want a knife which will be easy on our shoulders and forearms or do we want easy on the wrist? Fortunately, finding a balance is possible.

Even though the physics of a perfect knife is absolute, the perfect knife might vary from person to person depending on their preferences, height of the person, height of the surface where they're cutting, posture, technique, objects they're cutting, a whole plethora of materials they might be biased towards. For example, for me the perfect knife to cut onions with is when the knife is in another person's hand and I'm nowhere near the kitchen.

First of all, a lovely welcome to Talk Is Artes. I am Artes Blackheart and I have lots of opinions. And here I will talk about stuff, because I talk a lot. And y'all will listen to me. Because of course you will.

I'm gonna be talking about Oppenheimer today, and of course there are going to be spoilers. Duh.

So, if you're a science nerd like me, you cannot walk out of an Oppenheimer without saying, “wow”. The movie, in a very rudimentary form is a love letter to the physics of the early 20th century, talking about quantum physics and radioactivity, arguably the phenomena that breathed new life into physics, thought for so long to be a closed subject; and the people behind it, Einstein, Szilard, Fermi, Bohr, Heisenberg and the man himself, J. Robert Oppenheimer. It truly felt like the Avengers' Endgame for science nerds (totally didn't steal that from a friend, love you Darshna). In essence, it's a story about the science, the bomb, the politics, the physics and the egos. I wish I could have finished that sentence with “and the man himself”. And there lies my problem with the movie.

Because I am a terrible movie reviewer, I am going to refer to a scene at the right end of the movie. Robert Downey Jr. in his role as Lewis Strauss gives one of his signature monologues where he speaks about how he knew what kind of a person Oppenheimer really was, all along, and the fact that Oppenheimer, will just become a martyr in his story. I think this monologue sums up exactly how Nolan saw Oppenheimer, a person whose achievements can warrant nothing but martyrdom, someone whose achievements far encompassed his flaws.

Nolan's Oppenheimer, played by the flawless Cilian Murphy is Oppie, the father of the Atom Bomb, beloved by his immediate peers, considered the greatest scientific mind of his time, yet someone who is despised by people who were shadowed by his cult of personality, someone who is way too trusting, except for the time he is the polar opposite, but most importantly, someone, whose flaws don't feature on the silver screen, where his flaws are depicted as the whims of a master craftsman. Oppie can't admit to being Communist, Oppie can't commit to Jean and in essence, Oppie can't commit to where he stands on the destruction his greatest creation has caused. Yet, he gets away with all of it with the charisma that only Tommy Shelby possesses, and the hallucinations and flashbacks that only a Nolan protagonist goes through. But first, you need context. It's time to talk about the bomb.

An invention that awes and scares to this very day, an invention that will always be at the forefront of world politics, an invention that truly has, to an extent, prevented global conflict. A weapon that gives humanity the power to end its own race, a power befitting of the gods. Prometheus stole from the gods and gave humanity fire, and Oppenheimer gave humanity the fire that would blaze across the world, wrapping it in fear and mutually assured destruction. Nolan crafts a masterful story, like only he can, crafting the magnum opus of his work, through Oppenheimer, following him through his appointment as the Director of the Manhattan Project and his creation of the Los Alamos facility. Oppenheimer is almost considered a Messiah at Los Alamos, controlling every little detail, and crafting the deadliest weapon known to man. The music and cinematography is regal, to say the least. Everything leading upto the test detonation of the bomb (Project Trinity) is crafted to absolute perfection, as we have come to expect from Christopher Nolan. The soundplay, the lighting, the angles during the detonation cannot be put into words by my writing. And, oh, the detonation, itself, there is nothing you can do but stare open-mouthed at the screen at the magnanimity of the blast. It is cinema, as it is meant to be; something that captivates, something that holds your heart hostage, something that blows up every sense in your body.

The successful bombs are then carted away, ready to take the lives of more than 250,000 Japanese people. And we are left with a scene of Oppenheimer standing at the boundary of the Los Alamos facility, alone in the sunlight, having crafted his masterpiece. The bomb is then detonated and here is where Oppenheimer's dilemmas and my problems with the movie begin. Nolan's Oppenheimer can go through the major panic attacks having visions of dead Japanese soldiers yet having the American bravado to say “We don't know what the results of the bomb are, but I'm sure the Japanese didn't like it”. There is something about Oppenheimer that I feel that the movie couldn't resolve, for as much as Nolan likes black vs white characters, his writing of characters unfortunately rests in the gray. Be it Teller and his relationship, as well as the entire debacle on the Super Bomb (hydrogen bomb for you nerds), or his relationship with his own wife, a lot is left to be a desired about how he really feels about things. And Nolan keeps doing this, yes we see a lot of science and we see a lot of really cool Easter eggs that will make you unnecessarily proud of yourself when you spot them, but it's just, if his characters had a little more depth than going into flashbacks about events, maybe just maybe we could see Oppenheimer the way Nolan wanted us to.

The movie eventually became a tale of how Oppenheimer built the bomb to Oppenheimer vs Strauss. Nolan's Batman-esque protagonist vs Nolan's carefully crafted Batman-esque hero has to go through a shattering and scathing closed trial about his AEC security clearance, having already been ostracized about his role with launching the bomb once the Germans had already surrendered, facing betrayals, and criticism on his position, regarding the hydrogen bomb, or the Super, as is affectionately called in the movie, and in here, lies another of Oppie's dilemmas. Oppie is unsure in 1945, but in 1949, he is conflicted more still, and therein lies the the problem. I think his role and dilemmas can be best described in the scene where he meets President Truman after the Japan bombings, where he admits to feeling like having blood in his hands. Truman hands him his handkerchief and tells him to wipe it off, and tells him that history is going to remember that he dropped the bomb and not Oppenheimer. Herein lies the conundrum, Oppenheimer thinks that he is Los Alamos, and ultimately he is the bomb, personified. Yet, history will remember otherwise. This is why I am extremely happy that a movie with him as the focus was made, Oppenheimer is a complex character, and even though a lot of his flaws were overlooked, the Father of the Atomic Bomb deserves the attention of a world so perilously close to war and conflict. A message as to what science and what people can accomplish if they set their minds to it.

I love you all. Stay hydrated.

The 12th episode of the 4th season of Young Sheldon, a sitcom about the brilliant prodigy of physics, finds the hotshots of science teaming up with the unlikely, not-a-scientific-bone-in-her-Texan-body Meemaw (Sheldon's maternal grandmother) for her crochet skills : to create a porous sleeve to suspend a sphere in a buffer solution. Of course even as a physicist I have no idea which exact experiment this is, but that's an exploration for another day. We often think of science as this detached set of observations and rules floating around in a vacuum but that's not the case. Science is regular. It's a set of regular, everyday phenomenon, observations and conclusions derived thereon.

Archaeologists theorize that early humans across Asia and Europe would sew fur and skin clothing with needles made of antlers and threads made of animal sinew. An art with such humble beginnings has found its way into every moment of our lives. Thirty seven thousand years after the first human sewed themselves a piece of clothing to fight off hyperthermia on a cold winter night in Europe, another performed a simple suture on an open gash on a human shoulder in Egypt, saving another life. Humanity has since trekked a long way to develop a wide variety of stitches – for a wide varity of applications. Clothing and surgery are probably the biggest industries that uses the skill of sewing but related industries like taxidermy, book binding, fashion accessories, soft toys, beddings, upholstery also use some particular sewing methods. Whether it is a continuous stitch, discontinuous or a combination of two, all of the places they belong in, all the pieces of flesh or fabric they hold together is determined by one simple thing: tensile strength.

The “pulling force” that each stitch applies on the stitched medium and the thread needs to find the perfect balance. Tight stitches will lead to puckers – a bane we've moulded into a boon and created the perfectly easy way to create texture in fabrics. Embrace the pucker further and you end up with ruffles! How ingenious! Stitches when too loose will barely hold your fabrics together. Yet again, we found a way to make lemonade out of the metaphorical sewing lemons and invented the basting stitch! Finding the perfect tension while hand sewing is like the story of Goldilocks- it takes time, practice and observation to find the tension that’s just right. The main way to regulate the tension in your thread is to observe the way it feels when you pull on it by pressing your thumb of the fabric+thread junction. Another way of regulating the tension is to find the right length of thread. I find waxed thread that just reaches above my shoulder to be the perfect length for book binding, unwaxed polyester thread that reaches just till my shoulders to be the right length for hemming and joining stitches, embroidery thread that reached right beyond my forearm to be the right length for embroidery. A simple continuous stitch can hold a teddy bear from spilling it's stuffing and a human from spilling their guts. Many would call this a morbid juxtaposition but I find beauty in it. Sewing is often overlooked as an art form, or maybe it is overtook by its prettier sibling, crocheting in recent years. The true skill in sewing is to learn to make “tension” obey your instructions.

The two most basic stitches to play around with (specially if you're learning to sew by hand for the first time in your life) are : * Straight stitch / run stitch – lay your material down. Use your needle as though it were a dolphin jumping in and out of the waves of the ocean, only your fabric is the ocean. You will soon recognise that this is not the best way to stitch fabrics that unravel at the ends. That's when you experiment with different hems (Check out French hems). * Back stitch – again, lay your material down. Use your needle dolphin to go into the fabric and come up for air. Once you're up, backflip to the exact middle of your last dive and come up for air again. And there you have it, a continuous stitch that is a little more secure.

(Tell you a secret, back stitches are one of the strongest hand sewn stitches to exist! It doesn't unravel easily and is easy to repair.)

There's a lot more to sewing than meets the eye. Once you know how to sew you'll have to learn posture and lighting to work in. If you're taking up sewing as a hobby, remember it is an art and it deserves your respect.

They are everywhere. They are overwhelming. They are inclusive. They occupy all the place in the world, yet, when we try to take over a single iota of space, they brand us as groomers, political ideologists or whatever the latest buzzword of the day is. Why do they have to be everywhere, in such high numbers, all the time? How come they get to live such easy lives, not having to be plagued by any idea of the very fact that they were born as they were meant to be, and that their identity correlated exactly to what society tells them to be? If we are indeed so free, why the hell is there no space for us, a space where we don't need to hide from eyes that look us up and down, staring into our fucking souls, a space where you are called slurs in hushed conversations. Why? Why do politicians ask for our heads when we just ask for our identity? Why do we have to give so many explanations just for our existence? Everything sucks here and I fucking hate it.