Tag: life

Childhood

sheep

“How dare you do such a thing? You irresponsible, senseless, goat!”

She hung her head in silence, listening to her mother’s tirade. It wasn’t the first time, and wouldn’t be the last. She had done the unforgivable. Again. And her mother would teach her a lesson, again. Despite the many punishments for her carelessness, the little shepherdess couldn’t contain the family sheep. She’d try to steal a quick read from her poetry collection, and the sheep would caper, making her the scapegoat.

— — — — —

“Oh, childhood experience,” she reminisced, when her interviewer asked what had inspired her Pulitzer-winning novel, Black Sheep.

Essaying

essay writing

Over the last week, I prepared for an English exam. That’s when I realised how pathetic of a test taker I am. I had to take an academic-grade exam for work, and having been away from the official learning arena for over four years, I had no idea what to expect. I returned to the classroom environment and its fierce competition, with a little apprehension and more than a little nervousness. I could only think of all the things that could go wrong.

I was reading through sample essays when I noticed how much I had changed since my years at school. The recommended essays looked nothing like the ones I now write. When I write a piece for my personal blog or for a work blog, I try to focus on my voice and my opinion, and then form logical structures. The essays for the test, however, seemed childish to an extent. They tried too hard to be unbiased and cover as many points as possible, resulting in too much generality. It was at that point that I also realised—with much dread—that I too had to write in the same way if I were to acquire a proper score.

Gulping much air and all my doubts, I read essay after essay. Every one of them had the same structure: introduction, merits, demerits, and a conclusion. That should be easy, I thought before sitting down to write my own. I read the first essay prompt and felt all sanity evaporate from my mind. I blanked out. I couldn’t, for a moment, understand what to write or how to write.

I had a meagre amount of time to go from an outline to a final draft—a feat I’d never attempt elsewhere. Yet I had no other choice. I could’ve written a scrappy blog post in that time, but to construct a proper academic essay was harder than I assumed.

The samples looked easy enough, and they read like an immature person’s way of presenting their ideas. And yet only when I had to balance two sides of an argument in one essay—with a time crunch of 20 minutes and word limit of 300—did I understand how hard it must be for students. With so many things to consider, it’s no wonder academic essays lack quality writing, overflowing, instead, with stuffed and half-baked arguments.

Accepting that shamefaced reality, on the day of the exam, I wrote an essay so contrary to my nature, and walked out of the room. I had done what I had to do. I didn’t know how I did, but I know now for sure that I’d never enjoy writing academic essays.

A story

He crouched over the parchment, fingers, enveloping a phoenix quill, quivering in agitated uncertainty. A thousand thoughts flooded his mind, creeping doubt attempting to clamber onto his bony frame.

He cleared his throat to help clear his mind. Characters had walked in and out as remnants of a shady past. He’d animated them, but ended up eliminating them altogether. He’d fallen in love with some and out with others, spending days staring at the sky, his mind wandering.

Throat clearing hadn’t helped. Heaving, instead, he dipped his quill in the ink bottle and scribbled, “It was the best of times,”

Speaking of likes…

Speaking of likes

For a few years now, everyone I know is obsessed over likes on Facebook. It’s become the sort of thing that gives identity to a person. Like a beacon that assures them they’re in the right path.

Everything is about likes. It’s as if our need for recognition and social acceptance has surpassed our ability to self assess. I know I’ve made a decent photograph of the moon last night, and yet I can’t accept it unless I’ve seen a few tens of likes affirming it for me. And if the tens grow into hundreds, my confidence grows with it.

It’s a good thing in a way, because we need self-confidence to uphold ourselves in society. At the same time, however, this incessant desire for others’ approval is making us more dependent than ever. I’ve lived in the eastern part of the world all my life, and the one thing that differentiates the East from the West is that it’s more of a pluralistic society. The western world, however, is more individualistic by nature.

We see pluralism everywhere in the East; from schools that over-indulge in group activities, to local societies that promote the extended family system, to parents who expect children to live with them until they are married off. (That’s a story by itself.)

As people continue to crave more social media recognition, even the West may head towards a more pluralistic society. The current generation is, by principle, broad minded, and so it doesn’t shy away from accepting its dependence on fellows or the previous generation. Even then, this social shift seems to grow faster now than it did in previous years. Soon, we may all become more social. But — for all the wrong reasons.

The problem is social media recognition isn’t genuine. Most of the time, people on Facebook hit on the like button not because they like the post but because they want to acknowledge whoever’s shared the post. It’s a way to let the entire friends community know that they’re just round the corner. In a way, it’s a desperate measure by one person to remind others that they exist.

Though plenty of people use Facebook and other social media for specific reasons like business ads, community building, local selling, and interests and hobbies, that’s only a niche compared to the vast pool of youth who get on Facebook to chat with friends they’ve just said goodbye to at school. I remember, when in school, my classmates making appointments to meet on Facebook at a designated time just so they could chat on FB. It was a status symbol then—about seven years ago. Not much has changed since, except now it’s Snapchat.

This tendency is making us — both the eastern and western population — unable to survive without one another. What’s ironic though, is that while a proper pluralistic society means to promote healthy social living, we, in reality, aren’t looking for actual human interaction. We’re, instead, seeking recognition through the inanimate, yet animated GIFs and laughing faces. It’d be interesting to see how our society progresses from here. Do you folks agree? Or am I just being paranoid? (I’ve heard I could be.)