Monday Musings - Chaddi Talk

Happy Monday, everybody! It's an exciting week at 22 Nelson Street as somebody will be turning 25 tomorrow. And because this 'somebody' has taken both today and tomorrow off to stay at home playing video games (all day, everyday), I've been noticing some of his peculiar chaddi traits. Overall, I've been noticing things and thinking about them so the best way to organize all these thoughts would be through a blog post. So here goes.

  • Let's talk Chaddi: For my non-Indian audience, chaddi means underwear. Shane has an entire section of a chest of drawers dedicated solely to his chaddis but he wears only a selct 7 or 8 of them. They're the ones that keep coming into the wash and they're the only ones he'll wear. I've tried a few tactics to test and confirm this theory. First, I tried placing this select group of chaddis at the very back of the drawer where it's difficult for his chubby hands to reach them. Turns out that chubby hands don't come in the way of chaddi bliss. Then, I tried picking out his chaddi while he was in the shower. I found the chaddi I picked out stuffed into a remote corner of the drawer as he strutted off in his favourite pair of underwear. Do all boys do this? Do girls do this as well? If you have a particular brand/type of underwear you prefer, then why fill an entire drawer with underwear you never wear?

  • How does it feel to not finish a book?

    Till date, there's not a single book that I started and didn't finish, no matter how horrible I felt while I was in the process of forcing myself to read it. It's one of my many weird compulsions. I remember the time I read James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and almost ended up in tears because of how boring I thought it was. But I still finished that book.

    I recently read somewhere that stoppping a book you don't enjoy does wonders to your happiness. If you find yourself holding on to a book for weeks, and if the book you're currently reading doesn't make you excited to pick it up, it's a) not giving you the kind of pleasure books are known to give readers and b) stopping you from picking up another more exciting book. While this makes perfect sense to me, I'm finding it hard to navigate around my compulsion to finish the book in hand. I'm currently reading a book that I'm not a big fan of. And I have a very exciting book sitting on my shelf, waiting to be picked up. A part of me wants to just stop reading Book 1 and dive into Book 2 but my complulsion is holding me back. Do you relate? Have you ever set doen a book you didn't enjoy to pick up a new one?

  • Friends of the blog: This morning, as soon as I woke up, I had a nice long chat with someone who became my friend as a result of reading this blog (Hi Krishnapriya!). She and I are from the same city but don't have any mutual friends or any other common link between us. But she came across my blog, started talking to me, and we became friends. That got me thinking about all the friends I've made in the past year as a result of this blog and it's crazy to think what my life would have been like without those friends. Can you believe that Meenal wouldn't be my friend today had it not been for this blog? Imagine if I'd stopped writing after that falling out with my family in January of last year! Also, looking back, I feel so happy that I stuck by this rule from the beginning:

    It's the one piece of advice I'd give anyone looking to grow an audience and make worthwhile connections through blogging. Know your pace and update as often as you feel you can. It can be every day, every weekday, every weekend, once a week or even once a month. But stick to your pace once you make a commitment if you're looking to grow.

    But coming back to the point, I wish I could put to words how grateful I feel for this platform and all the good people who've come into my life as a result of it.

  • Short Stories: I can't tell you how many requests I've been getting from people asking me to write more stories. Some are nice and polite requests while others are more demands than requests. Some people have sent me emails in all caps, "shouting" at me and demanding more short stories while some others have told me that they've stopped reading the blog after I stopped writing short stories.

    But here's the thing. This blog is my happy place where I write according to my mood. If I'm in the mood to write short stories, I'll write short stories. If I'm in the mood to go on a rant, I go on a rant. If I'm in a humourous mood, I make people smile like goofballs at their computer/phone screens. I cannot force myself to produce content just for the sake of it. That's another compulsion of mine. I cannot write something that doesn't come from the heart or hold meaning to me.

    I realise that it's been a while since I wrote short stories but I cannot force myself to produce them when I don't feel like it in my gut. Most of my stories were written in a frenzy, multiple parts written at once, sometimes even in the early hours of the morning while Shane snored beside me. If a story like that comes back to me, I'll be sure to write it. Until then, this is my blog and shouting at me is not going to make me write more of the content you might be looking for.

Phew! I can hear the clanking of machinery inside my skull as a result of exercising my tiny brain. There's smoke escaping my ears as an indication of overthinking. These Monday musings have overworked my li'l brain and I'm going to take the rest of the week off. Just kidding! I'll see you tomorrow byeeee!