I Just Wanna Be A Girl!

Today, I read Petrarch’s Canzoniere 90 and then went directly to read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. I’ve read both of them individually before, but today was the first time I’ve read them in relation to each other, and that was pretty interesting. Before I get into that, let’s quickly look at them individually. Petrarch’s sonnet talks about how conventionally beautiful his lover is. He compliments her and then says how amazing the woman is. He talks about her physical features and about how her beauty is almost divine. He idealizes her beauty and describes her as an angel. On the other hand, Shakespeare is kind of the opposite. He almost trashes his Dark Lady in his sonnet. He talks about how her features are unconventional, and they aren’t what people would say are traditionally beautiful. At first glance, it looks like total slander and kind of disrespectful. However, at second glance, the end of the poem says that he loves the dark lady despite her flaws and different beauty. So, here’s...

A few days ago, I got to visit home. So, for some context, I just moved for my master’s and got to spend a few hours at home on my way somewhere else. There’s just something about your home city that feels like a warm hug. When I got off the train at Chennai, the evening warmth enveloped me. There was peace in the knowledge that the people here would understand the language I spoke without any difficulty. There was comfort in the fact that I was safe because I knew my way around and didn’t need to ask for directions. Even the smell – though it was sour – was welcoming. There was familiarity in the wind blowing in my hair and the dust settling on my face. I knew all the stores lining the way home and the bumps on the road. I found pleasure in being picked up and driven home by someone I trusted, when I didn’t have to make sure someone was watching my location and keeping an eye on me. I was at peace when I got to drink water from home, ’cause the taste of water at home just hits differe...

T oday, I got to go to Francis Xavier College in Tirunelveli as part of a faculty development program. I was helping facilitate it. Over the course of the event, I made a really interesting observation about the power of attire. So, picture this: a man walks on stage wearing a suit and tie with polished shoes. People in the audience would feel intimidated and think that he was someone very important and out of reach. This man wouldn’t feel approachable. In contrast, imagine the same man in jeans and a shirt with sandals. This would ease the crowd into things and make them relaxed. It would make them feel like the man is one of them. Right? This interesting technique is what the MD of the IT company I was with used to break the ice between the team and the college professors. His demeanor put them at ease and helped them open up. As expected, when faced with a stranger, the professors were a little shy, and we had a formal icebreaking session with a game to put them at ease. However, I ...

So, as you probably know, I’m a creative writing student. What this means is that I learn about how to write specific styles and genres, and specifically explore things I haven’t explored much before. Today’s class was about writing poetry, following a specific meter and rhythm. That kinda means that all the lines in the poem have to sound the same. When I heard about that, I was pretty apprehensive. I’d written poetry before, but it just flowed out of me. It didn’t have a particular style or beat to it. They were just words that made me feel something. I don’t consider myself a poet, but I like writing this kind of poetry. So, back to the topic, to ease us into this activity, my professor first wrote up the rhythm he wanted us to follow. Then, he asked us to say random words that might fit into it. He didn’t give us a theme or topic. There were no other restrictions, other than the rhythm. As a class, we called out random words, seeing if they made sense when they were put together. I...

First of all, what does it mean to be a dark romance hero?  In the simplest terms, he is usually a man with questionable morals. He might be violent, feared, unpredictable, possessive, or willing to cross lines that a conventional romantic hero would never cross. He is often morally grey, and sometimes, quite simply, a bad person who happens to be capable of love. Whatever form he takes, the dark romance hero is rarely the kind of man everyone around him feels safe with. And then, there's Maari. I just rewatched Maari and Maari 2, and I ended up realizing that Maari is, in many ways, a stereotypical dark romance hero. He is over a decade old, and I grew up watching him long before I ever knew what dark romance was.  First of all, Maari is a 'bad boy.' By that I mean someone with questionable ideals. He does not mind indulging in violence, even reveling in it. The people around him fear him. His reputation precedes him. He doesn't try to convince anyone that he's a g...

  The Riordan Voice Rick Riordan is an American writer, best known for creating the bestselling series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Riordan was a middle school teacher before turning to writing, and his works span various mythologies, making them accessible and interesting to young readers. Rick Riordan writes through narrators with very different personalities, backgrounds, and voices, yet his books still have something that makes them unmistakably Riordan. This voice is obvious because of the recurring patterns of humour, conversational narration, and contemporary language. These features keep showing up even when Riordan changes his narrator, his setting, and even the mythology behind the story. First, let’s look at the different series and narrators he uses, before diving into the similarities between the series. The first one we will look at is Percy Jackson and the Olympians , narrated in first person by the protagonist, Percy. The Heroes of Olympus is narrated in...

 To start off with, prosody is not a style of writing. It is not a literary form. Prosody can be understood as the ‘music’ of language. It includes rhythm, stress, meter, and feet. It also deals with intonation and the way people read poetry. One important part of prosody is syllabic structure. The meter and feet show readers how to read the poem. It helps them understand how the poem should be interpreted too. Here are some tricks for identifying the feet used in a poem. Firstly, there are two kinds of words - content words and function words. Content words are containers of meaning. Single-syllable content words are usually stressed. Function words have syntactic importance. Single-syllable function words are usually unstressed. Suffixes and prefixes are also usually unstressed. There should be a connection between rhythm and the meaning the poem is supposed to convey. If a poem starts with an unstressed syllable, the poem is usually sombre. Look at “Elegy Written in a Country Ch...

I’ve always been a consistent writer, but now, as a Creative Writing student, it’s even more important. Writing every day doesn’t just mean you have more to publish. It means that you have the discipline and dedication needed to make sure you pursue your craft seriously. I’ve been writing for years now. Sometimes, it’s just for me. Sometimes I erase everything I write or delete it. Other times, I might like it and share it with other people. Here, what matters isn’t how much you write or what you write about. What matters is the fact that you keep at it. Through my writing journey, I’ve learned how important it is to keep going. Consistency isn’t just about writing. It’s also about trusting yourself and being confident in your writing. It’s important to understand that you don’t need to listen to everyone else’s feedback. Sure, you can have beta readers and ARC readers. You can listen to some people you trust. But that doesn’t mean you need to listen to everyone. Your writing is yours....

 Today, I got to go to the Bangalore International Short Film Festival (BISFF). I’m the farthest thing from a cinephile, but my college arranged a trip to see some of the screenings. There was one that really stuck with me. I don’t know the name of it, because we entered the room a bit late. It was set in North India. The movie was about a couple from two different classes - lower and higher. They were trying to get a teaching job in the same city as each other. To do so, they had to bribe a government official. The man had trouble there, because to arrange the money, he had to sell his father’s shop. This shop meant everything to his father and when he asked his father if he wanted to leave the city, he said no. So here, the man ended up having to choose between the girl he loved and wanted to marry, and his father. At the same time, the girl would be alientated from or disowned by her family if she married this man. She was willing to do that, but the man wasn’t willing to compro...

Before we look into a personal essay, it’s important to know a bit about the essay as a literary form. Essays are a prose form - usually non-fiction - written for public consumption. They can be published in journals, newspapers, magazines, etc. They were popularized in the 17th and 18th centuries. This was partially because of the rise of the middle class. So, personal essays are usually written about people who usually have a very public life. They offer insights into the lives of people that readers are interested in. For example, a celebrity, singer, or actor. When such people write about themselves, about intimate moments that the press don’t yet know about, it’s called a personal essay. This is important because the idea of the self these days has become more personal and debatable. People could ponder for a long time about the kind of person they are, versus the kind of person they are portrayed as. There is a lot of focus on the self and the individual. A personal essay should ...

What does it mean if something is aesthetic? It's pleasing. It's pleasant. It's easy on the eyes. It could be appealing physically or otherwise. It might be something that's well organized. Organized chaos. It's beautiful. It's pretty. There a thousand other ways you could try to explain what aesthetic means. What are some ways you could make your writing more aesthetic and appealing? There are obvious techniques like making sure you have your own personal writing style. Making sure you don't copy off of anyone and that your work is original. Do some research about the genre or form that you are writing in to make sure it appeals to your ideal readers. However, there is something a little more interesting I want to share. Use your style sparingly. If you keep writing in the same way, readers are going to get bored with it. For example, imagine every single sentence you write ends with an exclamation mark. Readers are probably wondering why you're constan...

What exactly is literary nonfiction? How do you identify whether something is part of this genre or not? Is literary nonfiction any kind of prose that’s not a story? I don’t think so. Literary nonfiction is a type of prose that deals with facts. However, these facts are presented in a way that readers find attractive. This kind of nonfiction uses certain elements of literature and art. It could be a story about a person, city, place, family, events, institution, etc. It could be about anything a person writes in a journal or magazine article about. The literary elements that could be used range from imagery and dialogue to literary devices. The most important thing to keep in mind here is that literary nonfiction should be rooted in fact. Everything that you write has to be true and should be verifiable, if someone so chooses. When you study literary nonfiction, here a few things you might want to focus on. The first one is what the author is trying to say - obviously. A deep analysis ...

In today's class, my professor was talking about how we usually don't study things related to what we consume regularly. Let's look at an example.  An English literature student is asked to read classics like Bronte, Shakespeare, and other things like that. However, do they really like those authors? I'm sure there are a few who do, but for the most part, a student would prefer something more modern or something of a different genre. Now, I'm not saying there aren't people who genuinely enjoy the classics, because I know there are. But the question is... why are we studying something that doesn't really match what we consume on a daily basis?  There are a few reasons that might be. The classics help us understand how life was in different ages of literature. It would help us bring depth to our writing. It would help us gain an understanding of the world before us. I'm sure there are a lot more points.  But here, my point is that reading classics or other...

My first class today was about how perspectives shape how one writes. The activity we had was to write about the room we were in - our classroom - and our morning before we got there. Here's what I wrote.  "I woke up this morning to the sound of one of my favorite things ever - Taylor Swift. So, for some context, I'm a huge Swiftie and Taylor's music is my alarm. I think that's the best way I could start my day. I hopped into the bathroom for a nice hot shower. I know, some people say hot water makes them sleepy, but to me, it's rejuvenating. I was excited to get to dress in formals today, because I usually don't do that.  I realized after I got ready that I still had plenty of time before class. I decided to watch an episode of 'My Life With the Walter Boys' season 3. After that was breakfast. The highlight there was the vada. It was really crispy, just like the kind my dad and I like. Through breakfast, I was anticipating and looking forward to ou...

This is the title of a super cool workshop I attended yesterday.  The workshop talked about the context in which you write and the media you consume that feeds your writing. This is something that I actually had thought about before as well, but this is the first time I really dove deep into it. We were given worksheets about the two topics and were asked to answer a series of questions that helped us find out our context and identify how our consumption influenced our writing.  An important question we were asked was "Who are you as a writer?" Our professor wanted to know how our context and where we come from shape us as writers. When I was asked questions, some of my answers were based on the library I grew up in, back in the US. My consumption was rooted in mythology and the supernatural.  Now... my professor was talking about the fact that we write what we read. (Something similar to that). I found that to be very true. Like... I write books rooted in Norse mythology...

Yesterday, for the first time, we got to meet our professors and seniors. We were joined by a world-renowned poet, Mr. Neal Hall. He was a doctor by profession who then turned to poetry. He started the session with a poetry reading. And... wow. Each word he read showed us the pain his poetry carried. He told us that pain was his best friend and the catalyst for his writing. His poems were about racial discrimination and the Black American experience.  After the poetry reading, he took some questions from the crowd. Now, here's the thing. He didn't make us feel inferior, like he knew more than us or something. He welcomed all of our questions and answered them kindly, interacting with each of us in turn.  Next, we got to meet our seniors when they presented a small presentation about their experiences in college. We saw them joking around with the staff and teasing and being teased by them. The class group was small, which meant that the professors knew each of the students per...

I have been waiting to get here since last November, when I found out I was granted admission. Alliance University Bangalore.  I just got here today, and wow, was it one hell of a day. Today was just the onboarding. I got here around 10.30 and finished the entire process by around 1.15. Not long, all things considered.  I was surprised to see booths for each step of the process. Like... it wasn't one person doing the whole thing for you, but you had to move from table to table to finish the steps in order. That was fun. I think it took the edge off of waiting. It wasn't like you had to sit in one place and wait, but wait in multiple places. That made it seem shorter than it actually was.  After the tables came the hostel. I got assigned my room and went to check in there. The room is a typical Indian hostel room. I'm sharing it with one other girl, and she's pretty chill. After check-in, we went to have lunch. Here we means my parents and me.  They left after lunch. ...

This isn't really goodbye, but still a farewell.  Tomorrow morning, I'm leaving Chennai to go do my Master's in Bangalore. I still kind of remember stepping into Chennai a little over 10 years ago. I was moving back here with my family from the US. When I stepped out of the airport, I thought, "there's no turning back now." I remember the humidity enveloping me in greeting.  Now, I'm leaving. Sure, I've gone on trips before and studied abroad for a semester. This feels different, though. I'm going to be there for two years- yeah, I'm going to come back to visit, but it changes things, doesn't it? I'm not sure where these 2 years will take me. I have no idea what path they will set me on.  However, Chennai will always have a part of my heart. It's the city where I met my closest friends. It's where I learned to drive. It's where I accomplished so much and have passed through so many milestones. I will miss the humidity (a bit...