sambarvadai

[sambarvadai]

IMPORTANT

Hi! My works are now hosted at kadalvizhi.wordpress.com. This site will no longer be updated; apologies for the inconvenience.

See you there! :)

[sambarvadai]

#18 Judy and Punch (2019) - movie review

This movie reads like a fairytale. Husband and wife are having a great life, husband has a drinking problem, husband kills baby and almost kills wife, wife realises her husband (and her community) is FUBAR and goes on an epic tale of vengeance. What makes it awesome, though, is the inclusion of the familiar elements from the eponymous Punch and Judy show, taking the recurring motif of Punch hitting everyone and everything with his slapstick to make them bend to his whimsy, to its realistic, inevitable conclusion.

Punch, played by Damon Herriman (whom I had to look up because his features are just a touch reminiscent of the puppet’s hooked nose and elongated chin), is the tortured (torturing) artist, who believes he’s the greatest puppeteer of his time. His wife Judy, played by Mia Wasikowska (very awesome and very pretty), is the real star of the show, touching up the puppets, getting the coin, and taking care of the baby. The aspects of her personality that we do not pick up, like her dazzling skill with puppetry, are highlighted with the inclusion of a foil character in the second act, making Judy even more badass.

In true Punch fashion, he uses dizzyingly violent turns of phrase, threatening to bash people’s faces off if they don’t acquiesce to his fancies. He bends to the booze, resulting in the spousal abuse and baby death you see in the trailer. Judy is then found by a bunch of outcasts in the woods, having some of the few wholesome moments in the movie, before giving her husband an ending befitting of his crimes.

It’s a movie appropriate for our era, with modern colloquialisms peppered in, and electro/synth versions of classical pieces used for the soundtrack. The set design is gorgeous, and you can really see the grime and filth that was so present in those days. The movie also feels like it’s in a weird position in terms of timeline, because some of the extras aren’t white but there’s no talk of racism; people of color are present in both the vile town and the gathering of outcasts. It made the movie seem somewhat timeless, like the director had expressed in an interview.

The humor, too, was… interesting. I admit: I didn’t find it as funny as it was intended to be; it felt more satirical grimace-y than genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. Maybe that was intentional as well, showing the audience just how disturbing the original play was. The last scene was very, very nice.

However, I did feel that the gothic of puppetry and gore could have been pushed much further. The movie was nowhere as violent as I expected it to be (to be fair, I was expecting something like Sweeney Todd), with most of the gore being off-screen. This squarely shifts it from horror to comedy/thriller/historical fiction, which wasn’t a bad thing at all. Judy’s puppetry skills are highlighted time and again, but I felt its non-literal, subtle meaning could have been explored much more.

Some of the original elements of the show, like the executioner and the constable, were executed (ha) well. However, elements like the crocodile and the Devil felt like they were shoehorned in just to provide an ‘aha’ moment, making their inclusion feel weak and unsubstantiated. I was also looking for more banter between Punch and Judy, both as a nod to the original show and to show a taste of what their relationship once was before it fragmented and fractured. The plot element of the outcasts also could have been taken much further, with subtle references building up about how the people missing in the community actually harmed their way of life.

Overall, it’s a good movie–considering it’s a debut by Mirrah Foulkes, it’s a damn fine one. The fairytale elements were well and present, and it’s surprisingly satisfying to see Judy actually get back at her husband for 350 years of spousal abuse and negligent parenting. The actors are fine and vile. Special shout-out to the constable, played by Benedict Hardie, who has the most adorable characterisation. Movies like these make me wonder how this is the only film recorded in Wikipedia as being inspired by/portraying the story of Punch and Judy, because of the sheer potential and timelessness of such a narrative and such characters. That’s the way to do it.

anbudan, noon xoxo

#movie review #judy and punch #punch and judy #judy and punch (2019) #mia wasikowska #mirrah faulkes #slapstick #movieblr #film review #movie criticism #noonwords #damon herriman #puppets #puppet #puppetry

[sambarvadai]

#17 i'm takin a chance cause i like you a lot

When we entered junior college, we had the opportunity to sign up for a very prestigious, very selective programme called the Humanities Programme (HP). It looked very sexy. A number of my seniors had gone through the programme and it seemed like loads of fun, with many overseas trips, random classroom shenanigans, and a literature syllabus that included cool things like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I talked to my seniors, asked them why they liked it. They said it was cool because of the good networking you got there, and it was also very removed from the rest of the school because it was in a whole other block with its own lecture theatre and weirdly-shaped classrooms. It looked great.

The issue was as follows: HP required taking Literature. Literature had not been kind to me in secondary school. I loved it to absolute bits, taking great pains and delights to annotate my poems and required texts. Even now, they sit on my shelf because I cannot bear to throw them away; they were genuinely good books. I digress. It seemed as if I was doomed to love Lit forever, and Lit was delighted to scorn my essays and poems forever. If I couldn’t keep up with Lit in junior college, my future was as good as done for because, unlike my Secondary Four grades, my A-Levels did determine my entire life trajectory.

Also, if I did get into HP but decided not to take it, then I would be taking someone else’s place. I didn’t want to have that guilt hanging over me, and this was what pushed me to my decision.

In the end, I never applied for HP. I went into science stream. My class wasn’t the most united or the most wholesome or the most anything. We did the job, we were very good, and we were very nice. Every day, I’d log onto Instagram and see my HP friends having the time of their lives, bringing in pancake makers and tie-dyeing their shirts and doing all sorts of fun stuff I’d dreamed of. It wasn’t that I hated science–on the contrary, I was actually doing quite well in science as well. But my class wasn’t fun, and I hated that. Junior college was touted as the time of our lives, when we did all the stupid things and made the best friends we’d ever have for life. Reality sucked. Covid-19 made things even worse. I genuinely didn’t like school a lot more than I’d care to admit.

Now that I’ve graduated, I think I’ve done pretty okay for science, but I still regret that I didn’t try out for HP. So many people I’ve interacted with have expressed shock and surprise that I’m not in HP, what with my logorrhea about random humanities-based factoids or a very weird and bizarre love for Literature in a place where liking Lit is a sign of derangement. I’m pretty sure I’d have done well in HP too, but it’s too late to say.

(Also, very bemusingly, I looked at my Sec 4 transcript the other day. Guess what: I got an A for Literature. Yeah, it was borderline, and it was a 3.6 instead of a 4.0, and it wasn't great, but an A's an A. It's insane how absolutely warped my standards were back then; I'd be so pleased with that grade right now.)

Yesterday, I was talking to T and she told me that it’s good to be selfish sometimes. Getting into a programme means that you’re always going to be taking someone else’s place, and it’s inevitable. There’s no point in being so altruistic if you’re not doing things for yourself, too. Hawkeye (or someone, idk I read this in David Aja and Matt Fraction’s run) once said ‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’ Yeah, if those shots land, they’ll take up precious real estate on the dartboard, and there are fewer darts for other people to pick up. But if you’ve hit that bullseye, then I think it’s okay.

I haven’t explored or thought about how far to take this, but I’m trying to try out for whatever I can. This has translated to me deciding to apply for US universities much later than is strictly advisable, after my teacher said, ‘Let the admission officers do the first decision-making; you don’t want to reject yourself before they reject you.’ I’m going with that policy now. I’m trying things out because the worst that can happen is no, and a recently learned fact of mine is that companies always accept more than they can handle because people will reject the offer, and in the event I am actually denying someone else a seat, I’m trying to justify that by ‘what goes around, comes around’, and some cosmic force will right whatever imbalance I might’ve caused.

In the end, all I want to say to you, and me, is this: take a chance on yourself, dear reader. Don’t throw away your shot.

anbudan, noon xoxo

#noonwords #take a shot #im not throwing away my shot #thoughts #school #hawkeye

[sambarvadai]

#16 wahhh climax wahhh

It’s been a while since my exams ended--to be exact, four days. In that time, I’ve been slowly trying to banish my worksheets to someplace where I’m not confronted with them every time I see my desk. I won’t chuck them out just yet, but someday I have to. I don’t know when that day will be.

Today I want to talk about how climactic, or rather anticlimactic, life actually is. When the last exam ended, life didn’t drastically change; no huge gush of air left my lungs. I just felt vaguely queasy and relieved that it was all over. Now, it’s still sort of surreal. I’m half-expecting to get yelled at to study, but I also don’t really know how to occupy my days, despite having made a pages-long to-do list right at the height of exam stress. There’s no great, grand turning point, no awesome dialogue that’ll make this feel all worthwhile. I’m still waiting for something to change and make me realise that I’m not the kid I used to be.

According to Google, a climactic moment is a very exciting, intense or important event. Its synonyms are described as earth-shaking, momentous, epochal. Something that defines a period of time in one’s life, a culmination of events that go out with a big boom. But rarely is life like that, manufactured like a perfect little story mountain where the tension rises steadily and predictably. That’s not to say that life doesn’t have its story mountains; rather, these moments are not the ones you’re thinking of.

Also, things rarely end with bangs anymore unless they’re one-night stands or awesome explosions. Even the world is doomed to end ‘not with a bang, but a whimper’ (T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men). There’s just some quiet moment that slips past you, that you’ll keep searching for days after. When was the tipping point? When did my youth go? When will I stop mourning its loss?

I also define climactic as something that actually stays in your memory, like those core-memory spheres in Inside Out. If we go with that criteria, some of my most defining moments haven’t been ones that I necessarily planned or predicted for, or expected as climactic moments. For example, I vividly remember being jealous of a family friend because she could handle my baby brother way better than I could, and I remember her puzzled gaze as she squinted into the sunlight, trying to read my face. That, in retrospect, might’ve been what prompted me to be more present in my brother’s life, but I certainly didn’t know it at the time. There may be countless other instances that you didn’t know were coming, but hit you hard all the same.

In that sense, we use the word ‘climactic’ too loosely, wondering why the endings of events rarely feel as momentous as every underdog-performing-group movie makes us feel. But in those movies, those final performances are the culmination of everything, including the weird side plot about the love triangle between the newcomer and the current leader and the chick who has all of two lines, the side plot about the corrupt rival group leader, etc etc. We simply operate on a vastly different timeline. The side plots don’t just end with the event; we need to deal with them afterward too. But it’s when we actually deal with them and our emotions in our own time that we experience those climactic moments. They’re quiet. They’re understated. There’s no special lighting or big showers of rain to harken the mood. It’s just some click in your mind that makes you realise oh. I can’t go back anymore, can I.

Let’s recognise our own climactic moments, and give them their due respect. Life’s given us core memories and they’re our movie scenes. They’re not what we expect or want, but somehow, they’re exactly what we need.

anbudan, noon xoxo

#romanticise your life #romanticising #noonwords #text #blog post #blog #tumblr blog #core memory #anticlimactic #climactic

[sambarvadai]

#15 reading n weed

Lately, I’ve been writing and reading a lot. It wasn’t easy to get here though--I frequently read a lot of fanfiction, but I’ve always wanted to get into reading actual, published books. Fanfiction vs actual books is a debate for another time, but I wanted to read works by established, acclaimed authors to develop my writing style and read new characters in settings I wasn’t privy to, with backstories I had to freshly discover.

It was hard.

I went to the library every month to pick out books, armed with a list I’d gotten off Tumblr with titles like ‘ya lgbtq novels’, or ‘dark academia reading list’. You get the drift. Invariably, half the books on the former list weren’t available because they were too new or too gay (or they’d already been checked out), while most of the books on the latter list seemed so profoundly inaccessible that I’d never even borrow them. Nonetheless, I reached the borrowing quota on every trip, lugging the one-point-five kilo weight of books home. And there they would sit, completely untouched, until I’d get an email from the library to return the books and pay my late fines.

This went on for a couple of years. When I look back at my borrowing history of the past few years, I can count the number of books I opened with my ten fingers, and the books I actually finished with the fingers on one hand. It was horrible. I’d read the blurb (if the book even had a blurb--most of the books just had what other people had said about it with delightfully vague nonsense like ‘Riveting’ or ‘A riot of colours and sensations’. What is this, throw a dart on the board and pick an adjective for the day?) and decide it looked interesting. Then I’d never read it because actually it was just. Annoying. And sad. And just blegh.

Then, I found Annabelle Thong by Imran Hashim. Yay!

God, that’s such a dramatic sentence. But it’s true--it was the first book I genuinely binge-read and enjoyed. I’ll link the review to that later, but it’s a good book, well worth the read. I was ecstatic. I’d finally finished a book.

But then I felt like, dude, is the only book I can actually read just chicklit? Can’t I read better books? Am I just going to be spending the rest of my life reading fluffy, tooth-rotting romance because it’s the only thing I can stomach? I knew I could read better things--I’d read much better writing in fanfiction, but I couldn’t find that level of writing and honest representation in published books. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough, but I’d had enough. I felt horrible once again, for enjoying a book.

It was much later that I figured out I was being completely stupid over the entire thing. Here I was, trying to ease back into a habit, being unsuccessful by picking the path of most resistance, then complaining when the path of least resistance actually yielded results. My first goal was to actually start reading books again, not to finish the top 100 books of all time.

I think I’ve been struggling with this for a long time--actually allowing myself to enjoy the things I like. Media and peers influence us so much and there’s a constant expectation that we need to act a certain way, and more importantly, like certain things. I’m slowly learning to let myself have the luxury of liking what I like. There shouldn’t be guilt that I’m consuming ‘less intellectually stimulating media’, because that’s not my primary goal. There shouldn’t be shame that I don’t like what the mainstream likes, and I don’t find it joyful. I don’t like depressing books, and I don’t like stories that are distressingly open-ended and filled with sadness. These kinds of books are hailed by critics and given five-star reviews, and it’s okay that I don’t jive with them. I don’t like books with high stakes or apocalyptic dystopias or alternate fantasy settings wherein I need to learn the rules of the place before I can properly enjoy whatever heteronormative romance that’s probably lurking in chapter 20. I like urban fantasy and slice-of-life and gentle books and very good writing. It’s okay to like those things. It’s okay to like what I like.

This, I realise, is at the heart of most of the conflict I have with myself right now. There’ll probably be more blogposts about this later, but for now I want to focus on just being kind to myself with regard to the media I consume. Popular stuff is popular for a reason--a lot of people like it, and it gains media steam, and then it becomes the new ‘in thing’ where if you haven’t consumed it, you’re a loser. I’m exaggerating, but that’s how it’s felt for me. There’s an emphasis to ‘be yourself! Own your identity!’ but before that, there needs to be self neutrality. It’s just acknowledgment that you don’t have the same likes as the kind of people or media you’re exposed to, and that’s okay. It’s only after that that you can truly go on the very awesome journey of finding yourself and developing your own unique tastes. I’m still at the larval stages, but I can finally see the road ahead of me. It feels great.

Just, be nice to yourself. Allow yourself the privilege of liking stuff. Allow yourself the kindness of being yourself, dear reader. Allow yourself the pleasure of enjoyment.

anbudan, noon xoxo

#noonwords #bookblr #booklr #self neutrality #books #bibliophile #reading #bookworms #booknerd #bookaholic #books aesthetic #dark academia #read #blog #booklover

[sambarvadai]

#14 why endgame sucks

Yesterday I was talking to D about spoilers and the enduring quality of media. In secondary school we had a discussion about what constitutes and endows a piece of work with literary merit, and we came to the conclusion that it was that it had an enduring, long-lasting impact, and offered varying perspectives with each new consumption (I’m just going to use consumption because watching/reading/listening/etc are too complex and annoying for me to use please don’t think of TB thank u).

This implies a few things: firstly, the work must have a universal theme. Most works of art and literature have this - it’s what ties in the humanity aspect to the work. We read books about aliens and extraterrestrials precisely because of the bits of ourselves we see reflected in texts, identifying with emotions of betrayal, jealousy, joy. This theme must also be accessible across various periods in time - that is, there must be parallels that can be drawn to future contexts from the context that the media is produced in or the context that the media inhabits. This is much easier than you think because history rhymes, and the themes of powerlessness, struggle, conflict will forever be entwined in the human narrative. It’s bleak, but that’s what makes us relate so hard to Achilles or Arjunan or Gilgamesh.

Second, the way the theme is presented must be meaningful. Meaningfulness is very subjective but I feel like a good definition for it is: it shouldn’t be immediately accessible; you have to work to get there. This definition was brought to you by the mainstream Tamil movie industry (not counting the heavily social justice movies like Karnan) and my horribly biased perspective. Almost every masala movie has incredibly on-the-nose acting and pointed dialogue that says exactly what’s on the characters’ minds, and you really don’t have to dig any deeper to find what the director is trying to say. If someone wants to chase a girl, he will do just that - through a song and five stalkery scenes which are played off as cute and buttery. If someone feels wronged, he will say that in a huge monologue filled with punch dialogues. You do not have to work at all to understand the movie. Yes, it’s nice to have simple, watchable movies, but I find that these rarely stick with me. It’s much more satisfying to reach the conclusion that ‘oh my god they actually loved me this whole time’ together with the characters and find the clues and interactions, rather than being ‘ok great they finally kissed how much more of the movie is left’.

This ties in with my third criteria: the piece of media must reward reconsumption. If everything is available upon first watching, then there is nothing drawing the viewer to rewatch it. If it’s easy the first time, then there is no satisfaction rewarded from a second rewatch to entice the viewer to find the set-ups and dissect the hidden signs. There must be more waiting; the magician cannot reveal their tricks immediately.

Therefore, the entire and complete selling point of the piece of media cannot and should not be the suspense or the twist. Yes, I’m talking about the shitshow that was Avengers: Endgame. When the whole marketing campaign is just ‘don’t spoil the endgame’ instead of having genuine interactions with fans, when there is a genuine fear about preserving the twists just to avoid spoilers from the cast, it’s clear that there is little else to the movie. Heck, even the actors didn’t know what the final movie looked like until it was released to the public, and had to speak their lines without knowledge of the larger narrative they were part of. It seriously hurt the emotional gravitas of the film and made for some laughably stilted line delivery, and if a movie is bad and you know there’s nothing else waiting for you in terms of discovering character arcs or narrative hints, then what’s the point of a rewatch?

We stick with classics and analyse old texts not just because old white people wrote them (I mean yeah that too), but because they offer deeper insights with every new reread. The books that earn their place in literary canon have good craft and are deliberate in engineering reactions and evoking emotions, connecting all the narrative devices and tropes into a larger narrative to convey a message that is profound and meaningful. This is a lot of big words but what I’m really trying to say is: if we’re making art or producing media that is meant to be meaningful, we need to give viewers their due credit and not spoon-feed them all the information, nor set up one-dimensional scenes and characters. We love seeing people like us in the media, and this extends to the unique ways we are messed up, our three-dimensional narratives. Let’s reflect that too.

We’re just meat bags and water tubes with opinions, but we are also messy and long for something to connect us to times prior and future. Art must reflect our struggles meaningfully, and we must have ways to engage with it meaningfully too. Literary merit may be a buried concept, but it is now more than ever, in these trying times of weirdness and wackiness, that we have to dig it out and feel dirt on our fingertips, rub the gem against the hem of our shirt, and feel the awesomeness that has been passed on from generations to generations. What old wonder will you newly uncover today?

anbudan, noon xoxo

ps cool relevant stuff: https://anotherhundredmusicals.tumblr.com/post/668971793142415360

#noonwords #endgame #marvel endgame #anti endgame squad #marvel meta #kollywood

[sambarvadai]

#13: just believe in pixiedust oh my god

Today, I want to talk to you about suspension of belief. There’s a post that says: ‘in coco what did they do before photographs were invented’ and it’s a very good question. It opens a can of worms that I’m not sure I want to look at. What did they do? Did they use paintings? What about people who couldn’t afford them? Do similar afterlives exist for other cultures?

Do these really matter?

Because at some point, the writers must have had these questions too. They, too, went through the process so rigorously and picked apart every aspect of the world they’d created. Since it’s Pixar, it definitely happened multiple times. At some point, the writers must’ve said: ‘Okay, you know what? I’m fine with leaving this as a plot hole. I’m fine with not providing that bit of context or explanation.’ That’s the important bit.

As a creator, you are only able to draw on existing things and create something, and maybe creation itself is unnatural because evolution was how things occurred and is how things are occurring. Our world, in that aspect, is free of plot holes because these plot holes organically emerge and are filled with extraneous details that don’t matter to our lives, but matter to someone else’s, because it’s part of their story a lot more than it’s part of ours. Your creation will have plot holes. It is inevitable. When you lift characters and stretch them to the breaking point, you are stretching the world too. You will tear the world, and you have to make the choice whether to leave those holes there or patch them up.

You could do this clumsily a la J.K. Rowling who just retcons everything, or you could do it with grace by creating side stories, or you could just let them be. I think the third option is the most realistic.

The world we individually perceive itself is full of these unexplained miracles and phenomena. How did they know to catch me at that moment? How was there one perfect muffin waiting for me right as I stepped into the bakery? How did I even end up here? They're all deus ex machina(e) or some twisted, perfectly engineered executions of Murphy’s Law, made inexplicable by the absurdity of their odds. To me, these sound like plot holes too--just a little different.

We accept these phenomena, and we accept that our perceptions are limited and our worldviews are nothing more than matchsticks glued together from saliva and pixiedust. Coco had plot holes, but they didn’t matter to Miguel’s story, so they don’t matter to us in the context of the movie. I don’t think there’s any point trying to justify every single action or decision with datasets and a rational explanation, because real life doesn’t give us the answers either and it’s unfair to expect it from manmade art, especially when it’s nitpicky. Suspension of belief is what makes stories work. It’s what makes us able to function enough in this society, because if we go down too deep into that rabbit hole of ‘why me? why now? what am i?’ I believe it’s extremely difficult to get out.

Believing in the impossible isn’t just for children and improbably animated movies, dear reader. It’s storytelling--it’s making our worlds work for us. It’s survival.

anbudan, noon xoxo

#noonwords #suspension of belief #coco #meta

[sambarvadai]

#12: waking up early is super fun yo

I've been trying to wake up early for the past 20 odd days now. Some days I've been successful, some days it's failed, but it's really brought me back to the times when there was no one awake or alive except me and the streetlights and the moths. I'm lucky that my window is opposite a quiet side road and overlooks the sea, so sometimes I can see ships out on the water. These ships are shrouded in fog so you can only see the dim fuzziness of their lights, so they look like phantom ships unmoored and doomed to roam the seven seas for all of eternity. It's also super peaceful to not have construction banging or drilling or clanging or generally just trying to shake your brain out of its poor skull, or even have the owo birds singing their infernal song. It's good. It feels nice. It's what reminds me to get my ass out of bed at 4am and on some days, it even works.

As I’m typing this, it’s 7.17am. I got out of bed at 5am and stood for a moment watching the sky. Right now, I can hear the birds sing so sweetly. I never really understood why poets and artistes would refer to birdsong so frequently in their works, but when you don’t have industrialisation or the murmur of car engines, I suppose it’s the loudest sound that is a constant.

I’ve found that waking up early helps me be productive. There’s something about the night sky that feels warm and comforting, that it gives some reassurance and illusion of the endless stretch of time. Afternoons, in contrast, seem to pass by much quicker - it’s 3pm, you go on one Twitter search, and suddenly it’s 4pm. Maybe it’s also the slow creeping of the sun up the horizon, and feeling how much you’ve done before you see the tangible reminder of the day breaking makes you feel like you have done something worthwhile. Of course, in true form, I woke up early and browsed Twitter for a while, did like three essay plans (I planned to do 10), and then spent the rest of the time getting a very unsatisfying mug (not bowl, mug) of granola and milk to accompany my sunrise watch. Cool!

At least I’ve achieved my primary objective, which was to wake up early today. November is ending soon and so is the year, and I want to just regain a bit of that control over my time so it doesn’t feel like I’m completely at the mercy of some vengeful god turning the clock faster.

Also on the theme of wresting back control: I’m trying to ease back into the groove of writing and posting regularly, even if it’s just for myself. I reread my older posts and I can barely recognise the person who wrote them, even if our thinking patterns mirror each other. I’m in awe of my past self’s eloquence and flow, because right now it feels like my words and phrases are clunkier than 2000s’ six-inch heels, and my trains of thought are one twig away from derailing and careening into the void.

It’s odd, how writing and communicating are such important muscles and skills that must be practised and honed and toned, but are not as emphasised upon in popular culture or even just normal culture as much as they are in school. I need to make the conscious effort to get back into that habit, to prove to myself that I can actually do it. It’ll be fun - let’s see how this goes.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this quote from ‘Revisiting Van Gogh’ by Angeline Yap:

and i would send you buds of jasmine with their still-wet scent, the flung-on-fence trumpet flowers’ gliding yellow, and, thence, the gilding glinting bright-edged leaf’s holes’ glowing-- with morning’s sun, shine growing, peeping through.

anbudan, noon xoxo

#noonwords #morning #introspection #waking up early #writing

[sambarvadai]

#11: sky sky sky

hi! it's been a good while but it feels like every november i get the insatiable urge to blog, so here i am, back on my bs.

i also screwed around for at least two hours looking for beautiful pretty themes and none of them were Right, and then i came back to this blog and saw the beautiful, beautiful theme by @sorrism (called thyme, I believe) and yelled because it was exactly what I wanted. you just might find you get what you need, indeed.

onto the actual blog post.

I've been taking pictures of the sky for the longest time now! I think the sky is something we don't pay enough attention to. it's a nice way to just take a breath and remember that we are all so small and the sky is much older than us. Especially during exam season, I like to go to my window and watch the sky. There's a quote from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak:

I do, however, try to enjoy every colour I see - the whole spectrum. A billion or so flavours, none of them quite the same, and a sky to slowly suck on. It takes the edge off the stress. It helps me relax. A Small Theory: People observe the colours of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colours. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses. In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them.

(The Book Thief, Chapter 1)

This quote stayed with me (maybe because it was in the first chapter…) and made me think about how I look at the sky too. There's more than just waiting to catch golden hour and turn the camera onto yourself. There's more than just waiting to see pinks and purples in the sky, like they are rarities and oddities and unnatural phenomena to be captured. There's more than just waiting for a sunset to start a new day.

Have a look at the sky right now, dear reader, and feel a little bit of whatever pain you have in you dissolve into the ether.

anbudan, noon xoxo

#noonwords #the book thief #sky #golden hour #markus zusak

[sambarvadai]

#10: rest in peace, spb sir.

just found out about spb sir. really really hope his soul rests in peace. my sincere condolences to his family and loved ones.

just. i think one thing 2020 has taught us is that we need to learn to grieve. i won’t go into details just yet, but 2020 gave me loss, and i had to learn to manage it. i hadn’t experienced grief like this ever in my life, and it was difficult. i still don’t know if i’m doing it right - if there’s even a way to do grief right. 

but in a year where so many people are losing their lives and their minds to this pandemic, in a year where people are getting properly incensed about lives being carelessly thrown away, in a year where which keeps taking and taking and taking and demands so much, i think we’ve all had to learn to go through loss and grief and anger and pain. we’ve lost a lot of people this year - people we’ve always taken for granted as constants in our lives. we’ve lost people we loved personally and publicly. in that aspect, 2020 might be a turning point for many of us. it definitely is for me.

i guess one lesson we have to take away from this is we really need to up our appreciation game, and reconsider how much we take people for granted. we need to tell people the things we’ve always wanted to say but never could find the words for. damn social norms and niceties. damn our culture for not integrating love into our daily routines. damn our careless, careless selves for pushing off appreciation and nice notes until it’s too late. personally, i’m trying to appreciate my friends more on a regular basis. i hope i’ll become better at it. 

to conclude this post, hugs hugs hugs to every single one of you reading this. may spb’s voice stay evergreen, may we all cherish his memory. thank you spb sir for your small laughs in sad songs, and small sadnesses in happy songs. thank you for all the songs that never fail to make us better. thank you for everything. rest easy <3

anbudan, noon

#spb #rip #grief #noonwords

[sambarvadai]

#9: uwu :,)

the cutest cutest thing happened yesterday. 

there was this indian guy on the mrt sitting opposite me, he was a jc student too. he was watching a standup comedy show on his phone, and he had very nice nike shoes - gold logo against black shoe. these two indian aunties got on the mrt at bartley. they were speaking tamil. like me, he too looked up because he could understand the language. the two moms were very very indian - idk how else to describe it. they were speaking in indiatamil and had gold earrings and neatly plaited hair and were wearing chudidhars. they were picking up their daughters from sarada kindergarten. one mom had a stroller too.

seeing them, the guy got up. the person beside him got up too, so there were two free seats. the two little girls went to sit on the seats. they were wearing sleeveless blue dresses with small white stripes. it was a really nice contrast with the yellow seat and was really cute.

the two girls both had small pigtails with neat centre partings. their hairties were purple and blue. this little fact sort of made me want to cry in a good way. if you didn't know better, you'd think they were siblings. they were both wearing tiny black maryjane shoes and socks with frills.

they were taking turns to say: 'my favourite animal is ___!', accompanied by the animal noise. it was adorable how they just went on and on, and did cute hand actions to illustrate the animal.

the girl on the left's mask was slipping down. the girl on the right caught my eye, and i gestured to her to tell her friend. she simply pulled her friend's mask up and looked to me for approval. it was so so so so so pure.

left's mask slipped down once more and right pulled it up for her again, looking at me again. pure.

the guy is largely irrelevant to this story but he got off at my station and is now on my bus. he let me tap my card before him. nice dude.

idk yall might not read until this much but i just wanted to share. kinda had a shitty time last night but this made me feel better. thank u @ god and @ life <3

#life's phenomenons #idk this was just something that kinda happened and it made me feel so so soft inside #god really does take care of u if u tell them ur having a shitty day #bless u @ god <3 #noonwords #good stuff

[sambarvadai]

#8: on mala and microwaves

hi. after the last very heavy post i thought i’d make a lighter one. this one is going to be about food. i hope u like food. :>

this was inspired by a conversation i had with a friend. she’s from the sichuan province in china, where they regularly eat mala hotpot. how it traditionally works is that people sit around a big vat of bubbling mala sauce (ma (麻) refers to a specific chilli found in the sichuan province that gives the sauce its characteristic and distinctive spiciness, and la (辣) means spice. together, they refer to the mouth-numbing spiciness of the chilli) and dip raw ingredients, such as meat, vegetables, and tofu, into the sauce. as they wait for it to cook on the spot, the people gathered around the table laugh and make merry, following which they feast on the food.

my friend’s acquanintance was going to china – to my friend’s province, specifically – and wanted recommendations on mala hotpot places. my friend was puzzled. ‘he wants to go eat mala by himself? isn’t it very sad, just dip in take out dip in take out all by yourself? quite pathetic, leh,’ she said, shaking her head in bemusement. that was when i realised the communal nature of the dish. it is a dish specifically designed to encourage people to gather around, which is why you cannot eat it alone.

why? damn simple: it’s spicy. you won’t have anyone to laugh at you as you struggle with the snot coming out of your nose. who else is going to video you with numb lips and tissues around your plate? 

ok no la it’s a dish that requires long amounts sitting around, waiting for vegetables to cook. hence, this naturally encourages conversation, even if it’s just pleasant banalities to pass the time. it’s not just about the food, in this case, but about the people eating it as well. the very nature of the dish, the design of the dish, requires community and communality.

this nature is echoed across the traditional foods of multiple cultures. i’ll highlight a few here. do feel free to correct; this is purely based upon personal experience.

the south-indian thali is similarly designed as a way for people to bond. it has many different variations now, but i’ll talk about my experience with the tamil ilai sappaadu (literally, leaf food).

food is served on a gigantic banana leaf. there are 3-4 courses. the food is basically rice plus a gravy (the gravy determines the course) and at least six vegetable dishes as side-dishes. there is a specific order to consume the courses as well as an elaborate thought process behind it, but i’m not too sure of it haha. this is usually eaten at big function, like weddings and get-togethers. you usually sit down in long rows, like hogwarts tables. two rows face each other – i.e. the people of two rows face each other. this has a lot of opportunity for salacious winking and such ;))) just use ur imagination for more information, do check out the multiple youtube vlogs and blog posts about this.

for the purposes of this post, let me explain why i consider ilai sappaadu a communal thing. first, this requires actual serving. typically, the women of the house cook and serve the food while the men eat first. a bit sexist ya :, but oh well. because weddings and such grand functions are where you meet people your age (i.e. People Your Age And Therefore Possible Suitors), many many tamil movies have a scene where a girl lovingly pours gravy while staring at the boy’s eyes. it’s A Thing. sometimes, though, the younger girls will be permitted to eat with the guys (because they are all Young) – hence the salacious winking mentioned earlier. there’s a specific way to serve the food as well; you can’t just yell who wants xxx dish!!! raise your hand!!! but instead have to go down the road and ask each person individually. by doing so, you do get to form a connection with them, even if it is for a fleeting moment. you learn people’s tastes, and you gain their trust if you can sneak them an extra vadai or two. small things like that.

more importantly, it is also a meal that is very, very long. as such, you tend you talk while you eat, forming friendships with the people next to you. you rib your friend for eating so slowly, you nudge your friend to see that pretty girl standing off at the side, etc etc. all in all, it is designed to make people eat slowly and steadily – the portions are very big and the refills are virtually endless – and therefore encourages bonding and conversation. similar themes, ay?

the third dish is not from asia, but from ethiopia. i don’t know if this is the actual authentic way of eating ethiopian food, but this is what we had in multiple ethiopian restaurants so um haha

but the food has the same basic principle. a large, large plate around which several people are meant to sit. the plate is lined with a thin, roti-like bread, on top of which are several dishes. what you do is tear off the bread and eat it with the side dishes. again, this isn’t a dish you eat alone, and therefore isn’t a dish you eat silently. you literally eat from the same plate, eat the same food, and exchange ideas and jokes as you eat the hot, belly-warming food. again a food designed for communality and community.

compare this food with the food design of today. these days, you find packaged meals designed for one person to eat alone and very quickly. take instant noodles, the perfect example of this modern phenomenon – you pour in boiling water, and wait for a grand total of around 3 minutes waiting for it to cook, then you just. eat it. by yourself. at 3am. sigh.

this isn’t a bad thing, per se; it does make things very convenient. and it’s a good (?) source of sustenance. and i guess you could talk to your co-worker awkwardly while your waiting for your noodles to cook in the pantry. but all things considered, it isn’t a food that’s meant for communal consumption. in fact, it is designed for eating solitarily. same with burgers and meals you get at fast food restaurants. technically, you can eat them on the go. technically, you don’t need to sit down to have them, though it is nice to do so. technically, you can eat it alone.

contrast these kinds of foods with the ones mentioned earlier. the very design of the foods affects their purpose and function. one important point i want to make is that there is no one right type of food. both these categories serve different purposes and are required at different times. obviously, you can’t sit on the floor and have a one-hour long meal when you have to squeeze in lunch between consecutive meetings. but, undeniably, in the past, at least, food was treated as a way to bond and get together. this was reflected in the way their meals were meant to be eaten, and it is a common theme across cultures. while the food itself might be different, they were designed to make people sit down together and enjoy good food together.

because at the end of the day, everyone loves food, or at least tolerates it for the sake of survival. man took that and made it something to bond over, and that has stayed the same for so many years.

so next time you want to grab mala hotpot, grab a friend you haven’t seen in a while along, catch up over snot-filled tissue and stinging tongues. think about why you’re eating what you’re eating, think about the legions of people who’ve enjoyed it like you, and appreciate it.

thanks for reading!! anbudan, noon <33

#food #mala #asian #chinese food #indian food #india #brown tingz #word #blog #mine #noonwords

[sambarvadai]

#7: ooh la la spill the drama sis

posted on 30 nov 2019

hi, long time no see. it’s been a hectic week. we had our drama club’s end-year-production, and i started on my internship. this post will be about my somewhat complicated relationship with theatre so buckle in for the ride! this is going to be a really long post sorry i have a lot of feelings about this

(in case you haven’t already realised this is an EXTREMELY self-indulgent blog haha)

so! four years ago (god has it been that long) when i joined drama club, i was so excited. i nearly wasn’t going to get in because i had missed the audition date, so i cried late into the night, texted my senior about it, and got the reply that no worries, audition dates had been extended due to the overwhelming response. phew. i auditioned, i said the monologue too fast that the panel was left blinking, i tried to make friends in the audition room (i don’t remember any of them). i got through. i was so happy. it was the best best experience.

my new batchmates were… interesting. they were cool. we all liked to sing at the most random times. we were so extra. now that i think about it, i haven’t actively recalled these memories in so long. i can’t remember half of them, but they must’ve been good times because i remember waking up on mondays and thursdays – drama club practice days – pumped and ready to go. the seniors were a big part of this. every practice session, they’d come in, full of energy, and dazzle us with how much they could show with one movement on stage. they taught us the basics of vocal projection (I SHAT A BABY/I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE), spatial awareness, ensemble awareness, and teamwork. they made sure to get to know us properly, learn our names, be our seniors. they were amazing.

i remember the productions we did that year. we ran around under the stairs before production, writing notes on bags and karaoke-ing, sleeping and eating. we told stories of the girl who had been crushed by the stairs, now a benevolent spirit who blessed us before every performance. we wore our shirts inside out, tags sticking out, because a senior told us our shirts had to be ALL BLACK. NO PRINT. (we later found out this was not meant seriously, but oh well.) once, we traipsed down one of the most affluent parts of town wearing our shirts like that, on the hunt for some ice to cool the drinks. my fingers froze by the time we got back to school (because there was no bag big enough to carry the ice) and i had to dunk them in running water to thaw them out. we were backstage, having the time of our lives, peeking through the hole in the curtain, mouthing alone to the lines said on stage that we had heard countless times in rehearsals. we cheered when the audience laughed. we bit our tongue so we wouldn’t curse when someone inevitably put the block down too loudly or got caught in the light. our batch was the only batch of first-years who cried when our fourth-years (the graduating batch) left, because they had made such an impact on us. it really looked like we were going to be one of the better batches.

it really looked like joining drama club – and theatre – was going to be one of the best decisions of my life, because of how much fun i had. i learnt about the processes that went behind-the-scenes, which made me appreciate every theatre show i went to after that even more. i

year 2 came, and with it, a competition that would suck out my life. for the purposes of this post, let’s call it abc. abc was a really prestigious competition – it was difficult to get into, and it was difficult to survive it. survive, meaning go through it with your sanity intact. it meant long, long hours cooped up in a corridor high up, inhaling spray paint fumes and sprawling on the dusty floor. it meant hashing and rehashing ideas and thrashing out team squabbles and pain and suffering. i mean, it was a great, character-building experience, but i’m told that i became so much of a dick during that time simply because of the stress. abc also took up much of my free time, so i couldn’t meet up with my other friends during breaks because i would always be busy.

the toil was not without its rewards, though. we got regional champs and placed 5th worldwide and won a really prestigious award for creativity, one of the few teams to ever win it in our division. but during that time, i felt nothing except passiveness (is this a word). i felt a sense of distance, that it wasn’t me who had won it. and it was partly true. toward the end of it, my enthusiasm for the competition had died down from a raging bonfire to a tiny matchstick flame snuffed out by an errant gust of wind. i just… gave up. i didn’t contribute as much. i should’ve felt guilty, but i couldn’t muster up anything.

what does this competition have to do with drama? well, because i was involved in abc, i couldn’t contribute as much to my drama club’s mid-year recital-thing. i was relegated to the props and sets team, where i met my favourite senior ever. we spent a lot of time in there, and it felt great. although all we did was just talk and do jackshit, it was fun to be in that tiny space, trying out makeup and talking about sherlock.

abc did affect my relationship with my batchmates, though. the rest of the teams in abc had my team-mates who somehow bonded with their team and loved their team, but i was the odd one out. i couldn’t connect to them at all.

fast forward to the end-of-year production, where i was in props and sets again. this time, it was slightly different because a teacher tagged along with us for every excursion we did to gather supplies and draw inspiration. that production was set in a bookshop, so we hopped around singapore looking for cool bookshops. it was fun, and i got to know that teacher a lot better. i’m still relatively close to her now. my batchmate, though, fell out with that teacher. i’m not entirely sure what happened, but it was weird.

year 3 was such a big mess, and it was wholly my fault. i was given the position of being in charge of props and sets, and i did a colossal screw-up. none of the sets were ready, none of the props were procured in time, the full-dress rehearsal was just accusations after accusations. i remember being backstage in the toilet washing up all the makeup brushes after full-dress rehearsal, and i could hear the seniors really really talking shit about me. it was cathartic, in a way, to hear everything i knew but hadn’t fully internalised. it was similar to abc, in that i had fully given up even before fighting. my rep was pretty damaged after that.

the end of year production was when things fully fell apart. i didn’t know anyone in my batch anymore (except maybe for one person?). another person whom i had been quite close to also drifted away. it was really, really shitty – there’s not much to say about it at all.

bUT. not all hope was lost. what i didn’t get in drama club at school, i found through something else. around march, i saw an online flyer for a youth-created theatre show. i auditioned. i got a part in the ensemble. and it was, hands down, one of the best decisions i made in my life. see, this online flyer was from a senior in drama club whom i had never met before, but was somehow following on instagram. so in a way, drama club was responsible for my so-called rebirth into drama.

that experience really taught me a lot. for starters, the way they handled everything was so professional. the props and sets team started work three months before the production and handpainted sets and built actual moving platforms out of wood. the publicity team actually got one of their photographer friends to take high quality photos and videos. the songs. oh, where do i start. the songs were full, a-grade broadway musical material, with motifs for each of the characters and fully realized emotional arcs. every single person working on the production was so wired and energetic and passionate. backstage felt like year 1 – all the excitement of cheering when something great happened on stage.

maybe it was god telling me to not give up on theatre so easily, to give it a second chance. maybe it was god telling me that i hadn’t lost my love for working hard to put up something on stage. maybe it was a sign that all i needed was a change of people. at any rate, i made so many new friends and learned so much about performance. it really changed me.

as i went into year 4, my final year, my feelings were mixed. i didn’t feel like a senior. i didn’t feel like i had any of the expertise or weight my seniors held when they were in our position. moreover, our drama club had merged with the chinese drama club, meaning that we had to adopt an entirely new set of practices and traditions. i kicked my year off by auditioning for the chinese new year skit. guess what? i got a main role – a chinese-speaking role.

i learn chinese as a third language, so it was really quite interesting to figure out how to perform chinese rather than just say it. all my co-actors were younger than me – a nice turn from everyone being older than me in the external theatre prod in year 3 – and it was a wonderful opportunity to get to know my juniors. sometimes, i didn’t want to go to rehearsal so much that i cried. but when i got to rehearsal, suddenly all the reservations i had went away and i fully immersed myself in the craft. being around the kids and hugging them when they felt down and cheering them up made me feel like i was properly slipping into my role as a senior. it was really a turn of fate.

of course, around end-feb, i performed for my youth theatre thing again. it still felt as good as it did the first time, and was a space for me to grow beyond just a skit performed in the school hall.

around april was our biannual mid-year recital thing, same as year 2. this time, though, i was selected for the main role (again!). i’m ashamed to say that i didn’t try quite as hard as i could have; didn’t allow myself to properly connect to my character. see, my character was a father trying to grapple with the loss of his mother, and the play was about how this affected his relationship with his daughter. it was a difficult role, mainly because he didn’t respond the way i would have if (touchwood) something happened. i didn’t allow myself to actually consider what i would do, i didn’t go down that line far enough to examine my own emotional responses and relate them to my character, because i was scared of what i’d find. anyway, the process was really rushed. we didn’t explore any of the characters’ backstories during rehearsals, which made it even harder to play them. we changed stage directions and cues barely a day before performance. the props and sets team were all super stressed. it was a mess, as usual, but we somehow pulled together in the end.

i should say, i’m really quite grateful that my batchmates (who were the directors) gave me the opportunity to be in such a big role. they trusted me to carry it off and to perform it well. i don’t know if i lived up to their expectations, but i hope i wasn’t too much of a burden on them.

next! the end of year for year 4. it was finally our turn to write, direct, produce, and act in our own play. we started the process around august, and we did shit out a script, but the script was rejected and we had to come up with an entirely new plot nine days before the performance. i was supposed to be one of the script-writers, and i did do my part in writing the first script, but the writing of the second script coincided with my chinese exam (see previous post) so i couldn’t help out much with that. i didn’t really feel an attachment toward the play, and honestly thought it wouldn’t even happen.

on the day itself, as we were rehearsing, something strange happened. i felt a bit of that wonder as we lounged backstage waiting for our scene. i felt a bit of that thrill as we gossipped about boys, same as we did in year 1. i was talking to people i literally hadn’t properly talked to in two years, and it was strangely comforting. of course, things went wrong as they always did – the transformer broke in the middle of rehearsal and we were left wondering if we would even have proper spotlights and stagelights to perform with, but it got fixed in the end. a prop was torn, but they taped it up and made it look laminated.

in the end, as we performed our play to a huge crowd who screamed, gasped and cheered for us, i felt like my journey in drama club had come to a good end. not a great end, where our batch sorted out our differences and actually hugged and was one big happy family, but an ending that we all worked for. i got notes and hugs from juniors, telling me i was a great senior, and all i could think was, ‘thank you, i don’t know what i did to deserve this.’ maybe i had grown up even without realising it.

so you’ve sat through 2.3k worth of word vomit, and you’re wondering what’s the endgame. i think the point i want to make here is this: drama was my one constant throughout the four years of my time in this school. it had seen me at my best and my worst, in all its various forms. it exposed me to an entirely new way of performing art. and for all the flaws in how i experienced it, it taught me so much, and was my safe space.

in these four years i’ve gained and lost in unequal measure. maybe i’ve lost more than i have gained, maybe i wasn’t the greatest person to be around. but in the end, i’m struggling to remember every single tiny perfect imperfection. i can’t recall so many memories, but i remember the feelings i felt. yeah, my batch wasn’t the most bonded, but on stage, we made it work. we pulled up our socks and showed the world that hey, it is possible to put something together in nine days. yeah, i wasn’t the best senior, but i was a good senior, and hopefully some people will miss me. yeah, sometimes i hated going for drama club, but that doesn’t negate all the good times i had. yeah, maybe it wasn’t the best choice of extra-school club, but it was only because of it that i was able to go for that external theatre thing that changed my life.

i’ve been learning to take my bad experiences with a grain of salt. i might’ve had shitty encounters, but they’ve led me to amazing places and great discoveries. i think that’s what i want to say – that one john lennon quote that goes: everything will be okay in the end. if it’s not okay, it’s not the end. and it did turn out okay, even if it was in a relative sense. i don’t know if i’ve articulated my feelings or experiences properly here, but i tried my best. i’ve ended my journey here, made my peace with the fact that i may not be on best terms with my batchmates, but at least we put aside our differences to work together. i had an experience, and that’s all it is.

and i’d do it all over again.

thanks for reading! anbudan, noon xoxo this post was brought to u by the 2.7k word club B))

#drama #introspection #character growth #word #c'est la fucking vie #mine #noonwords

[sambarvadai]

#6: the curious art of crunchtime creativity (2/2): aha

posted on 14 nov 2019

exams happened yesterday, and also i wrote this blog post yesterday, but now it’s all gone and i’m rewriting it. c’est la vie! edit before posting: it is one week later and another exam has happened and now i have more material to write about. c’est la vie pt2!

so. there’s a second type of creativity – calling it creativity isn’t accurate; most would consider it to be going down the rabbit’s hole that is the internet. we’ve all done it before, somehow finding ourselves staring at something in horrified fascination with no clue as to how we ended up there. in my case – or at least, in this context, it is mostly subject-related, specifically to the subject on which i am about to write the exam. (future me: the exam is over) please note: this has only applied to tamil and chinese, the two languages i take (english doesn’t count. you can’t study for english), because those have scopes so wide that they might as well not exist at all. hence, it’s not me, it’s the subject. we move on.

chinese is a lovely, lovely subject ((please forget the fact that my exam is in two days and i’ve barely started studying) <– this exam is now over i hate it) and my love for it came from this book i found when i was starting out. it taught the story of each character by broke it down into radicals and connected these radicals into a coherent plot that told its meaning. that was a long sentence. so this made learning chinese, which is, primarily, a pictoral language, quite manageable.

a tangent here: simplified chinese is harder to understand pictorally as compared to traditional chinese, because in the name of simplification, many radicals have been bastardised to mean completely different things from what they were actually intended to be. for example, the character for listen (听, 聽), as you can see, has been grossly simplified from including the radicals for ear and heart to just including the radical for mouth. kinda sad, isn’t it

anyway back to story so i have amazing friends who kick my ass into studying and will absolutely scream at me for browsing taobao two days before the exam (which i did haha) and it’s great learning chinese in a chinese-speaking country because you have so many somewhat-native-chinese-speakers who will correct your chinese but still encourage you to strive on and not make (too much) fun of you. it’s lovely because my friends have similar pop culture exposure compared to me, so if i drop in a random korean reference or whatnot they get it. it’s really, really great and cool, especially when i want to write fanfic in chinese and they get it B)

speaking of fanfic, i recently discovered twosetviolin (why recently, you ask? i’ve been seeing their thumbnails in my recommended for ages but never clicked; sorry) and i was hooked. so naturally, i turned to fanfiction (idk if i actually ship them but the stories are cute). surprisingly, there was a large amount of chinese fanfiction about them, which led me to lofter (chinese tumblr)! and i learnt so much vocab from that and it was so so fun to read, because it was seeing familiar tropes in a slightly-less-familiar language. i do want to continue learning chinese, so hopefully this will prove to be a good gateway into the language.

the tamil section’s going to be shorter because it’s been a while since the exam, but anyway, i shall try my best.

tamil has been my pride and joy for the last four years, in no small part thanks to my peers and teacher who made me love the language and love myself for inheriting the language. i once regarded tamil as a burden and hated speaking it because of how i stumbled and had a funny accent. now, though, my accent is a lot better, and i speak it much more naturally. it’s still a work in progress, but i love the language so much more and that has translated directly into (or has affected) how i interact with my peers and family. i’m a lot more confident expressing myself in the language, and i like speaking it and making a connection to other people who have chosen the language.

because that’s what it is, isn’t it, you choose a language. you can choose to reject the language you were born with, or you can choose to cultivate it and respect it. you can choose to learn a language that was not yours to begin with, but has grown to become close to you in a different but equally inexplicable manner. you choose the language, and you give it the acknowledgement it rightly deserves.

anyway. the love for the language stayed largely within class, where our teacher showed us ancient tamil poems and translated them for us, showing us that themes of love, kindness, filial piety, and so many more have not changed one bit in the last 2000 years. recently, however, i found oldtamilpoetry.com, in which the blog-writer translates tamil poetry into bite-sized pieces. as i stayed up late reading the archives, i felt the language settling into my bones, draped over me as comfortingly as a childhood blanket. it was reassuring. calming. lovely.

this, i now realise, is just a really long love letter to my languages. these are my languages now, and i’ve made them my own by finding the beauty in them. that beauty was best discovered in the moments before exams, when pressure drives you to look for alternate ways to make learning bearable. this was when i discovered why i actually love the language – and love learning, really. yeah.

i don’t know where i was going with this but YES. tldr, during exam periods, i find how beautiful subjects – languages – are. it’s really cool, and i recommend you do it too. just go down a rabbit hole and find what makes you click. find that pull factor that makes you realise that yeah, this was worth it. this is probably kind of incoherent but hey. hopefully a bit of you resonated with this!

please watch out for part 3. idk when ill post it, but yeah! it’ll be a wrap-up to this academic year, or maybe just exams in particular. important! because i have quite a bit of reflection to do about that too. hope you enjoyed reading this haha thanks for reading so far !!!!!!!!!!! legitimately bless you owo (pls check out twosetviolin theyre amAzing) stay tuned for more !11!1!!

anbudan, noon xoxo

#exams #creativity #thoughts #creative process #words #word #languages #love language #love letter #mine #noonwords

[sambarvadai]

#5: the curious art of crunchtime creativity (1/2): voila!

posted on 4 nov 2019 there’s something about exams, about the mindbending stress they induce, about the level of shutdown your brain goes into. for me, exam seasons have never been about exams themselves, but about everything else.

i find myself relishing being let off early from classes, because as soon as i go home i take a good, long nap. i like having free blocks, when teachers let us study whatever we want to, so we pull up chairs and quiz our friends, or follow around the teacher as they entertain hysterical, nonsensical, or the rare well-thought-out question. i enjoy filling up pages of paper with math workings – done in pencil, because pen refills are expensive.

but this post isn’t about what goes on in school. it’s about what i do when i’m supposed to be studying. in those moments, i find myself more creative than i’ve ever been.

this isn’t a recent trend. when i was twelve and gearing up for my first bout of national exams, i found an old grid notebook with yellowing pages. it was my mother’s notebook, judging by the handwriting, but evidently (and thankfully) it wasn’t a very important notebook. that became my sketchbook for the year. i carried it out everywhere, drawing anything and everything that caught my fancy – from the line of my classmate’s back, to the imposing national museum. i wrote notes in it from a philosophy book. in short, it was my diary, and i loved it very much. the best sketch i’ve ever done comes with a defiant postscript: ‘done on xx/xx/xxxx, oral day!’ that sketchbook retains my fondest memories. i still remember my art teacher saying: ‘you know, this is a really great portfolio. if i didn’t know better i’d think you were gearing for art uni,’ citing the numerous sketches, studies, and figure drawings i’d done.

since then, the activities have changed, but the drive has not. my most recent exams saw me making music on musescore (god bless musescore), composing a 100-bar-long song inspired by chinese music, among other pieces. it felt really, really good. while there was a slight tinge of guilt that i wasn’t studying, it was quickly overtaken by the sheer joy of writing music. some of the best pieces i’ve produced (imho) were written when i was supposed to be doing anything but that. it was during times of external pressure. it seems as if creative energy leaks happen right when critical/analytical energy levels run dangerously high, initating some sort of shutdown that makes the right brain go into its happy place. i don’t know what’s the science, but i’m very thankful for this science, even if it rears its head in the most inopportune times.

my friends express this too. one friend also discovered musescore after i repeatedly sent her my music, and composed an intriguing piece after messing around with it for an hour or so. another friend found herself doodling gorgeous, gorgeous things right during exam peak period. this blog, itself, was born three days before national exams (i’m seeing a recurring pattern here). who knows what’ll come out of the next national exams two years later? (hopefully, something a little less time-consuming, because those exams MATTER!!)

in conclusion, on some level, stress helps us create, and we should embrace that and let it out instead of beating ourselves over it when we inevitably succumb to drawing bodiless eyes on exam papers. let yourself relax. write that blog post. draw that perfect face. feel that sense of satisfaction that you’ve created something just for yourself. that’s the special part – you’re not doing this because someone else told you to or forced you to. creativity is like a relationship – if you have to force it out, something’s wrong. allow yourself to be comfortable with doing things for yourself, and feel good that you’ve created something at the end of it. even as i’m typing this with my national exam looming over my head, i feel content that i’m sharing a part of myself that gives me satisfaction. try it out.

part 2 coming soon!! in the meantime, all the best to whoever who has exams and is reading this!!

thanks for reading!! anbudan, noon xoxo

#exams #thoughts #blog #stress #mine #noonwords

[sambarvadai]

#4: book review: the hating game by sally thorne

posted on 4 nov 2019

book 2: the hating game by sally thorne

another romance! this book is widely recommended on goodreads, and for good reason. it’s cute, funny, a bit cliche, but makes you feel warm all over. full review under the cut!

i think this is one of the few het novels that ive actually finished (because lately theyve all felt really cliche and manufactured – if you know any solid romance novels hmu) and it does, to an extent, read like fanfic (which might be why i like it :>) but it does have characters fleshed out solidly.

i appreciated the small details, like the robin-blue egg color thing, and i really appreciated the slow buildup of the love/hate thing. i also liked the male mc’s family interactions, and how they really contributed to his character and the way he interacts. definitely stan the hot doctor brother B) and hot mc too B)

male mc’s struggle was Real, and i Felt That. the ex gf was handled really nicely too, and that tension was portrayed well. last scene where female mc Killed It was very very satisfying to read.

the banter felt a bit ehh but also good effort, op. the last part about the (spoiler) blue wallpaper matching her eyes was cute but also lmfao where got eyes like that one

i also didnt like the startling lack of diversity. both of them felt really, really white (which they are, yeah, look at the cover) and their character descriptions left little room for any imagination because it was just ‘his/her dark eyes and hair framed his/her pale face’ or something – you get the gist. also, everyone is irritatingly attractive and irritatingly perfect or irritatingly misunderstood. blegh. i also didn’t like the male posturing and the entire emphasis on kissing as the Primary form of love. it felt a bit one-dimensional and simplistic, but ah well; artistic liberty In The Name Of The One True Love. male mc feeling threatened by the One male friend female mc had throughout the entire book also felt a bit bleghhh like get a grip sis

that’s not to say i didn’t enjoy this. i did, tremendously, screenshotting all the cute interactions and gleefully sending them to my friends. i loved the buildup, i love the softness, i love the mindlessness. read this once and bookmark all your favourite parts (so you don’t have to sit through the eughhhh ones) 3/5

thanks for reading!! anbudan, noon xoxo

#book review #romance #the hating game #sally thorne #word #books #noonwords

[sambarvadai]

#3: book review: autoboyography by christina lauren

posted on nov 3 2019

first legit post here!! thought id start off with a book i read recently (when i shd be studying haha)

autoboyography by christina lauren

first thoughts: very cute, feels very ficcy but that might just be me, kinda rushed towards the ending

actual thoughts: it was good. i rushed through it which was probably why i didnt cry at the places where everyone said they did, but honestly it didnt impact me as much as i thought it would. it was good, definitely, but not as life changing as id hoped

i’ll try not to spoil, but here are a few points that i particularly enjoyed. full details under the cut!

this book discusses church of the latter day saints, sometimes known as the mormon church. it has a reputation that precedes it, but one thing i really appreciated was how they didnt vilify the church and how they portrayed the people to be kind and human. sure, there were some characters from the church who werent great, but there were some that werent from the church who were also not great. basically, both sides were treated humanly and humanely, with no side being unduly villainised or victimised. good shit, author.

definitely one thing i really liked was the scene at the end when tanner and sebastian (the mcs) were at the bookstore and seb was just trying to (spoiler) keep veneer of professionalism even when his eyes were brimming with tears. it reminded me of that One scene in mi6 where tom cruise hugs his wife for the first time in years and then immediately puts up an act for her boyfriend, who doesnt know the entire story. im not explaining it properly, but long story short, it’s heart-breaking when two people who love each other very much are forced to put up a pretense disguising and denying their relationship, and you can clearly see its killing them.

i also really liked autumn’s characterisation, and how her friendship with the mc was portrayed. it was honest and funny and cute, and really well written. im just sad we didnt get more of her story, or even get to read a part of her book

the story also felt kinda unrealistic, especially the part about being unable to find places to make out in (try ur school after hours, dumbass) but maybe thats just me and my asianass experience talking.

the ending felt rushed, because it felt like no real closure – i guess real life is like that too, but here it felt more as if the authors didnt quite know how to end it properly. id have liked to see sebastian’s struggle a bit more with regards to trying to reconcile with his family. it wouldve been nicer to show the compromises that they had to make, rather than simply putting a one line dialogue that felt like it was negating all his character growth. it was building up to something….and then just Stopped. not nice author.

overall, still a good read, can be read once. hopefully u felt it more than i did, in a good way. 2.7/5

thanks for reading!!!! anbudan, noon xoxo

#book review #word #autoboyography #christina lauren #lgbtq literature #queerlit #noonwords