HAYIIEEEE!

Good morning. I am back after a couple of days. I hate it. Not being back, but taking days off. ANYHOW.

I forgot my earphones at home today. So I got new ones to avoid being irritated through the day. And they work unbelievably well?? What was all this Apple drama then? They’re LOUD AND CLEAR AND SHARP AND WEIRDLY NOISE-CANCELLY???? So that’s good.

I have decided I’ll try intermittent fasting. On second thoughts though, I get cranky and low without food. We’ll see how that pans out. I got my second period yesterday (for the super concerned moms and dads, I talked to doc) If I consider this one, I’d be in the follicular phase. However, if I count from the old one, I’d be in my ovulation energy. AND I FEEL THE OVULATION ENERGY KICK IN TODAY, or as Alisha put it, i am hustle i am grindset i am achiever.

On to interesting things.

Dr Vijay Shankar Maurya

Dr. Maurya is an old family friend. I’ve spent A LOT of time playing fort, licking Jim-Jams and watching Harry Potter along with his kids. I’ve also super admired Uncle because a. I thought he was really, really smart because he could cut open heads and fix you, and b. He had noted my DoB, my class and my previous year grades in a diary. And he’d ask for updates every single time. I just liked the attention back then. Looking back, I understand he was just a smart people’s person.

So yesterday, I told the Internet about him. Here’s the thread.

And for the lazy, disappointing people, here’s what the thread says:

Talked to a neurosurgeon in Gorakhpur, UP about his experience treating women from rural areas. And his efforts to help make their lives better.

My heart is SO FULL right now. Here’s a thread 🧵

1/ An interesting insight he gave was that most of his female patients can’t read their own prescriptions. Or their kid’s.

2/ Mostly since most doctors write prescriptions in English and they can’t read it AT ALL. So he writes them Hindi ALL THE TIME. And from what I’ve seen in my 20 years in Gkp, this is NOT common practice.

3/ For women who can’t even read Hindi, he puts down a phone number to call – very legibly, to match and call – in case they go back home and have questions.

4/ Every woman fills up a form (or is helped by someone in filling it) about the degree of their literacy.

• Can you read the क, ख, ग?
• Can you write your name in Hindi?
• Can you read words and sentences in Hindi?

and so on.

If they come back for their next visit one step ahead of before, say: couldn’t read क, ख, ग before, but now they can, they get a free treatment. A brilliant incentive for the rural patients he has.

5/ Every kid that comes in gets a notebook and stationery if they pass all health checks: nails, lice-free hair, clean ears, etc. Young girls also get sanitary pads.

To me, this was a simple of example of someone using their position of power & privilege and doing whatever they can – VERY NON-PERFORMATIVELY – to help make the world a better place for women.

Rooting for such pockets of individual effort. Also, so inspired to do more with @dcdngdrpdi!

<3

Anshika Kushwaha’s Twitter

This was last night. It kind of mini blew-up through the day. That’s okay. But guess what’s the coolest bit? Neelesh Misra texted me asking more about him. For his Gaon Connection project.

The point I want to drive is this: The Internet is a VERY cool place. Back in the Covid days, I would binge on his Slow Interview videos all day and hope to do cool things like it when I grew up. For a week when I was hyper-focused on his content, I. WAS. MESMERISED. Of course, me being myself, I grew out of it. It felt like an impossible, or say, insanely hard thing to do for me. (Mind you, I was a cool kid, unwillingly stuck in the JEE-rut) And the same person reached out to me. It is nothing to do with me but just the turn-tables is cool.

So that.

(Everything before this was written on Oct 3. After it on Oct 4.)

Another thought on this: I’d open Twitter through the day and get excited about its 100k reach and all that. I did this many times. And then it clicked – this is neither my story, nor my effort. So there’s no point reaping random success-dopamine hits. So I muted the thread and forgot about it.

Really short ideas

I always feel stuck and angry at how short-worded I am. What I mean is that when I give you context – I skip out on irrelevant, “obvious” details. Or, I assume one would just conclude point C if I give them A and B. Basically, I talk in super small summaries. It’s annoying, really. HOW TO BE ELABORATE? IOEFGNCDKMV.

So, two things.

One. I found this tweet (okay I lost the tweet now) by Dickie Bush. For the lazy, it says:

Never write more than two pages on any subject

99% of books should be blog posts. And 99% of blog posts should be tweets. I would preface this by saying: never *publish* more than two pages on any subject. If it can’t fit in two pages, it should be simpler.

David Ogilvy/Dickie Bush

Now, I know I don’t do any justice with what I write. But at least I don’t feel as cribby about it.

Two. I will pester everyone around me till I have cracked writing longer things. It’s not that hard – think. I am just scared. For sure.

Failed BADLY but I’m back at it.

Last two weeks, I’ve tried to be more consistent with my life.

Eat healthy: One coffee in the morning, which I increasingly switched to Americanos. And overall clean, healthy eating,

Write: The little blog things. One everyday.

Getting smort: Watched the YCSS series – one a day.

Chores: Put daily things in order so they don’t pile up.

BUT, last Friday to Tuesday, I’ve been as wild with it all as one could be. School was off. A friend was in town. Lot of socialising. Long, fun, tiring, hedonistic days. So I just slipped off. A shame, really.

Took me a while, but lesgooo. I am glad I did not forget about any of these 🙂

I deleted all Social Media.

For a total of 3 days. Hahahehehu. And then I came back. Nothing transformative happened. If anything, I had more things to think and say but nowhere to put it out. The idea was this: All the time I spent scrolling to the Earth’s end on my acoounts, I could do on DD. And then, all the posting + interacting activity would add to the DD traction and we’d rule the world. But it failed. I had a ton of AK things to say too. So yeah.

I think I am a bad relationship-person.

I don’t know where this thought came from. But I am very convinced I am not the best at relationships. Of all kinds. Kid, sister, niece, friend, girlfriend, peer, everything. All for the same reasons too. I don’t think I’d do an AK-heart-dissect on the Internet but yeah. I felt that and I will figure out how to do better.

College is a dud.

It’s been a couple months I went back to it. Still figuring out how to be happy with it. Lol.

I mean, I made peace with it, yes. But it’s still an annoying slug. Especially the attendance bit. How insecure and un-interesting do colleges have to be if they’ve to force and mandate an 85% attendance policy. If you’re in the teaching business, do it well?? I think they just try to offload their lack of motivated, interesting professors on the kids with their attendance things. Oh, how I miss Prof Pratish sometimes! (Ask me about the blind-people-gifting class.)

Or am I simply uneducatable?

Why are they parroting us things that are already on LinkedIn and Instagram? Try? Something? New?

EH!

Okay, I have more things to say but I need to go. College is soon and I want to finish up some things on DD before I leave from here.

I think – and I might be really wrong – that because I have college eating up most of my time, I am more particular and mindful and productive (?) with what I do have on hand. Might be a false positive.

See you tomorrow.

Bye!