Hello, dear reader 👋
I'm often faced with a dilemma when it comes to decluttering my phone storage - do I delete an image or video, and if not, then how long do I keep it for? How are you supposed to decide what goes, and what stays? I was going through a strange time earlier in the year, and this small problem escalated into a larger existential question. I felt overwhelmed, and didn't know what to do with all the random WhatsApp videos on my phone. So…. I made a short film out of them -
- and was reminded of the magic that exists in the seemingly insignificant parts of our lives.
The Missing Grey Area in Social Media
Grim times like these make me want to hold on tighter to the small and inconsequential delights. It’s been a confusing, distressing, and dividing time. Social media is designed to encourage users to have a strong opinion, but not necessarily with the full context or depth.
How do we know what is right and wrong, what is true and false? When the very systems seem so fractured, when you don’t know what to believe, when your sources of information are biased, how do you know what to think? Is it as simple as having a position, in order to make a difference as an individual? But what if your position is incorrect? Then isn’t it safer to say nothing at all - take no sides, have no stand. You are your opinion and silence is golden. A good time to dig out Jon Ronson:
I favour humans over ideology, but right now the ideologues are winning, and they're creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas, where everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. We can lead good, ethical lives, but some bad phraseology in a Tweet can overwhelm it all - even though we know that's not how we should define our fellow humans. What's true about our fellow humans is that we are clever and stupid. We are grey areas. The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people. Let's not turn it into a world where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.
I found some comfort in what Paromita Vohra says while talking about the publication Khabar Lahariya- politics is not a fixed syllabus, but a capacity for recognising meaning and value on our own terms.
I have a love/hate relationship with Instagram, but I have to say that I really enjoy the good parts of social media. It’s been a powerful voice for young citizen journalists more recently, who have been providing the on-ground coverage that mainstream news sources seem to be missing out on. It’s Instagram presences like that of PARI that make us question who decides what “news” is.
The possibilities of the medium are endless - apart from the usual, some use it as an archive, some for activism, or exclusively for documenting the ceiling upholstery of Bombay taxis or Delhi houses, or as a sketch book of really bad portraits, a way to share DIY craft projects, inspiration, and even learn a language.
Keeping Close Friends Close
I had always wondered what the point of the “Close Friends” story feature on Instagram was. As an experiment, my friend Abhipsha and I started actively posting stories for close friends , to see if our close friends felt more connected to us if we shared more of our mundane everyday.
Pictures I ordinarily would have shared on five different chats on text, I now put up as a story on Instagram. A big part I miss about not living in the same place as loved ones is not knowing the little things that happen in their life. I feel a twinge of sadness when I think about the details of minor importance that I will never know about.
In one of my all-time favourite films, Frances Ha, Frances says about her best friend moving out:
It’s those little moments that make life, and that’s what I want to be up to date with - not just the “she said yes!” and “Today I turned 30” and the “Vitamin Sea” caption under a picture of a beach vacation. But who is a close friend? Family and friends you have a close personal connect with, of course. But also those to whom I want to say, “I know we don’t talk everyday or even every week, and sometimes months, but here’s a picture of this disgusting weird fungus in the food I left in the fridge for a month”. And that is something that you may not be able to share with just anyone… and probably shouldn’t.
“Close friends” did feel closer to me [based on anecdotal data, confirmation bias, and intuition - not on actual research]. I also saw some of my friends starting to use the feature more actively, which felt like a positive sign. If my newsletter is any indication, I’m a big believer in sharing and sharing and then sharing some more.
Rituals
Holiday season will soon be upon us. Maybe because there are so many festivities - but this time of the year feels like a Friday evening. With festivities, I think about rituals, and read something about the theatre group Manalmagudi that resonated:
After all, there is a downside of rituals; namely, they can be faked, corrupted and made into an instrument of discrimination. But Manalmagudi attempts to stay away from that trap as they seek the true essence of rituals, which symbolises survival through coexistence, not the hierarchy of power… Not every actor who came to Manalmagudi has been able to cope with such shared living, such “constant cancelling of self”
“To call this trance raw and uncontrollable is looking at it through the colonial lens … only if you enter the ritual reality, you become an insider. Not every mask-wearing person is a ritual performer. The apparent chaos of a trance in fact represents many interconnected points in life that need to be experienced, not necessarily understood.”
Year In Review
I’m a fan of annual reviews, but my friend Iti and I came to the conclusion that December is not a good time to look back on the year because of recency bias, a tendency to gloss over the initial months, and also - it’s a lot of pressure. October or November, in comparison, feels better. A method that I like is making two columns - less and more - what do you want less of, and what do you want more of, in the following year.
I stumbled upon a Notion template to log a daily highlight. In February, I started using it; and did it, as I do many things, just for kicks. I soon got quite into it, though, because it felt great to scroll through and see each month as highlights of the days.
I find the whole gratitude journal stuff a bit corny, but it’s really nice to see all these really trivial little things that add up to your life - the “went for a silly walk. it was almost raining”; “Seeing M’s moodboard from when she was 16. She stuck a picture of a Borosil kettle and said - take the heat without burning yourself or something”; and the “Watching Sex And The City with D” - the kind of stuff that you may only share on your close friends story on Instagram…
And Other things
🧘♀️I discovered One Sec, via swiss-miss. It’s an app that makes you take a deep breath, and asks you if you really want to open Instagram every time you try to open Instagram. And most of the time for me, the answer is no - it’s just something to do. OneSec hasn’t reduced my Instagram usage significantly, but has increased my intentional deep breathing :-)
🧩Move aside, Wordle. My friend Surya introduced me to NYT Connections. It’s such a fun game, especially when you play it with someone - either competitively or in collaboration, depending on how hard it is on the given day.
☠️Auto Grave Digging Syndrome, or AGDS, is a term introduced by my friend Aaishu’s father. Appropriate to use when you get yourself into an unnecessary conversation; when you back yourself into a corner; when you dig your own grave. It may have the risk of falling into the dad joke category, but it’s quite fitting in many a situation. Aaishu’s dad is a cardiac surgeon who runs one of my favourite accounts on Instagram - viewer discretion advised - on which he sometimes shares videos of his open heart surgeries.
🎟Do you have a paracosm? I heard about this term for the first time during a talk by filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia, and it is defined as a complex and richly detailed imaginary world created by an individual, or group of individuals over the span of a number of years… The general agreement between psychologists and theorists regarding Paracosms is that the formation of the world must occur within childhood or early adolescence, and in many cases, continued on into adulthood…In the case of C.S Lewis, his Narnia series was developed from the world of Boxen, which he developed as a child alongside his brother, Warren. [from Artefact]
💌I found these e-cards from Quentin Blake’s website quite sweet.
Why Not Sing?
Dept. Of Enthusiasm is a sporadic newsletter where Jeff shares a few lines, enthusiastically, about something he’s been loving. I love learning about what people love. There’s an email from May in which he writes about this song by Portuguese musician Tim Bernardes.
Jeff writes:
Something about it felt significant—possessed of that rare magic that suggests a song was written exclusively for you ... As the first few months of 2023 lumbered on, hard and heartbreaking, I kept this song in my back pocket. I’d whistle the chorus or sing phonetic nonsense in no language at all, but never dared look up the English translation of the lyrics. I wanted to believe the song meant what I needed it to mean.
As I walked home that night, warm enough to wear a single layer and with marginally less of the sky falling than on New Year's Eve, I decided to finally look up the English language lyrics to 'A Balada de Tim Bernardes'. There in the later verses?
I will come back, I will come back
I'm going to be happy again, I want to be calmer
I am taking care of myselfI'm going to change, I already changed, I'm changing
Life is made to be enjoyed
And somehow I'll enjoy it
And the line repeated in the chorus? A piece of advice not so much lost in translation, but perhaps just waiting there for me patiently?
And why not sing?
Let me know if your review of this year makes you realise what you want more and less of.
Hopeful for the strange things that are to come,
With love,
Nitya