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The Making of a Dumb Datum

Imagine 10,000 years in the future. Two archaeologists are digging a site, and they find the remains of human bones. They take those remains to the lab, perform tests on them, and try to reconstruct the habits and lifestyle of that human. Say those bones belong to me. They are trying to find out my story, how I lived, what I ate, where I traveled, etc. Once they find all the info they need, they toss it into a museum where they store all other such ancient human remains they find. I was essentially one data point to them in trying to understand how humanity evolved over time. Or I can also call myself a “datum”, the singular form of data, literally one piece of information to solve a bigger puzzle. Honestly, I don’t need 10,000 years to become a datum. I am already a part of several datasets people use these days to study many things. So for that objective learner, I am already a datum. Now let me get to how I got the dumb part of it. I have had an interesting and eventful life so far...
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Atom

Lately when I am overwhelmed, I start thinking about how we’re all made up of tiny atoms, and how atoms are mostly hollow except for one dense nucleus in their centers, and how if an atom were size of a cathedral, nucleus will be the size of a tiny fly, and how this tiny fly is so dense that it makes up the entire weight of cathedral, where as cathedral itself has no self weight, and I say to my brain that all of this makes no fucking sense, and my brain says “nothing in this world makes sense, so stop overthinking and just go to sleep”, and I say “but this is 9 am in the morning”, but my brain is asleep already
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Fly

Whenever I hit the rock bottom, I am quick to blame gravity. I say things like "look at this stupid gravitational force always dragging me down mercilessly while I am trying hard to fly." I also blame Newton and his apple, as if there was no gravity in this universe before that apple hit Newton's head. But if I just for a moment chill out, and stop trying to find who's to blame, I may say things like "Geez, what if gravity is not the pulling force I imagined it as? What if it's just rock bottom accelerating up and catching upto my feet that feels like something dragging me down?" If this is true, then it means I am not actually losing the progress I made with flying everytime my feet hit that rock bottom. It's just gravity being annoying and tricking me into believing that I am a lost cause. So, I guess I should keep trying to fly. 
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A 12-Foot Mistake

I used to have a cocky attitude towards exams. I think it’s because I was lucky and never really had to study very hard to get a decent grade in school. But overtime I have come to realize that my luck actually screwed me over big time. It meant I failed to develop a habit of sitting in one place for hours and studying with vigorous intensity (I am always jealous of people who can do that). So, when school actually got hard and I could no longer escape with minimum effort, I tried to get some focus and build good study habits. But of course, I became miserable and felt like I wasn’t cut for it, so I accepted that my talents lie elsewhere. I am yet to find out where those talents of mine are hiding, but meanwhile as a consolation prize I found that I love consuming and telling stories. So, I remember there was a brief period where I was looking for a story in everything I read, and if there wasn’t one, I used to spin up some bullshit story. Especially during my undergrad when me and m...
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A Brand New Day

I think the concept of post-credit scene is one of the brilliant inventions in modern cinema. It gives a reason for people (at least, for those who are curious enough) to sit through the credits and read through names of technicians who were instrumental in creating that movie. But I remember there was a time when I used to hate this concept. It’s because I was an impatient youngster who didn’t want to sit through a never-ending stream of credits just to catch a brief sixty-second scene. I was also a youngster who purely watched movies out of my passion for story-telling. But I am not that young anymore and developed an inkling of what others may call ‘patience’ over time. I also saw my passion for movies fizzle out in between because I was too focused on big potato stuff in my life. But life smacked me in the face with those same potatoes, and I had to find a way to distract myself from that pain. So, I decided today to go watch Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and this was my second time w...
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Schrodinger and a lonely cat

Imagine that you are an uber driver. Your first ride at 5 am in the morning was booked by a brown guy to go to an establishment whose name ends in ‘Alehouse and Brewery.’ You are completely justified in assuming that this brown guy is an alcoholic. In fact, this happened to me three weeks ago when I booked an uber to go to white rock alehouse & brewery. My uber driver was confused and asked me “is it really open this early in the morning? Or you just go this early because you work there?” Maybe there’s a parallel universe where I learned how to brew a beer and landed a lucrative job in a brewery, but I had to break it to him that we are not in that universe, and that I am going there to run with my marathon training group. I did the same thing this morning again. If someone ever starts using my name as a verb, I hope it is to represent the act of “booking an uber ride to a brewery to run with a marathon training group” Whenever I am running with other people, I have this disease ...
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A Soap Opera

I confess I am a bit too dramatic and emotional. I have a theory for why I am this way. It has something to do with Indian Soap operas that my mom watches. I used to be annoyed at them as a kid because we only had one small television in our living room, and there was a pecking order for who gets to choose what we watch. Somehow, I was at the bottom of that order, even below my little brother, despite me outliving him by 4 years. I was always vocal about my hatred towards overly melodramatic and unrealistic stories in the soap operas my mom puts on. But secretly I was hooked to those stories. I used to keep an eye on television from a corner of my eye (I couldn’t give my whole eye; else my brother will know that I am invested in whatever crazy weird family drama is happening on screen and I won’t hear the end of it). These soap operas always have a female protagonist who is portrayed as a victim of the torture inflicted on her by cunning in-laws and a cruel husband. If this happens i...
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Life of a Junkie

When people get to know I run regularly in mornings, they start saying things like “wow, that’s insane dedication to fitness.” But truth couldn’t be any far from that. Calling me a fitness junkie is like calling me an actual junkie. I never touched substances in my life, and I never really thought of myself as someone who is disciplined enough to exercise every day. When I try to explain this in my trademark mumbling, people get confused and just divert the topic to stuff like weather. This annoys me, and I am internally always like “at least pick a different interesting topic, like formula one”. Sometimes I genuinely wish someone takes interest in me and says “okay, you don’t run for fitness, then why do you run?”. Then I will start explaining the wonderful reason behind why I run by bringing up the story of formula one legend, Niki Lauda. Niki suffered a horrible crash in the 1976 formula one season, which saw him almost flirt with death. To say he had a long list of injuries and s...
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