The uncomplicated life of a 15 year old

Do you know I am 15 years old and even though I claim life isn’t as complicated as it seems, one of the perks of being my age is you may be getting randomly stressed or panicked about your future. Now this is completely normal, I think. The thing is that today as I was pondering on philosophical things of our existence, as one might on a Saturday morning, I realised I wasn’t doing homework or studying at that moment and this made me guilty. Now surely that shouldn’t be right, why should I feel guilty for doing some philosophical thinking? “Because morning is for Physics”, my brain politely explained. That’s when It hit me – my default state was supposed to be ‘doing H.W.’ or ‘Studying’. If you have perhaps read my earlier blog on parenting, you would know that in my house thinking about butterflies (this is an example, we don’t only think about butterflies. Bees are important too) is preferred over sitting at a table and staring at study books. Despite that, in the back of my min...

Today is international parenting day, so I felt that maybe I should write a blog about parents or perhaps it would be more appropriate if they wrote one for me. The first time I realised that there was something peculiar about the way my parents were parentings, was in junior school. When my friends used to crib about their parents dragging them to tuitions every day. Now this didn’t sound right to me as the only place my parents dragged me to was to the park. Intrigued, I investigated further and found out that they had timetables at home ! These timetables were like lists, not like the annoying list I had at home which dictated which 5 fruits I have to have that day, but a list with all the activities under the sun allotted to a time slot. In a day, they would have a math tuition, a science tuition, singing class and skating class. I never had these time slots. I thought everybody played, studied and slept like me. If I had to follow any of those timetables, by the end of the...

Yes we are in a lockdown and it is perfectly understandable if you are at a stage where you are lying on your bed and you want to do something, but you don’t want to. You are feeling bad lying around doing nothing but you don’t want to do anything. So here’s a carefully compiled list of things to do, even if you don’t want to. 1.            Cooking – ingredients may be limited. But that’s exactly what watching Masterchef – limited ingredients rounds – has prepared us for. Also, when else are you going to get the opportunity to justify watching TV? 2.            Plants – spend time with your family and I mean your WHOLE FAMILY, including your plants. I have recently been given the mammoth task of watering our balcony – meaning jungle – of plants. Trust me I didn’t like it at first, I just did it by routine. However now you may catch me having a long philosophical conversation with a Ficus. 3.       ...

“No, I will not”, again mama and I were fighting the night before the walk. She said that I should come. But I did not want to wake up early in the morning and walk. But I had no choice! I was simply angry. Next day before we reached the metro station, I started feeling excited. The streets were empty. It was not sunny nor was it hot. Although no one seemed up, the birds were up and were making a dinfull racket. When everybody reached, we did a round of introductions. Then we started walking. We were almost the only people so could walk freely. There was no traffic. First we went to ‘Chor Minar’ where we heard the squeaking of bats. And there was a puppy who I went and patted. Then we took a picture with everybody holding their necks! (1) Then we started walking again. This time we saw a hornbill, who was extremely shy and did not like being photographed. We then went to the ( I forgot the name)(2) where we stood on stairs and took pictures and there were two puppies. And...

(typed by the little girl, without any grammar checks!) Walking is a good thing, but waking up at 6am on a Sunday morning and walking is not one of my favorite things to do. But, that does not seem to stop my mother. Every Sunday she takes me for a walk early in the morning. Usually these walks are planned, have specific starting point locations and a guide. My mother sometimes (as her hobby) conducts walks too. And many a time, I quite enjoy myself too. One Sunday as usual, I was woken up for a walk which was to start at 7am. While I was getting ready, I realized that the clock in our house is not showing the correct time. So, I went and checked the time on the phone, and to my dismay I saw that the time was already 6:30am! Immediately all the peace in the house was shattered as everybody started running around as frantic as possible. Anyhow we all tumbled into the car at 6:45am. When we finally reached the location we were utterly surprised to find absolutely nobody...

Recently we had student council interviews in my school, which I had to miss thanks to the high levels of pollution. I am especially upset since I finally had the answer to the question ‘Why should we select you’. Perhaps you would like to hear the answer. ‘Ma’am, Sir. I believe you should select me because I am not afraid of being unpopular. I say and do what I know for a fact, rather than following a herd doing wrong things. Don’t get me wrong – I am not stubborn or egoistic. I welcome opinions and am happy to be corrected. But mostly, I do whatever I understand to be right. The interesting thing is that doing the ‘right’ thing is always logical – based on common sense. Throwing rubbish out of the school bus instead of waiting for 10 minutes and putting it in a dustbin, makes no sense. Buying plastic bottles of water and drinking ‘nano plastic’ is illogical as it’s dangerous for our health, not just the planet’s. [ I recently learnt this on the WWF website – whic...