The allure of Table-top Role-Playing Games for a better connected world

You and your band of marauders are hiding in wait for a certain royal caravan to pass by. They bring a particular magical treasure that your employer will pay big bags for. The caravan trudges slowly, along with a handful of guards. How would you approach this particular heist?

Doesn’t this set your mind whizzing into all kinds of possibilities and narratives? Do you have an ex-royal guard with your gang of thieves to gain an upper hand? Did the crew plan to entrap the carriage in the unseen forest road? Will you break in and escape undetected, or will you take down every single guard in your vicinity? I can keep going on and on, but I will still be caught off guard when a player would throw all of my plans to the wind and chooses to betray the crew and warn the guards!

This is a scene I imagine putting in front of my friends, with whom I love to play these scenarios through what are known as Table-Top Role-Playing Games or TTRPG for short (also pronounced teeturpug if you wish to, best said out loud in one breath). We come together almost every week and throw ourselves into outlandish worlds shaped by our collaborative imagination following a particular rule-set known as Dungeons and Dragons — D&D for short.

Games generally tend to be associated with winning or losing, but nowadays, there have been more games (including video games) that lean on facilitating an experience instead of a “game-over” scenario. This is one of the primary appeals of TTRPGs for me and made me quickly realize that the experience offered by this kind of a game is that of human connection.

You might ask, “But Jabber, what IS a table-top?? And what do you mean role-play?” To which I point to the past for a short history lesson.

Brief History of Board Games

We are a small speck in the grand scale of the galaxy, a being born out of chance and sheer coincidence. And in this stew pot of life that we live in, we try to seek connections among other lives around us. Life lived alone can be exhausting save for a few, and one way to make these connections is to find community in shared beliefs or hobbies. The former can take many forms such as the belief in faith, trust in science, acceptance of identities. But a smaller subset of people make connections by talking about shared hobbies or interests.

Some hobbies are more communal than others. One of the biggest pass times the world has to offer are board games. Cards, dice, shells and sticks have been found even in the days of yore. Ancient India has had games like Chaturanga (which evolved into Chess), and Moksha Patam (westernized to Snakes&Ladders), and Dayakattai or Pasha (westernized to Ludo). So we had nerds and gamblers since the dawn of time who were all looking for a way to have a fun time amidst daily drudgery.

Since board games were played on a table, they all got grouped together into the broader “table-top games” umbrella. Tabletop games have a way of bringing together and easing conversation between a group of people who’ve never met before. They can make for fun hangout sessions between a group of friends over pizza. They’re a natural way to bring people together, often so they can fight amongst themselves over who should buy that one Monopoly asset from another player. The wholesome sabotage attempts between the players make for unforgettable memories.

Nestled within this niche of playing something on the tabletop is the wonderful world of TTRPGs — this sub-genre branched off in the late 20th century from war games and has deviated enough at this point to have become an entire genre in itself. With a greater focus on playing a character and tactical combat, D&D popularized this hobby to a large swathe of players worldwide.

In a TTRPG, you “role-play” as a character — usually not yourself — with different thoughts and morals than that which you hold. Maybe they’re inspired by Tolkenien archetypes (Wise Wizard, Dwarven Warriors, Elven Rangers) or something from your childhood, like a secret superhero who can transform into something that can save the world, or most likely, the village you live in.

~History lesson finito~

Why We Play These Finicky Little Board Games?

TTRPGs offers some respite from the mundane. Life is decorated by the moments that sparkle amidst the ordinary, but TTRPGs make for such moments to grace your minds a little more frequently than that. Like with every hobby, once you sink your teeth into this, you’ll be asked to give it a bit of time, and loosen up. With a right table of friends, TTRPGs can slowly bring conversation and excitement on a weekly schedule (provided the dreaded *scheduling conflicts* don’t sabotage you). You get a set of dice (or not!), you grab a bunch of friends, and that’s about it. Everything else is extra, for all you need is your mind and imagination, and the willingness to believe that you’re a different person in a magical or mythical setting!

There’s a TTRPG for every kind of person. I truly believe that everyone can enjoy TTRPG, but finding the right one might take some time. D&D is very popular, and may be the gateway drug into this hobby. But there are tonnes of Fantasy and Magic-centric games, Sci-Fi or Futuristic games, games where you’re an office worker with superpowers when the night comes, games where you hunt vampires, and games where you ARE the vampires. There are so many more kinds of TTRPGs available in the wild, with zany experimental systems, or no systems at all!

My friends and I try out different games with different mental goals we want to reach to gain a level of satisfaction. Sometimes it’s us enacting a court case in our collaborative fantasy setting, which by all metrics have no bearing upon the broader story we wanted to play. We tried playing a dystopian sci-fi story where AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) takes over the world, but some people wanna have a word with it. These allow our creative muscles to exercise regularly, and help us make more and more outlandish scenarios deeply rooted to a sense of realism. Our life experiences translates into our game-play, and affects our decisions.

I wished to share the joy and appeal of getting together and engaging with friends in a way that keeps interactions fresh and going. I hope at least one of my readers ends up checking out these games after reading this.

Author’s Note
This is an interesting article for me to approach, since I generally don’t tend to recommend an entire sub-genre, which led me to flesh out too many details, which might serve to intimidate instead of encourage. After cutting down on some extra bits, this reads more like a more up-beat encouraging post without too much to bog the reader down. Hope you enjoyed this history lesson!

In Search of Human Connection: TTRPGs was originally published in The Jabber Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Reading has been going through a renaissance over the past few years due to the influence of various online media becoming ideal platforms for book discussions and recommendations. The conception of Internet blogging in the early 2000s did quite a lot for reading — by offering a community to readers, it encouraged collaborative reading and participation in these forums. There were niche blogs focused on ye olde classics, forums formed around Fantasy and Science Fiction, and a culture forming around contemporary literary fiction.

However, nothing brought more interest in reading than the big 3 platforms: YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Or rather, Booktube, BookTok or Bookstagram. Content creators share their real and “unfiltered” opinions about books, be it positive or negative, which got picked up by the Algorithm Gods that ruled back then. A catchy thumbnail on YouTube, or particularly interesting sounding ten second pitch on a reel or TikTok can quickly garner attention about a specific book series.

While it’s possible to argue that this attention could be detrimental, thousands of eyes focus onto them, and these books find moderate success in some form. But the mere mention of Popular on TikTok/Reels somehow elicits a frown of disapproval from a traditional reader (even me). I have experienced this feeling too, but I only began thinking critically about it after stumbling upon this video, The Death of Personal Taste in Books by According to Alina, which itself is a video-essay compiling and analyzing various reports on the modern reading habits of Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

The premise behind this video is as the title suggests: there is a decline in what’s being called as the “personal taste” when it comes to consumption of books in this TikTok era. Alina claims that she has not been the only one being recommended the same set of 10 books, in the same 10-ish genres that have either been over-rated or are smut in some form or another.

I was somewhat following the arguments Alina was making, and agreeing with a few points here and there, till she actually began listing these book. I’ve read The Song of Achilles, and I think it’s an amazing book that I can fully recommend anyone to check out. I have even recommended it on this site a few years ago! Despite the positive emotions, I felt called out for riding the algorithmic bandwagon, when I’m certain I picked it up since my friend swore by it.

This means that these algorithm picks are not even “bad books” like the low effort AI generated book slop that’s being sold on Amazon now. Sure, good books deserve recommendation. R.F. Kuang’s Babel was apparently incredibly popular/controversial on BookTok-Tube-Stagram, and I was a few years late in checking it out. And if you know me, you know how much I loved Babel (with a few caveats).

The biggest point Alina and Cinzia (linked in Alina’s video description), seem to share is this: by reading the same bunch of books, with very little deviation, you end up losing a sense of identity and taste. Primarily using these big social media sites to source your recommendations may bias you into only reading a single genre. Visiting a local library or thrift bookstore to pick up a book that catches your eye feels like such an Instagram-worthy activity, but this was also almost exactly how I picked books and developed a taste for reading epics and high fantasy books. But this was also almost exactly how I developed a bias for the genres I regularly read.

I thought the name Artemis Fowl was cool, and I was right, that was a fantastic series. I thought Eragon was a misspelling of “dragon”, and that introduced me to some of my favourite genre tropes. I read some wacky kids books as a teenager that stayed with me far longer than even I realized like The Mouse on a Motorcycle, or The Hundred Year-old Man Who Jumped Out of His Window. My love for classic “whodunnits” came from a random library selection of The Secret Seven and The Hardy Boys, moving onto Nancy Drew, and Hercule Poirot. I developed my reading taste by going to the nearby library to borrow random books every week.

One of the biggest genres originating from the new BookTok-Tube-Stagram is “Romantasy” (portmanteau of romance+fantasy). Outside of these platforms however, I see a lot of outrage against these romantasy books or dark romance novels that get heavily recommended on TikTok and Reels. From the few ones I’ve tried such as Throne of Glass, Red Queen or The Fourth Wing (this one reached huge mainstream popularity), I found the dialogue to be cringey and unnatural, the authors don’t really make a cohesive world, and the protagonists barely have personalities in order to allow the readers to project themselves onto. This sounds like perfectly serviceable cliche, generic stories, and are criticized as if it’s corrupting the market.

My problem is not that more people are reading romantasy, but that the algorithm slowly keeps feeding the exact same types of books to the readers in order to hit the same emotional reactions.

One section of the internet says this is a harmless genre, and actually somewhat positive in that it gets people who would never have picked up a book to read romantasy. Thinly veiled smut or not, reading is reading isn’t it? My problem is not that more people are reading romantasy, but that the algorithm slowly keeps feeding the exact same types of books to the readers in order to hit the same emotional reactions. And authors begin feeding into this Ouroboros viscous cycle of making the exact same book in order to appeal to the same BookTok-Tube-Stagram audience. By depending on the Algorithm Gods, we are losing any say in choosing what books to read. Romantasy or any genre is not ruining Reading: It’s the Algorithm. Always has been.

More people are reading things. But they’re reading very specific, niche genres, that give them exactly what they want, and nothing more or different should be there. “Enemies-to-lovers, fantasy romance with seductive faeries that capture main girl and they have a war between factions” becomes an actual real requirement for many of these readers and anything that deviates from these tags will give them anxiety. Almost as if they are averse to surprise. Being surprised IS the point of reading! Why spoil yourself by seeing the tags that fully reveal all of the events in the plot in one sentence?

NO! The Algo will serve you with unobtrusive and perfectly appealing slop which you will keep consuming.

I am not going on some holy crusade against reading shitty books. I read a lot of Wuxia/Xianxia webnovels, which is a Fantasy genre originating from Chinese mythology including Buddhism, Taoism, Chinese alchemy etc. I don’t believe you can get more formulaic than this sub-genre, which I genuinely love to read (and laugh at). And I chose to read this of my own volition, untainted by the miasma of the algorithm.

I know my dislikes since I’m usually open to trying out new genres. Historical fiction sounded right up my alley, until I’d read The Wolf Hall. With a Man Booker Prize from 2008 in its bag, it checked all boxes to become my new favourite. But even the most beautiful prose could not hold me long enough for the actual plot to get going. I’ve tried reading the Wolf Hall multiple times, but could never finish more than 30% of it.

“How naked and vulnerable and afraid I would be of the hardest days in my life if I had not had years and years of stories preparing me for these moments.”
 — Brennan Lee Mulligan

If we do not read books that we disagree with, if we only look for things we’ve already thought about and formed an opinion about, why are we reading stories at all? Sure reading what’s popular opens avenues for conversation, and facilitates a sense of community among like-minded people, but straying away from the done and dusted set of books to check out some weird 100 page novella could become your next life-changing experience. (I don’t want to include a tangent about closed bubbles enabled by algorithmic curation that keeps you stuck in a particular echo chamber.)

So I’m going to make it a point to pick up books I would NEVER have read before, just to see if I can read it, and what I think about it, before giving myself a treat by reading what I like to. That way, I can take rest by reading high fantasy, but challenge myself by reading Stephen Chbosky or Yanis Varoufakis.

Read wide, and read a lot.

Signing off,
Jabber

Are We All Reading the Same Ten Books? was originally published in The Jabber Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

(Re-uploaded from the FeedsNITT Magazine Archives with a few touch-ups)

Vagabond is a manga series created by Takehiko Inoue based on the novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. This story is a fictional take on the origin of Japan’s most renowned sword saint Miyamoto Musashi. There have been thousands of analysis videos and articles around this critically acclaimed series, which begs the question — why write one more?

The straightforward answer is, Vagabond helped shape my thoughts. My first introduction to Vagabond was in 2016, when I was going through an ‘Action/Battle anime’ phase, where I searched for any and every kind of action anime series out there.

This brutal samurai story quickly landed on my radar — but the immensely violent nature that screamed out of the first few pages overwhelmed me. The unnecessarily detailed violence felt somewhat gratuitous, and I felt my headspace wasn’t right for this story then.

I picked up Vagabond in the onset of the COVID-19 quarantine to give it a fair try — not only did it impress me, it soon grew to become one of my favourite pieces of media.

The Premise

To win any battle, you must fight as if you are already dead
–Miyamoto Musashi

Vagabond primarily follows Miyamoto Musashi on his journey to become the greatest swordsman in Japan. He starts out at the age of around 18, swinging the sword wildly to kill with brute force alone. Musashi had monstrous strength and the sheer determination to make it through fights. Having had no formal training with the sword, he grew up fighting in the wilds in his lonesome. The survival instincts he picked up from his time in the forest brought the ire of his village, who unsurprisingly shunned the troubled child. These instincts, however, became his vital advantage when he chose the path of the sword. But becoming the “greatest under the heaven” was easier said than done — his journey threw him against stronger and stronger opponents, who’d trained all their lives and honed their crafts to perfection.

The Characters

The swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi, was strong when we first met him at the end of the Battle of Sekigahara. He could break heads and limbs with just a wooden sword. Unfortunately, that was all he knew. The man could not hold a proper conversation even at the cost of his life. He got either jumpy due to being on guard or angry at himself for not being as strong as he’d like to be. It’s extremely sad and pitiful to watch the man go through fight after fight, sinking in deeper and deeper into a bloodthirsty, battle-hungry maniac, starting fights with one school after another.

The opponents that Musashi faced were from various backgrounds, coming from highly prestigious samurai schools to fellow vagabonds, and he cut down everyone he came across. Two additional characters have their points of view in later chapters: his childhood friend Matahachi Hon’iden and a deaf swordsman Sasaki Kojirō. Otsuu, the childhood friend of Matahachi and Takezō, and the lovable and sassy monk Takuan Sōhō become characters who significantly affect Takezō’s decisions.

There are various other recurring characters being introduced as the story progresses, and they contribute a lot as they pit themselves against our protagonists.

Samurai Action and Philosophy

“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”
–Miyamoto Musashi

Underneath the unfiltered action of Vagabond lies deep-rooted philosophical questions. Vagabond masterfully explores the themes of life, death, the mind, the human condition and concepts like willpower and strength of heart. Life in Vagabond is portrayed as a fragile piece of glass — one clean strike cleaves the body in two. Every character has the power to take away lives. It’s difficult to be continuously reminded of the fleeting nature of human life — it takes but a second to reach its end. Death is every man’s best friend and worst enemy, always accompanying these poor souls. Death brings peace to the recipient, it hurts those around them, their family, their loved ones, and their companions.

Every fight is as much a mental effort as it is physical. Does having a stronger motivation help someone win at a pivotal point? Life is valuable. It has inherent value that each of us is entitled to. No one has the right to take away another life.

Being an action-samurai series set in feudal Japan, the morality of these characters is questionable at best and deplorable at worst. By accepting these morals as appropriate for the period, we are presented with multiple dilemmas. Becoming the strongest was the dream of not one but hundreds of aspiring martial artists across the land. And many were willing to pay the price by taking others’ lives.

Invincible Under the Sun

“You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain”
–Miyamoto Musashi

Musashi is depicted as a rage-filled vagrant focused on becoming the strongest. But becoming strong is impossible if one does not know the meaning of ‘strength’ itself. The power to take lives is not ‘strength’; the power to save them is also not ‘strength’. He set out on a quest at the behest of the monk Takuan across all of Japan to find what it means to be truly strong.

Takuan guides Takezo by giving him a second life and names him Musashi of the Miyamoto village. While searching for his contemporaries in the martial arts, Miyamoto encounters the age-old Japanese trope of the old-but-badass characters. Vagabond features a few of them — those who have realized that true strength does not require the use of weapons or violence.

“to become Invincible under the sun,
to have no equal among men,
to be the strongest throughout the lands”

Violence is often the wrong answer to the problems that trouble the belligerent Musashi. Being strong does not necessitate its enforcement upon others. The poetic narrative of the story pains a glorious picture of the world with blood from countless fallen warriors.

Hatred Begets Hatred, Violence Begets Violence

“The path that leads to truth is littered with the bodies of the ignorant.”
–Miyamoto Musashi

People project their inner fears and insecurities onto others as a means of escaping reality. Musashi projects his insecurities, fear and animosity onto everyone he encounters, perceiving it as their hostility towards him. This leads to frequent conflicts with anyone passing by and a bestial restlessness in an unfamiliar environment. He cannot rest his eyes for an instant without putting up a guard.

Overcoming one’s inner demons and living in this reality is a major theme in Vagabond. Not projecting onto another is a small victory against oneself. There is nothing to prove to anyone but oneself, and one must strive for self-improvement. But clearly, these teachings are hard to practice, for it requires a complete change in mindset. It’s an arduous process for all, but perseverance is the only way to become the best version of yourself.

I found myself pondering the ideas sprinkled in the story. Sinking deeper into this tale, I wondered how much we as humans projected our inner fears onto others, generated biases, and spread hatred among ourselves. The feeling of inertia when it comes to changing thoughts or mindsets is large enough to deter the majority of our species.

This is the cause of the perpetuating cycle of hatred and violence in the world.

I spent way too long on this essay, trying to perfect it (and failing to do so), but at one point, I decided to take the lessons from the very pages of Vagabond about not being focused on ‘perfection’ but letting things happen in a flow. So if you did enjoy my essay, do check the actual series out. I assure you won’t be disappointed.

PS: In the pursuit of perfection, I have attempted to edit a few glaring mistakes I found in this essay, but ultimately stopped before I changed the entire post in lieu of maintaining it’s original vision.

Vagabond, In Search of Strength was originally published in The Jabber Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The English language has a lot of useful tools, punctuation and words that find use in the majority of day-to-day phrases. The “and”, “or”, comma(,) and the period(.) all form the building blocks for compound sentences that aid in bridging two or more ideas. But deep in the depths of this punctuation rabbit-hole there exists a whole lot of symbols that a layperson would never have encountered in their lives such as the “en” dash(–), the “em” dash( — ) and the semicolon(;). The semicolon is still very common in most forms of coding as part of code syntax, but the former two siblings of the familiar hyphen(-) are only found in literary mediums nowadays.

The en dash is a hyphen as long as the capital letter N, and the em dash is as long as the capital M; hence the names en and em. The en dash is usually used to make direct connections between terms, or between a range of numbers or years (2002–2020). The em dash however is far more versatile in its application. The em dash ( — ) is my favorite punctuation. Not my most used punctuation, not even the most practical one. It’s the one I use when I want to feel like I’m a good writer. And now people think it’s invented by ChatGPT.

Everybody should be using the em dash

The em dash has been in my repertoire ever since I started posting on the Jabber Junction. I had the impression that I was using em dashes as far back as my middle-school blogging days, which was quickly disproven by pulling them up. While I wouldn’t advise reading your middle-school blogs almost a decade later to save yourself from lethal embarrassment, going back to read them helped see the improvement in how I approach these blogs. My sentences felt disconnected from each other, especially in longer paragraphs — it still feels like so — and trying to emulate writers far better than I led me to using em dashes to help guide me to better sentence structuring.

I used to use the em dash primarily for bridging my ever-distracted thoughts that bombarded as I wrote, but this doesn’t even come close to showcasing the use cases of the longest punctuation mark.

With the em dash, you can:
1. use it like how I regularly do, with bridging sentences, kind of like a longer comma, or a semicolon.

2. use it like a colon: “Some examples of transition metal atoms are — Co, Ni, Fe”

3. use it like a parenthesis, to add extra detail, or clarify. “The Wheel of Time has been an incredibly strong fantasy series — till book 6 where I’m currently at — with size and scope incomparable to its contemporaries”

4. use it as something more important than demarcated in parenthesis. Here’s a snippet from Brandon Sanderson’s Essay “Outside”

“When you’re very young, it’s proximity — not shared interests — that makes friends. This often changes as you age. By fourteen, John had found his way to basketball, parties, and popularity. I had not.”
 — Brandon Sanderson, 2023

5. use it to interrupt a speaker (self, a third person or a sudden incident).
“Melissa, I’m gonna be leaving for work, make sure to keep the door — “ as Klein heard the door thud, “I guess she understood the assignment,” he lampooned as he headed for work.

The em dash is a fiction writer’s spell-casting focus, it’s their ultimate pacing tool; used to fix the flow of a sentence. There’s no such thing as too many em dashes in literature.

The Modern Em-dash Revival

Until the sudden rise in the usage of em dashes in the past 2 years, starting around 2022: Em dashes were relatively unknown to casual readers, or general everyday man. And suddenly it was everywhere, especially where it shouldn’t be. A gradual increase wouldn’t have been as surprising — maybe more people got exposed to literature with em dashes. But you see, most people do not use the em dash. Not because they don’t need to — trust me they all do — but because for whatever reason, it’s mostly inaccessible on keyboards. In almost every keyboard it requires some insane ritual to type it:
- In Windows, you would need to hold the alt key and type “0151” on the numpad (not the num bar on top) to summon the em dash.
- In Macs, the shortcut is a little easier, press Shift+option+hyphen.
- In Linux, you type ctrl+shift+U and type “2014”.
(Note: Some word processors like MS Word and Google Docs convert a double hyphen “- -” without space into an em dash)

With how inconvenient it is for ordinary typing, it’s no surprise that it barely finds any use in day-to-day conversation. But the recent rise in usage has to do with the LLM chatbots — for some inexplicable reason — spit out the em dash like no tomorrow in place of any other punctuation. And now the em dash is associated with AI generated text — more accurately AI plagiarized text but that’s a matter for a different blog post — and any use of this symbol raises eyebrows as a sign of AI.

Hey, I can write shoddily without the use of AI, but at least I know it’s still me!

I was made aware of this when helping some of my friends sharpen their Statements of Purpose for college applications, and noticed a few of them overuse the em dash. Thing is, I knew they’d never before seen this dash in their lives, and now they’re using it in every sentence? That struck me as odd. On digging deeper — by which I mean I did a little bit of googling — I landed on this contentious back-and-forth on blogs, Reddit and LinkedIn. Here’s an snippet from a comment thread on Reddit on em dash usage being associated with LLM generated text:

A lot of eyes fell on the topic when Rolling Stone published an article about the em dash. As Miles Klee puts it,

“…the received opinion that the long dash is a product of generative AI that basically didn’t exist in years past is a worrying sign about public literacy.”

— Miles Klee, Rolling Stone Magazine

I am just baffled by the fact that so many people have not noticed the existence of said punctuation that has been used by celebrated poets and philosophers have been using em dashes for centuries — a simple Wikipedia search lists various popular authors/poets who flaunt their use of ’em in their works.

Em dash in Ye Olde Days: Poets and Writer’s Spell-book

Out of the various celebrated poets and writers, only one names comes to my mind upon thinking of this seductive dash: Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson was known for her liberal use of em dashes, so much so, that it’s informally known as the Dickinson Dash.

“From examining all the evidence collected, I have come to the conclusion that the dash as used by Emily Dickinson is used for emotional purposes in her poetry and more of a mixture of grammar and emotion in her other works. Dickinson used a dash in almost any work that has thus far been discovered…”
 — The Dickinson Dash Project

In her poem, Come slowly — Eden, she uses the em dash to end each line with an expectant pause; each line is discontinuous while being cohesive to the overall structure:
Stanza from Come slowly — Eden!:

Come slowly — Eden!
Lips unused to Thee — 
Bashful — sip thy Jessamines — 
As the fainting Bee —

‘Twas such a little — little boat is another poem about the desire for writing, stealing her away from ordinary life.

The Prowling Bee blog features more of Dickinson’s poems, and Project Gutenburg hosts the majority of her poetry (unformatted) for those interested in stepping into this rabbit-hole.

The Em-pathetic Dash

Several other writers have published in their blogs similarly expressing concern about the perception of the nifty dash. Here’s Fatima Ahsab on poets who would laugh at us from their graves:

“I use em dashes so much in my writing. It helps me build sentences that feel cohesive without being perfectly cohesive.”
She quotes Emily Dickinson, Woolf, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Plath as being proud and unabashed users of the em dash.
 — Fatima Ahsab

She says,

Em dashes are a tool. But sometimes — on the hard days — they’re also a weapon. You use them to keep writing when you can’t quite find the right word. When your thoughts refuse to sit neatly beside each other — the em dash builds a bridge. You hope your reader picks it up like Lego blocks, and builds something of their own.

Understanding the history behind the em dash reinvigorated my interest in 19th century poets who helped define a lot of my perception of poetry. While I feel sheepish about the cheeky overuse of em dashes in this post, I think it serves as examples of how easy it is to just plop it in the middle of a sentence. Though I share said concerns about the negative perception of this dash being an indicator of apparent LLM usage, I am still somewhat glad that this amazing punctuation mark has reached audiences that would never have landed upon gold. Learning to use new tools and techniques to always sharpen one’s skills is what make us human, and I see the re-introduction of the em dash as the mainstream percolation of literary prose.

There is so much to learn about this world, why make it worse by judging one handy dash? So I humbly ask the readers to try using the em dash when you can — and feel the small satisfaction of having done something new.

— Bavesh Rajaraman

PS: Here’s a library page that lists some famous authors and poets known to use the em dash!

EDIT: Mom, The NYT copied my homework (jkjk)!! Really happy to see the NYT cover my favorite dash, in a far more eloquent manner than I could have ever written.

An Era to its Knee: An Em-dash Retrospective was originally published in The Jabber Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Almost a decade ago, I remember playing out in the streets when a sudden spell of drizzling rain took me by surprise. I covered my head with a handkerchief that looked like it couldn’t hold an extra drop of water, as I sprinted home. Drying my hair with a towel, I walked to our apartment terrace to sit and watch as the raindrops pattered on our rooftops and washed the dust away. When the rain started to dwindle, I finally got what I was waiting for: the smell of fresh earth, filling me with a sense of comfort and warmth.

The fragrance of rain has been a common concept in Indian culture, for the fresh smell of the earth is cause for much hope as the dark skies part. Making a hot cup of chai along with pakore (deep-fried Indian fritters), sweetens the already cozy feel.

My mother used to scold me when I got even a little wet, telling me I was hellbent on catching a cold. I would often sniff and sneeze after the rains, but that did not stop me from feeling drawn to the dark, sepia-tinted, cloud-covered skies, filled with joy amidst heartache. The mild pattering of raindrops on the windows gradually relaxes the nerves.

This fragrance, called Petrichor, or “Blood of the Earth” (from the Greek petra — rock/stone — and ichor — blood of gods), is such a perfect encapsulation of the ever present feeling of melancholy after a spell of rain. Sometimes words do justice to the feelings invoked by a phenomenon, and this is one of those rare occasions that make you go “Aha!”.

For me, I have carried this scent in my mind for more than a decade, and I will continue to cherish this in my heart. But it maybe something else that makes you take a seat and reminisce about a particular moment triggered by a sudden rush of memories.

I talk about scents, fragrance and nostalgia because: it turns out, according to a Harvard Gazette article on the science of smell and emotions, “Smell and emotion are stored as one memory.” Olfactory senses are extremely tied to nostalgic sensations. And we feel what we smell, be it the dreaded walk through the rotting garbage disposal bin at the end of the street, or walking into the smell of mom’s signature dish at home.

“Smell and emotion are stored as one memory.”
 — Dawn Goldworm

During my preliminary research for this blog post, I stumbled onto the Proustian Memory. Marcel Proust, a famed French novelist, literary critic, essayist, and thinker, coined the term “involuntary memory” to describe the sudden flood of memories triggered by an external stimulus such as scent or taste.

This phenomenon was later labeled the “Proustian Memory” or the Proust moment. In his book, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), the self-inserted main character experiences a childhood memory triggered by the taste of a French Madeleine cake soaked in tea.

“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.”
 — Marcel Proust, A Remembrance of Things Past

Though Proust romanticized this sudden flood of memories, it would take scientists many decades more to corroborate the experience and prove the existence of this phenomenon.

Claudia Merrill, in her blog post on the Madeleine Effect, explores the science behind Proustian Memory in detail, explaining how the limbic system makes the brain experience heightened emotions when exposed to scents tied to moments in one’s past.

True longing — yearning for the simplest feelings of comfort and familiarity — was a foreign concept to me, one I can only feel now after being robbed of the heavy weight of the air permeating the streets of Chennai in the monsoon. I miss the smell of rain. I realized how much I missed home the first time I got stranded in the rain, and how foreign it felt. How sterile and stale it was, with no particular fragrance to speak of.

The little things in life often go unnoticed:
the hearty scent of an old book that grows older as you keep coming back,
the sound of cuckoos and mynas ringing aloud in the morning,
the chill and comfortable sea breeze early in the morning as the sun rises,
the fragrance of flowers from the small rooftop garden.
These are the things that call me back home.

Chai, pakores, and petrichor make for the greatest combination possible, and now I can say this is backed by science and logic.

Even you might have the “smell of rain” moment, triggered by something from your formative years, a strong Proustian Memory that brings you back to feeling like a child without worries running around with boundless energy. And maybe, just maybe, it might make you take a breather even when surrounded by dark clouds.

Lots of Love,
Bavesh

Petrichor, The Scent of Rain was originally published in The Jabber Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig, is marketed as a whimsical and fantastical story of the down-on-her-luck and depressed Nora Seed, in an attempt to stop her perpetual misery, chooses to end her life. Instead of an afterlife, she finds herself in a vast and endless library filled with books floating in invisible racks. She then meets her long separated Mrs. Elm, the school librarian who she had confided to many a times in her school days.

‘Between life and death there is a library,’ she said, ‘and within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived’… ‘Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’
Page 29

My exposure to The Midnight Library was through osmosis and favorable opinions from many of my reading buddies, claiming it was a wonderful feel-good book. I was piqued by this review, and its relatively high rating on Goodreads and when gifted the copy for my birthday, I took it as a sign to read it.**

Matt Haig starts The Midnight Library very strong by portraying real depression and self-loathing with a genuine authenticity. One cannot screw up more than Nora Seed, atleast according to her. Though these screw-ups aren’t really unfixable or malicious, she just can’t help but regret them all. This is a feeling I find myself sharing with Nora, clinging onto past mistakes, letting it hold back my progress forward. Seeing a bit of myself in Nora made the suicide attempt all the more difficult to witness.

The journey through the library is filled with small revelations, but more often than not, battered with tribulations. Tribulations that I often found myself disagreeing with. Matt’s wonderful imagination in creating interesting settings is unfortunately overshadowed by a lack of consistent cause-effect relations made the surprises these lives held look like a poorly timed jump-scare, and in time became extremely predictable.

There no sense of agency given to Nora. The library’s sole purpose is to see if she would do anything different and without any agency, there is a definitive and deterministic answer: NO! Of course she would like to do something, but she is just not allowed to, all she can do is to observe the current life. The only choices offered to her are the books she can go into, but without the being given the permissions to manipulate the world in any way, it feels like window shopping.

In many related time-travel/transmigration stories that I have unfortunately been exposed to, the migrator often retains memories of the original body and with the knowledge and context of both these lives, they decide how to change the world. Nora Seed is not seeking to change her world and she quite frankly cannot because she does not gain any memories of the current life. She has to piece together who she’s sharing her bed with, where she currently resides, which of her friends or family is dead due to a completely irrelevant incident. Ever since the first world-hop, I was bracing myself for awkward interactions that this extremely introverted woman would go through and adding temporary amnesia is just too cruel.

The different lives were made more awkward than it needed to be, because the rules of the library made it so she would remember details only when she accepted the current life she’s witnessing. What she chooses to pick, after having to piece together the circumstances of her current life with a large missing section, is totally obvious. This rule makes accepting a new life impossibly harder for Nora, inadvertently hinting at how the story might end.

It took 140 pages into the book for something different to happen. In the first half of the book, the various lives she bore witness to were beginning to get repetitive and extremely predictable. As I was losing interest in this story very quickly, one incident felt like it would change the direction that the book was going to take. I bit the bait but the story went back to that same repetition, all the way until the end.

The Midnight Library often threatened to explore interesting ideas in each scenario she experiences, maybe she will do something or realize something different. But it repeatedly pulled back right before anything worth pondering was allowed to happen.

Between the different lives Nora has somewhat interesting conversations with Mrs Elm’s lookalike who seems to want to lead her into a life she truly loves, I even expected a sick twist to emerge from this character. Again my hopes were dashed.

One final life-hop finally managed to break the mold, with a genuinely lovely message that made me somewhat soften my criticisms against the book. Though a cliche, the final emotional beats of the story truly felt like it paid of the metaphorical suffering the middle parts inflicted on the reader. The feelgood ending of the story elicited a lot of emotions from me, that were not present during the majority of the book. I only wish the fat could have been trimmed to make the book leaner in pacing, making for a more comfortable reading experience.

I wavered a lot when it came to this book, since I loved the way the book ended, but heavily disagreed with the way it reached it. Often, I find myself questioning the intent behind the author’s book, and how strict I needed to be when judging it. The book comes from a genuinely good place from the heart. Did I like Nora by the end? Not really, but I appreciated the message being shared at a time in which many among my generation gave into self-loathing and regrets, wishing to change their lives and wishing they’d made different decisions. To see yourself for what you are and move forward in life is a lesson I desperately needed to hear, and following a path that you want, not dependent on others’ wishes for you, is the best way to move ahead in life, regret or no.

I recommend The Midnight Library to anyone in search of a fairy tale reminder that your current life is yours to live. I can give it a 3/5 and I ask you to check the story out.

Edit: so someone on youtube obviously made a better review on The Midnight Library and pointed out the very anti-therapy messaging that I missed, that on a second read is very apparent and actually quite overt. Docking a point off and giving it a 2/5.

** Goodreads is somewhat of an unreliable source when it comes to newer books since books made popular through TikTok and other communities tend to have bloated ratings and hence an additional level of bias to them compared to shows which have accumulated ratings over a longer span.

The Midnight Library was originally published in The Jabber Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Anyone who has read more than one of my blog-posts would have identified my love for etymology, puns and language in general. You can only imagine how ecstatic I was, to know there was a book that focused on translation and word associations. ‘Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution’ by Rebecca Kuang might sound unwieldy at first, and even a bit wordy (haha pun intended), but the title will slowly make sense as the plot progresses.

I was introduced to this book through the fiery Hugo Awards 2022 controversy where Babel, along with a few other books, were vetoed out of final awards consideration since the organizers decided these works had problematic content that might be persecuted by the hosting country, China. I have also read her first epic fantasy series, The Poppy War, but was left pretty disappointed by the prose, plot and characters in general, but the familiarity still led me to reading the synopsis for this book. And I found myself a 550-page behemoth to eat away at my time for the next month to come.

This dense tome of a book tackles three completely different things tactfully: the societal issues that it showcases, etymological roots of its deep magic system, and the plot that drives the book forward. Without any single one of these parts, the gears stop turning, and the machine ceases to function. Like a well oiled machine, Kuang manages to weave a compelling tale of feeling like an outsider after having discarded one’s homeland. It shines light on the rampant discrimination existing within post-industrial Oxford, represented in an alternative history version, where the students of different nationalities were brought into England for the sole purpose of translation. The titular Babel, is the name for the tower of the Translation Institution at Oxford, that got its name owing to its invasive and prevalent control over much of the world’s magic.

Our protagonist, Robin Swift, was ‘plucked’, from his family in China, and dropped into post-industrial revolution England as a potential talent for the Translation Institute of Oxford. We meet Ramy, Victorie and Letty who find solace amongst themselves in sharing the same plight: to translate and make silver-bars function. These four children find themselves in the thick and thin of this bleak, dark academia with no one but each other to lean on. Robin is somewhat meek and introverted, but hanging out with the ever enthusiastic and charismatic Ramy changes him for the better; the kind and curious Victorie along with the somewhat prideful but loving Letty complete the family that trudges through the raging trenches of academic pressure and assignments. Seeing how they live their lives in relative harmony, and watching it all crumble continually, and begrudgingly is gut-wrenching.

Why had they refused to see the myriad ways they could hurt each other? Why had they not paused to interrogate their differences in birth, in raising, that meant they were not and could never be on the same side?
Page 88

The grandiose might and pride of colonial England is built upon discrimination and superiority complex, leads to a constant sinking feeling in the reader as the story progresses. The fantasy tower they construct in their heads, named after The Tower of Babel from The Genesis, is destined to fall like its namesake.

The might and pride of colonial England is fueled by many such children, who in turn, are forced to either rid themselves of their origin, or face charges of being themselves. The so-called Tower of Babel cannot hold a candle to this tower in how important it is to their society.

… that despite their affiliation with the Translation Institute and despite their gowns and pretensions, their bodies were not safe on the streets. They were men at Oxford; they were not Oxford men…
Page 68

As I brought up before, I was somewhat disappointed by Kuang’s prose, especially dialogue in The Poppy War. Much to my surprise, I was treated to adeptly written dialogue, delivering complex ideas through well characterized portrayals of the characters. Robin’s dialogue are often filled with doubt, hesitation and a feeling of tipping a boundary, never knowing what constituted another person’s limit. A diligent and emotional student he was, but also somewhat fueled by base instinct and rash when all logic breaks to a halt. We journey through Robin’s perspective throughout the novel, and we too suffer through the unknowns and uncertainties of his actions. Dealing with the consequences of his choices, and seeing him slowly blame himself.

“You’re a ship adrift, searching for familiar shores. I understand what it is that you want. I sought it too. But there is no homeland. It’s gone… But realize this brother. You fly no one’s flag. You’re free to seek your own harbour. And you can do so much more than tread water,”
Page 219

The dramatic and showman-like lectures of Professor Playfair add much charm and colour to this drab world using paints made of words. He shows the children the beauty of what they were there to work on, and the terrible importance of it in the grand scale of things. For you see, translation is a necessary crime that they commit to bring greatness to the world at large. Playfair says, “Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal.” (page 153)

While I have a lot of praise for the writing in this book, it sometimes becomes somewhat grating when Kuang throws subtlety out of the window when showcasing the discrimination present in the world, that makes these characters look like comical big bad evils. These instances can be very immersion breaking, but the rest of the book manages to assuages the problems and makes up a better whole. These few nitpicks are the only problems I have with this novel, but I believe her future works will radically improve upon these blemishes.

The juxtaposition of what we know about the misdeeds of colonialism over the wonderful magic brought into the world by silver-work makes for a masterful story that you can, at times, quite see where it goes, but never predict how it does so. I give it a solid 5/5 recommendation, and it should be a ‘must-read’ for anyone looking for a dense book to sink their teeth into.

Babel, or the Necessity of Reading this Book was originally published in The Jabber Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A review of Homer’s Iliad retold with a twist

Have you ever read a book only to experience the words flow into your mind in verses, felt uncomfortably invested in the characters and questioned the overly romanticized rendition of Greek Mythology? As someone who has read at least 4 books, I believe I am qualified to recommend certified bangers to those who seeketh.

Picture a beautiful Mediterranean sea shore, filled with glistening blue waters, slowly being dowsed in blood, arrows, armour and bodies. This is how The Song of Achilles feels like. The Song of Achilles is for those looking for constant heartache, bittersweet stomach-acid formation, and a small dose of frustration. Firstly, you might need therapy, but read The Song of Achilles before, so it adds to the trauma.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is a historic retelling/fictionalized account of Homer’s Iliad from the perspective of Patroclus. Patroclus was Achilles’ companion since they were wee young lads. He experiences the agitation and angst of a loved one who’s clearly aware of when and how their significant other would meet the pointy end of a spear. And as readers following the POV of Patroclus, we too can feel ourselves clenching our fists and shaking them at the sky as a form of retaliation against whatever the hell these people called society.

Enter Patroclus, a kind-hearted soul who got dealt a shitty hand in life, not being strong enough to be a warrior or smart enough to be a tactician; he was ordinary and somewhat satisfied about it. Except, his ‘hardcore’ father was disappointed by his mediocrity and, due to some circumstances, expelled his only son as an aide to Peleus. The kid was constantly on the receiving end of bullying from a young age and had seen how cruel life could be for those that lacked strength. With this jaded perspective into life, he meets Achilles: A man naturally radiating with charisma and lustre, who could win the hearts of both men and women with a single eye gesture. The pinnacle of human beauty and strength, packaged into one 7-ish-year-old demigod.

The story of Achilles has been told and retold hundreds of times over the centuries. Still, none have attempted to actively humanize him and make the reader genuinely care for him. Madelline does just that. By creating a POV through Patroclus’s lens, we see Achilles at his most vulnerable. Patroclus looks at Achilles with rose-tinted glasses while witnessing the rest of the ugliness of the ancient Greek society in full glory. These people commit taboos to satiate some douchy god who’s apparently too quick to anger, and the kings have massive egos that mirror their gods in temper. Violence, slavery, pillaging, rape and winning ‘trophies’ were glorified and celebrated. Ancient Greeks were bonafide pricks.

The title “The Song of Achilles” is wholly apt, considering the prose is written like a wonderful poem, with almost musical-sounding dialogue and narration. The beauty of the writing was apparent from the first page, but it started to shine around the book’s last third. Some of the descriptors used to talk about Achilles’ beauty, or the cruelty of the gods and goddesses, were unique, to say the least, and were captivating to read. The prose paved the way for a non-stop reading experience; I could not keep the book down for hours. I cannot quite place why it feels so, but the ballad-like nature of narration in this story fits the theme and works so well in conjuring imagery.

“He did not preen or pout as other handsome children did. Indeed, he seemed utterly unaware of his effect on the boys around him.”
- Patroclus

It’s not a huge logical leap to assume that the majority of the readers are aware of the gist of this story, for we have encountered it in schools in a very toned-down manner with a very simplified narrative:
- Achilles is Over-Powered (OP).
- No one can beat him in the current era.
- He is the greatest Greek Warrior to exist but is prophesied to die in the battle of Troy after Hector dies.
- Agamemnon is presented as an egotistical-but-kinda-smart-king leading the war effort.
- Achilles dies after getting hit in the Achilles Heel.
The end. Fin

Madeline however goes further and explores the deeply messed up roots of the Greek empire, giving us a look into the slavery, brutality, sexual abuse, physical abuse and tragedy of being alive in such a terrible era. Watching these injustices faced through the point of view of Patroclus, we sympathize with an already sympathetic figure. It hurts extra when someone from those ages also feels frustrated by their powerlessness against society.

Patroclus adds a human touch to the story and is the glue that holds our interest towards characters and incidents. It feels as though the reader is beside Patroclus while reading his narration. I recommend this book to anyone (potentially above 15 years old since they may not be comfortable with the brutality and sensuality) to check it out. I am sure you, too, will cry at this tragedy and be moved by the prose.

PS: I read this book over 4–5 months back, and it took me a while to collect my thoughts and let it marinate over a period, but I still don’t think I have done justice to the book. But, I assure you, it’s like nothing else you might have read, and you will appreciate the perspective presented in the story.

The Song of Achilles: A Modern Ballad was originally published in The Jabber Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My 4 years of college are coming to an end, and I have slowly felt the emptiness well up inside of my heart as the days move on. I should be sitting and finishing up my Final Year Project Thesis work right now, but being given a farewell by my lovely team Feeds and reading their small observations about me set me to write this piece tonight.

If you asked me what a Phase Diagram was, I’d have spent the next hour trying to bullshit my way through the question, mainly because even after 4 whole years of learning the same thing, I never managed to understand it a single time (probably cuz I didn’t try). Academics became one part of my life that I turned to only during exam seasons, repeating the same mistakes I did during JEE prep: Learning for the sake of scoring on a test. Removing this aspect from my college experience, it would boil down to 5 parts: Teams, Friends, Writing, Gaming and Anime. As part of the Festember Events Team and Feeds, I got to interact and work with some of the most charismatic and hands-on people I have had the fortune to come across.

In these 4 years, 2 of them (years not people) got robbed due to COVID-19, and I felt lost and without direction. Both of these teams served as my crutch to getting back to normalcy through the isolation of quarantine, connected by creative endeavours online despite the distance separating us. This was the push that led me to take up a core position at Feeds, to try my hand at guiding it to a place of renown in the university. You see, Feeds was the first thing I got to know about the college before anything else. I read every article on the website, thoroughly impressed by the varied content. I found myself laughing my eyes out reading the Fake News sections, simultaneously finding myself starry-eyes after seeing the different interviews of people who had worked on internships in what felt like impossible avenues. I wanted to be one of the people creating the next piece of content that would put a smile on people’s faces.

There are some that would be considered “people-person” (a weird word, but somehow makes sense when you verbalize it), those who can guide and lead those around them the way they like. And people genuinely want to be with them. I have come to realize that I am not one of these people. Still, I firmly believe that no one is as passionate as I am when it comes to the few things I am good at — making sure that people around me are comfortable, and making terrible jokes to make them uncomfortable. And in doing these few things, I look back and only find myself satisfied that I haven’t done anything that would hurt my conscience.

This might be a bit melodramatic of me, but I am not too expressive of my emotions, especially when I am taking upon myself some responsibility. Still I, too, have the ability to feel things, sadness, joy, wonder and humour. At every turn, I feel proud of my juniors’ skills and abilities while lacking in my inability to guide them forward and create a productive setting. I often feel regret when looking back to the “could haves” and “what ifs” of handling a team.

But these feelings of despair are blown away again and again after looking at the extraordinarily skilled and lovely juniors that I entrusted the team with. I might not have personally interacted with every member across the juniors, but I can confidently say that I made it fun and entertaining for the ones that showed up (often at the cost of my own image, but I digress).

Spending 2 real years’ worth of time in this desert has been a terrible experience so far. Water supply disappears from the Aquamarine hostel (aqua and marine being related to water), people nicking undergarments, and cycle locks get stolen, leaving the cycle intact. I could not be more grateful for the close friendships that I have carried since school and those I formed while in college. These bois and gurls ended up enriching my life, and I hope they will keep doing so for a long time to come. My friends picked me up when I needed a shoulder to cry on, and many a time, I have been the shoulder. I couldn’t have become half the person I am without the 4 years of constant learning I received from them. Learning to be human, to be authentic, to be concerned and at the same time stern when needed. I would have been a mess without any one of these people. They have formed what’s honestly a very accommodating family.

Writing, gaming and anime have been a part of my life far longer than the past 4 years. College exposed me to some of the most talented writers and poets, who blessed me with their guidance and ideas, helping me grow as a writer and giving me direction on creating my identity. I have worked on parodies, analytics, recommendations and critiques that have guided me into starting my own blog, The Jabber Junction, where I write to discover. I have slacked off in the past year, but I still collect ideas to work on and batshit crazy scenarios to bring into words. Gaming has been an enriching experience for me through quarantine. Games like Hades, Genshin Impact, Witcher 3 and No Man’s Sky were therapeutic, immersing me in their vast worlds and intricately crafted experiences. Without them, I would have gone mad in boredom. I also did a good chunk of reading, mainly in the Epic-scale Fantasy genre, filled with rich characters and absorbing world-building.

Anime has been with me the longest and has continued to be a crucial part of my life. It has given me unforgettable experiences, things that I wish I could forget so I could experience them all over again. Made me laugh, cry and ponder, helping me face my feelings sometimes.

To all those that I owe these few years of precious experiences, I give my utmost gratitude. Things might come to an end in one way, like graduation, but the bonds will live on to the new beginnings, keeping fresh the positivity and support for as long as possible.

Your humble and extremely funny pun genius,
Bavesh

How often have you woken up to an exceptionally dull Wednesday, realising nothing had happened or will happen that week? An average human being without any sort of dissociative disorder would vehemently nod to this exact feeling. We find ourselves in a limbo of sorts for the majority of our life. This is the part where nothing of import happens; you are just following your daily routine — eating breakfast, getting on the train, going to work or college, sleeping at your desk, attending a boring meet, and returning home to sleep. Rinse. Repeat.

Our nonstop endeavours to overcome this boredom is characteristic of modern human life. There are different ways to phrase this feeling: the eternal cycle of boredom, the daily disappointment, or on a more positive outlook, the ‘Specks in between the Mundane’. How can there be such mind-numbing mediocrity amidst the glittering experiences that spark joy in between?

In the manga series “Jujutsu Kaisen” by Gege Akutami, one of the mentor figures, Nanami, talks about the drudgery of life. His motto in life is that daily life is all but despair. The young (albeit barely) me decided to purge this off my mind labelling it as a quirky anime trope that got inserted. But almost two years since coming across that idea, I have come to appreciate it immensely. According to him, these ‘despairs’ could be nothing more than minor inconveniences. But chained across lengths like a massive multi-hit Street Fighter combo, it starts to wear you down and take its toll on you.

The minor inconveniences can range from your fridge stinking of cabbage after you forgot to put it in a Ziploc, the router being erratic with the connection, the taste of Sambar at your favourite restaurant being distinctly different (RIP Saravana Bhavan), your regular train being unnaturally crowded at your usual time. But all in one day, and you might be the most miserable man to exist for a brief duration of 24 hours.

“The accumulation of these small despairs is what makes you into an adult.” Nanami, Jujutsu Kaisen

The above quote sounds jaded, but I think it makes us mature into more understanding or patient selves who can move on despite the barrage of nuisances. Why did I choose to randomly talk about something that might be as mundane as the title mentions?

I’d like to think that aside from very few exceptions, humans cannot appreciate the highs and lows of life without having anything to compare it with. Without experiencing the lows, it would be hard to feel truly grateful for the highs. Not everyone will have a straight, flat-lined life; it might dip down momentarily or burgeon upwards for some time, but it always, ALWAYS returns to normalcy.

One story I can think of is the Gold Rush. A brief period that imbued madness into people who searched for tiny gold nuggets in vast oceans of silt in the riverbeds of the US in the 19th Century. In their frenzy, they did not get disheartened by the sand and water that kept moving through the sieve with no trace of gold flakes. Was this idiocy or an attempt to control the highs in life?

I pose the question — Do we let the specks come with the flow, or do we actively seek it? There may have been scientific journals studying the effects of the mundane in daily human life, but I believe that a healthy dose of seeking and waiting is the right way to live life. Each step you take might not be important, but it is still a step taken to move away from mundane life.

Specks of Gold Amidst the Mundane was originally published in The Jabber Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.