The last couple of days, while listening to music, I realized that the volume was significantly lower than usual.

It’s not just the volume - I’m unsure how to describe it, but it was like I was listening to someone play music in a room, far away.

Today, I finally lost it. For days, I thought I had water in my ears, or earwax made me feel deaf.

I noticed I only felt this way about a few songs I was listening to. What did they have in common?

That’s when I noticed the f**king Dolby Atmos symbol.

“How to turn off Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio”, I typed.

And just like that, I could listen to music again. Like usual.

Note: This is a rant. If you do not have the energy for this, just close your tab and keep what is remaining of your sanity. You don’t want to lose that to my ridiculous analogies, do you?

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

Bruh.

I don’t want to settle for the stars; I want the moon. Problem is, I’m not alone. Most people I know are competing for the moon.

A few days ago, after I finished walking on the treadmill, I went downstairs to continue reigning my usual spot on the couch.

My mother promised that she would talk to me while I walk, but as usual, she did not keep her promise. I couldn’t just go back to doing work without making a quip about that, so I made a remark about how predictable she is.

With onions in her hand, she said, “Oh… I didn’t come… Because I was too busy crying. Crying about how our friendship is no more.”

I raised my eyebrows and asked her if she was crying because our friendship was no more, or because she was chopping onions. With great dismay, she regretted that I had grown up. According to her, I was much easier to fool as a child.

The same day, she told me that she has been experimenting on me since my childhood.

Dear Unforgotten Friend,

I was in a program a few days ago, and there was this random guy who decided to play a certain instrument that you used to (and I hope, still) play. It reminded me of how you worked so hard to be good at everything you do, be it playing an instrument, schoolwork, or even making friends.

I think you reaped the fruit of your hard work for some of those things. You played the instrument beautifully (hope I’ve told you about my keyboard fiasco?), as one would expect you to as a result of your hard work. You put your 100% effort into your schoolwork unlike the rest of us, myself included, and that meant you would go to any extent to achieve your goals. I still have no idea how you managed to do that. My mother would tell you that I can’t study without Spotify, and 30 minutes after I start, I’m walking around contemplating about a version of life I will only live if I work.

But there is one thing I noticed you struggled with: making friends. Was it your fault? I never thought so, and I still don’t think so. You always had a tendency to blame yourself for people disliking you, but I can assure you it wasn’t your fault. I will explain my reasoning throughout this “note”.

Not that anyone actually cares, but I am sorry I haven’t posted for five months. To be honest, I just typed that apology down so I feel less guilty about unintentionally killing my own blog.

Looking back at my posts, I realized I spent quite a lot of time narrating past incidents, so I thought it was time for something more contemporary. Instead of just talking about things, and how they happened, I decided it was time to confront a few feelings of nostalgia that came up of late when I thought about school and social situations.

This post is going to be about a few things that have been missing in my life of late after I decided to get homeschooled. I don’t think my thoughts would seem too far-fetched to others either, since most of us have been staying home due to the lockdown.

Some things make sense to us with time. However, at times, our convictions are so strong that they don’t change much - what at one point seemed wrong continues to feel erroneous five years later.

The first incident I will mention is an example of something similar. What angered my nine-year-old self continues to anger me today.

The earlier years of my childhood were marked by me reading a tremendous variety of books, ranging from books like Dracula and Alice in Wonderland to Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the occasional Geronimo Stilton. In fact, I did not like Geronimo Stilton but I still proceeded to read a lot of the books in the series.

Have you ever felt like there’s a cage of thoughts residing somewhere in your mind?

No, I am not talking about repressed emotions. I’m talking about different voices. Voices that represent different versions of yourself - one voice answering questions to another version of yourself in an interrogation room, followed by voices that represent a jury pool, and one guilty voice trying to break free from prison in the most pathetic fashion imaginable.

Yeah, I meant “cage of thoughts” quite literally.

“She is a pretty well-rounded student. However, her math is quite weak.”

The above quote is a paraphrased version of what my class teacher’s assistant told my mother on the day of the final Parent-Teacher Meeting in fourth-grade. I remember grimacing as I heard those words. I managed to score 100% in English and Science across all three terms, a feat no one in my class had achieved other than me. Why did I have to be put down just because of one subject? Why couldn’t the teacher appreciate the good parts of me? Those were just a few of the thoughts running through my head.

The class teacher’s eyes fell on her assistant, giving her a look of swift disinterest. “Well, we don’t want to put it that way,” she said, “All I’m saying is that she should probably take a look at a few websites that could help her… well… strengthen her skills in math.”

As a person who was quite emotional back then, my teary eyes dried up, and I smirked. “Now that’s a teacher who knows how to appreciate me”, I thought.

The Problem Solving and Chess 960 tournaments were to be held on the same day, November 21st, 2017, and this was exactly a week after the Whole School Chess Championship. During this time interval, I was scheduled to have two classes with Mr. Mispronounced (the chess teacher), and I planned on asking him if he could play some Chess 960 games with me so I would be in form for the tournament a week later. He claimed that it was unnecessary, and that I would get the hang of it all by myself on the day of the tournament, and I took his word for it. Since it was a busy week at school, I couldn’t play more than two games of Chess 960 during my free time, and this lack of experience fit the bill for the disaster that was to come.

The Whole School Chess Championship symbolised another opportunity to reimpose the idea of me being a decent chess player - or at least a better player than Mr. Blabbermouth. The Championship shortlisted the best players in the school through four competitions - the Class Chess Championship, the Whole School Chess Championship (the winner of this is declared Whole School Chess Champion irrespective of what happens in the following tournaments), the Problem Solving tournament, and the Chess 960/Fischer Random tournament.

My relationship with chemistry has always been a peculiar one. Even today, I would never go so far as to say that I hate chemistry - I certainly do enjoy equations and the numerical side of it, but I lose the ability to focus during classes that dealt with the overly theoretical chapters, like metallurgy. On this day in January 2017, I had quite a few reasons for being unfocused during chemistry class. Sure, there was always the fact that we were learning about the water cycle, but more importantly, chess class was next period. This particular day was of great importance to me, as Mr. Silent was finally convinced to ditch Karate for a bit and opt for Chess as his S.P.A. instead.

Don’t let the title fool you, this post is not about the animated television series that captivated me during my primary years of schooling - but about the events in a school bus. Unlike the show, this van did not fly, but I would not fail to believe that it was not enchanted in some way, since it brought out the most authentic version of myself, one that I was forced to hide during school hours. The four-wheeled vehicle represented a concept that I always deemed to be unrealistic - a utopia wherein people appreciated even the craziest and cringiest aspects of my personality, and turned my idiosyncrasies into something laughable in the long run.

An exhausted seven year old Khyathi plopped herself onto the bed after a long Saturday afternoon - she had just finished reading Judy Moody and the Bad Luck Charm, after around four long hours. Her novice self, who was clueless about how many books were left to explore, thought that the series was the greatest she would ever read. While she probed into the depths of how Judy Moody’s character learnt to believe in herself over the felicity offered by a squished penny, her mother joined her, and in the process, her train of thought was interrupted. Little did she know that this “tradition” of lying on the bed and discussing the most random of things would last for several years to come. Over the course of the conversation, Harry Potter was eventually brought into the picture, to be succinct, my curious mom wondered if there was any particular reason behind why I had not expressed any interest in reading the novels. A prime characteristic of my personality that is unique now, and even then, is the fact that I love to hold an opinion about everything, even if it is founded upon prejudice. At that point of time, I knew very little about Harry Potter, so I replied in a stereotypical and run-of-the-mill manner - my scoffing self told her that I was too old to read a book based on magic and fantasy. Thankfully, this was not met by contempt, and my opinion was respected, irrespective of how unfounded it was.

[Contains Spoilers from Death Note]

When a substitute teacher walks into your class on the first period of a Monday morning, one of the prime thoughts in your mind is that it grants you the opportunity to catch up with your buddies, and narrate how your weekend went to them, unless of course you have incomplete homework due next period. However, that very morning, it seemed like I had built castles in the air, since there was a colossal damper to my plans - my friend preferred to read “Attack on Titan”, a book that I then thought to be subpar as it was classified as a manga series. I glared at my companion as I felt my lips crease into a contemptuous smirk, and I would like to believe that he turned around to glance at me within seconds since my frustration was evident to him. He shrugged, and with a hint of attempted nonchalance in his voice, he proceeded to tell me how I might enjoy the storyline if I tried it. My incorrigible self regarded this as his grim attempt to change my opinion, leading to me telling him how I would never stoop down to reading manga or watching anime. In response, he grinned from ear to ear, and softly chuckled to himself while shaking his head in amusement, which was enough of an indicator of the fact that he would have the opportunity to laugh several years later.