Veronica's Musings

Everything came to a standstill, even the air seemed to stop circulating, making it difficult for me to catch my breath. It immediately reminded me of the time I was trapped in an elevator for seven hours in an almost dilapidated building in what can be considered the ‘bad side of town’. The same choking sensation, the same feeling of helplessness and the same ominous thoughts of confusion and my imminent death. The only difference was that this time the world around me was trapped. Everything and everyone were frozen in the exact positions they were in just a minute ago. Everything, except for me. The silence was deafening. I looked around me, trying to make sense of what was going on. The postman stood still in the lawn of a house on the street, his left foot in front of his right, his lips still puckered from a moment ago when he had been whistling. The middle-aged woman who had been standing on the corner of the sidewalk was frozen at the moment she had been checking h...

The 1964 Indian Bengali film, Charulata, is highly regarded as one of the most outstanding achievements in Indian cinema. Based on the novel Nastanirh by Rabindranath Tagore and directed by the evergreen Satyajit Ray, it features Madhabi Mukherjee as the titular character, Soumitra Chatterjee as the infamous Amal and Shailen Mukherjee as Bhupati Dutta, Charulata’s husband. The film takes place in Calcutta in the nineteenth century when India was still under British rule. In the beginning, it depicts Charulata, an intelligent, beautiful and creatively challenged woman, feeling bored and purposeless in her empty, housewife life. This is shown in the scene when she is seen to become overly excited at watching the mere movements of strangers through her binoculars. Her husband, an intellectual, mostly stays preoccupied with the editing and publication of his political newspaper, not giving much of his time to his wife. Noticing his wife’s boredom, he adopts the idea of invitin...

It was my grandfather who taught me how to bake. He was quite a methodical man, giving precise instructions and emphasizing on the importance of exact measurements in producing the best cakes. To him, the art of baking was in its mathematics and chemistry, even the technique used to mix and fold the ingredients onto themselves had to be a certain way. My love for baking developed as I watched my grandfather take seemingly random food components and turn them into the most delectable delicacy. The wondrous transformation left me awestruck, and I reveled at the wizardry behind the methods. When I first started baking, it was a disaster. My cake did not rise, and it was soggy and inedible. I have to say that I am a living testament of ‘practice makes perfect’. I learnt and grew from my mistakes – liquid butter will make the batter too runny, so it is better to use softened butter, the importance of pre-heating the oven and maintaining the perfect temperature (finding the idea...

5 AM Have you ever experienced situations where reality felt a little bit altered? Like you're not present in a place physically as well as mentally? You're a visitor, a stranger in your own existence. Everything feels fluid, and you get the strange sensation that you're not real. Nothing's real. You're trapped. This was not supposed to happen. You are trying to understand it, but it does not want to be understood. The ambiguity of the situation leads you into a whirlwind of thoughtless emotions, and you're drifting, drifting away.   5 am mornings have a subtle touch of reality shifting elements in them. The soft blue light delicately crossing the threshold between your room and the outside environment, the subdued callings of birds and your weary mind just taking in all of the details of your surroundings with a vivid curiosity- all of these create an atmosphere in your room that just does not feel like that it's of this world. It was the little ...

The Doomsday Clock in 2019 is set to two minutes to midnight which indicates that humanity is closer to its collective destruction than it has been at any point in history since World War II. One of the chief reasons for this and one of the most pressing issues humanity is facing today is the rapid and unchecked destruction of the environment. With the oceans being choked with pollution, air quality degradation making it difficult to even breathe, climate change radically transforming the extremities of weather cycles and the decrease in biodiversity propelled by extinction of species, it is at us the finger points to when we look for who to blame.  Nowadays many more people are aware of what the ramifications of environmental destruction are than they were a decade ago. There are campaigns promoting recycling, using reusable goods and stopping the use of plastic straws, however most of these movements have very little impact on the overall effect on saving the plan...

'lost words' And there lay the roses With their thorns stripped bare, I looked into an abyss as it decomposes And found my true self there.

Rooftops are meant for reflection. Standing at the edge, I look into the world below, the lives of unknown people unfolding before me. With the sky stretching infinitely above me, the confines of the city seemed to lessen as I breathe in the rustic air. An undeniable grief befalls me as I catch a glimpse of the construction site beside my building. The sign says that it will rise up to be another giant fifteen or twenty-storey apartment complex, which will undoubtedly block my view of the horizon and make coming to the roof just like stepping onto another enclosed floor of the building. The sense of openness will no longer be present and the act of staring at a grey wall is not particularly attractive. However, there is no use worrying about what the future might hold, and as forever is made of nows, I will just remain in this present moment of serenity.       Looking into the sky’s abyss, the infinitude boring into my mind, I became humbled at ...