Veeksha's Vibes

"Words Don't Mean What They Mean" brought some attention to how we treat everyday language. I think we use complex language because we care about our own impressions. We want more unfamiliar people to see us as professional and more approachable. Whereas with friends we want to build an emotional bond so that we can be more attached with them. If you think about how you communicate with your closest friend, you will likely not have any if not little formal speaking with them. Because when we do this, we show the more human side of our personality: the one that makes mistakes, the one that has strong and confusing feelings, the one that sometimes needs help. This way the human side of the other person is more willing to open up as well.  The formal language is like a defense mechanism, the outer walls of a fortress; while the informal language is the open gate to the more sensitive and vulnerable parts of us. There are some people who choose not to open their gates, and so...

When we were asked in class to answer the prompt of how we had changed a public space, I instantly thought back to this one day. Even though I didn't really change the space, I did notice something quite funny.  Warning: the next paragraph gets a little graphic One day in summer 2019, I was biking around looking for one of my friends and took the more convenient parking lot route (I used to live in Somerset). On my way back I saw a huge bird that I later realized was a vulture, which is very unusual because I had never seen one in the suburbs before. As I got closer I saw that it was poking at something on the ground...a dead bunny. It had already made it's way to pecking out one of it's kidneys, the blood was still fresh and dark red. I biked past it as fast as I could and described the scene to the rest of my friends. They thought I was joking at first and then I took them to the site. Almost immediately, all the boys went up close to it, scaring the vulture away, while t...

     I chose to answer number 6 in the book. A popular Bollywood movie I've watched called "Dangal" follows the life of the Olympic athlete, Geeta Phogat and her father. Before she was born, her father (who made it to national level wrestling but didn't have enough support to make it to the international level) hoped for a son who would fulfill his dream of getting India's first gold medal in wrestling. But instead he got 4 daughters. He gave up all hope of his dream because he agreed with the stereotype that girls shouldn't play sports and especially ones that have a more masculine atmosphere such as wrestling. It wasn't until he witnessed Geeta and her sister beat up two boys - both older and taller than them - that he realized wrestling was in their blood. So he starts training them to be professional wrestlers. This part was already breaking so many amazing boundaries because this was 1990s in India (when many people weren't used to females doing ...