Ruchira's Ramblings

Lately, I have been trying to confuse my Spotify algorithm. Yeah, I know. We usually try not mess up our feeds, as I sternly told my friend who sent me a reel from a film that I absolutely do not want in my algorithm. But well. When I started Spotify, I picked on songs that I liked and played them on loop. Soon enough, they caught on and sent me a playlist. And for two years, I shuffled that same playlist, playing songs that got me into an adventurous head-space, beats, rhythm and voice. I wasn't listening anymore. I was zoning out. This isn't probably so much Spotify's fault as it was mine. I was using music to escape instead of paying attention.  And then I got bored. I shuffled and changed and came back and shuffled and it seemed that there wasn't a song left that I liked without engaging in mental cosplay. Again, not the songs' fault, but mine. And so I have been trying to remember how I used to listen to music before Spotify. Before we had our music on our phon...

In the spirit of National Poetry Writing Month, I thought of doing a prose-poem for the blog. But before that, a small announcement. I have a song up on an episode of the London Theatre Podcast- episode titled –We Need to Talk –New Writing Showcase Part 1. It’s only 11 minutes long and you can listen to it on Spotify , iTunes , SoundCloud , PlayerFM or Podbean . Let me know what you think. Longings What does a love story look like? What shape is it? What are the ingredients you need to make one, and most important, where can you find them? I feel like there is space in me for a story, if I could only write one. Or does it get written for you? How does this work? Does an island long for a ship? Do the walls of a little room long for rain to break in? Does a river raging in the rain forest feels incomplete for the space by your side? How does this work? When you speak your words, and no one hears them, were you alive? If you spoke at all, and nobody else spoke your lan...

I left a little bit of me at every place, A little broken trust, a little broken heart, A little bit of not loving myself. I found a little bit of me in all of you, A bit of spite, the good despite, A little bit of old me replaced anew. I left a little bit of me in your songs, A tattered toy, a dash of joy, A little story retold winded long. I found a little bit of me in your love, A stronger voice, a truer choice, A little light along the road as we evolve. How do you make friends? You are thrown together to sit at a table at 4 or 5 by your Kindergarten teacher. You run into each other during afternoon play because you happen to live in the same neighbourhood. At that age, that’s all that matters. You don’t think of big words like wavelength and frequency, because you don’t know your own frequency yet, and you can only like or dislike from amongst what you are given. When I try to recollect my earliest friendships, I cannot recall any great sur...