Miss Clueless

 August has been rough. Yumleima, our last female cat, passed away on Aug 10th. ′⌒` At one time, we used to have 7 to 9 cats. Now we just have 3 male cats.  Rex, the rottweiler, is also gone. So unexpectedly. This is also the month we cut down all our bamboo. New stuff coming up. Our home used to be surrounded by bamboo on two, almost three, sides. Most of it was cleared. For a long time, we had a small bamboo grove in one corner. Now it's also gone. No more bamboo shades. Hotter now. I am sad. I like having plants, trees, and bamboo around the house. Time to buy some pots and flowers and plant some trees. Please. Anyway, I read/listened to these books in August. Five are books I got from an Instagram giveaway. One is an audiobook. The No‑Show by Beth O’Leary Genre: Romance Three very different women discover they’ve all been ghosted by the same man and uncover unexpected emotional truths.  I liked the twist towards the end. Fun read. The Roughest Draft by Emily Wibberl...

August has not been very kind. Our Rex died. 23rd August 2025. A seven-year-old healthy Rottweiler. He was never once sick. How did this happen? I am having a hard time believing he's gone.  Every day, after I wake up, I let him out to do his nature business. Within our walls. As usual, he did and came back. Then later in the morning, I went to feed him. I saw that he had vomited everywhere. But he looked okay. He came out, did his business again, and came back. I took him up to the porch and sat him down on the sunny side. I thought he was cold and having indigestion. But he kept getting up. So I moved him to the shaded area. He drank some water and sat. I went into the room and read for some time. While reading, I could hear the sound of his chain jingling. That was normal. Maybe he was scratching himself, causing the sound. Nothing new to cause concern. I finished the book and went out to check. What I saw was horrible. He was seizing. I thought it was that. He was lying on his ...

What books have I read in July? Let's see. 1. The Indispensable Zinn, Howard Zinn 2. A Livable Future is Possible, Noam Chomsky, C.J.  Polychroniou 3. Manufacturing Consent, Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky 4. History of Manipur Pre-Colonial Period, Gangmumei Kamei 5. Rebel India, Henry Noel Brailsford 6. Rainbow Valley, L.M. Montgomery The Indispensable Zinn is a curated collection of Howard Zinn's most influential writings. The book highlights his lifelong commitment to social justice, anti-war activism, and grassroots democracy. It includes selections from A People's History of the United States and his speeches, essays, and personal reflections. He made a powerful case for ordinary people as agents of change in history, which is exactly the kind of thing I want to read, learn, and get inspired by. I'm very glad I picked this up. A Livable Future is Possible is a series of interviews with Noam Chomsky conducted by journalist C.J. Polychroniou (sounds like a chemical su...

 Scrolling through Instagram, I was seeing clips of a debate where one guy was openly declaring himself a fascist and laughing out loud; another guy was not answering a straight question of whether or not Israeli snipers shooting Palestinian children in the head was the fault of Israel. Instead, he tried to justify that those children may not be innocent. Seriously!! Sooo exasperating!! They were CHILDREN, for goodness' sake!!! Then there's another guy saying, White people are Native Americans. 🙄 These are actually clips from a YouTube debate titled "1 Progressive vs 20 Far-Right Conservatives (ft. Mehdi Hasan). Going viral now, I think. Of course, I watched the entire thing straight. I have to say Mehdi Hasan is excellent at what he does. So satisfying to watch. I felt bad when the guy with the pink shirt and white cap told him, "Get the hell out." I am not surprised, though. I know these people exist. Racist, fascist, privileged white supremacists who do not a...

 It's 3:23 am, Friday the 27th of December, 2024. I am up because I had a bad dream. I tried going back to sleep, but I felt that I should write down how I was feeling. Perhaps I will feel a little better or more relieved after doing that. I don't know whether the way we left off our phone conversation or the news about the total shutdown had anything to do with the dream. I mean, we didn't finish our conversation on good footing. We nearly, no! We most certainly raised our voices. And there was news about the shutdown, which was a reason for some panic.  So, in the dream, I was in a big lecture hall with benches & seats on big steps. There were many people. The person beside me was just telling me to be careful, more like hide my face, because I, with two other people (I didn't know who they were), looked a bit like Kukis. (I mean, what?! How did this even pop up in my dream, huh!?) He said that we were more susceptible to attacks, so it's better to be safe and...

Last month, in June, I read the History of Modern Manipur. It's a book edited by Lal Dena (Department of History, Manipur University). This copy is a first edition, published in 1990. Our story starts way back in 1762 —the year Manipur came into its first formal contact with the British . At that time, King Bhagyachandra of Manipur was in big trouble. The Burmese (from present-day Myanmar) had invaded his kingdom, and he had to run for his life! So what did he do? He asked the British East India Company for help. The British, who were gradually expanding their power in India, believed that assisting Manipur could be beneficial. So they signed a treaty with Bhagyachandra in 1762 and promised to help him get his kingdom back. Spoiler alert: they didn’t do much at that time. But it was the start of a new relationship between Manipur and the British. Fast forward to 1819 . Manipur was in total chaos . Brothers were fighting for the throne. They were the sons of Bhagyachandra: ...

 Today is the last day of June, and I feel compelled to jot down the books I read this month to reflect on my experience and learnings. These are the books: ~The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen ~My Seditious Heart by Arundhati Roy ~Annihilation of Caste by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar ~History of Modern Manipur by Lal Dena Just four. It's okay, really. There is no compulsion to read 6/7 books every month. Reading fewer books doesn't mean I'm learning less. In fact, I learned more deeply. The books this month have been impactful in different ways. Clearly, there is a shift in my choices, and I feel this was meant to be. Meaning, I'm leaning more into nonfiction now. I guess I've always been angry and frustrated deep inside. Angry about the climate crisis, social injustice, discrimination, violence, war, exploitation, etc., etc. I was just deluding myself, living in the comforting world of fiction, escaping all these thoughts. As I read more nonfiction, I get angrier, but I k...