Dear Thatha,

It's been 67 days since you went to a better place.
Every single day I think of something I want to share with you.
I wanted to tell you when I drove myself to college for the first time. I thought that would make you proud.
I made Korean pancakes one day and wanted to share them with you.
Whenever my dad or my mom scolded me I wanted to tell you about it because I know you would've taken my side.
Sometimes I just want to run to you and give you a big hug because you gave the warmest hugs and then I realise I can't do all that and it breaks me.
Everyone says it gets better with time but I'm sat here bawling my eyes out as I write this wondering if time does heal this?
Whenever I visited you unannounced, your face lit up, it's something I will never forget, it moved me in ways you can never imagine. The fact that you were so happy just to see me, blew my mind and made me feel like the most loved person in the entire world.
I always thought I've never felt the unconditional love people talk about in songs, but then you made sure I did.
You calling me 'Sanakka' still echoes every single day. It was always so funny that you took it upon yourself to call me Akka because the rest of the youngsters didn't and funnily enough, it stuck. Recently someone called me 'Sanakka' and it just didn't feel right because it didn't come from you.
You only saw the good in people. Even when it came to one of those spam messages that you shouldn't reply to, I don't know how you did it but you still only saw the good side.
The way you respected women was always stunning, I mean, you sometimes don't see that in kids my age. I've always been so proud to call you my grandad but that always made me burst with pride.
The hole you've left in our lives is so substantial, you can't not feel it.
Every single day I think about you and I miss you so much more than words can say.
It hurts.
At the same time, I'm so glad you're not in pain anymore.
Of course, I wish we had more time together, but I don't think any amount of time would've been enough.
I turn 20 soon and as much as science tells me otherwise, I'd like to think wherever you are, you'll be by my side as I embark on a new journey of sorts.
I hope I make proud.
I hope I can spread kindness and happiness the way you did.
I also hope you're happy and at peace.
Thank you for being the greatest grandad. I'm not sure about what I did to deserve you, but I'm so grateful for all the years, all the jokes, all the conversations, all the food, just all the tiny things we shared together.
I will never and can't ever forget you.

Love you forever.

Without Wax,
Your Sanakka

Hihihihi guys!

Here's me hiding from 2019

Hope y'all are being the best you and doing well!
Oh, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
We're six days into 2019.
Yes. Six days. I'm late for the new year you say?
Well. January was hard. And I mean hard.
You know how people say with the new year you're starting off with blank pages and all that? Well, I'm the sort of person who is ready with her best stationery on the first of January, every year.
That purple highlighter, that pastel pink post-it, that pen-pencil that's so convenient since a normal pencil is too much work, all ready and armed to take on these blank pages that people speak of, ready to make each page neat and aesthetic and colourful and better than the last. I feel like we all try our best to do this in some way or the other, in January at least. Some of us start that diet we have always wanted to go on and some us of try to be more productive and not make the mistakes we made the previous year. Regardless of whether all this lasts, we still try.
But what happens if your post-its don't stick well or your purple highlighter runs out of ink or that trusty pen-pencil gets stuck and you don't know how to fix it? Suddenly the blank pages aren't being filled the way you wanted it to. Well, a series of these pages happened and I just wanted to rip out these pages out and start over. I finally gave up after a point and decided to leave the pages blank and start off afresh in February. So that's why I've convinced myself that we're only six days into the new year.
But here I am, at 2am trying to convince myself that January didn't happen and February is ok so far. *touch wood*
But because it is 2am and I'm trying to convince myself of this, I realise I cannot and actually shouldn't forget that January did happen and things did go terribly wrong but more importantly that that's ok.
A few exams not going so well, almost breaking my leg, my anxiety making a big comeback and finding out out some terrible news are a few things that my January was made up of.
We live in a society where we're branded by the how much marks we get, it sucks but it's always something for those aunties and uncles to judge you and make them feel better or worse about their own kids. Nevertheless, we are always on a quest to make those aunties and uncles feel bad about their kids, fueling an insatiable desire to prove people wrong. The moment I knew my marks weren't going to make me or my parents particularly proud, it devastated me, more than it should've. When you let that happen, you end up putting yourself down and undermining yourself when you're actually better than a lot of people out in the world. So if there's anything I've learned at 2am, six days into my new year, it's that whatever happens is ok, I'm just going to go out there and give everything my best shot. Things aren't going to go as planned and that's ok. Giving it your best shot is important.
Then we have the anxiety coming back. I've been getting very anxious lately and a small trigger is all that's needed to break me. It's been making me lose my temper a lot too. Not particularly proud of it, but I threw my phone the other day when I got super frustrated. The phone is ok but I'm not. Taking it out on everyone or everything else is probably the worst thing you could do. It gets harsh but I'm working on it. I'm distracting myself with book clubs and k-dramas. It's hard but to people who might be going through this too, WE GOT THISSS.
Finally receiving the terrible news, its not something I want to elaborate on but let's just say it was pretty much my worst fear come to life. I wish there was a 'How to Life for Dummies' book that I could delve into because no one teaches you how to deal with things like this.  If there's anything I can tell you from learning about this the hard way is that, you have to spend time with the ones you love. Tell your loved ones you love them every single chance you get. Throw kindness around like confetti, I cannot stress enough on that. Go write a letter to someone you love right now. Or give your loved one a hug. DO IT.
Spread the love, the world needs it.
And on that note, I think I should wrap up this blogpost.
If you want your new year to start in March, start it in March. Hell, start it in August, make your own rules but don't forget what the bad months taught you. You got this, kick life's butt.
I really hope you have an amaaaazing year. Own it and kill it.
And do it all Without Wax.
Auf Wiedersehen.

Without Wax,

That Indian Blogger

Hey guys!
It's October. How are we in October already?!
I also turned 19 recently, final year as a teen, what even.
Turning 19 doesn't feel any different though. I feel like there needs to be something almost ceremonious to mark this final teenage year, but there's nothing. If anything it has told me I need to pull myself together. I'm probably the most childish person I know (I may or may not have a dozen Disney songs on my playlist at the moment), and somethings telling me I need to maybe grow up a tiny bit.
So I've wanted to write this post for a while now. I thought about the title for quite a bit. "How to put it in a way that no one judges me." I then decided that life is way too short to worry about things like this😂 and therefore decided to put it as exactly what it is.
Social media ruined my life.
In today's world, I feel it's fair to say that almost everyone you bump into is on social media. The impact one can bring about via a following on social media is actually insane.
Apart from having the ability to pretty much sway the world, Social Media has made the world such a small place. You get to see what everyone is up to each day no matter where in the world they are. What we don't get sometimes is that Social Media is such a filtered version of someone's life. It may be all rainbows and unicorns on someone's page but we can never really tell if it's all rainbows and unicorns in their life.
What I find myself doing on Social Media is comparing myself to people I see on there, a lot. You may not relate, in which case I applaud you and I want to be like you, but I'm the sort of person with a super low self-esteem. Social Media also happens to have such negative vibes. A lot of people on there are hiding behind a phone or a laptop and hence get all the courage they wouldn't normally have, to spew hate on there. You may go through loads of good comments about you, but the one negative comment you find will haunt you longer is what I've found.
All sort of Social Media numbers bothered me a lot too. Likes, follows, followers, comments, I just wanted to run away from it all.
Recently something happened to my account and it bothered me so much, way more than it should have. The thought of potentially losing the account with the following and base that I had scared me and it shouldn't have. "How will I promote my blog", "How will I build up what I had from scratch", were just a few things that kept going on in my head. The same day I came across the following tweet

I realised I do not want to be that person. Social Media is not who I am, it hit me that even if I lose the account, I don't lose myself and there should be nothing more important to me than myself. If there's anything my low-key obsession with BTS (anti-K-POP and anti-BTS peeps stay with me on this xD) has thought me is that I come first. You can't even fall in love with anyone else without learning to love yourself first. Once you accept yourself for who you are, everything else falls into place, you get this adrenaline rush and feeling of "I can change the world and no one can stop me" and you know what? You can. Once you believe you can, you're already halfway there.
Don't let Social Media get to you the way it got to me. I won't deny all the good things that come out of Social Media, I've met some of the best people online, just remember to love yourself, keep your chin up, and throw kindness around like confetti.

So that was today's post! Hope you liked it! Let me know what you think!
And don't forget to Love yourself.

Without Wax,

That Indian Blogger

Hey guys!
I'm back with a new post at a record time, I'm not quite sure how that happened either.
Before I start off with the post I'd like to mention something that happened that left me SHOOK. Someone recognized me as That Indian Blogger in a mall the other day. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?! Never in a million years did I see myself in that situation. So a massive shout out to the girl who came up to me.
So this is a post I've wanted to put up for a while but never really got around to it.

In March of this year, I visited Taiwan with my dad.
I don't want to bore you with a lot of details, so I'll try to keep it short and fill the rest of the post with pictures from the trip.
I was amazed by the country from the very beginning. As I stepped out of the plane, the first thing I saw was a massive board that said 'Taiwan' but it was completely made out of circuit boards. From the airport, we drove down to our first stop, Hsinchu, a small city in northern Taiwan. It wasn't a daunting city like the capital, Taipei. The way the city was built and maintained made me wish I lived there. We spent two days there but on the second day, we took the Taiwan High Speed Rail to two cities, Taichung, which is fairly in the middle and Kaohsiung, a city in the south. I didn't really get to explore those two cities but the train journey is something I'll never forget. It made me wish I had more time on my hands to explore the Taiwan countryside. In Taichung, I had the most memorable lunch, trying out all the local delicacies like fried oyster, goose, stinky tofu and even something called iron egg which is a boiled egg that has been braised in soy sauce for a long time because of which it is hard on the outside but soo tasty. If you find yourself in Taiwan do not be afraid to try out all the food they have to offer, you'll find yourself loving dishes you never thought you would, and it'll definitely leave you satisfied. On the last three days of my trip, I was in Taipei. Like I mentioned before, this city was quite daunting. The massive skyscrapers and just the scale of everything made me feel tiny and intimidated but I definitely would love to just get lost in it for days. I didn't get to explore as much as I'd like to but I did do quite a bit of sightseeing here like at the Taipei 101, the National Palace Museum, which I highly recommend you visit and the Raohe Street Night Market which is also a must visit.
The people there were incredibly sweet and always willing to help. Someone who didn't speak a lot of English but knew my dad for a while took us out to dinner with his family and as a stranger in foreign place, where I couldn't understand a lot of things or even a word they were saying, I felt right at home, so much love and didn't feel out of place.
Taiwan may be a small country but it had so much to offer.  I went at a time when my anxiety was really bad and this trip healed me in ways I didn't imagine it would or could. So if you get an opportunity to explore this amazing country, please do.
谢谢台湾

Without Wax,

That Indian Blogger