A letter to everyone who feels too much Pt. 2 : Beautiful words which you wish you knew!

On Literature teachers, words and a sense of wonder from classrooms to around the world.

Here is the part 1 for you to read if you haven’t read it!

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Of Dictionaries and Hidden Novels

I remember as a kid, one of my favorite pastimes was to open the dictionary and simply learn and get to know new words. Moreover, it was a way to pass time, so much so that it was always lying at an arm’s distance from my study table. Well to be precise they were all stuffed beneath my table to sneak them out whenever no one was looking, with all those novels with it.

There is something about learning new words, a deep fascination and sense of wonder I share with language and literature enthusiasts, in spite of being a technical student. How do I explain to you the sense of calmness and happiness that floods my soul when I chance upon the fact that what I feel has a word? A literal word that quantifies the emotions I feel! Tell me getting validation could ever level up more than this.

You might think that my enthusiasm is a bit too much for the simply boring activity of finding new words. But here is the fact: when you push everything you feel and think into a closet away from the prying eyes of the world, just to make sure you don't mess with the atmosphere—and when there is no one to tell you that it’s okay to feel in certain ways, we innovate. We find new ways to be expressive, to find our peace and validate ourselves. Because let’s agree point of life is to simply feel validated most times. The day I give up this that will be the day its over for all of you lol.

As someone who feels as though there are no limits to how much my heart can take, I always fear that I will lose this ability one day. That I will lose my eloquence, this empathy, this entrenched kindness in me and this ability which is so deeply rooted in me, to be able to put into words my emotions and what I feel. I consider this a gift, of whatever God wants me to do on this planet: to give words to the people who wish they could speak more of their lives. It’s not much, but I strive to do everything I can because life is short enough, and maybe, just maybe, we never know what’s in the mold for tomorrow!

So here we go—and I promise, you will love these words like a soft whisper on a full moon night. The ones that make you ponder the weight of your existence.

Rain as Refuge, Words as Windows

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Petrichor (n): The earthy, pleasant smell that rises from the ground after rain, evoking a quiet connection to nature.

Pluviophile (n): A lover of rain; someone who finds joy and peace in rainy days.

Needless to say, the rainy season is my home, my sanctuary it’s something I find peace in ever since we moved to a city where it rained almost ever other day. It’s the rains that make my heart wash away the sadness it harbors. It’s the showers that bring bloom to the barren corners of my soul. The downpour washes away everything I don’t wish to carry in my heart anymore. The rains leave behind greens and blooms and hearths of merriness, and the aroma of petrichor and freshly brewed coffee.

As someone who grew up by the Ghats in the city of Hassan, it was the monsoon, the most intense, the longest season. Romancing the rains is an intimacy most people can never feel in their lives.

By rains, I just remembered a quote that I read recently, something that helped me cope:

“If the rain which falls on you can come find you, the people who were destined for you will come to you as well.”

And don’t question the logic behind things which help you cope, it makes life easier, haha.

So don’t forget to describe yourselves as pluviophiles when you introduce yourself to somebody. It’s our turn to become the Shashi Tharoors of our circles, lol.

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The Gold in Nostalgia

Scintilla (n): A tiny trace or spark of something, often an emotion or quality.

Halcyon: A period of peace, happiness, or tranquility, often nostalgic.

Ambedo: A kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details.

Evanescent: Fleeting or vanishing quickly, like a moment or a dream.

So here’s the thing about memories, and my memory of them: I’m a sucker for nostalgia. So much so that I am amazed at how much nostalgia is filled within me just for the whatever 18-19 years I have been on this planet earth!

Do you all feel this unexplainable feeling of nostalgia when you listen to a song you hear after a long time? You vaguely feel something rise in the chest as if you could be at the moment you heard it the first time. But the moment you try to fully recollect the scene, the feeling, the swell of emotions….. and then? It’s gone. Radio silence.

That momentary feeling of the past mental state you go to? That’s the gold. Absolute gold. It’s funny how we humans love to create these small pockets of memories we all revisit in the future. Humans are suckers for nostalgia (both you and me, we share that!), but we all, conflictingly, know that our best interest is to dwell in the present. Yet we choose to make that decision, to recall those moments of mellow reflection.

But we all fear, in our heart of hearts, that we will lose them. So we try hard to treasure them, as if they are small diamonds of memories, worth more in feelings and emotions than in money. It’s like digging through the fertile land of emotions to find a diamond. And our consciousness continually keeps accumulating and mining more memories.

I wrote this in the metro, fondly remembering a song after I met my buddies back from school. It’s funny how we humans become receptive to these fine emotions in the company of emotionally close people. Ever since, I’ve been trying to find a word to put this feeling into an experience every human has but fails to put into words.

And I can’t tell you how my heart felt a tad lighter, as if rising to the moment and acknowledging that what I have is a universal experience. These are the fine moments in life that make it worth living, in my opinion.

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Bookshops, Ghosts, and Time Machines

Vellichor: The wistful feeling of being in a secondhand bookstore.

Anemoia (n): Nostalgia for a time or place you’ve never known; a longing for something you can’t quite name.

Have you ever been in a secondhand bookshop, locating books? The old musty smell with the humid temperatures, the stacked-up books as high as you can see?

There is this tension you feel in your heart when you stand in those old bookshops, the places with a million stories, places that stand as witnesses to the ghosts of people who once possessed those books.

When you stay in these shops, you have a feeling of uneasy pleasure. You feel like you're in a time machine, one that flings you back into the same moment someone else read the same book you lay your hands on. When you open a book, when you see emojis, doodles, underlined sentences, you don’t just read the book. You’re looking at the book through the eyes of the previous owner. You see what mattered to them, those words they felt were worth underlining.

And there’s a strange feeling I sometimes have: if reincarnation is real, how many of us read the same books we owned in our previous lives? How many of us get our hands back on books we might have written, the ones we gifted in our past lives?

This particular word is such a powerhouse of memories and emotions, and I can’t say enough about how beautifully it describes that experience we’ve all had, one way or another.

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A Home That Wasn’t Mine

Hiraeth (Welsh): A deep, wistful homesickness for a home you can’t return to—or that never was.

Querencia (Spanish): A place where one feels safe; a place from which one’s strength is drawn.

Desiderium: An ardent longing, especially for something lost.

Longing, yearning, waiting, these are sports I would win competitively, if there were any. And there has always been a longing in my heart to go “home,” even when I’ve been home. Not because I didn’t have anything,I had it all: a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, food to eat as much as I wished. But there has always been this sort of restlessness and vague sense of detachment to everything I called “home” because nothing here felt like “mine.”

I, for one, have always longed for something to call “mine.” Somewhere no one yelled at me, where I could just have been a kid, where no one would want me to become an adult. I long for the kind of home people say they had, the ones where families sat down for dinner peacefully, the ones where they went on picnics with smiles and merriment. The ones where I could enjoy and live life instead of having to survive what I was put through.

I was writing another piece about what home truly means to me, but longing? It’s something that constantly tugs at my heart. It wants me to express, to create, to put into words and show what I was put through. And how much I would give up anything to get back what was lost. Everything from my childhood to my innocence to things I wanted.

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The Ache of Love, the Act of Re-Claiming Worth

Saudade (Portuguese): A deep, nostalgic longing for something or someone absent, tinged with both love and melancholy.

Sehnsucht (German): An intense, inconsolable longing for something indefinable—often tied to an idealized past or unattainable future.

I am of the opinion that no love is a lost cause, and all of it is an experience—something we all gamble with. Because it takes courage to love someone deeply and willingly. Not because love is about the grandness and the epitome of what life has to offer, but simply because it was your choice. And it’s not always given back.

I’m struggling to put this into words, but as I write, I’m gripped by fear, and I don’t fully understand why. The idea of writing about love in the first person—about my life—terrifies me. But I’m here to face it.

I’m declaring it loud and clear: I deserve love, and I am worthy of being loved.

There’s nothing wrong with craving connection, tenderness, and intimacy in real life. It’s a human need. I’m not unworthy of love just because I’m still growing, or because I haven’t checked off some imaginary list of self-improvement. Love isn’t something I have to earn by becoming “perfect” or waiting for the day I fully love myself.

No.

I deserve love simply because I exist—beyond my achievements or accomplishments.

For too long, I’ve wrapped myself in discomfort, hiding behind a strange façade that told me I had to prove my worth to be loved and respected. But the truth is, I will be loved for who I am right now—even if I’ve done nothing to “earn” it. And those who don’t see my value now? They never will, no matter how hard I try to please them.

It’s a strange conclusion to reach, but in my opinion, it’s the truth.

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The Ache of Love, the Act of Claiming Worth

Numinous (adj): A sense of awe and mystery, often tied to the divine or the vastness of existence.

Onism: The awareness of how little of the world you’ll experience.

Yūgen (Japanese): A profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe, often evoked by the fleeting or ineffable.

On some nights, I simply stay awake and try to imagine the vastness of this universe we live in. What exists beyond the universe we know? Is there anything beyond what we can perceive as the universe or space?

And for too long, I have delved into this idea, how small or little we know about the universe. That really bends my mind and fascinates me in more ways than it should.

Sometimes, I try to fathom what we humans are mere specks in a universe full of billions and trillions of galaxies, planets, and possibly more life.

And then there is this realization that has dawned upon me from life ever since: we can never know everything we want to know. As humans, as mortals, as beings, there will always be only so much we cannot understand, see, or perceive.

This idea also pervades into other spheres of life.

There’s a strange lightness and sense of relief in knowing and accepting that you will never be able to know everything you want to. And there’s always only so much you can do.

But this is not about giving up or simply not trying—it’s about understanding and relieving ourselves of the expectation and the desire to be everything. Yes, you should try everything, but there is a point in life where you begin to break if you clutter and try too hard to figure out everything. That is where you need to understand your ability, your power. That is how we actually achieve our fullest potential, in my opinion: by understanding that we can do much and more but only so much.

It’s a paradox, but it’s the beauty of life.

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The Earth Whispers Too

Vesper: Evening or twilight, often tied to serene moments.

Psithurism: The sound of the wind whispering through trees.

Nature has always been my sanctuary—the place I run back to when in need. Starry nights basking in moonlight, sitting under a tree feeling its bark in its shade, as the leaves whisper secrets of things as old as time. As the sun plays peek-a-boo with the earth, coming on and off between the clouds. As the river flows in a universal orchestra of sounds. As the birds scream in delight as they take flight. Or seeing it rain as puddles form.

There is so much and more—why I love being a carefree human who enjoys life and nature. Hills to rolling plains, to the fog that kisses the land, to the sunlight that floods the earth we humans should be more thankful and happy for what it gives us.

Nature has given me things to cherish, guard, and treasure. Moments from my life that would have never been complete if not for the universe playing a role to make life a splendid one, worth living for. From the flowers that bloom in my garden, to the rainbows I can’t seem to get out of my head, to the rainy nights and thunders that make me feel home, to the rolling fig on the hills, the snows atop peaks, the greens of the distant ridges, the tall trees and the vast canopies—there’s never enough I can describe in words how deeply I love nature. :)

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People, Places, and the Fragments They Leave Behind

Opia: The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel both invasive and vulnerable.

Sillage: The lingering scent that a person leaves behind in the air.

Limerence: A state of mind characterized by intense infatuation and romantic desire for someone, often with an obsessive quality.

People, memories, desires, and places—they are not just physical things we all know, experience, and feel. There are parts of us left in the places where we made some memories. There will always be that impression we leave on a place once we spend time there, because nothing else can explain how calm we all become when we enter spaces where our loved ones were—or how our hearts spring like trees entering bloom.

We all remember people: the times we met, the memories we made, the jokes we laughed about, the fights we had. The times we could have acted differently. The situations we wish had ended in other ways.

But there are a few things we all regret, no matter what. Even the most nonchalant person who pretends to feel nothing has regrets, soft sighs, deep yearnings. It’s funny how we humans learn to wear these masks, of being happy, of pretending to be fine even when we’re not.

And we break free of those masks, selves, layers, personalities, and versions of ourselves in the night. As the world sleeps, we all return to ourselves when no one sees us. That’s when we truly know how we feel.

There’s a part of me, a fragment that wishes for the kind of things you see on television. People looking into each other’s eyes as they simply sit there. Smelling the scent of someone we love beside us as soon as we wake up.

Maybe life has its ways. People and the books say, “Wait for it. It happens right when you don’t expect it to happen.”

But it’s fine. Let it happen when it wants to.

But why didn’t it happen all the times I wished so badly something would? Why did no one ever come to save me when I needed saving? Was it my destiny to pull myself up from every crevice of hard luck I fell into? Did the one above break me just to make me strong, and then break me again when they arrive?

I don’t know. But the vague desire stays.

Maybe the idea will stay there, and fearing it will leave is just pointless.

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The Conversations Which Changed Me

Sobremesa (Spanish): The time spent lingering at the table after a meal, lost in conversation.

Food is truly the way to a man’s heart. In life, there are things I love more than others, and there is a guilty pleasure in speaking to gentlemen of knowledge, the ones who seem to know everything, from the laws of the land, to the nature of death and life, to climate change, to the kind of happiness that comes from living a life doing what truly matters to you.

This glee lies not just in speaking, but in enjoying the company of learned men. To be able to learn from them, to absorb the aura they have about themselves. The repositories of wisdom and knowledge they are, from all those years that life weathered them down.

They are our signs that even when life beats us, it’s a choice to rise and to keep sailing in spite of how hard the waves rise or how the ship shudders.

I recall one such experience: it was past dinner. We had one of the most amazing sessions of storytelling in my entire life, from one of my dearest friend’s dads. As he spoke from across the hearth fire that was lit in front of us, there was an absolute sense of wonder that filled my heart. Because when kids see people like this, it moves something deeply in them.

That night, I was determined that my life would one day be like that gentleman from that night.

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To the Teachers Who Opened the Worlds

After having spoken so much about words, how much they mean to me, and how fortunate I have been to have found my resort of comfort in words, it would be a disrespect to my teachers of English if I didn’t remember them here today with this piece.

And there’s a thing about English: if you don’t teach it well enough, people sleep. Because in a society which today has ended up in a conclusive decision that Humanities do not have a place in this world, we still have passionate people who want to teach Literature, Languages, History, and Geography the way they were supposed to be taught. In a way that arouses curiosity in our hearts. In a way that pushes us to explore the world by ourselves.

And today, I can proudly tell you all that all my teachers did that for me. And if I’m still interested in literature, art, books, history, and writing, there is credit due to my dear teachers.

And to flex a little(because why not?), my literature teacher is subscribed to my Substack newsletter, and hopefully, he still reads them. It’s always so heartening and soulful to know that what I wrote was even good enough for him to have taken the action to subscribe to this place where I pour in everything that’s bottled up in me.

I remember one of the reasons I also fell in love with words and their wonderful uses, the way they’re used and their ability to mean so much more than their literal definitions, was a fun exercise we used to have in class. Our English teacher made us a list of words we could use in our essays to be more descriptively apt in our writing. Say, for example, the difference between petite and thin. I would’ve never cared to know or inquire about the difference between the two in my entire life. But in that instant, there was a realization in my heart that literature, language, and writing isn’t only about the figures of speech we were supposed to learn by heart, nor was it about answering the MCQ questions asked about poems.

It was about understanding and making sense of the deeper meanings and the underlying pain, love, or emotion the artist decides to put into his/her/(whatever pronouns you prefer to call yourself, dear reader - I don’t wanna risk it) work.

If I’ve been able to simply appreciate the beauty of literature, my teachers played their role in making sure to show how juicy and mind-bending literature truly is.

Like every reader, student, or writer has a moment in their literary journey, there is this one moment where your brain just opens up to a multi-dimensional universe, a multiverse of meanings. I had one too.

It was during the lockdown, and we had this poem Daffodils by William Wordsworth. I still remember that shell of ignorance in me breaking as I heard the way my teacher explained the similes, the hyperboles and everything about that poem, for that matter. And another instance was understanding the feeling behind Why the Caged Bird Sings, in the context of Black oppression in America. Maybe today, that is what fills me with compassion for every struggling human being. Because literature transcends boundaries and leaves behind morals and stories which stay for generations.

Everyone deserves to be heard, respected, and loved. And that is what literature and books have taught me till day.

And maybe, dear reader, that’s the power great teachers coupled with the great words of gigantic writers have: to shift things in our hearts ever so gently and make us better humans, to make us all feel safer in our own skins, to make us all feel okay to feel in certain ways!

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