Shambhavi's Shells

       Picture this, you are getting married soon and your significant other chooses to get married in Las Vegas, the mystical, wonderful city that's always on the move. Time is everything here, especially for marriages. You are told your marriage will be cheap, quick, and easy, taking place in a drive through.       Now picture this, your significant other wants to have a grand Indian wedding where not only your distant relatives but also more than half the city's population will show up. Your marriage won't take a day, not even two days, it'll take place over 3 days and maybe one more for the reception. The wedding venue that will be booked will most likely cost only a couple (around one hundred thousand dollars) of dollars without food or entertainment provided.     What do you pick? Would you rather spend the precious time of getting married in a few minutes or a few days? That was my exact reaction to the drive through Las Vega...

       Feel free to read in an Australian National Geographic voice:)     On my adventures through the world, I came across an unusual herd of sheep. These sheep came in many different colors, sizes, and shapes. These sheep seemed to converse in many different ways, especially those of different color who only communicated with sheep of similar color.      These sheep live in an unusual way. They go by their daily lives seemingly mocking other sheep that appear different from the rest. Whether it be the color of their wool or their facial features, all sheep seem to prefer the portion of sheep with white wool.     Now it's not like the white wooled sheep are any different from the rest. Maybe their wool is considered cleaner than the others, but that's just ridiculous! How could these sheep segregate themselves based on something as minute as the color of their wool! They're all sheep anyways! It's not like there's a ...

      Names-the deciding factor of first impressions.      For many families, finding a name for their child might take months, but quoting Shakespeare's line "What's in a name?" could render efforts for picking baby names useless.     I'm here to tell you that Shakespeare did not have the future in mind when writing these lines. In a world where names decide friends, enemies, and a child's future, Shakespeare's words lose their credibility.     The weight a name holds can be suffocating, especially when the meaning behind a name seems contrary to the beholder's personality.       Take my name, for example, Shambhavi, I was named after a goddess in the Hindu religion who represents bliss and happiness. With this in mind, I find that I constantly remind myself that I need to live up to my name. Yes, people have tried to make jokes about my name, but I disregard it because of their ignorance, I'm the...

      As this week's class discussion dived into the reason behind using polite phrases and indirect speech, I realized how important it was to communicate with others using respectful speech.      As someone who values speaking to others respectfully and politely, I always felt distasteful towards how the bare English language is structured. Unlike many other languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, or the many Indian languages, the English language lacks the formal conjugation for the second person pronoun "you".          Personally, this missing formal conjugation makes communicating with others, especially those older than you, difficult.      I've been exposed to multiple different languages other than English that use a formal conjugation, and if I happen to make a slight mistake and refer to someone older than me with the informal "you", I might as well give up trying to build a good r...

       While reading The Clan of One-Breasted Women, I encountered a quote that changed my perspective on the common but tragic event of death.     Williams described her experience with watching women from her family die of cancer in a perspective that I could never imagine.  " In the end, I witnessed their last peaceful breaths, becoming a midwife to the rebirth of their souls."     Throughout my life, although I've never been through the same experiences as Williams, I have never thought of death as a "rebirth" of any kind. The way I anticipate most of us would describe death is by saying "we lost someone" which is why Williams perspective shocked me.  The entire line is written from a perspective that was foreign to me. Being a witness of death is described as being a “midwife”, someone who witnesses birth.      This line really captivated me. It makes the pain and suffering that the women in her family...

     Disney, the entertainment company geared towards all ages, particularly younger children, is loved by everyone, but one thing I couldn't help but notice was their changes in how women are portrayed and their new roles in movies.      Those from my generation, the early 2000's, grew up watching Disney princess movies like Cinderella, Snow White, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, and so on. The problem with most of these stories is the overused damsel in distress trope.      Ever since I was little I always wondered why the princess needed to be saved by the prince, or why she would give everything up just to be with him. Movies like The Little Mermaid, where Ariel gives up everything including her voice, or Snow White, where the Prince's kiss saves her, had me confused. These movies are usually viewed by a younger audience whose perceptions can easily be changed. If a young girl grows up watching weak female leads ne...

       I've struggled a lot trying to find my own style, whether it be hair, clothing, accessories, or just the way I carry myself. When given a prompt in class about the different cliques seen around school, and having seen the class respond with jock, nerd, popular, and so on, I wondered if your clique truly defines your style.       To be a part of a clique is to be in " a small group of people, with shared interests or other features in common, who spend time together and do not readily allow others to join them." This definition doesn't state anything about fashion, instead, it's more about the interests that the clique shares. So why do we classify a clique based on appearance? Certainly not every guy who wears shorts and a hoodie in the dead of winter is a "jock", and neither are all the girls with branded clothing the "popular girls".       I've been a part of multiple friend groups and cliques, but those groups neve...