Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is a deeply vindictive, revenge-driven narrative filled with harsh emotions and intense suffering. The constant turmoil and the characters’ tragic choices create a powerful, though unsettling, story. Themes of obsession, love, and betrayal leave a lasting impact. While it may not be my personal favorite, the prose is undeniably masterful. The haunting imagery and dark emotions that permeate every page make this a book that lingers long after it ends. The culmination of curses, emotional decay, and disintegration of relationships leads to a narrative of ultimate nullification.

The story revolves around two central figures: Heathcliff and Catherine.
Heathcliff is the owner of Wuthering Heights, and people are deeply frightened by his name. He is a gigantic, rude, curmudgeonly figure, causing fear and resentment among the locals. Mr. Lockwood arrives as a tenant at Thrushcross Grange and meets Nelly Dean, who is the housekeeper at Wuthering Heights. When Lockwood falls asleep that night, he encounters a ghost in his room, leaving him utterly disturbed. He clearly sees the name ‘Catherine’ written on the window, which frightens him greatly. The next day, when Heathcliff learns of this, he rushes to meet Lockwood.

The conversation between Heathcliff and Lockwood revolves around Catherine. Heathcliff eagerly inquires, ‘Did you see Catherine? What about her?’ He is deeply obsessed with her presence and yearns to meet her, even if only once. Lockwood, completely clueless about what is happening, seeks answers from Nelly, the housekeeper, who begins to evince the entire story of Heathcliff and Catherine and

The story commences with Mr. Earnshaw, a wealthy man and the original owner of Wuthering Heights, who is the father of Catherine and Hindley. Both these kids are filthily rich and spoilt brats. When Earnshaw travels away on a business trip, he asks his children if they would like any gifts. Hindley and Catherine request something they can play with, but instead, Earnshaw brings home Heathcliff, a lonely orphan he finds on the streets. Catherine and Hindley are shocked by his arrival. Hindley immediately hates Heathcliff and treats him cruelly, like a slave, bullying and abusing him at every turn. On the other hand, Catherine is also no good though, she is contemptuous and is always in open disdain towards others. But Catherine and Heathcliff form a strong bond — they become inseparable, developing a deep friendship that grows into a close, almost unbreakable connection.

As they grow older, a turning point comes when Heathcliff wishes to marry Catherine and expects the same in return. However, he eavesdrops a conversation between Catherine and Nelly, where Nelly asks Catherine if she plans to marry Heathcliff. Catherine responds, saying, ‘No, I cannot marry him, as it would degrade me. Instead, I will marry Edgar Linton of Thrushcross Grange, who is socially acceptable, wealthy, and offers the stability I need. Marrying him will provide me with comfort and security, which I cannot achieve with Heathcliff. Though Heathcliff is a part of me and I am a part of him, and yes, I do love him, this cannot be.’ Heathcliff, devastated by her words, is unable to face anyone and is shattered. He quickly disappears, leaving no trace of where he has gone or what he is doing. Shortly after, Catherine marries Edgar.

Catherine is despondent by the fact that she has no knowledge of Heathcliff’s whereabouts or what he is doing. Although she is married to Edgar, the man she had chosen, she cannot escape her love for Heathcliff. This emotional turmoil haunts her, as she is unable to find peace of mind knowing that Heathcliff is missing and that she has no trace of him. Catherine is torn between her thoughts and actions, which are in direct conflict with one another. The contradiction between her feelings for Heathcliff and her commitment to Edgar leaves her in a state of deep confusion and inner conflict.

After three years, Heathcliff returns, now incredibly wealthy. Upon his return, he learns that Earnshaw has passed away, and everything is now in Hindley’s name. Heathcliff visits Catherine and is deeply saddened to see that she is married to Edgar. Catherine, though happy to see Heathcliff again, struggles with an inner conflict and cannot fully reveal her feelings, creating a tense atmosphere between them.

This moment marks a turning point for Heathcliff. The rejection from Catherine — her belief that marrying him would degrade her — has haunted him. But it is this very rejection that fueled his drive to leave, earn wealth, and return richer. Now that he’s back, Heathcliff is forced to face the harsh reality: the love of his life is married to another man. Moreover, he is reminded of the cruelty Hindley inflicted upon him during his childhood, which intensifies his desire for revenge. Heathcliff transforms into a figure consumed by vengeance. He overtakes Hindley, becoming the new owner of Wuthering Heights, and treats Hindley like a slave.

Heathcliff also sets his sights on Edgar’s sister, Isabella, who secretly admires him for his raw, intimidating presence. Edgar vehemently opposes the union, both because of Catherine’s connection to Heathcliff and his protective feelings toward his sister. Similarly, Catherine disapproves of the marriage. However, Heathcliff has no interest in Isabella for love or happiness — his sole intent is to use her to inflict pain on both Catherine and Edgar. His plan is to torment Isabella, making her suffer to hurt them. Eventually, despite the opposition, Isabella and Heathcliff marry.

Since Heathcliff is consumed by grief and anger. He ruthlessly abuses Isabella, causing her immense emotional pain, leading to their eventual separation. Isabella no longer wants to live with Heathcliff, and they both end up living in different places (though the name escapes me). Meanwhile, Catherine, on her deathbed, is mentally and emotionally tormented by her divided loyalties — her heart yearns for Heathcliff, but she cannot live happily with Edgar. Heathcliff’s presence and his influence only add to her suffering.

When Catherine passes away, Heathcliff is utterly devastated. He cannot process the loss of the woman he loved and who was also his soul’s counterpart. He finds no purpose in life, sinking deeper into sorrow. A few years later, Isabella dies, leaving their son, Linton, who is now 12 years old, in Heathcliff’s custody. Edgar, on the other hand, continues to care for his daughter, Cathy, pampering her as the only child he has left.

As time passes, Linton is brought to Wuthering Heights, and eventually, Cathy and Linton form a bond. Heathcliff, still fueled by his vengeful obsession, continues to manipulate the situation. He forces Cathy to agree to marry Linton, threatening her with imprisonment,if she refuses. Cathy has no choice but to comply because she has her ill father, Edgar alone at home and needs to headover soon to take care of him, and soon after, Edgar dies. Cathy marries Linton, but their union is short-lived. Linton, already frail and sickly, passes away at the age of 17, leaving Cathy devastated and penniless. Heathcliff, who had already anticipated Linton’s death and taken all of his property, leaves Cathy with nothing.

Meanwhile, Hindley’s son, Hareton, who had been treated as a slave by Heathcliff, is now the only remaining heir. Over time, Hareton and Cathy begin to form a bond, eventually marrying. They move to Thrushcross Grange, while Heathcliff remains at Wuthering Heights, increasingly isolated. As the end of his life nears, Heathcliff is consumed by his memories of Catherine. He cannot live without her and finds no purpose in existence. He dies alone, and soon after, people in the moors report seeing the ghosts of both Heathcliff and Catherine roaming the hills in the evenings.

Heathcliff is buried next to Catherine, Edgar, and Hindley. It is said that they are now reunited, and their spirits wander the moors, never to be apart. Nellie, the housekeeper, narrates the entire tragic story to Lockwood, concluding the tale.

NEVEDTHA VENKATARAMAN

12 — Jan — 2025

NEVEDTHA VENKATARAMAN

11 APR 2024

“Keep your cards close, for not all journeys are meant to be shared before their time. Your journey is uniquely yours, and not everyone can walk your path. Sometimes, you must navigate with the quiet wisdom of trial and error and there are times when the world must witness your moves only after they’ve been made.”

Remember, Nazar is real.”

NEVEDTHA VENKATARAMAN

14 March 2024

I began filling out the I-539 form, which was quite extensive with multiple submissions and questions. I had to double-check everything meticulously. After writing a cover letter, I went through the process of printing, signing, and scanning multiple times. At one point, I even had to rush home to get my marriage certificate, which I had forgotten.

After making sure all my documents were in order, I submitted the form on March 21st, 2023. I was relieved to see the change reflected in the portal and felt a sense of accomplishment. Three days later, I received a slot for biometrics in New Hampshire on April 13th.

Fortunately, we had already planned a trip to Florida for our first anniversary from April 6th to April 10th. After returning, I went for the biometrics. On May 22nd, I received a Request for Evidence document, which was five pages long and asked for various justifications. The deadline for submission was June 22nd.

Feeling overwhelmed, we decided to seek help from an attorney. Although the attorneys in the USA charge hefty amounts, it was worth a try. They drafted a file with all our necessary documents, which was successfully submitted on June 12th. I received the Approval notice on June 26th.

It was a long and arduous process, but I was thrilled to have it done. There were days when I was stressed about the processing times and the possibility of needing approval. However, receiving updates every month from the starting date kept me hopeful. In the end, after a long and winding road of paperwork and a trail of perseverance, I was successfully converted to an F1 student visa within three months.

“Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.” — Arnold H. Glasow

Hooray and Happy!!!

NEVEDTHA VENKATARAMAN

1st MARCH 2024

In the process of reading, if something doesn’t resonate with you, you can stop reading right there. Time is very precious, and you can’t sit with something that doesn’t appeal to your sensibilities. It’s perfectly fine to set it aside and discover a different tale that truly captivates your interests; otherwise, we risk spinning our wheels and accomplishing nothing.

I’m certain that this time, the book of your choice will strike a chord with you and create a more positive and meaningful impact on your reading journey.

Realizing this is the crux of the matter, and everything else that comes along is the byproduct of the process. Take it slow, one step at a time, one day at a time. Eventually, you will start enjoying the process and will define it in your own way.

For me, reading has always been refreshing, breezy, and a kind of escape from reality. It transports me to a different world where only the writer and I know which page I’m on. Whether I want to continue sticking to the same page, turn it, skip, skim the pages, or reread the entire book, I have the authority to choose what I want, welcome or set it aside for the moment.

It’s how life functions too. You have several options to explore, just like the numerous books around the globe. You need to decide whether to document this moment, hold onto it, take a lesson, gain new perspectives, expand your horizons, or let it go if it doesn’t align with your wavelength.

Just like every choice requires the right frame of mind, if you feel the right energy radiating from a book after reading it, you are a different person now. And this has been a beautiful experience.

If a book doesn’t click with you, take it as a learning lesson and move on. You are in the position of authority to move on from the book. The epiphany of having power and influence over any activity is a boost, making you take it as a challenge and work on it. When it comes to the activity of reading, you have control over the choice of book and whether to read it or not. Embrace this power and embark on a fulfilling journey.

Every book may seem silent, but it has a lasting effect on us. Reading is always a wonderful way of jiving with your mind in harmony and yet bringing it so much focus, including thinking, creating a positive aura and happiness.

NEVEDTHA VENKATARAMAN

20th May 2023

Author — Yung Pueblo

There are many viewpoints on aspects relevant to sincerity, kindness, and merely being okay while progressing as a person.

Many of your accumulated thoughts and reflections make you approach situations in a certain pattern, hence learn to cease pondering about pre existing notions.

Any thought process that demands your peace of mind needs to be excavated and instead create space for expansion and growth. It was another reminder for self realization and acknowledging the values and instincts without being judge-mental.

One great, wonderful book with many life lessons, many snippets of advice that targets you to concentrate on your wellbeing by developing a cognitive behavior. Since the paragraphs demand for some form of reader contemplation, it took me a while to read them. There’s a good mix of prose like writing as well as modern poetry.

I really enjoyed the poetry style, the messages, and the structure, which makes me think of a modern Meditation.

Nevedtha Venkataraman

I have encountered this topic many times but my recent visit to the New York City where AR is being used in immerse mode to see how these tall buildings looked in the past left me curious about its potential benefits.

It’s incredible how quickly technology is developing. What was formerly regarded as impracticable is now the truth. Who would have believed we could access the outdoors by merely pressing a button on the living room couch’s smartphone?

Landline phones didn’t achieve saturation, or the point at which the rate of growth in demand, for nearly a century. While mobile phones took just 20 years to reach penetration. Tablets may move much more quickly, and smart phones are on course to cut that rate in half once more.

What seems to be more challenging and promising, Virtual or Augmented Reality?

Virtual reality roller coasters are more thrilling and exciting while augmented reality is proving to be a highly helpful tool in our daily lives.

As Clay Bavor elegantly describes,

These are different technologies which, while related, are neither mutually exclusive nor entirely competitive. In the long term, I expect the line between the two to blur (an AR device that can generate sufficient opacity can emulate VR, a VR system with cameras to bring in the outside world can emulate AR) but in the near-term they have distinctly different missions.

Evolving of technology with glasses. Understanding the real world through camera feed

Internet and reality

A smartphone with a camera is first needed to record reality. Secondly, an Internet connection to access the information layer. Third, the desired app on our phone to tie everything together. The virtual objects are the fourth.

Augmented Reality isn’t just limited to desktops & mobile phones, however, as the rise in wearable tech like Google Glass, a worn-on-head computer with an optical head-mounted display, & smartwatches has brought Augmented Reality much closer to us.

As we walk by stores, buildings, people, and products, this screen displays information from sites like Wikipedia or Google. Suddenly the reality is richer and more interesting. It’s coming, but augmented reality has a long way to go. Keeping the eye out for ways that augmented reality adds layers of information to our reality.

The reality that we view with our eyes is wonderful and gifted. But how has it changed in light of our eyes and smartphone camera sensors?

Augmented reality is the cutting-edge technology that expands digital data into the real environment, adding a further layer of knowledge. To replace the actual environment with the virtual one, it does not produce any new artificial environments. Instead, it stands out clearly from the surrounding while also incorporating films, sounds, and images to make it more engaging and aesthetically pleasing.

It is now frequently employed to enhance the immersive viewing experience of natural settings. The surrounding actual environment of the user becomes digital and interactive with the aid of cutting-edge AR technologies like object identification and computer vision, we can view a scene in the actual world with a computer-generated overlay.

The program employs sensors in the goggles to draw the 3D scene from our perspective. The software tricks us into thinking the “virtual” environment is three dimensional by subtly showing slightly different images to each of our eyes.

It works as a combination of machine processing, image reflection and projection and the simultaneous involvement of cameras and sensors. It takes the information of the real world, trying to make a so-called copycat in its virtual world, implements it in the real world with some other features.

What is the current state of augmented reality?

AR is poised to lead the way and is soon becoming a part of our daily lives & is driving a majority of our regular decisions. It is no longer just about the technology; it’s about defining how we want to use this new technology to live in the real world and how we will create meaningful moments and experiences that will benefit humanity.

Profoundly said by Tim Cook -

“Think back to 2008, when the App Store went live. There was the initial round of apps and people looked at them and said, ‘this is not anything, mobile apps are not going to take off’. And then step by step things start to move. And it is sort of a curve, it was just exponential — and now you couldn’t imagine your life without apps. AR is like that. It will be that dramatic.”

We would see a connection of a smartphone and augmented reality viewing device, with our smart phone serving as the secondary AR display for that phone and our AR glasses serving as the always-connected computer. The “AR” compute components will be moved into a device that is already in our pocket, which will reduce the bulk of the glasses significantly. With the introduction of WiFi 6G as we are already using the 5G in the USA, our phone will be able to communicate with the rest of the world 20X faster.

The glasses will eventually disappear and be replaced with something else, perhaps contact lenses. I constantly use both my home assistant and my smartphone. They’ll eventually just become a routine part of my life that I use constantly without thinking. The impact of AR in this form-factor will be significantly greater than that of the smartphone, thus I do believe it will take off significantly. The hardware problems are all being fixed.

There are way too many advantages for it not to take off, and the tipping point is going to happen pretty soon.

The power of AR can inspire our readiness to welcome and implement positive change in the world by enabling us to see, hear, and touch potential realities. Let’s commit to and work toward designing for humanity’s greatest interests as a whole.

NEVEDTHA VENKATARAMAN

25–07–2022

My take on the read -
Perhaps it was your grandfather, teacher or colleague. When you were young and in quest, they could relate to you, helped you see the world as a more meaningful place and provided you with insightful counsel.
For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.
Like Mitch, you might have lost track of this mentor as you moved forward, causing the insights to vanish, making the world seem icier. Wouldn’t it be nice to run into that person once more and ask bigger questions than your younger self.
It was a second chance for Mitch Albom to meet his professor who was terminally ill and in the sunset stage of his life.
I like the author’s style of writing, the way he switches from third-person to first-person voice, engaging the readers right into the story.
The book is a series of Tuesdays, a peculiarly beautiful interplay between the student-professor duo where Morrie recalls his life events, its turbulence, nitty-gritty, and how he found the elixir of life in simple things. Throughout these visits, which Morrie called “lessons”, they talked and discussed anything and everything in and around life.
You’ll interpret his words and his demeanor as someone guiding you towards solving complex equations of life.

The saying I love the most from this book -
“This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It’s knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.”

Nevedtha Venkataraman

29- 07–2022

Who Moved My Cheese? is a metaphorical parable that reveals profound truths, where all the goals you want to achieve , succeed in and the changes coming along which can be either predictable or surprising are compared with a “cheese”.

It talks on various aspects such as self-confidence, procrastination, determination, business, adaptability to sudden and unexpected change, courage, constant improvement and awareness about one’s surrounding and definitely never losing hope even in the situations when you feel as if you are lost in a maze and don’t know the way out.

A change is bound to happen in one’s life so one should anticipate the change and adapt to change quickly.

It highlights to be an ameliorate, energetic, opportunistic, futuristic and have a realistic approach with life.

There are four characters to the journey — the mice sniff and scurry and the little people Hem and Haw. Johnson uses a story of two rodents that once stumbled upon a jackpot of a cheese. And that unwanted finding of a lifetime supply of cheese made them put a stop to their hard work. Instead, they sat on their couch and started enjoying the cheese without doing any work whatsoever.

But years later, as they were consuming, the volume of cheese started to decline until it reached a point of zero. And that freaked out the first rodent, while the other one accepted it as a regular event. On the other hand, mice were fast enough to sense the changes.

One day cheese got over and the story continues with how each character reacts to it.

And this is the key theme of this book.

Some amount of fear can be good because we think what worse can happen and it will set a prompt action. But it is not good, when we are so afraid that it keeps us doing nothing .We should not be afraid to take risk in our lives, take risk when it is necessary.

So decide which character you are.

Sniff: One who sniffs all the opportunities and threats as they are approaching.

Scurry: One who scurries into action or take action immediately.

Haw: One who is reluctant to change at first but after seeing no other better alternative decides to change.

Hem: One who is scared of changes and thinks something wrong might happen, hence, doesn’t change at all.

All of them explain different behaviors and perspectives towards life and what it serves us. The most important thing is adaptive nature towards the surprises it comes with!

To quote few of them with my insights from the book:

Change Happens They Keep Moving The Cheese

Anticipate Change Get Ready For The Cheese To Move

Monitor Change Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old

Adapt To Change Quickly The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese

Change Move With The Cheese

Enjoy Change! Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!

Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again They Keep Moving The Cheese.

Spencer also explains how people from different backgrounds were able to relate the story to themselves and how applying the moral of this story changed their lives.

In one line if this book can summarize :-

“Be the best version of yourself before you become outdated”

Happy reading !

- Nevedtha Venkataraman

8TH DEC 2021