Conform or Perish

The road to a job change, or for that matter any change, is a thorny one. It's no wonder then that we have all, with such alacrity, stuck our butts to our plush office chairs with Fevibond (the ultimate adhesive!)

The day I quit my full time, obscenely high paying job felt liberating. For exactly 3 days. Then 30 days of a free floating feeling with the soft cushion of the ocean on my back and the sun on my face followed. As the first month drew to a close, I filled the next 15 days with the purposeful vigour of determining the path that would catapult me to overnight superstardom (because that is my destiny, duh). I am now in my last 10 days of my job and feeling like the ground I am standing on is rapidly depleting. 

I don't think I am fated to be famous; I am snowboarding towards the abyss of a cracker that showed tremendous potential, only to fizzle out. The least I can do is to take a detour so that I can atleast pay the bills that pile up every month. 

My reasons to become independent were not because I had an idea that I was passionate about, or because I wanted to change the world, one person at at time. I admit it. I just got tired. Of people telling me what to do, over and over and over again. Of stupidity that got paid to be more stupid. Of obsequiousness and pandering and oily palms. I didn't think it through. I just thought enough to realise that I was unhappy in the present. The amount that got credited to my account every month was supposed to make me feel better, but it didn't. So I opted out. 

Not wanting to limit the options in my future, I pressed every button that would get me a call. Any call. Only to realise that I was not ready to do anything than talk to myself. My first interview went somewhat like this:

Interviewer: Nivedita, I think you are obscuring the contribution that you have really made to your team. Don't worry, I am not going to get confused if you get into details. So what I would really like to hear is how you solved this particular problem, using a framework. You see, I love frameworks and it would be great if you could use this approach to explain your work to me. 

Me: (Grinding teeth and punching my stuffed toy's face) Sure. Can I take 2 minutes to compose my answer, please? 

The worst thing a criminal can do is to create more criminals. That's why today's prisons are not exactly the epitomes of rehabilitation. Needless to say, I did not make it to the next round. Frameworks are for dudheads who don't know anything about action but know everything about talking. My personal opinion, but hey, I am entitled to one, right? Oh, right. Am not!

My second call was with a recruiter, who, after calling me at 9.30pm on a Thursday night, proceeded to apologise for "calling late" in the most insincere tone I have ever heard. He asks me if I have "2 minutes" and when I affirm he asks me, "Can you tell me more about what you do currently?" 

Now, both him and I know that this is not a 2 minute question. So I decide not to oblige, because "I want to put my best foot forward", and well, I am just not ready to interview on the fly. He insists. I insist right back. I finally request him to call me the next morning. It's been a week. 

The reason we are all the way we are is a complex network of incidents, experiences, influences and a whole lot of other things that scientists and thinkers today are all still trying to decode. What we have done, with this absolutely unique, precious and highly evolved science is to dumb it down to conformation. A rigid set of rules. 

A + B + C = Smart

D + E + F = Stupid

A + C + G = wait, what's this? Oh, ok. Stupid!

I refuse to conform. I have spent too much time and energy trying to be A+B+C, feeling like being packed into a 2x2 carton. The only upside was that no one asked me any uncomfortable questions. No one noticed me either. 

I refuse to perish. Like animals in captivity who lose their inborn skill of hunting, I refuse to forget what I have painstakingly built. Sure, it doesn't fit into a financial model and doesn't massage anyone's ego, least of all mine. But I don't care. There's got to be a way out and if I spend the rest of my life digging myself out of this tunnel, so be it. That, at least, will not be a life in vain. 

The (Un)fairness of It All

I feel embarrassed to admit that it has only been a week since I accepted that the world is not a fair place. I know, I know, it seems obvious and practical and realistic. But to me, it felt boring, this feeling. It rang of resignedness, of giving up, of failure (my least favourite word). I resolved to redeem myself from this tragic fate: I was going to stand up for what I believed in. Break, but never bend, that would be my motto for things I considered important were involved. 

Thanks to circumstances currently beyond my understanding, I ended up watching Alain de Botton's charmingly witty and stealthily harsh TED Talk. It was about success and failure, mainly, but a bulk of the justification for not getting swayed by either was his argument that society and the world at large were too complex for a neatly ranked list or a normal curve. So we should be less quick to judge others, and infinitely more gentle when we pit ourselves against the world.

For someone who claims to be in touch with her instincts, it took a vaguely probabilistic allusion to convince me that Failure was heading my way, one way or the other. Then Hugh MacLeod took 49 PDF pages and around 100 of the normal A5 ones to tell me that the pain of making sacrifices will always hurt more than I think it would. I tend to feel sadness and anger way longer than happiness or joy. Maybe because I feel completely entitled to all happiness but not sadness.

If the Present is a Gift that I don't like, can I give it back?  There are times when even the mathematically sound logic mentioned above does not help. I wallow in the Unfairness of It All; in the hollow certainty that there will be people who should have gotten more and even more people who should have gotten less. Maybe the notion of karma was created to address this thorn in our side. After all, as highly intelligent beings, we are more likely to accept something we don't or cannot understand. It is comforting to know that justice would eventually prevail in the universe. So what if I could not see it? He can. 

It is stupid to expect to get what we deserve; what we think we deserve is our measure of our own worth, of, for a 30 year old, having spent 946 billion seconds with ourselves. The maximum someone like a parent or a sibling could have gotten with us would be half this number. Decisions like marriage or job options are made in a fraction of this time. How is it, then, that we can expect the world to give us our due, or worse still, constantly surprise us with its generosity? 

Hence the copious literature available on defining our own measure of success; standing up for what we believe in; following our heart, da-da, da-da. In reality, it's the least resistant path to Failure. The difference is this: I think this path can be flipped that to get the most resistant path to Happiness. It's a surest shot of a path out there, and so, definitely worth taking.

Thirty

It's the age that most women dread meeting, like bumping into an ex boyfriend at a friend's wedding after an acrimonious break up. It's the threshold of being 'young'. And when you work at a place where the average age of the girls walking by in swishing skirts is 23, it feels a lot older than 'not young'.

Here's a strange thing - nothing happened to me when I turned thirty. Well, nothing outwardly noticeable or obviously bone tingling. Yes I could make jokes about 'turning old' and the afore mentioned twenty somethings would laugh politely. I could preen and mime when someone assured me that I did not look a day older than 25 (mostly because they wanted to get some work done, but never mind that.)

Yes the body ages and yes, the eggs die. So now was the time to do something about it, if I really cared. It seems pithy that a society spawned notion could spark anything in me, particularly such a transformative flip. Then I remembered what I had told a friend who had laughingly confided that his best writing had come from the times he had fought with his parents as a perennially angry teenager: It's the inspiration that matters. The source is irrelevant.

Someone wise once said that the most important things in life are not spoken; they are felt. What I felt when I turned thirty was         resolute. Now I had a reason to make every minute count. I felt bolder, more in touch with my inner self, because there's nothing left to judge. Nothing that I cared about, anyway. Most importantly, I felt happier. I knew what I wanted and I was going after it. Just like that.

To turning thirty. 

Honour

I heard this word being bandied about at a wedding last week. Sure, I had heard of it before, although recently it had been famously paired with another by now familiar word, “killing”, in articles splashed in newspapers, starring enraged parents and indignant community leaders. 

As personal experience amply demonstrated, reading something in the newspaper and having it do the rounds at a wedding I was attending, are two very different things. One always tends to read unfortunate news with an admirable sense of detachment. Simply because “it will not happen to me.” If we were to employ this studied detachment in our daily lives they would be a lot more peaceful. 

The wedding itself went off smoothly, but the venue rumbled that the bride’s younger brother was ‘opposed’ to her marriage to one outside her community. He famously walked around with a sword in his hand in the days leading to the happy event. I had only to surmise that he was waiting for the right time to kill himself. Here’s why: Imagine that I were to meet this visibly angry person, furrowed browed and thin lipped, a sword dangling at his waist, a possible escapee from the set of Bajirao Mastani. 

Me: Hey, what’s up? 

Angry Brother (AB): Nothing much, just took a selfie with my sword. Uploaded it on FB and got 110 likes already, see? 

Me: Oh. That’s a cool sword. What are you doing with it? 

AB: Apart from the selfie? Waiting to kill my sister, and the traitors who support her unclean marriage to an outsider. She has destroyed my honour and that of the family!

Me: I see. 

AB: No, you don’t see. You don’t know the meaning of honour and how important it is to us, men. Women are supposed to protect it by behaving with discretion and respect. When they commit such sacrilegious acts they bring shame upon us! They don’t deserve to live and neither do the other traitors!

Me: Yes, you have mentioned that already. Um, can I ask you a question?

AB: Sure, sister. Anything. 

Me: So you say that your sister has destroyed your honour?

AB: Yes.

Me: And honour is undoubtedly the most important thing to you? Because you are ready to kill for it? 

AB: That is correct. 

Me: Would it be fair to say, brother (it seemed fair to return the favour bestowed to me), that a life without honour is not really worth living? 

AB (removes his sword from his waist and holds it towards the sky with a fierce cry): Haan ji, haan! 

Me: Great. So then shouldn’t it be you who should be killed? 

AB: What? Kya bakwaas hai yeh? 

Me: Yes, see it’s perfectly logical. (I count the points on my fingers under his glowering eye.)

One, honour is the most important thing to you.

Two, honour is irreversible. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Three, a life without honour is not worth living. You said so yourself. 

Hence therefore, you should be killing yourself. Your honour has been irrevocably removed and cannot be gotten back now that the dirty deed is done. And let’s face it, it’s easier to kill yourself than so many people, right? I hear that the groom’s father has five siblings. So that’s five into two plus two children each on an average, twenty plus the groom and his parents twenty three. 

(I eye his slim sword skeptically.) Did this come with a warranty? 

Dance

When A told me what ran through his mind while he was under water, I became aware of the seed of my love for the sea. He said that if we ever needed inspiration for forms and colours, we only needed to look here. This was where the world as we knew it began approximately 4.5 billion years ago, covered in blue all over. Marine life is far more evolved than us, like billion years evolved. To just think of the advancement, the maturity that exists when compared to us, possibly the youngest animal on the planet, surpasses my ability to imagine. 

What I absorbed first was the sheer beauty. If I did not have to remember to breathe steadily, not bump into coral and basically try and be buoyant I would collapse in a heap wherever I land and just, stare. Even then I would not know where to look. At the coral, which formed the base of the marine life? Hideouts of small fishes, go-to places for the bigger ones at meal times? Or the ones lolling on the sea beds, sweeping into themselves plankton and anything else that chances on their path? This time we saw, fifteen metres deep, above ridges of coral, fusiliers, hundreds of them moving around in curves. They seemed to have created an infinite loop, engulfing us within it when we moved closer, pulled by the magnetism of their movements. Stone fish, expertly camouflaged on the coral, but not too far away from their passing prey. A shy octopus scuttled into the nearest cave, its curious head black in the dark, moving this way and that, observing us covertly.

Fusiliers in Dance

The perfect proportions and unthinkable combinations of colour. How do you know? How do you know what looks good with what and create something so compelling, you could spend an hour looking at it and still not have enough? Not just one something, millions of somethings. Over and over and over again. Each more perfect than the other.

Then I understood the rules. Not our rules, the divers’. They are aplenty, starting with don’t touch anything. The rules of the ocean. One, swim in the direction of the current. Swimming against the current is like calling someone at the other end of a cricket pitch during a match. Futile. Two, be benign. If the fish help the coral by identifying when predators are in sight, the coral will hide the fish when danger approaches. Like animal calls in the wild. The monkeys famously have alert calls for the jungle when the tiger is on a prowl. They share knowledge, let it out in the universe, trusting that it will be used for the greater good.

Clown fish and coral

Finally, I got a glimpse of wisdom. We did not belong in the water; we were foreign beings. With bubbles following us wherever we went, awkward movements, careening towards and away from surfaces. Shouting our approach loud and clear in the way we displaced water when we moved. Yet we were tolerated, welcomed, even. Fish moved around us. Nothing approached us and we were told that the only injuries came from touching or provoking animals, which otherwise just had better things to do with their time. Like look for lunch, find a mate, or just sail with the current. While boundaries exist, they are defined by the nature of the habitat like water temperature, currents or depth rather than being forceful, or contrived.

An enlightened friend once countered that we are also a part of nature, so surely we come imbibed with some of these qualities. To say that we behave unnaturally would be harsh. Perhaps, he is right. I hope to reach his level of optimism one day. 

Till then, I remember the silence, the colour, the purpose. Which, far from proving the next big thing, is just to exist. And, to dance. 

Willy, nilly, silly old Bear!

Oh, bother!

As I write this post on my all time favourite Bear, my heart beats faster than usual and I can feel my ear lobes heating up (that's what happens when I blush).

It was a simple but poignant article in today's newspaper that set me thinking about dedicating a blog to Winnie The Pooh. It was also through this article that I learnt that Winnie the Pooh was created in 1926! Almost 90 years of being cuddly and still going strong. 

Like most children in my time, I grew up watching many kinds of cartoons - Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny and Warner Bros, Scooby Doo, Captain Planet, Mickey Mouse. The only one that stayed with me after I graduated to Rom Coms, and then to Documentaries and Oscar Winning films was Winnie The Pooh and his adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood. While Pooh Bear cuddly toys and other licensed products are commonplace nowadays, my first (and unfortunately, the last) t shirt with Winnie the Pooh on it was bought at Colombo Airport in Sri Lanka in early 2003. It was a store for children and I had bought the largest size. I had worn the t shirt long after the rubber print had worn off, leaving faint shadows behind. 

Shortly after that a friend gifted me an A3 size poster of Pooh Bear and his friends. The poster occupied pride of place in my tiny hostel room in college, never ceasing to cheer me up, because: 

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”

Then I was privileged to own, for a very short time, a Pooh cuddly toy. Sadly it got wet in the rain and never really returned to its original splendour after that. I had to give it away as its dank odour was making its position on the centre of my bed untenable. 

Like Cinderella, I have tried to rationalize my love for this fluffily stuffed Bear. The oil for this eternal flame, I now realise, is that Pooh has many facets to his nature, not unlike a diamond. I have discovered each part over time. 

There is an endearing simplicity in the Pooh stories, where all that mattered was protecting Piglet from fierce thunderstorms, or finding Eeyore's tail. If I could choose a life to lead, even from tomorrow, it would be with Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood. I could borrow books from Owl, help Rabbit with his carrots and give Eeyore a hug when he loses his tail. Again. Maybe Tigger will teach me how to bounce like him, and Pooh will teach me that Life is as simple or complicated as we make it out to be. With Hundred Acres of Wood to explore, we would never run out of Adventures. 

Cutting to the present, my most recent discovery is his penchant for the bon mot. 

When he said, 

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." 

I thought about all the things in life that I take for granted. It is only when I have lost them that I have realised their worth. 

“What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?”

“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best-” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called. 

We are on a journey, and most of the time it is easy to mistake the journey for the destination. Where we are, every day, is at that point just before we begin to eat the honey, which is, like Pooh the Wise says, a moment that is better than the best. 

There are many, many more pearls of wisdom that Pooh has mouthed, and some of them can be found here. 

If it's too much to take in at one time: 

“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

Why Cinderella is my all time favourite story

I watched the film adaptation of Cinderella yesterday. While watching Lucifer trying to catch Jaq and Gus and crashing into the chest of drawers under which the mice scurried, I got transported almost 20 years back, to the first time I had seen Disney's 1950 Cinderella.

I had been completely enthralled. Since then I have watched the first adaptation many times, more than I care to count. I have always loved stories and over time I grew to love animated movies as well, but Cinderella stayed my favourite.

Firstly, the story. The quintessential fairy tale where a girl reduced to a servant in her own home catches the eye and the love of the Prince of the Kingdom. While the Prince did not slay any dragons or break anything (or anyone) to rescue her, he presented her with the opportunity to prove her identity, through the famous glass shoe.

Secondly, the animation. For 1950, the animation was definitely one of the best, not to mention the grandeur of the sets at the palace, Cinderella's home, her dresses and the wonder of her night at the ball. The effects blended with the story beautifully and became more than just a medium - they became the only medium through which the magic of the story itself could be felt.

I have often tried to dismiss my (irrational) love for this fairy tale, which I will admit has some regressive overtones. I pride myself on being logical and am fiercely protective of my independence, so submitting to the charms of such a tale is hypocritical.

My counter argument to the claim of hypocrisy is that seeing it so many times did little to change my world view of my destiny and the role I can play in shaping it. I am definitely not Cinderella. I would not have just sat there, slogging my life out for ungrateful people and then singing in happiness because I was too pure to feel otherwise.

This brings me to the third and possibly the last reason - the beauty. I think Cinderella was my first real brush with beauty. If we were to notice everything around the central characters, we would see perfect proportions, understated elegance and royal colours. It was the seed of my belief that for one to create beauty, one had to first experience it. I can, therefore, understand the lure of Paris and Venice, high costs and stinking canals notwithstanding.

From today's perspective, the taste of the decor featured in 1950's Cinderella would be called 'traditional' but for a 9 year old girl who spent most of her time reading books and creating alternate universes in her head, Cinderella gave my imagination glorious wings to spread and fly.

Like the Fairy Godmother says: "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo!"