Morning

The older you get, the fewer your comforts become. Drinking into the night and binge watching TV no longer helps you forget a bad day or to practise ceasefire from a domestic fight. The sharp edge of survival propels you inward, and you end up deriving sanity from small, harmless acts.

Right now that is your morning cuppa. Usually it is coffee, and it makes you feel grounded, the rising plume of steam from the cup creating a whitespace that calms. On other days it highlights the choppy waters that your uncontrollable life has become, prompting you to prolong that pause just a little longer. You also recently rediscovered the beauty of froth. Being hemmed in by the few minutes to yourself before the rest of the house - man, child, dog and the cringe worthy doorbell - awakens and trudges around demanding things, you are hyper focussed on that mug. With your brew in it. In the morning. It’s 6am and the night sky is wrestling with the day, slowly losing its midnight black colour to a conciliatory chalk grey. Standing against your spotless kitchen counter gleaming black you watch, head bent into your plain white ceramic cup, mesmerised. The placid surface of water the colour of dirty mud comes alive to the thin stream of hot milk that descends on it, creating tiny, perfectly circular bubbles, just one or two at first, moving this way and that, then more and many more, banding together to create a layer, layers of anticipation, all the while turning the concoction into a rich, fulsome brown. The brown of thick tree barks, with their age old wisdom, branches dancing to the breeze and sheer solidity. The brown of a milk chocolate bar, never mind that it actually has more sugar than chocolate. The deep brown of the labrador across the street, its tail wagging and perpetually wet tongue dripping saliva over your exposed toes as you rub him on his neck. 

Your fingers are cold and stiff from clutching the thick handle of the milk jar, a larger version of the cup in clear pyrex glass. They wrap around your mug, and the warmth seeps in immediately. You lift it and straighten up, the weight of your toil pleasurably heavy in your hands. As cup meets lip, the froth tickles, bubbles bursting into frivolity. So carefully created, so easily burst. A few more careful sips, this time your tongue feeling more confident, and the warmth spreads down your chest in a careful line of heat, gently pooling in your stomach. You flex your  chilled toes, wishing that they could get some coffee too. The smell of coffee is everywhere in the kitchen now, it’s hugging you and you lean in, wanting more, needing more. It is no longer small, or harmless. It’s a good morning and it’s almost everything that you will do for the rest of the day. 

It wasn’t always this way. Mornings used to be unrelenting, the cunning light cutting through the drawn curtains to prick your blissfully closed eyelids, forcing them open. Or your mother’s voice, booming like a drumbeat in a closed room, bouncing off the walls in her house and slithering under your door, “Wake up, you’ll be late for school!” They used to be cruel during the years you stumbled out of your room in a tiny flat in the city, eyes half shut, stubbing your toe on the raised edge of the toilet (we did it to keep the overflowing drain from ruining the house, you know, the landlady had explained practically) on your way to brush your teeth. Then rushing out thirty minutes after, late for the train and later for work. 

Now they are in hand, the mornings. Not because of your age, or because it’s a particular day of the week, or the fact that you consider five hours of sleep a luxury. But because, as the house wallows in chaos and the sun peeks through the clouds, you have a rite that creates it just the way you like it.

My Parenting Goals for 2019

A friend asked to pen something down for an upcoming blog, and I said yes, because I would never refuse an opportunity to write. 

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My single parenting goal for 2019 is to - 

Stay Calm and Be like a Wave in the Ocean of Life

As a full time mom to an energetic and eternally curious 15 month old, the first part of my resolution is virtually impossible. Nevertheless, it is there to remind me that the only thing constant about overwhelming days and sleepless nights is just that – more overwhelming days and more sleepless nights. I like to think of myself as a recently reformed control freak and micro planner, so my new (non-) plan for 2019 is to let the day take me along, rather than me dragging the day and my screaming baby along a path that is supposedly the ‘right’ one, but which neither of us wants in the first place. 

Schedules and routines notwithstanding, I want to allow for more unstructured exploration, both for my baby and me, be it spontaneous outings to the park, new games that can only be played with kitchen vessels (if I am doing so much with it, my baby thinks, it must be an interesting toy right?) or doing “just enough” housework rather than creating a perfect home with gleaming surfaces and everything in its place.  

To a child each day is a fresh start, an empty canvas to create for herself any picture that she fancies. In 2019, I want to be like her, approaching each day with a deep breath and a blank slate, watching it ebb and flow like a tiny wave in the giant ocean.

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I did it. Called myself a full time mom, and wrote it down also, because let's face it, when I had the chance to postpone a few things off my back, this is what I kept - the baby care. I am actually somewhere in between full time mom and mom figuring out what she wants to do, but it's an 80-20 right now. 

I have also pledged to reform my perfectionistic tendencies by choosing where to apply them, and so far it seems to be working beautifully. I don't remember the last time I cleaned my dining table, and I took a 1.5 hour nap in the afternoon yesterday. Because I felt sleepy. 

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I am happy to share that a part of my writeup got featured here. 

Letter 1: What the H.

Dear Nivi of 2018,

I know that you’re wondering what you got yourself into, for the nth time in life. You are thinking - all this sublime enthusiasm for the new and unexplored is sweet, but one head duck into deep waters and it feels terrifying! 

Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t tell yourself that you never learn. You are a very fast learner. But with this, there is just no other way but to learn as you do. 

Before S was born, you told yourself you were doing this in case you wanted a child later but couldn’t have one naturally. Now, one look at her sleeping, crying, laughing, curious, screaming face and you wonder why there ever was an ‘in case’. A seconded your opinion at that time. He still does. 

For you, the 30s have been the decade of inflection in terms of experiences. There were so many critical but excellent decisions that you took. I am reaping the benefits of all your hard work until today. 

So don’t doubt yourself. On the bleak days, tell yourself one word - phase. Phase. Come and go. Go and come. 

You know the rest. I have faith in you. 

Lots of love and a giant hug,

Nivi of 2028

Peaking

Throughout my life I have had periods of absolute silence. Growing up, I didn’t make too many friends, so I learned to amuse myself with books (I was just beginning then), the Nintendo (for a short and dangerously addictive period) and movies (a love for which I carry till now). A’s chaotic, gregarious family made me realise that my family had always been into long silences where each member would disappear into his/her haven within the house for hours till the Mother or a rumbling stomach propelled them outwards. 

In the past year I have grown to first notice, then resent, and now cherish these periods of complete, utter quiet. Being on my own meant dramatically less social interaction, so I was back to amusing myself, much like when I was ten or twelve years old. I resented the silence because it reminded me in what felt like loudspeaker volume, of my crazy decision to throw away my career to “determine what work I do with my time”. Over and over again. It has taken me a better part of the year to accept this dramatic change. Being independent meant that work could be irregular, so there were bound to be quiet times. I would have to learn to tide through these times if I wanted to be ready for the high tide, when work would come flowing in and the number of hours in my days wouldn't be enough for the work that needed to be done. 

It seems now that along with a career decision, I had subconsciously put a number of other significant life changes into action. Not knowing when or from where the next project was going to come from effectively halted the long term planning I used to spend hours doing earlier. Not to mention the stress of these intricately made plans not working out, well, just because. I had bigger problems to worry about now, like where my next billing was going to come from, and how I was going to convince that new client to give me the project. 

In the silence of my own thoughts, I became more aware of my weaknesses, but at the same time more appreciative of my strengths. It would be my strengths that I would have to play to, in order to make my freelancing career work. I learned to celebrate milestones, big or otherwise. I realised how impossible the task I had set myself was - to be superlative and nothing short of perfect in everything I do. Now that I actually had a choice on how to spend my time during the week (no office to run to or boss to put up with), I gravitated towards doing a few things well - 
- I am a cook by necessity, but I learned to enjoy it by choosing to do it when I wanted to, and making the dishes that I enjoyed eating
- I prefer depth in relationships to width. I eschewed the conventional ‘networking’ that everyone insisted I needed to do in order to survive on my own, and contented myself with keeping in touch with the few people who mattered to me, and enjoyed having the flexibility to meet them during the week at their convenience. Those long, leisurely chats propelled my thinking and I came away with more ideas, because I now let them in
- I accepted that I would be bad or less than perfect at some things. I could swim the shallow depths of mediocrity across multiple oceans, or deeply discover one. I choose the latter and that was it. 

More than one erstwhile colleague remarked that I looked so much happier now than earlier. I would call this change acceptance. Across multiple levels. 

I still do not want to admit to myself, that I did not have the courage to listen to what my heart has been telling me for a while now. Today I came across this interview and multiple incidents clicked in place in my head. 

During a training session I conducted recently, a participant celebrating her 30th birthday described her feelings as “depressed” and “old”. Someone else piped up, saying that for him, the 30s were far more fun than the 20s. To have known in the 20s, the clarity with which he could think in the next decade! I silently concurred. The blurred mess that was the 20s was important. It was the dirty, sandy water at the top before the clear blue of the ocean deeper down. It was a necessary rite of passage, of a kind. 

I remember feeling in school, irrelevant in the larger scheme of things just because I had missed the top mark in the class by one or two points. It had meant the world to me then, like a symbol of achieving something. Of course my fourteen year old self did not know any better because she didn’t know anything else. The fact, however is that the very same test became irrelevant as soon as I found some other missed goal to obsess about. I realise now that - for the most popular girl in school, who also topped all tests and was a star athlete to boot, the answer to the question “what next?” was way more difficult to answer. Mine was a relative cakewalk - get to the top of the class. 

There is nothing wrong with early success. It’s great validation and has many advantages. Sometimes, though, it can obscure the real story; the real calling. Jhumpa Lahiri echoes this when she talks about her decision to move to Rome and write in Italian:

“The answer, I believe, is that I’m seeking the freedom to write in my own way, to write whatever I want in whichever language, form, length, and without any pressure.”

She should know. She won the Pulitzer at 32 for her first book, The Interpreter of Maladies, and has written three other books (The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, The Lowland) thereafter on similar themes, in a similar language. The same thing that propelled her to fame restricted her growth as a writer. In other words, there is such a thing as peaking too early. 

In sharp contrast is the feeling of collectedness I got from Vivek Shanbaug when he spoke about his Ghachar Ghochar entering mainstream publishing with its translation into English and further release in the US. Of course, this is no comparison to the Pulitzer, but a new, exciting and potentially significant step for a Kannada writer of more than three decades. I will never forget the deadpan expression with which he told us that Ghachar Ghochar as a story had been in his head for ten years before he put it into paper! To have waited so long, first for it to materialise and then for it to be translated into English. 


While there is extensive documentation on how and why one can recover from failures, we underestimate or even ignore that some recovery, and a lot of of effort is required to turn around from one successful peak and make another one happen. Absurd and ungrateful as it may sound, there is such a thing as a problem with success. What can help here, though, is a little perspective. That’s what the doldrums, the turbulent times, the slow times, the bad times, the silences are for. They are scary, but necessary. They are there to remind us of all that we have not done, lost, chosen to let go, all to get to the next summit. That’s the path, I believe, to multiple peaks in one life.

The Unconcern of Adam

I am presently engaged in a jigsaw puzzle of the famous painting by Michelangelo in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, known as the "Creation of Adam". This painting is one of many that adorn this historical monument so it is hard for a first time visitor plus average tourist to absorb anything more than the sheer scale of the endeavour that is the ceiling. I got lucky - the free Android app that I had downloaded when I had visited Italy in June 2014 had skipped tourist places to visit in Rome, but had a beautifully detailed audio account of this very magnum opus. So I had spent 45 quiet minutes inside the Chapel with my neck craned upwards and my mind in awe. Wanting to take back a souvenir, I splurged on a 540-piece jigsaw puzzle for 11 Euros. 

My first attempt to put it together after I got back was abandoned almost as soon as it had begun, what with life's sundry pressures taking its toll. Two weeks ago I pulled the box out, craving an outlet for my wayward thoughts. So it was that three-odd years on, the exquisite form of this painting took a slow but steady shape on one corner of the bed. Four days later I was surprised to find myself more involved in this project than ever, contrary to my usual waning of interest in any new project that I undertake. Yesterday I googled the painting. Among other things, two points surprised me: that Michelangelo was a deeply religious man, and that one of the messages encased in the “Creation of Adam” was God’s ultimate power in the creation of man. Maybe it is my interpretation of the painting, but all I could see in the scattered pieces was not awe, but a nonchalance underlined by a satirical smile - driven solely by man’s incredible sense of self importance. 

Let me explain why. 

The key part of this work is Adam, the first man created by God, getting life through a touch of His finger. 

One of the interpretations I read described Adam as lifeless; being incapable of energy and therefore lying in a heap on Earth, weak. While God was surrounded by a halo and a bevy of angels, floating in the air. He is depicted in energetic (and of course, beatific) movement, stretching his fair, muscled and hairless arm towards Adam all the way from Heaven, as if to offer help.  

I did not see helplessness in Adam's glorious, naked form. In his lazy, lounge-like posture, I saw entitlement instead. And in the way he stretched his finger out at God, an irreverent carelessness. Almost like as if he was saying, “You owe me this, already. After all, isn’t this why You made me?” 

It is true that we do not ask to be given life. We are born because of someone else. But once we are, it is our responsibility to ourselves to make this life count. Ever since I convinced myself that I had a choice on how to live my life and went about doing precisely that, I have noticed with greater and greater frequency, how many others share Adam’s sense of entitlement. It could be adult children expecting their parents to support them financially even after they are capable to being on their own, or employees expecting a certain treatment by their organisations. But most of all, I see this helplessness manifested the strongest in times of crises. Beyond the “Why me?” is a feeling of hopelessness that they are “destined” to suffer, followed by an envy of others who are not sharing a similar fate at the same time. Why they do not ask “Why me?” when something good happens is apparently a moot point. 

Beyond the fleeting moment when we enter this world, we are on our own. To expect anything more from fate, destiny, our families or friends is misguided. After all, if God wanted to control everyone’s life, why create a living, breathing, thinking human form? Might as well have created amoebae that are scarcely aware of themselves, let alone the purpose of their lives. 

Seneca echoes this thought far more eloquently, when he asks: 

But how can a man learn, in the struggle against his vices, an amount that is enough, if the time which he gives to learning is only the amount left over from his vices?

None of us goes deep below the surface. We skim the top only, and we regard the smattering of time spent in the search for wisdom as enough and to spare for a busy man.

I think where and how we start out is no indication of where we end up. It does not mean that we disregard our origins; it means that irrespective of how we came into this world and began living, we should aim to become wiser and happier. In a life with limited time, energy and resources, we, and we alone must make the decision on where, and how to spend them. 

Picking my Battles

I feel battle weary. Nothing like the true blue action in Amish's latest, but a test of will and perseverance all the same. 

I brushed past another insidious comment today with a seemingly innocent one of my own, effectively quelling a potential confrontation. There have now been so many word wars I have avoided, I have ceased to keep count. 

It was only recently, as I celebrated a year of being on my own, that I realised all that I didn't do, at the same time I noted all that I did. I didn't act as much as I observed. I didn't look back as much as forward. Finally, I didn't fight back even though I could. 

I don't remember the first time my parents advised me to "pick my battles", but it's been repeated often enough since. I first let things go when I was barely out of college. Dictated by pride, convincing myself that silence was the hallmark of the dignified. But that only led to the fire burning inside of me instead of outside. The next time I smiled at a disparaging dig it was at work. I had smiled because my next decision, which had been to quit that job, had suddenly become so much easier. 

Over the past month or so, the figurative demons I have been fighting have been the makings of my own mind - a potent mix of abundant hormones, a rapidly tiring body and a burning purpose to do work worth my while. Strange bedfellows have been my only constant thus far in my life, and this was no exception. 

That was how I was discovered by the newer insurgents over the last three days, hurt and snarling. Pride dictated that I put up as normal a face as possible, but it barely lasted a couple of hours, crumbling in the face of constant querying, judging and commenting. Hankering for some peace and quiet, I put on my cloak of silence and found a cosy corner of my mind to sulk in. I had barely started licking my wounds, and was in no state to be the charming hostess that was expected of every daughter in law in an Indian household, urban or rural be damned. 

Yesterday, by noon, I had felt dangerously close to a precipice. I had lost control over the mask that had now become my trademark inexpressive face, and had turned to spouting venom the moment I stepped out of the house and encountered another non-familial human being. I knew I was treading dangerous ground, because when I would search my memory for those interactions, I would remember nothing. The only time my excellent visual memory fails me is when I am raging beyond expression. Oh, this was so not good. 

I napped my way through the stress, my already weak body crumbling under the mental strain. Only to be rudely woken up with a reminder of my non-dutiful behaviour - "We had guests at home and you slept through it all. You could have come out of your room and spent 10 minutes with everyone. What is so difficult about that?" 

Keeping my tongue in control was difficult. Allowing such a rabid invasion of my house when I was in no state to entertain, let alone stand in one place for a few minutes was difficult. Most of all, keeping quiet through it all, when all I wanted to do was scream my head off and chase everyone out with a stick, was difficult. Compared to these scenes repeating in head, my napping through the afternoon felt like a hungry python whose snores are only rivalled by its stomach grumbling with hunger. 

Now that we are all caught up with my non-issues, I replay the retort of my dreams for the nth time, open my laptop and begin to type out a blogpost. 

Annus Mirabilis

Tomorrow marks one year of being on my own, and I decided that it warranted a blogpost, irrespective of whether I had anything specific to say. Before that, first things first: I have definitely improved my skills in the naming of blogposts (check this out and the current one - fist pump!)

Figuratively speaking, I closed my only door before looking for a window to open, 365 days ago. I just knew that I needed a change from my full time job but it took me two weeks of roller coaster like thinking, an excel sheet and a sleepless weekend to decide to freelance rather than get another full time job. 

My ex employer was the initial light for this untrodden path, offering me a 2-day-a-week consulting assignment even before I could articulate what I wanted. A much needed jab of reality for me, in hindsight. I struggled with the other 3 days at home, getting 5 days of work done in 2 and admitted to myself that I sorely missed the social environment that a workplace provides above everything else. 

I moved from binging on movies, to binging on sleep, to a higher frequency of workout at the gym. I met people, made project proposals for said prospectives, swished them off by email and then bit my nails to dust when no reply was forthcoming. I weaved huge dreams, visioning and then visioning my life 5 years from now, when I would be making more money than I have ever done, while having enough time for all my hobbies and my family. A juxtaposed utopia that seemed within my grasp. 

The hot winds of an early summer in late February brought with it a stony silence on the work front, something I was ill prepared for. I knew from watching my father (who was also an independent consultant) that Q4 was traditionally a quiet time. Plus, ups and downs of this nature are part of being independent. I wish I could say that I reasoned myself into a smile; that I took the silence, moulded it into a ball of clay and tucked it away in my pocket. 

When prospective clients popped out of their walls to message and email me again as April dawned, I could scarcely believe it. So much so that I undervalued myself a couple of times. I lived to learn from it. To date, I have worked on 4 projects with 3 different clients, and none of them have been anything like the other. I enjoyed the fast learning curve, and learned more about negotiation, people management and dynamics at the workplace from these projects than my 7 years of work put together. Ah, and the icing on the cake: regular expenses included, I have made money. Just don't ask how much yet, because I am only focussing on the colour of that number for now.

When speaking to friends, family, or prospective clients, I marvelled at my ideas - new, yet workable. I admired my new found adaptability and chided myself every time I grimaced at a change. I created monthly / weekly / daily schedules, didn't follow them and still got work done. Most of all, I learned to like myself a little more, and be more forgiving. I deserved a chance and this was life giving me just that. 

It seems like only yesterday when I signed up for this, because I didn't want to do anything else. Through ups, downs and everything else in between, it has been far, far more than I expected. 

Thanks to friends sounding so wistful about my new life that I wondered if I was cribbing too much, and to family for making me take things one day at a time. I am a reformed long term micro planner and proud to declare it. 

Thank you to the world at large, for not being the crazy place filled with evil intentions that I had thought it to be. 

Thanks to me, for just sticking on, day after day, month after month, watching time go by and appreciating the view from that window, always. 

It has been a truly wonderful year. 

FOMO

I had many fears when I quit my full time job after 7 glorious years of fancy titles, fancier company names and unmentionably low salary increments: 

1. How would I finance my monthly shopping frenzy, one. Answer one: that itch died along with the need to be constantly seen in something trendy, because my new wardrobe was rapidly rotating pyjamas and those seasons last years, you know

2. How would I continue to be financially independent and hold my own in important decisions at home, two. The cash well, so to speak, was not empty, yet. Like the swan singing its last song, I was free to assert my opinion as long as it numbered > 0

3. What would I do with my time, three. This turned out to be the least of my problems. There always were movies to watch, afternoon naps to take and friends to catch up with. And the occasional "business development" for new projects, of course

Nine months to myself and some of my deeper malaises are floating to the surface like dead fish: 

1.1 The worth of my CV, which I had painstakingly and strategically built to its impressive (as of June 2016) state, one point one. Another year of sitting around, dreaming and I could kiss any chances of getting another full time job worth my time goodbye 

2.1 In five, maybe ten years all my peers, especially the ones I would refuse to be in the same meeting room with, will be VPs, CXOs and oh-so-definitely investors, two point one. I would be exactly where I am now, slightly worse the wear

3.1. Aforementioned VPs and CXOs will send their children to fancy international school holidays for "study tours", and eventually to Norway to study "design", three point one. I would scrape through something to support living expenses of my progeny for a merit seat at a local college

4.1 In their early fifties, people my age will be talking "early retirement", four point one. I will still be searching for my calling

On the other hand, I know in my heart of hearts, as I have known for every single day of the past nine months I have spent outside of the workplace, that I belong elsewhere. Even on the worst days - the days when I had no new clients, nothing new to add to my latest piece of writing and when everything seemed dull, I did not want to go back to work. 

Maria Popova of Brain Pickings fame speaks eloquently and passionately about how anything worthwhile takes time, and laments our culture that values productivity and money over real immersion and following our hearts. She's lucky, I think, she stumbled upon her calling like one trips over an uneven stone on the footpath. I am too tired to study something completely new, too old for fanciful thinking, and too close to the ground to ignore the monthly bills. Then there are the others, my colleagues turned ex friends, moving on to better paying jobs while looking at me as a trapped bird would at the sky. 

I don't know which is the greater fear: never tasting freedom, or not knowing when and where (if at all) real, life altering inspiration is going to strike. 

Being Female

This is the first time I have given voice to a topic that has been close to my heart since I left home for college, and spent time in the close company of the opposite sex. 

I realise with bitter clarity one reason for me to have taken so long to get to this point: for almost a decade I had been all bluster and no essence. For the first half of my life I was content to do laps in my shallow end of the pool, since I didn't know any better. I spent the next ten years or so seething. First quietly, then in fits of words, like an overloaded washing machine leaking its excess. Now, I am tired. Or rather, my body is tired and is dragging my mind along with it. Hence the action. 

My first learning is that a bulk of my limitations or restrictions are self inflicted. As an impressionable teenager, I had looked at other women - older women, younger women, more popular women, successful women - and decided to be a little like all of them. My shackles were in my mind, into which I allowed just about anyone whose words fell into my over sensitive ears. In all that cacophony, I lost contact with who I really was. Now, the only rules that matter are the ones that I make.

My second learning is a practical one - for better or for worse, we live in a society where men hold more power. It is natural that they will do things the way they know. If women had been in power, maybe men would be blogging about their rights, too. I want to focus on navigating this tide, rather than trying to turn it in my favour. Of course, if a few people get sensitized along the way, great. Otherwise, they will be made more than aware simply by watching me stand up for myself.  

My last learning is that preaching to the world is a waste of time. Everyone has emails to check, families to feed and FB to update. I have my little world, which is in as much in my control as it could possibly be. I need to effect the change in this microcosm. Then I can blog about it and send it to a few people who matter to me. Maybe they will do something in their worlds, maybe not. Either way, change will happen in its own time.

As a disclaimer, I am just writing about what I know. I don't want to get into an argument of "buts" on how I am privileged to be where I am, since lakhs of girls get killed in their mother's wombs, lakhs get married off as mere children and millions continue to suffer a plight that is the definition of subjugation. All of that is true. What I think is also true. To me.

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. 

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? 

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.”

The Longest Walk of My Life

I must admit to thinking that the title sounded very ‘Chetan Bhagat’, if you get my drift. His books are the a-b-c of what to do to make people turn the cover to the read the first page and not put it down till the last. No mean feat, as anyone who tried to write a book could tell you. If you don’t know any such person, the millions of copies that each of his books sold should be enough to convince. 

Nevertheless, I would persevere in calling this the Longest Walk of My Life in my recent past, because I have a short memory when it comes to forgettable experiences, and most of them are well, forgettable. So, the question here was not about what I was looking forward to, but of what I was willing to risk to get to what I was looking forward to. 

Ten minutes, the friendly person at the Reception had said. Only four minutes had passed. The longest four minutes of my life (not counting the one minute I had to swim in 20 feet deep sea without my mask, but more on that later) and I had six more to go. Six and a completely dark and lonely stretch of road ahead. With possible redemption at the other end. 

Behind me, the Greats beckoned. Gold End, Havelock Favourite, Symphony Palms, Holiday Inn. The here and now, looking good. Did I dare? Did I dare venture into the unknown; did I want it badly enough to take an immeasurable risk to my safety? I stood in front of El Dorado, indeterminate. To the right stretched adventure, dark and mysterious. To the left, the familiar, brightly lit and warmly welcoming. 

I remembered Santhosh, the receptionist’s expression when I asked him, Is it safe for me to walk? Is it safe for a woman to walk, all alone on the road after dark? His answering smirk spoke volumes. Of course, what kind of a question is that? I am disappointed. I had rather hoped that you would ask what I would recommend you eat. Pah! Go away now, allow me to get back to my game of Solitaire on the computer. 

Switching on the flashlight on my phone, I turned right and started walking. A lone tube light shone a few metres away, banishing the dark. I walked faster, my eyes on it, unwavering. The sound of a motorbike behind me, every thud of the engine sounding like my heartbeat magnified a 100 times. I swallowed and concentrated harder on the tube light. Then capitulated and turned. Just in case. Looking for escape routes. A narrow lane turned into a few houses, bunched at right angles to each other. A child played in the lane, its buttocks bare. 

The motorcycle vroomed past, the two travellers too engrossed in their conversation to look hither or thither. The tube light illuminated the grubby interiors of a small room of around 30 square feet with a low wall facing the road and an entrance of about three feet in width at one end. Red plastic chairs caught my eye, as did the dark shape of a man in a nondescript shirt and lungi, his pot belly creating a gentle curve in the in the lower half of his torso. I looked ahead and saw more tube lights. I looked back to see the incredible feat I had accomplished, the proverbial walk on fire. It seemed irrelevant now that I had crossed it; ordinary even. All that courage and nothing to show for it except a sweat soaked shirt. I licked my lips and tasted Odomos. 

The phone glowed two minutes past the ten minutes it was supposed to take me to reach the best place in Havelock to have dinner (I supposed non vegetarians may venture to have their own opinion on this matter considering that it was an island on the Andaman Sea, but vegetarians had to be content with what was handed on from previous travel accounts of like minded individuals) I continued walking, the tube lights and the stray motorist passing me. I noticed the words “COCO” painted in blue on a red board, the nearest tube light putting the part above this line in the dark. I walked faster, unconsciously, my eyes riveted on ‘COCO’. The dark parted to reveal ‘Anju’ painted in the same faded blue paint. More lights, this time within an enclosure in which a few blonde heads bobbed.

Twenty minutes later, I scooped a spoonful of Paneer Makhani into my mouth and tasted sweet, sweet victory.

Forgiveness

We all do some things right, and some things wrong. Sometimes they happen so fast that it is all over before we know it, and sometimes it stretches like much chewed gum, on and on, getting thinner and more fragile by the second. But the one thing that binds both right things and wrong things is - they pass. They begin, they end and life moves on. 

Why are we so ready to forget the right things, and so slow to forget the wrong? Do we ever wonder why we spend so much time going over and over the argument from the previous day, or the hurtful messages, or someone’s expressions, when there were probably many more smaller but positive things that happened at the same time? 

I have held anger and hate inside me for a long time. Even when the fire soothed itself into glowing embers, I fanned it with thoughts of the past - sad, unfair thoughts of the past - and got it burning again. Only to go to bed completely exhausted at the end of it all. 

Retribution. I dreamed of it. To all the people who had let me down; treated me unfairly. Sometimes I pulled strangers who were, in my estimation, irresponsible or wrong into the same huddle. One day I would get back, I vowed to myself. Show them how wrong they were. 

It never came. The opportunity, the time to do it or even practically speaking, the resources like money. Instead, days and years passed, and I felt like I had not moved when the rest of the world raced ahead. 

In flashes of sudden enlightenment, I realised how some people were just fundamentally happy. Sure, they had problems; they had ups and downs just like the rest of us. But that did not stop them from smiling everyday, or just enjoying the moment. 

I was fundamentally unhappy. The only wall that stood between me and happiness was, well, me. The fires that burned inside took everything. They were fair that way. There was nothing left when it was all done. 

At the end of it all, when we go to sleep at night, or when we come home after a long day, we have ourselves for company. I asked myself - would I go away somewhere with myself? I did not even like myself at that point. When we are not comfortable with who we are, taking refuge in the company of others is the easy thing to do. Living with ourselves, our thoughts, our idiosyncrasies is difficult. 

Now I think about it more often - spending time with myself, going away, just enjoying my company. There will be some good, some bad, but I know that it’s what I make of it. I can live inside my head. And I know that so long as I am around, everything will be okay. 

To all the people who have wronged me - I forgive you. But you know the most important thing? I forgive myself.