WOMAN

The morns are meeker than they were - 

The nuts are getting brown -

The berry’s cheek is plumper -

The rose is out of town.

  The morns are meeker than they were, Verse 1, by Emily Dickinson

There are a great many things that you wish for, but once in a while, on one of those days, you really don’t want that morning. When you crack open your tired eyelids only the sun and the crusty lorry on the road outside seem to be bellowing with laughter. Big heaves: the former blistering hot, the latter, smoky black.

It isn’t till close to mid day, when you play a random video forward on your phone while waiting for your coffee to fill in the office cafeteria, that you smile. The real one, not the bland, social one usually reserved for others. You don’t want anyone to know that your favourite search phrase on YouTube is “laughing baby”. 

Your head hurts from the vodka of the previous night, but you suspect it has more to do with the unbearably forced conversation rather than an excess of alcohol. You laughed at their jokes once, especially the risqué ones. Ten years ago, as a curious, lusty, just-turned twenty, you had liked that they could be indecent and you could too, without actually saying it. You had been looking forward to a wonderfully flowing, cosy evening of good food, moderate drink, and lots and lots of laughter. Maybe that was where you went wrong - men are rarely known to grow up, and that’s why you have always been thankful that you didn’t know your husband when he was a teenager. 

Some hyperactive HR female has decided that the easiest way to meet her quarterly KRA, namely ‘employee productivity’, is to get the women to spend less time looking at themselves in the mirror in the toilets. Hence the poster - “THE SEXIEST CURVE ON YOUR BODY IS YOUR SMILE. FLAUNT IT!” Capitals written in pristine white, sans serif type, against a crimson red background, pasted strategically next to the mirror, a little above your eye level. You think then, that the men’s loo should have “THE SEXIEST SERVE IN YOU IS YOUR RESERVE. SO SHUT IT!’ But not near the mirror, please. 

You flash yellowish teeth at your dull reflection and remember a time. The only time, in fact, your mother called you “beautiful”. You might have been secretly smiling to yourself then, because at the rosebud age of sixteen, your long time crush had finally proposed, elevating you to that of a girlfriend. Since the precious deed had been done on a Saturday evening, and the motherly compliment was delivered to you the following morning, you had had to wait a whole day (and night) before breaking the news to friends at school. Of the proposal of course. The compliment had felt comparatively duh then.

You also used to be called “Miss Smiley” by friends, after your ready smile and engaging conversation. You loved to laugh. Not the trilling, musical, girly variety. The open-mouthed, full throated, belly rolling HaHaHa! You still have a child in you, your favourite professor at college had said, as ‘constructive feedback’ on why your masters application could have fallen through. 

Grown ups are serious, responsible people. So you grew a crust, rounded out, became measured. You massage your throbbing temples with your hands. Surreptitiously. Grown ups show cracks only at certain times of the day. Your phone pings and you see that the jokes of the previous night have received a fillip, for the worse. Grown up women showing cracks? Hardly ever. 

The brain fog lifts at around five in the evening, when the interminable day also settles into its downward curve. Heels clack, bags are rustled, phone calls are made. What the … ? “Women Only on Wednesday! Gastro Pub, 8pm onwards” screams the mailer in your inbox. They really need to stop using red. 

The prospect of driving in horrendous evening traffic, going home, changing, and then shimmying into an Uber to the ‘party’ in question wrings a grunt out of you. You rest your forehead on your worktable, the cool surface soothing your hot skin somewhat, spurring thoughts into action.

When you lift your sapped out, warm head a few moments later, you send two messages. To the husband, because it was Wednesday, and to the girlfriend in whose name yesterday’s ruckus was created, to meet at the coffee shop next to Gastro for a tete-a-tete. 

Would you have preferred to have remained blemish-less? You had always assumed that mistakes, heartbreaks, low GPAs, silent rejections, broken relationships and missed promotions were part of every young adult-to-jaded adult trek. It’s easier to rail against the system, against yourself, rather than to do something about it. Another secret added to the List, right after “laughing baby”. For once you are relieved to be tired, because your mind does not rattle off all the things you should have done, didn’t do, cannot do; an exercise that you realise, in its absence, you have conducted for as long as you can remember. 

Another trip to the toilet to freshen up, and you wonder what happened to your laugh. If you tried, would it still be as fulsome? You rub your rounded belly thoughtfully. It growls back in response. This time in the mirror, you shrug at yourself and smile. What’s precious porcelain without the cracks from use, the chipped edges that mark your cup as singularly yours? You have what you have, and you are what you are. There’s no getting around it. You hunt in your perpetually expanding handbag, roll on some red lipstick, and mascara your lashes. First things first - food. 

The maple wears a gayer scarf -

The field a scarlet gown -

Lest I sh'd be old-fashioned 

I’ll put a trinket on. 

The morns are meeker than they were, Final Verse, by Emily Dickinson

It Hurts to be Right

I am used to it now, what I have decided to call The Curve of Belief. It starts with me proposing something, usually an idea that feels brilliant in my head on day 0, then enthusiastic the first time I narrate it to my immediate family. The idea sounds defensive when their eyes glaze over and they zone out while I am speaking. It becomes whiny and plaintive when I am encountered with what I consider to be irrelevant / stupid questions or even more idiotic suggestions that i should be working, getting a job, doing something useful, you know, rather than ... this. 

Time passes, months, sometimes even years. Then what I prophesied happens to pass, and said infidels tell me, "So, you were right." I smile. Because I would have moved on to the next Curve by that time. 

We are in one right now, don't you think? I don't believe that we need any more graphs than those that are already going around, or more reporting on the numbers of people infected with the covid-19 virus. Last Friday I declined to attend office and consequently skipped an important client meeting. This was my first project after a year of near-drought work (and money) wise, but when I called my employer that morning I was convinced about the severity of the outbreak, even though in India the infected numbers were in the low double digits. He was kind enough to agree to my wish, although he ended the call with an embarrassed laugh on how "people have pressed the panic button, yeah". 

Yeah. 

Five days later, here's what things look like in India: 

Source: India Today and covidout

As of writing this blogpost, the total number of covid-19 positive cases is reported as varying from 148 to 151 in India on 18 March.

Well, not bad, of course. More people are dying of it in Italy everyday than the total number of positive cases in India. Hurrah! Indian immune system ki jai! Go mutra zindabad! Filth and pollution, thank you! 

Except when you put it in a graph. 

And then you compare the shape of our graph to that of other countries.

Source: Worldometers.info

Most of them are ahead of us on this deadly bridge. A bridge would be an apt metaphor, because our line graph, which is right now as steep as a dreaded mountain face, should flatten out before it starts reducing (refer China and South Korea above). We are still climbing (like Italy and the US above). Which means: there's lots more to come, folks. 

Sure, these numbers cannot be compared, apples-to-apples. India's numbers may also not be indicative of reality, since we have opted to quarantine people at home and only test them if they show symptoms. We have ramped up our testing capability only recently, and the so-called Stage III of the spread, which is when it moves from people with a travel history to affected countries, out into the local community, to people who don't have a travel history or anything to do with the people found to be infected initially. But all this only underscores my earlier point that, in this case, there is a lot more we don't know - about the virus, about the extent of its spread, and its effects - than what we know. 

I probably sound ridiculous, with my over-righteous lectures and forwards about "social distancing", mostly over WhatsApp. Heck, I have even started practising social and emotional distancing at home; that's how ingrained this behaviour has become for me. 

I also know that I, and my immediate family (which is a rainbow of ages, from a toddler, to adults, to 80+ years old senior citizens and others with pre-existing health conditions) will also get infected. It's only a matter of time. All I want is to get there at the point when the curve has moved downwards, so that they can get admitted to hospital and therefore get the critical care they would most definitely need. Hopefully by then the number of recoveries would also be robust, giving all of us, along with all those who might have contracted it from us, some hope. There is no bigger regret than a tragedy that could have been avoided, but was not because we believed in our genetic immunity, the unhygienic conditions our bodies have adjusted to and the legendary powers of cow pee. I am no analyst, biologist, doctor or an expert on anything. I like to read, to think about what I read, and to understand how it may / can / would apply to me and my life. 

This is my take. 

Note1: The extensive Medium article that convinced to work from home last week.

For of a Truth ..

For of a truth, in these days of independence, of pushing and striving among all ranks and sexes, the gracious old-world flower of gentleness runs risk of being trampled out of feminine character: the more so, because it is a common fallacy to confound gentleness with weakness; whereas true gentleness is the handmaid of strength though not of self-assertion. For strength has any forms of manifestation, and the ideal woman of the East is strong in self-repression, in cheerful subordination of the individual to the community: since an Indian household is still a community on the old patriarchial lines. She is the outcome of an ethical, if not a material civilization. Analysis of the seemingly arbitrary conventions that dominate her life reveals an underlying canon of stern self-control; just as analysis of her rigid religious observances reveals a faith permeated with the poetry of symbolism. 

Maud Diver, The Englishwoman in India, 1909

The more things change, the more they remain the same. 

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. 

5 Myths, 2 Truths and a Rant about being a Freelancer

THE MYTHS

Myth 1: It’s like a job minus the politics and the obligation to go to office everyday

Fact 1: It’s not like a job, it’s way more. And going to the office everyday is the least of all the obligations that a freelancer is freed from. A nice, steady, monthly salary is at the top of the list, closely followed by a fancy title that gives social credence, free gifts during Diwali and the arrogance to want to board a plane even after check in counters close.

Myth 2: A freelancer gets compensated for all his effort, unlike in a job where you slog like a donkey and get paid peanuts

Fact 2: Just like a full time job, freelancing is about your ability to negotiate good pay, strong communication skills to set the terms with a client, and clarity of thought on the kind of work to take on. Every new client is like a new job, complete with acing the interview, negotiating the salary and proving yourself as of yesterday.

Myth 3: Freelancing is a good career choice for mothers, housewives and basically all women

Fact 3: I had the privilege to work with a freelancer who was a guy and was very good at what he was doing. With a combination of shrewd networking, gold class full time experience, and a strong set of working rules, he was working whenever he wanted to while earning 3x his last salary. It is lifestyle choice.

Myth 4: The perfect example of work-life balance is a freelancer

Fact 4: A fundamental problem with this statement is that it assumes that a sense of internal balance can be obtained from outside forces. I rest my case. 

Myth 5: It’s for those who can’t hold down a full time job

Fact 5: Whatever the reason for this idiotic opinion to hold fort, it is not true. That’s it.

THE TRUTHS

Truth 1: It doesn’t pay as much as a full time job

Hallelujah! Finally someone got something right, although this statement is a half truth. Freelancing can, over time, yield more money than a full time job, but not over a steady period like a monthly salary. There will be strong times and lean times and tiding the latter is the key to making it work and staying sane. 

Truth 2: We are moving towards a Freelancer economy

I feel that today people are more open to hiring a freelancer to do a job than, say, 10 years ago. This is partly because of the maturity of the Indian industry and partly because of the kind of freelancers now available. They are no longer limited to coders, desginers of websites and photographers. It is now possible to run an entire company only with freelancers, or entire departments, at the very least. 

FINALLY, THE RANT

It has been more than 2 years since I started out on my own, taking on part time work or consulting projects of limited duration. During that time I also got my health back on track, had a baby, moved into a new home, furnished it and learnt how to make a crisp dosa and finger licking French Toast. 

No, I didn’t do it because i got fired from my job. 

I didn’t do it because i couldn’t find another one after I quit; I just didn’t want to. There is a lot of difference. 

I did it because I wanted to make a conscious lifestyle change. 

I did it because I truly believed that I would be better off on my own than in an office reporting to someone. 

I am tired of explaining to people that I am not freelancing to spend more time with my baby. In fact, freelancing makes balancing my life tougher because of the unpredictability of the work. I am not “lucky to get time with the baby” because i am freelancing. I make time. I can just as easily un-make it, and that would probably reflect in an inbox overflowing with projects. Nothing in my life “just happened”. They were all choices, and if I didn’t make them consciously earlier, I am very aware of them now. 

Freelancing is NOT a euphemism for being a homemaker / full time mom. Having had to don this mantle for a couple of months when I didn’t have help with my baby, I have complete respect for anyone, man or woman, whose full time job is to manage the house and/or raise the children. It is, in my opinion, equivalent to 2 or 3 demanding full time jobs, and I have held a few of those in my short working life. 

Next time someone tells you that they are a freelancer, or consulting, or a single person company, nod thoughtfully and ask them what kind of work they have been doing, and what they like best about being on their own. They are trying to make it work on their own in a world that is pretty set in its assumptions about them. A little empathy will go a long way. 

Letter 2: Diary Entry no 7802 (approximately)

Me time. Nice and proper. I got it today. Because I am lucky. I could go to Rajani early, and S was asleep by 730pm, after some extra screaming because she was tired. Today was a breeze. There will be other days that will be gales, hurricanes, tsunamis, or earthquakes. And I am going to quake on those days. The house will be a mess on those days, and so will I. I want to tell the Future Me that it’s ok to come unstuck and plop on the floor once in a while. If I want to work; if I want to do more than what I am doing now, it is always going to be a stretch. And I can only get through it if I go easy on myself, and on others around me. Life will happen like it did through May and June, and it is going to continue to happen. Initially I thought that getting back to work will be easier when S is older, but now I feel that there is no guarantee for the future. Or, in a very Interstellar-esque way, what I do today will define my tomorrow. If S is happy and healthy, and A and I are able to make something more out of living in the same house, then there is already a lot to be thankful for. 

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

My Stroke(s)

I was watching "One Day", the sweet rom-com on TV today, fast forwarding through 1 hour within a span of 15 minutes. When Anne Hathaway asks the newest waiter at the Mexican restaurant she worked at, "What's your stroke? Waiter/Writer, Waiter/Actor?" I realised that I have had more than my share of them, lately. 

Perennially exhausted new mom

/ lamentably absent wife 

/ demanding daughter 

/ surly daughter-in-law 

/ semi productive freelancer 

/ paranoid house cleaner 

/ ex-dreamer of dreams

I have landed smack dab in the exact place I did NOT want to be - biting off more than I can chew. Struggling to join the loose ends and just creating more in the process. 

Family obligations mean that I cannot work as much as I would like. Neither can I finish the unpacking that has been pending since we moved (almost a month now), or run any other errands. I am stuck composing eloquent sentences in my head, reading Seneca on my phone and wishing I could type as fast with my thumb as with all my fingers on a laptop keyboard. Oh, did I forget? All while crooning "ahhh" the little one to sleep. Then I put her down and my eyelids droop. 15 minutes, I tell myself. 

Then she is crying herself awake and I am rushing over with help and comfort. 

A and I make plans to go for a movie but my parents have to go out of town and I am babysitting. A wants his mom home, and I think: can I really take more? 

Really, how much more can I take? How much longer? How much farther? Should I be grateful that she is not crawling yet? That she is not speaking yet? Or walking? That I got what I wanted? That it has to come like this, at this cost, because I cannot not do it perfectly?

When I have eaten last? A cup of lukewarm milk at 11am. It's 4pm now and I have lost my appetite. The little one reads my moods like a book. So she cries and I make funny faces at her, which works. She wants to picked up and I take us both out for a walk. 

Nietzsche gives me company every now and then, telling me that what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger. I suppose I will have the hollowed out eyes, stained clothes and sticky hair to show for it soon enough. Dwindling bank balance - I already have - so that's one item accomplished. 

It's a deep, dark tunnel, this one. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. That's how it's done.  

A 'Motherhood' Statement

This phrase rang in my head last week, while I struggled with my wayward thoughts and a newborn that had been crying for five continuous hours and was still going strong.

'A motherhood statement' is one that has universal acceptance. It also has mildly negative connotations, in that it is a statement that adds little or no value to a debate where taking a side is considered a sign of progress.

I have now promised myself never to use this phrase again. Simply because there is absolutely nothing universal about motherhood, other than the fact that it has existed since the advent of humankind. The appropriate word for this would be 'continuous' or 'vital' even. But universal? Definitely not.

As my baby turns four weeks old, she learned to cry for food, to move her limbs voluntarily and showed the first glimpses of a 'social smile'. I, on the other hand, learned that there are solutions that the world and its sister preaches, and then there are solutions that work for me and my baby. My solution, like the ones that others offered me, would serve as a guideline at best, and yet another experiment for some other new mother to try, at worst.

I am just a month into being a mom, and I already realise that it is an incredibly difficult job. Yet many women, across centuries have done it and continue to do so in a world that judges them more harshly for being a mother than anything else.

At the risk of sounding harsh and judgemental myself, I would say that the same pseudo-masochism that pervades our male dominated society today has seeped into the child rearing as well. Why mothers are weary of talking about how tough it is to first give birth, and then to (single handedly) manage a child is beyond me. Maybe it's because if we judge each other on a level of 'x', we judge mothers on a scale of 10x. So there's virtually nothing a mother can do to please everyone. Or maybe because women are already considered the weaker sex, so complaining about how tough it is to do the one thing that we have been doing for centuries doesn't help our case. 

My counter point: It does. Not talking about how much work child rearing is makes it insignificant, which it is most certainly not. I used to pride myself on taking on life's lemons, without a whine. This worked perfectly till I got married. Then the seemingly effortless way in which I managed my life led people around me to believe that I was just coasting along. When in reality, I had been employing considerable mental strength and meticulous planning to get through each day, albeit quietly. 

Learnings to take with me into 2018: 

1. Talk about my day to the ones who matter, because they need to see how much work goes into being a mother, running a house AND (thinking about) working

2. Don't compromise on my priorities, no matter the external pressure. If they are wrongly placed, at least I will only have myself to blame

3. Tell myself that everything is possible with time, oodles of patience and constant support

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.

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. 

How to Ride the Wave

It was the fourth dive of my trip and the tenth dive of my life. Visibility was spotty, and combined with my slug like grace 14m under the blue, blue ocean it was turning out to be a tiring and mildly boring dive. 

The instructor gestured for us to head back towards the boat. Not much use hanging around when we could barely see our hands in front of us. It was only after a couple of minutes of flailing about that I realised that everyone else was doing exactly the opposite. There was a strong current which luckily for us, was moving in the very direction that we wanted to go. As experience amply showed, all the other divers stopped moving and focused on breathing evenly. This ensured that they retained neutral buoyancy, conserved energy (and consequently oxygen), all the while moving towards their destination. 

I thought of this incident today, while contemplating the seesawing nature of my once predictable life. It was wake up, get ready, work, work, work, get home, sleep, sleep, sleep. Then it's weekend and soon it's Monday. So wake up, get ready, work, work, work, get home, sleep, sleep, sleep. Then it's weekend and soon it's Monday. For 7 years (I know that many people have done this for 23, 53, 60 years. For me 7 is a lot in a way that half yearly anniversaries are celebrated by the newly married.) I recall the ups and downs of work life, good one day, disastrous the next, snooze worthy on most days. Post my 6th year, I learnt the hard way (and thanks to A's brutal advice) that getting all worked up over every small blip on the excitement screen was a wasteful expense of energy. Growing older helped. As did losing sleep. What I detested the most was my overall powerlessness in making or breaking these things. Hard work rarely determined the output. Neither did sincerity, saving for a rainy day and calling wolf. These sound pathetically naive to me now, but at that time I was out of options. 

There are so many things I want to do, starting with determining how I spend my time. I want to be on time, no, 5 minutes early to meetings, movie shows and family dinners. I want to read sleazy romance novels for 30 minutes everyday before sleeping, in the warm comfort of my bed. I want to create something with my impossibly high standards; something perfect in my eyes. Then I want to share it with the people who really want to see it simply because they are curious, not because they are being paid to or because they accepted my meeting request when they were high on self importance. I want to write of course. 

Nothing can get me as close to what I want as I would like, whether in a controlled environment like a workplace, or out of it. Not by doing it my way, at least. Each day is a like a wave in the ocean. It comes from somewhere deep inside the world, created by many tiny thoughts and actions each adding up to the curve. It it continuous, day after day, but no wave is alike. I cannot determine the wave that would lap at my feet or prevent it from sinking me under. But I can ride it. Take steady breaths, achieve neutral buoyancy, and drift with the current. 

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.

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!"