Slow Burn

Slow burn

That’s how it feels.

Jealousy.

It surges instantly. A flush of anger in the face, the slight clenching of the jaw.

Eyes that rake you. Strip you naked.

Raw, animal instinct.

In a blink so much and yet so easily gone.

A downcast look of disappointment, a head turned away, biting of the lips to curb… it that guilt, pain or longing?

And you look again. Reading their faces for a truth, your truth. Was I transparent? Did they see it? Recognition. Acknowledgement. Hope. Fear. Faint flush of hot and cold simultaneously. Am I ready?

A pause.

And the truth is laid bare, waiting to be picked up and worn.

Instead, we pull the shutter. Tight. Pretense is more fun. Let unsaid things remain unsaid. The cowardly way out.

It has no name. Not liking, not love, not even lust.

Of Knowing

What is the nature of epiphanies? It is definitely not a thunderbolt strike out of nowhere. It is there in the consciousness, building up slowly, gaining momentum, and when all that you know meets all that is now before you, an epiphany happens. It’s a clarifying moment when facts meet and match perception.

Like when you have always wondered about a relationship that seemed precious yet bothered you as pretentious but you could never pinpoint anything. Of course there was the care, the concern, the love, the admiration and the perceived 'specialness' but you were not convinced that it was yours exclusively.  Then, one day, you see it happen before you. Some other people, but mirroring your situation, and you know it instantly. You’ve had your epiphany.

Today, I've had my moment of clarity. Of knowing that I could resist. You. Even if it was temporary.

A thank you of sorts

It’s been that kind of a year. A year that I would most fervently wish hadn’t happened and also a year that, because it happened, made me stronger in a way, made me realise my strengths (though it still hasn’t fixed my inability to spell strength without it getting autocorrected).

A year that was filled with moments of almost joy, of pure happiness and unadulterated delight and then suddenly one that seemed to descend into a darkness none of us wanted.

This year took away the one person whom I adored with all my heart. My dancing partner, my carom cheater king and my accomplice in beating around mom’s strict rules.

As difficult as it was to watch dad go, I was happy to see an end to his torment. No one deserves to linger in pain, and God was merciful and kind in that sense. The void is there. It’ll be foolish to pretend otherwise but what made this loss bearable was the comfort and support of friends and neighbours. And every time we were at out wit’s end about how to proceed from another obstacle, somebody came forward to clear the way.

His loss made me realise that I can be strong, that I can be relied on, and that I have the ability to persevere. Caring for him in his last days was strenuous, frustrating and heartbreaking, but I did it. We all did.

And as a friend wrote “For no matter the outcome, you have emerged a stronger, more loving person than you may realise. And that's something both you and your father can be proud of.”

So a thank you to all the people who touched our lives this year, for all your prayers, your comforting words and presence.  

Epiphany

She sat in her favourite corner, knees bent, coffee within reach, notepad and pencil ready, with serenity on her face.

“Today, I set you free. And in doing so, I set myself free.

I am clear now in my head of where I am and where I want to be. I certainly do not want to be tied to you and definitely do not want you to feel obliged to me.

Today, I put to rest all the fallacies I believed in, the made-up life in my head, the slights and faults that were mine, the concern and understanding that were yours.

I chose you to love, but you weren’t in that relation; you knew where you stood. I was the one who chose to hope.

Today, I have clarity. Today, when my mind is open and free of illusions, let me do the needful and cast aside all the wishful thinking I have been indulging in.

This is what it is, and whatever ‘this’ is, is all that will ever be. You never claimed to offer more, you will do nothing to change it and I would certainly not allow anything to happen. Cowards never thrive.

I have taken off the rainbow glasses that magnified everything you did and have begun to view them practically, untainted, without prejudice. And then they seem harmless, ordinary, very everyday.  

So, why dwell in misery and wonder about all the has beens that could have been and all the maybes that never will be.

You are precious, but you are not the reason I live. And now that I know where to fit you in, I carry no burden.

I set you free.

I set myself free.”    

A familiar longing

It had been too long since she felt like this. An overpowering urge to hold on to him and never let go. To let him in and keep him there. With her. Forever.

Every time she looked at him, she felt it. She had no idea what she was looking for. But it was something. Something that would fulfil this terrible need within her. It was something that chanted Mine. Mine. Mine to her all the time, whenever he was around, asking her to take that leap, to break free from whatever bonds were holding her back. What they had now was incredible, but not enough. Even with the mixed signals, by turns hot, dismissive and then nothing. Even with the arguments, the stand-offs and the fury at each other. It was there – that tug to see where it would lead, even if it did not fit the neat little boxes she had made of her life.

The thought of distance, of loneliness, of regret – something had suddenly snapped within, letting all the pent-up frustration come rushing out.

He was right there, just within her grasp. All she needed to do was reach out and he would respond. She could see it in his eyes. She needed to shut out caution, for just this one instance – to voice out aloud a simple Yes. Please.

Our dangerous selves

We all court danger, it’s inherent in us. All dangerous things seem desirable to us—irrespective of age. Which probably explains why as babies we were drawn to buckets of water, power sockets and barrels or as children to finding out what happens when we stuck peas and assorted things up our nose, took a dive from the flight of stairs, raided our parents and siblings’ stuff when they weren’t around.  As we grew older the curiosity didn’t ebb; we needed and wanted all things that were forbidden, were taboo. The denial was the bait that lured us in. We had to find out for ourselves. Our adolescent years saw us playing truant, chasing after the objects of our obsession, experimenting with drugs, drinks and sex, rebelling because it gave us a high and made us stand out and feel powerful.  Then as adults, we get cynical, slower, jaded with the experiments. We crave for more, to push the danger envelope a bit more, just to feel the original high. So we cheat in relationships, lie some more and about bigger things, embezzle, cut corners and play dirty.

Each time we flirt with danger, we feel empowered. Like a siren calling, it’s hard to ignore. We ask ourselves, “What is the worst that can happen?” So, we take our reckless selves and do stupid things. Things we wouldn’t do, if we didn’t like to tempt fate, to play with fire. If we get away with it, it’s a license to do it some more and more often. If we fail, it’s a lesson well learned and we exercise caution till we feel the itch again.

This attraction to danger is addictive. It makes us irresponsible, it makes us egoistic, it makes us dangerous people to be around. Yet we pursue it. Why? Simply because by chasing after danger we are fanning the desire for importance, we are acknowledging the arrogance within us, we are feeding our ego with our conquests. With every successful venture, we find ourselves getting bolder, undefeatable, indestructible and insatiable. Nothing else can substitute. 

Dancing the dating dance

“I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies.”

-         From the movie He's Just Not That Into You

I don’t know how many of you were nodding your heads in agreement when Drew Barrymore explained her pitiable state of dating and communicating in a technology-reliant society, but I felt that her character was saying everything I wanted to say but in a eloquent yet matter-of-fact way!

Need I say more? Given my dating experience through all the portals and channels available to find the one person I could marry—online, matrimonial columns, matchmakers, priests, friends, friends of friends, relatives and their extended families, colleagues—you would think I would have gained some insight or clarity on the subject.  All that I can tell you is this, with enough conviction and case studies to boot, dating is a murky world. It’s an exhausting platform designed to infuriate you and leave you helpless and confused about who you are, what you want and why are you doing this in the first place. There are more questions each time you go through the whole rigmarole.

Practice makes perfect but practice in the dating world can make cynics out of even the most optimistic, romantic person. 

Of Greetings and Hugs

It's been too long. I got busy and I got lazy; a trip back home, sister's wedding celebrations, the death of an uncle and then some much needed R&R only to get back to piled up work in the office. So, it's been hectic but one that was absolutely worth it!

Over the weeks I have been wishing and greetings so many people, and I still haven't got the routine pat. Do I kiss and greet or just wave and nod and say hello? If I'm greeting them with a kiss, do I begin left to left or right to right? Given that I live in the Middle East, where there is the added third kiss, it all gets more confusing? The worst, when you lean in for the kiss and the other person stands frozen doesn't! Awkwardly embarrassing, I know.

Sometimes, people lean in for a hug. Now, I'm not a huge 'hug me' person; I've never been. However, in the last few years the number of times I've been hugged on a daily basis, makes up for all the years of my existence. Still, I have not grasped the basics of a hug; I just fake hug, always. A half, barely there, limp, something is all I can manage, irrespective of the gender or fondness of the person. Even side shoulder 'hugs' are awkwardly given and received. Sometimes, knowing a person's fondness for hugs, I throw my hands up in a grand gesture of enveloping them in a bear hug, only to have them kiss me on the cheek, thrice! Now locked up in a semi-hug and moving your head can be quite the thing!

This New Year, I'm still working around the whole hug and kiss and greet routine. For now, the only strategy I've come up with is a handshake with the arms stretched, thereby creating and extending this invisible 'do not cross'space, though, I must say, that has not been that effective. A few determined and enthusiastic individuals have broken through and enveloped me in a bear hug I never saw coming! Sigh!

*hugs* to my dearest friends and the three who loyally read my writings!

Art of ageing

"Time and Tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty."

- Robert Frost

If I admired Robert Frost before, I absolutely adore him after coming across this quote. Ten years ago, I absolutely believed in my ability to withstand this constant obsession with age that some women have. So, when I discovered my first strand of grey hair at 28, I was quite delighted. I have always been fascinated with sporting a lock of white hair across the forehead, much like Indira Gandhi —the ‘iron lady of Indian politics’. Like all things that feel different when it happens to you, I was aghast when I found ‘my lock of white hair’ in the middle of my head! There was no feeling of joy! All I felt was horror. Surely that was a sign of me turning old, wasn’t it?

From there started this obsession with turning old. I suddenly felt and acted like my world just ended. I mentally started ticking off all the things I should have done by the time I turned 30 and realized that other than actually turning 30 there was nothing else I could tick off. Top on the list was the fact that I was still single, but I was am not so worried about it. I was doing all I was supposed to do to meet some eligible bachelors but if I continued to elude the marriage bond, it was not for a lack of trying.  As far as my career goes, I am not too ambitious about where I land; as long as I am learning something I am fine. So, maybe I could just tick career on my list.

I realised that over time, I had become very conscious of the presence of younger people. I constantly compared them to myself at their age. At times, I was elated at being miles ahead of them and sometimes envious of the choices they had before them. I found myself territorial at work, colouring their ideas and opinions with my prejudices and obsessing over the fact that I would never be as fit as them. Oh how I cursed myself for not listening to mom about so many things plus the bags of chips I ate through on a regular basis!

Low-fat, trans fat, calories, cholesterol, health check-ups, diabetes —suddenly these words were popping up everywhere. Once I turned 30 health articles on ‘food habits for the 30s’ seemed to catch my eye more than I wanted to. Subconsciously, I started making healthier choices, not that I am too unhappy about it considering that I haven’t entirely given up on my sweets as yet. 

My obsession with age had to stop. Imagine running on the treadmill and all I could see was age group 30! As the days passed into months, I felt that nothing had actually changed for me. It was really all in the head. Age is just a number. I still have all the fun I did before, I pretty much eat the same kind of food though of the leaner variety and my hair stopped graying at that first lock of hair.

I wonder if I will face another crisis at turning 40? Or would I be deadpan like Maya Angelou, when she said, “When I passed forty I dropped pretense, cause men like women who got some sense."

These my habits, I lend to you

Every day as we go about our lives, we pick up ‘signatures’ from others that unknowingly become part of our style whether in speech or gestures.  When you spend a lot of time with a particular person, you unconsciously pick up their mannerism down to all the minutest inflection.

 You’ve been observing and absorbing their behaviours,  gestures and style from the sidelines, sometimes even making fun of them, when one day, suddenly out to the blue, you say something and your mind pulls the brakes and you have the “what the hell just happened” expression on your face. You’ve just reacted like some you know.

A few days ago, I caught myself saying, and with all the style that this colleague does, “One day I will kill him, literally” and I went Whoa! All this time I’ve been laughing at him and mocking him and here I was saying his stupid little sentence. Even the exclamations and interjections we pepper our daily interactions with tend to get coloured by the company we keep.

Over the years, I’ve picked up words like ‘babes’ from a client’s assistant who would call me every hour (which I have happily shed now), ‘pavam’ (poor boy) from a friend and words like ‘aiyo’, ‘aiya’ and other culturally influenced words. At times, I’ve caught myself leaping, clapping and doing random body gestures that were never part of my limited mannerisms, and when I do catch myself mid-(said borrowed)gesture I can only speculate which of my friends I have to thank for polluting what should have been my unique reaction.

Sometimes, these unconscious pick-ups also extends to laughter. Yes, laughter. Funny as it may seem, my laugh over time has changed, depending on the company I keep. My laugh has always been loud, gurgling and unstoppable; sometimes my close mouthed laugh resembles a ‘puppy yelping’ (or so I have been told among other not so polite descriptions),  so when I find another kind of laugh coming out, I stop and reexamine who I’ve been spending time with. I love my laugh, and I draw the line at my laugh descending into a witch-like cackle or a hamming villain from a C-grade Hindi film.

Everyday battlefield

Life is a battlefield. Every day we literally dodge bullets, hide from enemies, cross borders, enter hostile territories, lie waiting tense, alert and on our toes. We take on each day knowing that we have a long day ahead, a fight to finish off well. It may not necessarily be battles with guns and tanks, it could be short swift jabs with our hands, legs and pretty much anything we can get. We wear an armour of indifference and insolence most often and cowardice and fear at times.

We hide from friends whom we ditched last minute or have something to hide from instead of confronting them. We keep our guards on and put on our most defensive stance at work, we gear up for the commute battle ahead, we strategise, make plans and plot lines that will tear people apart or join them forever, or teach someone a good lesson. And every night we pray and hope that we live to see another day.

Since when did living become so difficult? Why does every day have to be this drudge to bear? We protect what is ours with a fierceness that is terrifying and we pursue brilliance, money, power with unrelenting desire. What happened to taking each day as it came? I think it’s our need to be better than the rest, to prove ourselves better contenders for whatever race we’re participating at the moment—mom of the year, best friend ever, superstar at work, business whiz kid of the century, brightest mind of the millennia, breakthrough artist/scientist, saviour of mankind.

The going is never easy, but we are prepared to do battle, we always have been. Ever since we were kids, we knew that we had to be strong and not let others get ahead. We may not have been the typical bullies but we were all determined to do better than our friends, even our best friends. And as adults, the battles just got fiercer and dirtier. We have been taught to survive, to be street-smart and tough.

That’s just one half of the story. We have also been told to watch out for the ones who are not so tough, the ones who get walked over on, to be caring of people, to share and respect and love and do good deeds and more. And that’s where the problem lies. How do we maintain balance between peace and war? Our natural instincts move towards the survival of the fittest or that’s how Darwin would like us to believe. So we try to be nice and befriend people and curb our ruthlessness. It’s a difficult thing to keep doing, it’s like saying, “I’m-sorry-to-beat-you-to-the-taxi-even-if-you-were-here-first-but-I-need-to-get-to-work-on-time-and-to-hell-with-you-actually!”

 It’s funny that we try so hard to be nice and all in situations when we just want to rip out someone’s head. I guess that’s the price you pay for being a part of civilized society. We strive to maintain some kind of armistice, a protocol of good behaviour even in the fighting ring. And just like the soldiers of the Western Front during Christmas 1914, we work out an unwritten understanding to respect boundaries and extend the hand of goodwill, peace, love and cheer. Or at least we try to more often than not.

Deindividuation

(I had written this piece more than a year ago and forgotten about it. I’ve altered it a bit after a recent article I read.)

We all understand how the virtual world provides a cloak of anonymity and many of us are grateful for it. A year ago I read an article that spoke about ‘moral disengagement’, which simply means that “the further removed we are from the consequences of our actions, the easier it is to emotionally separate ourselves from our own behaviour”, and I realised that what we witness on the internet on a daily basis in terms of comments is a perfect example of moral disengagement.

Last week, I came across another article that explained how, “The shield of anonymity strengthened by pack mentality leads even ‘normal’ people to let out their most violent avatars on the internet.”  Psychologists now call this ‘deindividuation’, (a word I don’t personally like and Word does not acknowledge).

As more and more sites encourage participants to express their opinions, a large number of people are finding that the anonymity of the internet is a perfect tool to vent frustrations. The vitriol that is spewed in the name of comments is unbelievable. Nothing is sacred and nobody seems to be scared. Scathing rants bordering on the abusive are heaped on everything and everybody. It’s almost like graffiti artists, you know the ones who perfected the art of defacing good pieces of furniture or walls to express their opinions, have found a never ending platform to voice opinions.

Trawl through the comment sections on any site or forum and you’ll find tons of examples of fantasised violence and rage coming from seemingly normal people, who are really normal people in their regular lives but morph into ‘trolls’ (as they came to be known) in the virtual avatars, that makes you wonder where all this comes from or where it will lead. Personally, they seem to expose the rampant xenophobic behaviour of people that is becoming all too common in the modern world. Good, healthy debates and legitimate counter arguments are drowned out by often ridiculous arguments, personal vendetta and slights. At times you notice a pattern, with a certain group of people constantly barraging each other and you realise that you’ve just witnessed cyber bullying happen right before you.

For some people, the internet is a God-sent miracle that allows them to express their frustrations; most of this can be legitimate annoyances while for others it can be just sheer delight in attacking from behind a veil. Getting annoyed, throwing abuses around, ranting and raving in public spaces can damage your reputation, often irrevocably; on the other hand online forums or sites can ban you only to have you resurface as another identity with no damage whatsoever to you personally.

I guess that’s the problem with anonymity. It creates lions out of lambs; and in a space where nothing can really harm us there is no telling the limits we are ready to cross.

Anger

Anger, the emotion we all underestimate, is surprisingly powerful.  Most of us don’t consider it a threat at all, categorizing it as something we can control, something we have control on. But that’s the thing with anger, it’s deceptively devastating. Whether it is a slow, simmering, seething kind or the one that flares instantly, anger has the potential to destroy and damage. After all, if it’s among the seven deadly sins, then it must be because there is more to it than we would like to acknowledge.

Like all vices, anger clouds our judgement, but the thing with greed, lust, pride or sloth or any of the other vices is that the danger is mostly to one’s self and a few others. Anger on the other hand has more far reaching impact. Anger almost always drives you over the edge taking a whole lot of others with you as well.

Time faster Time

Is it just me or do you agree that time has got a new set of wheels? How else can you explain the whizzing speed of days and years? One minute you are in April and the next getting ready for the New Year! I always feel like I just finished buying my Christmas gifts for family and friends (which can be so exhausting) and don’t have the energy to go through another round of them just yet.

Time is relative said Einstein but I don’t think that’s applicable these days. Time just seems to fly whether or not you are having fun. Try as much to slow down your hectic schedule and you still find yourself huffing to catch up with days. I feel like I’ve lost so many days without knowing how and when they dropped off the grid. I will admit that there are a few days where time seems to drag but overall it seems like the axis of the earth has shifted into some kind of super speed.

A procrastinator like me always pushes tasks for the next week, month, couple of months, year and before you know it, it time for me to come good on promises to myself. I’m always struggling to catch up with my lazier self, it’s like I can never catch a break. Events around the world celebrate their anniversaries and I find myself wondering if it has actually been those many years. In a way, there is no more place for anything old, it is always and always immediately replaced by the new.  Everywhere it is one revolution replacing the other in more ways than one.

Sometimes, I feel that modern living is all about speed. We measure our lives in nanoseconds and get impatient by every kind of delay. A 20-second delay in page loading gets us aggravated (come to think of it, I don’t think we can stand a 3-second delay) or  the 1 minute it takes us to get food heated in the microwave makes us impatient. Is this the reason why we seem to have lost track to time. Once a upon a time now really seems like a time phase really gone.

Writing about this, got me remembering this episode on Seinfeld. Have you seen ‘The Friars Club’ episode where Kramer is trying to copy Leonardo Da Vinci's sleep patterns to experience more life?

KRAMER: Listen, uh, do me a favour, will you? I got a hot date tonight with Connie. Knock on my door, wake me up in twenty minutes, alright?

JERRY: Catnap?

KRAMER: No, no, no, no. This is evolutionary. I’ve been reading this book, on Leonardo de Vinci. See, that means 'from Vinci', did you know that?

JERRY:  That must be some book.

KRAMER: Yeah, well, turns out that the master slept only twenty minutes every three hours. Now, that works out to two- and-a-half extra days, that I'm awake per week, every week. Which means, if I live to be eighty, I will have lived the equivalent of a hundred and five years.

JERRY: Just imagine how much more you'll accomplish.

Placebo effect

In medicine, there is something known as the placebo effect, when doctors administer a drug that is supposed to make you feel better but in reality is just a sham drug that is actually nothing. The effect of the placebo is that is works on the idea of perception; you believe that you are given a life changing treatment that will change your condition. This belief may in fact have a subjective positive result in you feeling your condition has improved.

How many times in our lives have we faced this placebo effect? Whether we’ve been the ones to administer it or the ones who get the dose? We have all deceived ourselves, others and more at some point or the other. Was it to make ourselves feel good or was it for the good of others?  Were our motives truly honest or were we fooling ourselves into believing that we were actually doing some good.

Deception is what we do every day. We force ourselves into believing that there is a reason valid enough to support these lies. In the beginning it may be something we do just to placate ourselves but over time, the reiteration of the lie completely obscures the truth. In times of trouble we pacify ourselves into believing that this phase is just transitory; that it will change and we will feel better. “ I am much better” we say this to ourselves over and over again that even if we don’t feel any better, we force our minds to accept that things have changed, have improved.

The truth is always harder to accept when you realise that you are not among the selected few to actually receive the real cure. We cannot accept that life has decided to skip us over for someone else. We’ve been handed the placebo instead of the real thing. It surely sucks. So what are we going to do? Are we going to fight, scream and shout or are we going to the do the next best thing which is to accept? We all have our ways of making peace with ourselves—rebellion, anger, submission, indifference, pathos, acceptance and denial.

When we deceive others, there is to an extent something clever about it, but when we deceive ourselves it is simply pathetic. Yet we never desist. We know that there is nothing more that can be done for us, so we do what we do best, ignore it and hope that it goes away. Sometimes, it does. Sometimes we do effect a positive change, because we have worked around the problem and tackled it in a roundabout way. And sometimes, despite what we do, there is nothing we can change. The harm is permanent and the end is inevitable.

Maladjusted

As people we are all used to making adjustments just to get what we want, whether we like it or not, and as Indians we are more familiar with the term. Whether in school, college, in the train or the bus, we always squeeze to make place for that one more person in our lives, on our seats and sometimes even on our toes.

I have nothing against making adjustments just to accommodate that one more person, but not at the cost of my well-being. I get all irritated and fidgety when I am squeezed and scrunched; I feel encroached upon. The feeling is worse when it happens in church. I mean, I make all the effort to get there well before time so that I can sit comfortably in a decent enough spot, and then the latecomers straggle in and ruin my peace. I know, I am supposed to display charity and goodness especially in the house of God, but I cannot, honestly cannot. How can I when my shoulders are scrunched in, I have someone nudging and jostling me every time I move?

For the last few weeks, I’ve had to sit up, squeezed just to make place for a pregnant woman, a lady with a child and a younger girl and her sister. If there is place, it is indeed shameful to deny someone a seat, but when we are already shoulder to shoulder, how can the usher expect us to adjust? I cannot pray when I am distracted by people stepping on my toes and elbowing my sides. What is the use of pray when I want to shove the next person or am grumbling about the lack of decency in people? When we were asked to shift and make place for the pregnant lady, there was place to sit, but the lady next to us wouldn’t move her kid who was sleeping across the bench. This only meant that I had to move forward so that the pregnant lady could be seated.

Okay, so you make the place, but then the newcomer decides that they want more. They start shifting, moving forwards and backwards till they can rest their backs. Hello? Whatever happened to being grateful that you got to at least park your butt? Even the fourth-seat passenger in the train will ask you to try and move! What happens then is that you have to take your shoulders in, sit with your legs crossed and lean towards the next person, all the while making you look like the interloper!

Coincidence cross connection

Coincidences. Do you believe in them? Most of us do and I certainly do. How else would you explain the fact that when you are thinking of something, it happens to pop in front of you? Coincidences have a funny way of manifesting themselves.

Haven’t you ever experienced yourself randomly thinking about something and it happens. I remember one particularly funny incident. I was in church and as usual distracted. When they were passing around the offertory collection, I was reflecting on the fact that it was so systematic and nobody drops it. What would happen if it did? And clang! Somebody dropped it! I mentally kicked myself for not wishing for something else.

There are countless episodes like this when you wonder about the power of wishful thinking, and most often than not all the useless, random thoughts are the ones that seem to fructify. So much for willing the universe to dance to your tunes.  I remember one of my friends remarking that you should watch what you wish for. Apparently God listens to you at one point in the day and grants you whatever you’ve been thinking. And try as much as I want I try to keep thinking materialistically or train my thoughts on getting that one thing that has eluded me so far but somehow or the other, an errant thought slips through and uses up my quota for the day. But then I’ll keep persisting and hoping and wishing. As they say “every dog has its day”!

Digital Legacy

A lot of our lives is online these days. We chat, video chat, twitter, blog, podcast, exchange emails, store our pictures, personal data, work and more. People once believed that there is a parallel universe that replicates our lives but interprets it according to its own universe; well now we live in a virtual world that is akin to a number of parallel universes. We can be who we want to be, anonymous perfect little creatures to live out our fantasies and goals that the real world has somehow put a brake on.

Recently I came across an article that dealt with digital information and what happens to it after the user’s death. After a person dies, most of this information remains unknown to his family and disappears into a cyber abyss. It’s something that most of us easily overlook. We make wills to take care of our loved ones, save and invest for a rainy day, make copies and backups of our memories in real and virtual sense, we squabble over possession of material goods but very few of us bother about what happens to our fiefdom in virtual space. Our real collection of comics, books and everything taggable in the real world are passed on to people we think will deserve it, but what happens to our online collection of songs, ebooks, movies and more?

According to the article some sites like Facebook have a concept of memorialising an account, which means that when they are informed of a person’s death, Facebook keeps the wall open so that family and friends can still access it; they delete certain info as well. In a way, there are ways to access information if you know the login details or say only the username.  One step ahead is a new online service called Legacy Locker that stores people’s login details and passes it on to a caretaker in the event of the user’s death.  So more and more people are creating something called digital legacies and will to take care of their digital data.  

On the flip side, say you are a healthy person, who creates and will and dies suddenly? But before your sudden death you didn’t get a chance to remove traces of your other self from there. What happens then? This scenario can play out whether we plan our lives or not. Our digital lives serve as an excuse to get away from the selves that fate has created of us. So we let go all our inhibitions and fears, and pursue avenues and pleasures that we would deny ourselves. And it’s a fact that we all have secrets safely stashed in the virtual world—pornography, erotic writings, emails from our adulterous lives, photographs and videos of our hidden exploits, our secret abilities and lot that stays buried in a pile of virtual junk.  Not all of this is seedy; there are a few who are too shy or reserved, who explore their talents just for themselves. They keep secret files like secret journals of their lives and live a fulfilled life that their real self denies them.

Imagine what happens when this virtual Pandora box opens on the very people we tried to hide it from? Much like the yarn unspooling from the spindle, secrets have a way of unraveling at the worst time. There is no way to stop the surprise, hurt and the shock. These secrets leave us exposed just like we were before on the doctor’s table being autopsied. People prod and poke us and measure and study and remove our insides for others to see. They judge us, the see us for what we really are and there’s nothing we can do.

Miss the manners

You would think that being educated would guarantee some semblance of manners and etiquette in people. It’s a foolish hope I’ve realised. Education just guarantees literacy, everything else depends on morality, upbringing and conscience.  

I’m not talking about grand gestures and thumping parades; it’s all about simple things. At the food court in a mall, do you pick up your tray or leave it there for the cleaners? If you happen to drop food on the floor or the table where you sit, do you pick that up as well or it is the cleaner’s job? I make it a point to put everything on the tray and as far as possible dispose it off myself (unless the cleaner pops up and insists on taking it). I understand with kids, it’s difficult to be so fastidious, but maybe we can try and do what we can.

It irritates me when I find people behaving so callously. Sure, there are people assigned to do a task, however menial it may be, but that doesn’t mean that we have to make their work all the more difficult. It doesn’t give us the right to deliberately add to their burden.

Take for example a public loo. For us it may seem like one stall, one sink, but that poor person has to do the entire bathroom, all the stalls and all the sinks for an eight- to twelve-hour shift. Must we be so uncaring and cavalier?

We’ve all picked up an attitude of others picking up after us. We grumble when we see a mess, but what do we do about it. Are we contributing to it or making a tiny effort to lessen the burden? What gives us the right to grumble, when we are as guilty as the next person? We blame ‘them’ the others …it’s never us, but how are we in our office, where we are seemingly surrounded by ‘others’ who are just like us? Like the ladies loo in my office; we have notices put all over asking, no begging, for cleanliness but no. The floor is left wet, the seat wet and sometimes with pee droplets, the occasional red blobs and skid marks of a healthy bowl movement! Why? Why? Why? Each time you step in, you wonder what surprise awaits you. Toilet rolls are used one and empty ones kept standing (are we counting how many we use in a day?), used ones that fall on the floor are left there, make up stains and hair strands dirty the sink. Is it too much to just take a peek behind you to ensure that everything is clean and flushed? You got a clean, pristine bathroom; why not leave it like that for the others?

All grown up?

Why did we ever want to grow up? Being an adult is tough. You are responsible for your life in ways you can never imagine. Every decision you make or fail to make is entirely yours. What to eat, where to live, whom to love or hate, where to work, whom to be indebted or obligated, whom to help or avoid, these are just basic decisions that you, just you, have to make.

What was wrong with being told what to do? At least if anything ended badly you didn’t have to deal with the fact that it was your mistake. You had somebody else to blame; somebody else to rely on. But no, we had to want to grow up, we had to have it all. We had to be independent, had to live separately, and get stuck with the choices we made. When we were kids, if we sucked at playing the piano, we could give our parents the ‘I-told-you-so’ look but whom do we blame when we have a big fat ‘F’ circled in red for an arts test, an elective we thought we could handle? We may have tons of excuses but it boils down to just one thing—you messed up.

As kids, we cribbed about having to study irrelevant things and envied our older siblings for having the choice of subjects and clothing and freedom and money. And when we reached their age, we realised that being in college was not all that rosy. Who knew that you had to read tons of books to write out a decent essay and that you had to work so hard to afford a wardrobe? And it only got worse. You kept hoping that at some stage you would achieve some semblance of order and living. No wonder Peter Pan never wanted to grow up! It sucks being an adult.

Of course, you get to stay up late and pass out drunk, and eat take-out food every day, but when you have to clean after your upchuck and appear bloated and bleary eyed at work, it no longer is fun. Being grown up and being responsible is hard. Unfortunately responsibility is not just going to go away. Either you learn to stand up and take control or face the consequences.

But being an adult is not really that bad. You just need to shake off the lethargy and get a system in place. You make mistakes and you learn and it’s a pretty good feeling when you fall and rise up all on your own. The clothes, the sex, the independence, no curfew or parents to report to, it’s all great and all but nothing comes close to the feeling of exhilaration you get when you come on top despite all odds. You have a problem, you figure out a solution and that’s all there is to it.

You realise that being grown-up has it perks, like being children had its perks as well. What matters is how you look at it. Are you going to whine about having so much to do or are you going to take care of it one thing at a time? Because there is something to be said for this whole be-the-architect-of-your-own-life—nobody else can do it for you and nobody can take it away, unless of course you let them. But like all things, in the end it all boils down to you.