Reflections of a restless eccentric

 Ever have one of those days where everything seems to go wrong on multiple fronts? I've been having a few of those lately. Actually, if I'm being honest, it's been a few weeks now. And I haven't been too nice to myself through this phase. Many times, I relentlessly point out all the things I should have done better. Needless to say, this doesn't help me feel any better. Sometimes I'd wish, if only I had a compassionate friend who knew all the minutiae of my life and could point out all the things I'm doing right instead, it would feel so much nicer. While I'm blessed with many such people in my life, today, I'm trying something different. I'm trying to be that friend to myself and reduce all the negative inner chatter. So humor me, dear reader, and come along on this highlight reel of my life with me. This is really hard to write for me because I'm so used to criticizing myself ! :) I remember you from three years ago. In fact, I particularl...

 I have burrowed my head in self-help books for the past couple of years, and the one theme I found in several of them is this: taking responsibility for whatever shows up in our lives. I found this very hard to accept or internalize, and I often found myself saying:  But this is not my fault! It was so and so who was so awful. Taking responsibility for this means condoning their behavior, and why should I do that?  After my Dad's stroke, I felt that life had been extremely unfair to me. Here were all my friends and peers, enjoying the prime of their lives, traveling, celebrating, and surrounded by parental and familial love. Contrast that to my life: I already had a grueling schedule with my PhD program, and now I had to deal with hospital visits, logistic, and financial woes, not to mention the huge emotional toll. Even when I slept, I had nightmares. I was at the lowest point in my entire life, and I couldn't see how things would get better.  And so, when I first ...

It is my ritual to write a thanksgiving post every time I turn a year older. Last year, I had ten months of normal life and one really tragic month. I focused on the ten and all the happy moments they had. But this year, I've spent all 12 months under the dark umbrella of grief. There hasn't been a single day in this year where I've been untouched by sorrow, stress or worry. I've forgotten what it is to have a normal life. To have a few days of pure and unadulterated happiness and peace. What do I have to be thankful for then?  A lot, actually. It can be really surprising to learn this, but grief and gratitude can co-exist. In the initial days following my dad's stroke, I experienced a profound sense of gratitude even for the smallest things. I was living on the edge, and felt the uncertainty of life in every breath. That actually made it easy for me to be grateful, even for the all things I'd taken for granted in the past.  I remember ordering a few essentials ...

For 3 months now, I have found no words to describe what is happening. Some horrors are best left undescribed, I think, and endure in silence. When people ask me How is your father doing? I struggle to find the words. For how do I tell them that the person I've always loved and looked up to has turned into a monster I barely recognize? How do I tell them that the person who was brave and strong all his life has become an emotional wreck? How do I tell them that I struggle to stay in his presence even for 5 minutes, that it feels like nothing short of torture to listen to his endless screams? How do I tell them any of this, all of this, while still respecting and honoring my father? I felt guilty and hesitant even when I think about it, and so I have labeled these thoughts unspeakable, and never given voice to them. But this is my reality now, a sordid and gruesome one that I must wake up to and confront, even if it makes me want to have never existed. Till yesterday, when a strang...

 Yes, this is going to be one more rant post. After having been woken up from my slumber for the fifth time, I am in a grumpy and grouchy mood alright.  The lights, fans and geysers in my room are smart. They're so smart that they decide when to turn on and off. And if you're imagining some tech-savvy house where there are sensors that detect presence/movement, stop right there. That's not what I'm talking about. This is a bug, not a feature. In my room, the lights turn on in the middle of the night, arbitrarily. When we're sound asleep. I detest getting out of bed for anything, and turning off lights is no exception. My spirit animal must be a sloth bear, because I'd rather sleep with the lights on than get out of bed to turn them off. My husband is way more bothered by the lights than I am, so he's usually the one to get out of bed to turn them off too. No complaints there. But today, he's not at home you see. And so, the Narada of electrical Gods has ...

Recently, my mother told me ever so casually that a close relative was suspected of having cancer and that she was waiting for her biopsy results. Knowing my mother, I knew she was devastated by this news, but she carried on with the charade of being unaffected. I too responded in kind, and asked only technical questions, as if we were discussing a hypothetical person and it didn't mean anything to either of us. What are the implications of this prognosis? What are the treatment options available? How long would recovery be? Are secondaries common in this form of cancer?  We continued this way for about an hour, never touching upon how we 'felt' on hearing this, skirting around it like a minefield. But when I put the phone down, I had no doubts about what either of our reactions were. We were deeply worried and upset, and she was more close to devastated. I could not sleep, and lay in bed endlessly pondering over this piece of foreboding news. Today, I think if I should rea...

My parents are diametric opposites in several aspects. And I, having inherited traits from both of them, by nature and nurture, at times find two contradicting points of view in my head both of which I can understand and relate to. I switch between the two frequently, and reassure myself that it gives me a balanced perspective on life. (There are times when this drives me crazy, but I'll leave that story for another day.) In this article, I'll share with you their individual perspectives on finances, and how that has shaped my own financial thinking. My father is a man of numbers. When I was in first grade, he called me over to the computer that he'd newly bought, and opened up Excel. He took a piece of paper, and wrote down a formula while I stared at it cluelessly. If there is one thing you should remember for your entire life, it is this. This is the power of compounding. He proceeded to enter the formula in Excel and demonstrated to me how an initial paltry sum could g...

 I've had so many electrical issues in the past year that I've decided to give it its own series. These stories will be told from a strange mix of viewpoints--debugging and ranting. Take from it whatever you like. :) On Monday evening, I unlocked the door to my home with a feeling of trepidation. We'd gone away for the weekend, and I was going to be home alone this week. Added to that, given the history of snafus we've had, I didn't know what I'd be greeted by when I came home. My mind had conjured up all kinds of disasters, and I was bracing myself for the worst. But as I opened the door and stepped in, nothing seemed to be amiss. I wandered around all three rooms cautiously, looking for things gone awry. The light and fan in the bedroom were both on, and God knows how long they had been on. (For those uninitiated to my electrical woes- No, we had not left them on by mistake. This is an extremely sporadic and irreproducible bug in my house. Or maybe it's a ...

 It has been a while since I last wrote. I draw a deep breath of trepidation as I begin to write this. I am almost tempted to close it citing a random excuse, but this idea has been in my head for a week now, and I must write about it. A short while ago, my friend SM wrote in an article that her fitness goals caused her to become obsessed with reaching those goals, and took away from the joy and peace of actually working out. This idea remained in the back of my mind, and during the week I saw several examples of the same.(Baader-Meinhof anyone?) There was a customer care executive I was talking to, and he spoke at 2x the normal conversing speed. He also cut me off mid-question several times, already answering what he thought I would ask. It seemed to me that he was trying really hard to minimize the time he spent addressing my concern. The logical answer, was that he was incentivised on average time per call. Thus, his goal was to spend the least amount of time talking to people ...

Growing up, my mother was always scornful of sickness. The occasional time that she fell sick, she would never take time off either from work or from household chores. She would pretend that everything was normal, and work through her sickness. Sometimes for a day, or maybe even three. Similarly, when she once injured herself badly after her two wheeler fell on her leg, she came home and bandaged her leg and went back to normal. I have heard stories of how she worked till the very day I was born, and then returned to work in a couple of days. She looked at sickness as an enemy, and she would never let it declare victory over her. She was invincible. I saw her as an epitome of strength, and these incidents as testimony to that fact. In contrast to her, I was someone who struggled with sickness and pain. During my childhood, I would catch a fever every two weeks if not more often. Like every other person, I hated being sick. But because of the example she set for me, I also started feeli...

Today, I choose to narrate one of the scariest incidents of my life, which after a year has gone by, seems less scary and more humorous. :) On a day which started as normally as any other, I found myself alone at home. My day began at 5a.m, and I headed to work after having breakfast. Work was as hectic as always, and around lunch time, I felt the weird sensation of a skipped heartbeat. The most likely first question in your mind, as so many others asked me during that time is this: how does a skipped beat feel? This was what it felt like to me: I felt my heart suddenly thudding into life, and realized that it had stopped for a teeny tiny second, for the space of a beat. The first time this happened, I attributed it to a one-off anomaly and shrugged it off. I was a healthy young person who'd just turned 25, and had no cardiac history. Then, in less than half an hour, I felt the same thing happen again. This time, I took it a little more seriously. I tried to remember if I'...

This article comes with twofold inspiration- a word from Obscure Sorrows and David Wallace's famous commencement speech titled 'This is water'. I would highly encourage you to read This is Water, if you haven't already. (Link in P.S) Sonder- everyone has a story The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk . Our life is a first person story. It is centered around us, and everyone and everything else is relative to our own self, including all our experiences. This is our default setting. Several times, ...

“Don’t try to compare a paper cut to stitches because they both draw blood” I'll admit to you, my last couple of posts  Embrace the struggle  and  Gratitude are seemingly contradictory. In the latter, I urge you, My Reader, to be grateful for everything you have by pointing out the fact that several people are denied of basic amenities. In the former, I ask you to accept that your problems are real and reassure you that it okay to seek help about them. Now you might wonder:  How can I feel grateful while I am going through so much struggle?  Or worse still: My struggles are not worthy of being expressed, I should instead feel grateful because people all over the world are facing so much more. In essence: Is it possible for gratitude and struggle to co-exist? Or are they mutually exclusive? I believe that it is possible, but before I get into that, allow me to clarify my stance. When I ask you to be grateful, it is not by denying the existence of your ...

I was looking to find solace from music amidst all the ongoing chaos. I signed up for the next module of my course, looking forward to it. And then, I got a call from support saying that I would be reassigned to a new teacher. I was utterly shocked. I had not seen this coming at all. I felt betrayed. Let us take a couple of steps back. I have been learning Carnatic vocal on a premier online platform with distinguished teachers for the past one and a half years, with one particular teacher. In this period, my life went through drastic changes: I graduated from college, got into my first job, got married, shifted house, volunteered as a mentor, made a significant career change, and also faced a few ups and downs in my health. But through all this, music was the one constant. Mind you, I was not an excellent student. I could never practice as much as my teacher wanted me to. Time and again, other parts of my life would take over, and I would lag behind in my assignments. I would apolog...

Yesterday, I watched a video of a migrant worker break down as he was offered food--it was heart-wrenching, and I had tears in my eyes just from watching it. I wondered how hungry he had been, and when he had last gotten a decent meal. He must have been deprived of work, and of his meager income therefrom. Soon, within no time at all, the first line of Maslow's pyramid, food shelter and clothing, must have vanished into thin air, leaving him desolate, both physically and mentally. Can you imagine how harrowing this could be? I, for one, find it hard to, never having known hunger or homelessness. I am sure I am not wrong in assuming that you too, Reader, come from a place of privilege. Yet, such is the harsh reality of lockdown for several people who live in our country, India. I am not trivializing your struggles or mine. I agree that they are real, that we have problems too. But it is important to re-orient our perspectives on the situation, to feel truly grateful for what we h...

A colleague of mine once told me: We need to reinvent ourselves every now and then. Erase our previous perspective and look at things in a new light. That's how we improve and grow. Profound words. The afternoon sun saw me sitting drowsily, tired from the chores of the day, struggling to continue with my work. I found myself restlessly pondering over the tenuous future, and contemplating what an extended lockdown could do to my mental well-being. I tried hard to reassure myself that this too would pass, and I re-read a post I had bookmarked last month:  No feeling is final . I had commented on the ephemeral nature of happiness, but I had missed the author's reply to my comment, which I now read: But the more I think about happiness, the more I sometimes feel true joy is not ephemeral – we tend to think of happiness as a feeling and that it goes away the minute we are sad. But what if we can be happy even with the sad? What if we are happy with the challenges? What if we...

Note: This post assumes that you are passionate about your work and enjoy what you are doing. If that is not the case, I suggest you first introspect on why you feel that way and what you could do to change it! :) This post is based on my 'working from home' experiences. Since most of the world is trying out working remotely for an extended period now, I hope some of these experiences and the consequent wisdom is of use to my Readers. I am sure countless articles have already been written on the topic, but I hope to add some personal flavor and novelty to it.  The first time I decided to work from home for more than a day, I couldn't be more excited. Yay! No more commute--I get back 3-4 hours of my day. How much more productive I could be! I'd get more work done, find time to exercise, and even catch up on a neglected hobby or two. Also, I could do those dratted household chores in parallel, schedule grocery and other deliveries throughout the day. Snacks...