Reflections of a restless eccentric

Today hasn't been the best of days. I have been very stressed out and anxious of late, and at that, on multiple fronts. For one, I have constantly been fretting over my family's well-being. Every time I hear of someone I knew being sick, I feel like the pandemic keeps inching closer to me, and that soon I will have to confront the harsh reality of a close family member falling sick, or worse, dying. On the other hand, with the lockdown, chores have once again become a time sieve in my life, and I am left with tiredness and the small interrupted remnants of an entire day. I worry about all the academic deadlines I have, and wonder how I will manage. If I will manage. The number of people I talk to has also gone down a lot, and some of the friends I usually call have either gotten exceedingly busy or extremely tired of listening to my woes ; and that has added to my feeling of being unmoored. As if all this wasn't enough in itself, the fault in our electrical stars decided to...

 As a toddler, I spent most of my time sitting in my mother's clinic. I neither had daycare nor doting grandparents who babysat me, and as a result, my mom juggled between her full time job and me. One of the first people I met in her practice was this woman with late stage esophageal cancer. I use the term 'met' rather loosely, because I never actually saw her. The first thing my Mom taught me before bringing me into the clinic was that I should never express revulsion at a human being's pain and suffering, no matter how horrible it looked or smelled. She said that if at any time I reacted or made a face, I wouldn't be allowed in to her clinic anymore. I complied. But somehow, she didn't trust me to see this cancer patient with half her food tract eaten away and not react. So anytime this patient made in appearance, I would be shooed inside. After she left, I would ask my Mom in curiosity: What was wrong with her? Would she get well again? Did she have family? ...

 In the recent couple of months, I have found it exceedingly hard to write. My city and country have been ravaged by the pandemic, and I have been struggling to remain positive. My work desk faces one of the busiest junctions in Bangalore, and for the past couple of weeks the ambulances have been wailing non-stop. I hear them even in my nightmares, and I so badly wish they would stop. I stopped reading the news, I stopped looking at the bleak statistics, but somehow I cannot shut out the ambulance sounds. I shudder at the thought of all the people who are sick, and are not even able to receive timely medical intervention. I am pained by the thought of so many people losing their near and dear ones. I worry so much about my own first circle. I try to go down for a walk everyday, because it is a very fine thread that my sanity is hanging by, and that thread is this walk. Today too, I promptly stepped out with my husband around 6. We got into the lift and were instantly lost in our ph...

Shaken.   Rattled . That's how I feel. Like my breath was knocked out of me. Like the solid ground under my feet vanished.  I woke up today, with a concrete plan for the day. As I was eating breakfast, I called home for my daily check-in. I was blabbering about some inane detail of my day, when my Mom cut my call saying she was getting another call. And then, she did not call me back for a good five minutes. My parent radar immediately went on alert, because this behavior was very uncharacteristic of her. I called her back, and after a bunch of probing questions, she blurts out: One of my patients tested positive yesterday. I froze for a full second, and then felt a tsunami of emotions hit me.  Concern and worry came first, and they caught my breath and held it captive.  My mother. I hope she's fine. God, this is the stuff of nightmares! Why is this happening to us? Anger was a powerful second, and I was so tempted to yell. I told you  a hundred times not to see...

I wake up at the crack of dawn today. It is a peaceful Sunday, I think, and I reach for my phone. The first notification that I open says that a person has tested positive for covid-19 around 200m away from where I stay. I pull up another map based tracker just to confirm that this piece of news is authentic and not rumor mongering. Sure enough, I see a big red boundary drawn around my area and several adjacent ones, with a heading saying Containment Zone followed by a sad smiley. For a minute, I couldn't believe it. Although things had been taking a turn for the worse all week long and I'd been trying to prepare for such an eventuality, I was taken aback. Like so many other days in the recent past, I lost the urge to get out of bed. I do not want to wake up to this, I thought, and buried my head under the covers. The last thought that I had was: We're almost out of milk. What about the groceries I'd ordered? Would they reach me? I woke up a couple of hours later, b...

The "new normal" is a phrase that is overused in these times. What does this phrase mean to you? What do some scenes from this purported normalcy look like? These are some questions I attempt to answer, from my perspective. The other day, I stepped out of my apartment to collect groceries that I'd ordered. I did that, and started walking back to the lift. I noticed a somewhat old person in front of me, carrying a bag of groceries and heading towards my block. I reached the elevator bank merely seconds after him, and he stood there wearing a mask, not pressing the button although the elevator was on the same floor. I waited for a few seconds behind him, then quizzically conjectured that he did not know the purpose of the button, and reached forward and pressed it myself. He immediately shrunk back, and when the elevator arrived, refused to get into it with me, although it was more than six feet long and quite spacious. By this time, I was a little annoyed. He didn't...

A few days ago, my mother asked me for the credentials to her gmail account, which I'd been maintaining for her for the last decade. I sent her the details and promptly forgot about it till evening, when I asked her if she was able to login. She replied in frustration: No, I've been trying for hours! This just doesn't work.  I wondered if I'd given her the wrong details, and quickly checked. It worked. Tell me more about what you're doing. She explained to me, unable to use the right jargon, mixing up things, and ten minutes and ten questions later, I came to understand that she was trying to use her gmail credentials to login to another website. Sigh! I could have saved her so much time had I known this. That won't work, I told her.  Why? She asks me in puzzlement. Isn't that my login and password? It's like locks and keys. Different locks need different keys.  My mother has been a technophobe in a digital world for the last two decades. Sm...

At the turn of the 21st century, my grandfather, freshly over 70, came to live with us. He was the type who had grown up with rivers and cattle, and even city life had been kind enough to be peaceful to him. After decades of such a life, he found himself in the traffic-laden bustle that was Bengaluru, without knowing the local language, struggling to adapt. My mother, in a creative spurt, suggested that he and I go on walks together. Neither of us could think of a reason to oppose her idea, and thus began our journey of a thousands walks. I had always loved walks, and exploring an area by foot. Finally, I had a companion; I rejoiced. My joy was short-lived, for my grandfather walked at one-third my pace. My strides bubbled with energy and enthusiasm, and he walked at a pace that seemed abysmally slothful to me.We made a rather odd pair- at every other step I would pause and linger, waiting for him to catch up. Neither did we know each other very well, and we quickly exhausted the th...

The myth of Sisyphus goes thus: Before he died, Sisyphus, knowing that he was headed to the Underworld, made his wife promise to refrain from offering the expected sacrifice following his death. Once he reached Hades, Sisyphus convinced kindhearted Persephone, the queen of the Underworld, to let him return to the upper world, so that he could ask his wife why she was neglecting her duty. Of course, Persephone had no idea that Sisyphus had intentionally asked his wife not to make the sacrifice, so she agreed, and Sisyphus escaped the Underworld, refusing to return. Eventually Sisyphus was captured and carried back, and the angry gods gave him his punishment: for the rest of eternity, he was forced to push a large rock up a steep hill, in itself a miserable task. Every time he neared the top of the hill, the rock would roll backward and he would have to start over,  as a metaphor for the individual's persistent struggle against the essential absurdity of life.     ...

“When someone seeks, then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”                                                                                        - Siddhartha, Herman Hesse I am a seeker of meaning. I worship at the altar of profundity. Everything has to have a deeper explanation for me. (What better example than this: I am writing this whole post explaining trying to impart meaning to a metaphorical mango! :P) If not, I am very dismissive of the experience--I ridicule it...

"The opposite of every truth is just as true!"                                                               -Herman Hesse The first thing I read this morning was a news article on how a neurosurgeon who had died of covid-19 wasn't even allowed a proper burial. A gathering of people, who apparently feared contagion, opposed the burial by pelting the family and colleagues of the doctor with sticks and stones, which resulted in several healthcare workers being injured. The doctor was finally laid to rest by his friend, without his family present. The upset friend asks of the public in a video: Didn't he contract the disease because he treated patients? He could have refused to do so and stayed safe. And now, this the way he is treated in return, by being denied of something so basic a decent burial.  Wasn't it just yeste...

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones. But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said. I came across this post multiple times in the past week, and each time, I was moved by it. What a poignant a...

Several of my friends and acquaintances confessed to me in trepidation of the lockdown: 24/7 with my sibling/roommate/spouse. We're going to kill each other, for sure! One of the consequences of the lockdown is that all of us are now forced to stay at home for an extended period without much of a choice. There are quite a few articles published on the alarming spike in divorce/separation following an epidemic. It is therefore that people are genuinely worried about the jeopardy of peace on the home front. I will confess to you, I too was one of those people. In the one year and odd months of married life, the longest uninterrupted time I have spent in my husband's company is 10 days, and that too on a relaxing vacation. My everyday routine had been to bid goodbye to my husband at 6.30 in the morning, and then greet him when he came home more than 14 hours later. What would it be like to work together, sharing the same space? What would it be like to have to divide all the ...

“To stun with clatter a mind that wishes to think.” Weak as I am, in order not to let my mind fly away on every wind that blows, yielding to the slightest breath it encounters, it would be necessary either to have everything motionless around me, or else, speeding on like a humming top, in movement itself to be rendered impervious to external things. Whenever, rotating slowly on myself, I attempt to speed up, the merest nothing—a word, a story, a newspaper, a visit—stops me, prevents my becoming a gyroscope or top, and can postpone or forever delay the instant when, equipped with sufficient speed, I might be able to concentrate within myself in spite of what is around me. We are obliged to eat, drink, sleep, laze, love; that is to say, to touch the sweetest things in this life, and yet not succumb. What is necessary is, in doing all that, to make the anti-natural thought to which one has devoted one’s self remain dominant and continue its impassable course i...

“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 ...

The struggle is real, for all of us. So many things that we used to take for granted are now taken away, leaving us in despair. Maybe you're someone who's struggling with household chores. Or maybe you find your productivity at work seriously affected. Maybe you're an extrovert who's feeling cooped up at home. Maybe you're a student bogged down by the uncertainty of your postponed exams and graduation. Maybe you're someone who lost their job. Someone who feels anxious and depressed every time you read the news. Someone whose wedding has been postponed. A performer whose shows have all been cancelled. A tourist who has been unable to go back to their homeland. So many people, so many struggles. As human beings, our greatest strength is our ability to adapt. But before we do that, in my humble opinion, we must paint an honest picture of our reality. Denial is a powerful coping mechanism indeed, but we cannot fix things if we do not first acknowledge that they a...

The lockdown is definitely a tough time for all of us. There have been countless posts urging us to pursue hobbies, to learn new skills, to use the abundance of time productively. While they are right, it can be daunting, and you might be feeling lost in the quagmire of choices. I will give you a slightly different approach: forget about productivity for a minute, and pick a couple of things that make you happy. Things that you look forward to. You must first feel good, only then can you be productive. I want you to pick something that would make you look back on the lockdown period with a fond smile  and go: "Those days when I used to find time for xyz. It used to be so much fun". This post is about my happy discoveries. I was lying in bed, my ankle hurting from a sprain, feeling a little blue. My husband walked in and remarked that the spark in my eye was missing. He tried to talk to me to figure out what was wrong, but there wasn't a "reason" for my gloom ...

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...

Writing has always felt cathartic to me. Therefore, in this time of despondence and dystopia, I take to it in an attempt to restore some semblance of normalcy to my life. However, I find myself unable to think or write about anything other than this pandemic--it has completely ensconced me in a cloud of gloom. I thus resort to chronicling my days in the old fashioned journal style. This will not be just a direct retelling of events in my day, though it contain a fair bit of that. I hope to delve a little deeper, and give my Readers something to reflect upon. The second week of working from home. A gentle dawn greeted me, birds chirping away happily, trees swaying gently, as if celebrating the purer air. But one man's meat is another's poison, and the insides of my house were like an unkempt nest. No coffee or breakfast awaited me. Instead: Two bucket loads of laundry that needed to be dealt with, three meals for the day that needed to be cooked, a sink of vessels that needed...