A happy memory

This morning mom started feeling weak, perhaps the result of her ongoing battle with Covid. She’s saying it’s the first time in the last 14 days that she has felt this way. Naturally, the emotional state at home is brimming with worry and helplessness.

In a way, we have had it all. We have been dealing with Covid for over 1.5 months now, and it has strained all of us. But do we sit here and keep lamenting? Does not make sense.

So I sat down to focus on a positive memory. The tough part is, I’m having to think a while to come up with something worthwhile.

Here we go:

A long time ago, perhaps when I was in sixth standard, I went to a poetry writing competition. I don’t remember the theme on which we had to write, but I distinctly remember having included the words “because old is gold.” Or maybe I am imagining it. I don’t know. The only thing that I can be very clear on is the fact that I wrote a long poem.

The thing is, I wrote the poem and came back, never bothering to enquire what the results came out to be.

Many days later, one of my schoolteachers who frequented such competitions asked me, “Arpita, did you participate in this event? Because it feels to me like they announced your name as the winner.”

It was surprising to hear him say that. One, because I did not expect this. Second, because I thought if I was indeed a winner, maybe the organizers would find a better way to get in touch with me. I do remember feeling a bit let down, if I had indeed won, at not being able to pick up the prize in front of a cheering crowd.

So I went with a neighbor to this nondescript building where the event had taken place (or maybe, it did have distinct and interesting features, but my memory fails me). Surprising as it was, my teacher was indeed right. They gave me a certificate and a trophy of a respectable size. I had won the first prize!

I remember coming home and feeling so excited about it, at the sheer unexpectedness of things. I don’t remember how my father felt about this, but my mother was definitely happy.

Afterward, this story was repeated many times over, among neighbors, friends and family, until other things pushed it down the stack of memory lane.

If you wish, do write the first happy memory that comes to your mind as you read this. Looking forward to starting a chain of positive memories as we trudge along this pandemic.

Creative Block Minor

I’m re-reading this book called “On Writing” by Stephen King. I bought it way back in 2016 when I was serious about being a writer. While I was writing the first draft of the novel I am currently working on, I thought I’d remind myself of the basics of writing, as suggested by Mr. King.

I am actually quite proud of the way the book was going so far. My goal for April was to finish the first draft and I was able to do that. The goal for May was to finish the 2nd draft and that’s where the big problem is.

Of course, I am going through this period of mourning. It’s an unprecedented loss in the family and it will take a long time to get past it. That said, life goes on in its own flow. What I am trying to do right now is get on with that flow, tell life let me move on and really focus on things that would leave a lasting impact.

However, now that I am reading the book, having gone through the emotional roller-coaster that I did, somehow everything feels bland. The challenges of my characters, the situations they are in, feel so simple, so easy to overcome. Yet, some months back, that was what my life was all about.

Somehow, I am jealous of the characters’ lives, of the simplicity in their day to day. On the other hand, however, now that I have seen a very different aspect of life, I want the characters to be much more life-like. Like they are living, breathing individuals.

One thing is for sure, it will take me few months more to finally hit that publish button on this book. Until then, I’ll probably write for you all here.

The City-Dweller’s Diary | Part 1

Every year in March, the non-evergreens shed their leaves. They shed a year of growth, tiredness, hard work, boredom, memories and lifelessness and go on to become homes to tiny neon-green leaflets. To become young again. To make more memories, to produce more oxygen, to become homes to countless birds, insects and squirrels. Year after year. Growth. Death. Renewal.

As humans, we don’t have a symbolic growth aspect. Our everyday is merged with our regularity. There probably isn’t one single moment which defines a significant change in life. It is gradual. Full of hopes. Full of fears. A literal step ahead, literal two steps backward.

Yet, over the years, our cells are constantly regenerating themselves. Our memories are become weaker – we are inadvertently forgetting some, forgiving some. We are becoming more accepting of the world around us – we are learning to live and let live. The hair is turning grey, and muscles are no longer taut. Yet, we morph into a version of ourselves which is less insecure of how the world sees us.

Traveler, behold! If you made a promise to yourself and never followed through: well, there’s a non-evergreen in everyone of us. Somewhere inside of yourself, you are shedding those leaves. Perhaps you don’t see yet, the growth of those neon-green leaflets. But in the moment you decide to wake up half an hour earlier to see the sunrise, to donate your old clothes to folks who need them more than you, in the moment when you let someone else take the lift because it is full and they are late, when you help a child to learn the alphabet – you grow a neon-green leaflet. Small. Fragile. So much so that it could break. Yet, in it lies the potential to grow bigger, stronger, the provider of purity that sustains the world.

So close your eyes, and nurture the neon-green. Because, at the end of the month, a deeper shade awaits you. Every moment. Every year.

Taste in books – Short review of Memories of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon

This Monday, I was travelling back to Bangalore from a week-long vacation at home. I had about half an hour to kill at Kolkata airport before boarding, so I decided to check out the book-store.

I picked up two books: Memories of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon and A Train to Pakistan by Khuswant Singh. I had not bought a book for myself in the longest time – thanks to the online library facility, Kwench, that my company provides. Besides – I had not read something really interesting that would make me want to invest financially and space-wise. But this time I wanted a good way to spend the two and a half hours flight (too used to having internet, and flight mode basically sucks), so ended up purchasing these two books.

I can’t remember if I have read other Sheldon books, but needless to say, he’s a popular author. Even if I have not read his works, I remember reading such fast paced, mystery thriller books growing up – I was quite a fan of the genre at the time. I loved Gone Girl when I read it in 2016. However, when I revisited the genre through Memories of Midnight, I can’t say I was quite excited. Some of the key traits that jumped out for me are:

• The fast pace of the writing, which is characterized by more telling than showing
• While the character development is not poor, it does not feel like a priority, but more like a secondary requirement
• The primary focus is on mind-boggling actions, bringing people back from the dead, showing larger-than-life (and in my mind, sometimes quite impossible) victories in business deals or courtrooms
• Lastly, there are multiple scenes which leave nothing to the imagination on the reader’s part – with too many obvious paragraphs which can easily be dropped to make the narrative stronger

While I have nothing against the writer or people who enjoy such writing (thrill is always exciting), from a writer’s perspective, a lot of the book felt like poor, lazy writing. I realize that over the years my taste has changed towards more muted, and closer-to-life narratives. I am interested in the story of the common man, the trials of regular life that s/he faces. Which is why I avoid most of Bollywood flicks, unless I am really in the mood for some drama.

However, I must credit the writer for his research on how different professions work: from information on oil fields to courtroom dealings to a psychiatrist’s clinic – this book covers a lot of ground.

All that said, I guess each author has a specific audience. In fact, even though the writing was poor, I did end up finishing the book, because I wanted to see it through to the end. Moreover, even though I had another book to choose from in the flight, I started with this one, coz, well, I was looking for a popcorn style book, made for light read! 🙂

How do you feel about these popcorn-style books? Should publishing houses continue to publish such books? Which are your favorite authors in this genre?

Stories are powerful

As a kid, when anyone came into our house, I used to bug them to tell me stories. I don’t quite remember the stories that my these people told me anymore. Looking back, I don’t even understand why I wanted to listen to those stories. As it was, it was not the age of deep thinking. I guess what I craved for was a a glimpse into a world that was not mine, something different, something wonderful.

I began writing for my school magazine in my third grade. The first few years were poems, and then I graduated to writing fiction. I was never good with storytelling; even today, I am not. I derive heavily from the life that I am part of, which is why, my stories are always, in some form, about me. I know for a fact, I could never spin up a world like Harry Potter’s. I think I do not have the imaginative mind to do it.

I have not written stories in a long time, even though I want to. I have always wanted to write good stories. But somehow, I always struggle with a good ending. Or if I have the right ending, I don’t know the story that led to that ending. Sometimes, I feel I am too young, I have not seen life enough to write anything meaningful.

It impacts how my relationship with this blog has also changed over time. There was a point when I wrote anything and everything here. These days, I don’t feel like writing unless I really feel like I have something to say. Even that is filtered to an extent. A lot of my writing are now personal, diary entries in a folder in my laptop. At this stage of life, that’s what feels right.

When I was younger, stories were independent things, with a life of limited duration. They began in the time that I started reading a book or someone started telling a story and ended when the story ended. The life of the story was within the duration of when it was told. But as I grew, as I watched movies and TV series, as I read more books (currently reading The Kite Runner), I realize that the stories we watch/read become a part of our everyday life. They somehow manage to creep into the fabric of our lives, and come back to us in their own time or affect the way we deal with our lives. As I grow, I realize, we all are also living some form of stories. Why do we want to be friends with different types of people? Because we want to witness a version of life that we are not living. We want to see how different life can be, when the actors are different. We take lessons from other people’s lives, we discover ourselves in the lens of other people’s lives. That’s why we write stories. That’s why we read stories.

Even businesses, at the end of the day, are stories. When you have a bunch of data and want to find some insights from it, what do you do? You try to visualize a story that the data can help you tell. That’s what analytics is all about. That’s why modern corporates stress so much on the art of storytelling. Analysis, done in silos, findings found in disparate chunks of data, do not make any sense unless they tie to the story that depicts the current state of the business, or tells it where it wants to go.

That’s why storytelling is powerful. That’s why art will always be counterpart of science.

The Happiness Project | Day 30

From six to thirty: it’s a bigggggggggggggg jump! Yes, I am talking about the missing 24-odd days of blogging in The Happiness Project.

I know I promised to write every single day in May, and I failed miserably at it. I have also not been uploading any videos on my YouTube channel. There is a reason behind this: generating content is difficult. Especially, when you are also trying to live your life at the same time. Not everyday you’d have stuff that you can talk about to an audience. And I am the sort of person who does not like to pour out content just for the sake of it.

Living the twenties is hard, especially if you are on your own, out of a relationship and living far away from family and suck at forming and maintaining friendships. An interesting bit I found about myself: even though I want to be around people (because being lonely sucks), I also love silence a lot. I like thinking by myself, and recording my thoughts in a diary. If I go out for two weekends straight, I find myself craving just being at home, having to do nothing other than chill out. That’s me!

As I was writing this, I revisited the first post in this series. The idea was to reconnect with the younger self of mine, who was more curious about things. I could not complete much of the things that I had listed down in that post, like growing plants and reading new books. But I definitely have started with a few things. There is no routine to anything yet, but I did make an effort to start.

For example, I got one of my previous teammates to come over at my place last weekend and help me with learning swimming. We also made cheesecake that evening, and it ended up being absolutely amazing. I also made an effort to go to a music school for guitar lessons. I did not really find the place worth joining at this point in time, but I did try doing something about learning an instrument.

I also started reading Mindy Kaling’s book, Is everything hanging out without me? I am making very slow progress, but I am at least getting somewhere.

Another interesting turn of events at work: I moved to a new project and am leading it. The last time I was really putting efforts in leading a team was around this time last year, and that time I was just pushed into the role because there was no one else to do the same thing. However, this year, I am a year older and have seen lot more stuff at work, and while I can’t say I am completely ready for the job, at least I have a few goals that I want to achieve in this role, and I trying my best to consciously work towards them.

So, as the clock strikes midnight and we step into brand new June of 2018, am I any happier? Well, definitely yes! Much more than I was when I began journaling this. Of course, not everything is perfect. I am feeling a bit weak physically this past week, and I am also waking up in the middle of the night every single day and am unable to fall asleep for an hour or two, and it scares me that the insomniac phase from the beginning of this year is returning again, but guess what? I try to not let that affect me. Yes, I would give anything to wake up earlier and get a lot more work done, but this is how it is. Maybe, something will change and my body clock with become right again. Maybe not. But I have to stay on top of my life.

So, what did I really learn in the past month?: Sometimes, breaking promises is good. Sometimes, letting yourself do what you feel like is good, even if they do not align to your goals. But in the other times, consciously trying to make 0.01% change towards your goals can lead to 10% increase in happiness. Okay, that’s a random number – but you get the point!

Thanks for being part of my journey! If you have been with me in this Happiness Project, I hope this concluding post makes up for the lack of the promised posts. Write to me in the Comments section – I love hearing from you guys!

The Happiness Project | Day 6

Yesterday, I went with my friend Pooja to Phoenix mall. I have been to Phoenix mall multiple times, but it never fails to mesmerize me with its crowd. People there usually are so well-dressed and good-looking that in the beginning I used to get inferiority complex! No kidding!

Having stayed in Bangalore for about 2.5 years now and having reached sort of a financial security in my own life, the inferiority complex is gone. In fact, yesterday, looking at so many good-looking people actually inspired me.

Back in 2017, I used to hit the gym almost five days a week. It had become a great habit. However, 2018 took a bit of toll on me and somehow, I ended up stopping going to the gym. The thing with life is, it is not always a forward-looking journey. It is filled with loops – sometimes the loops take you forward, sometimes backward. Not always you are moving linearly towards your final goal. I feel growing up is about accepting this and not beating ourselves up on missing a set goal. There is a reason why new year resolutions do not work for the most part. Life takes a dig at you almost everyday, and to stay put to a fixed set of goals is difficult. Sometimes, the changing goals are not bad either, it means you are responding to the lemons life is throwing at you.

Nonetheless, yesterday, I was so excited that I thought I’d definitely go to the gym. I had already walked a lot yesterday, since we were at the mall for close to four hours. Besides that, I had gone to buy groceries as well, which is another half an hour of walk to and fro. Unfortunately, when I went to the gym, there was no light, none of the switches was working! I don’t know when this happened, but last time I checked, people used to hit the gym in the evenings on weekends.

Then I thought I’d go in the morning, between 8 to 9 today. I went to bed on time, around 11.45 PM, much earlier than my usual 1-2 AM. And guess what? The mosquitoes were so annoying that I was up close an hour in the morning around 5 AM. And then I finally got up from the bed at 10 AM! Another missed goal, there!

Anyway, I am not going to let this affect me. I will figure out some other form of exercise (there is a TT court at office, probably will put that to use). The idea is to get back to the usual scheme of things (by which I mean a healthy, happier lifestyle) by this weekend. I’ll keep you guys updated! 🙂

 

The Happiness Project | Day 1

There are times in our lives when we are at a certain juncture. In these moments, you need to take a hard, long look at your life and make certain changes.

For a large part of 2017, I was depressed. For me, depression manifests in two forms:

1. Self-loathing, crying at the sad state of life and starting to believe that nothing better will happen again
2. Being unable to sustain happiness for a long time, frequent mood swings through the day

2018 is an important year in my life. I have been out of college for the last three years. I have been working in my first job for close to 2.5 years. There has been a lot of learning. To be honest, I am a much confident woman today than I was 2.5 years back. But this confidence has come at the cost of desensitization. I am a lot more confident today because I care a lot less. I also understand that most things in life come in phases, so the bad times are not going to be permanent. But that the same time, I have seen good things end and I have been finding it very difficult to adjust to it. Nothing feels permanent anymore, and to an extent, it is true. Nothing really is permanent.

This is something that has been bugging me for a while now. If you know nothing is permanent, how do you still find sources of happiness in everyday living? How do you stop yourself from feeling negative?

I don’t have a direct answer to that. But to answer the question, I decided to take a look at my childhood self. When I was younger, I could just laugh at silly things. I was so full of curiosity. When we got internet connection at home for the first time, for limited number of hours in a day, I used to literally make a list of things I wanted to search. There was a hunger to learn new things. Today, I have internet access 24*7, but I rarely search things. I don’t download movies by the GB from Torrent anymore. Desensitized to everything, like I said.

I feel that in order to be happy again, I need to find that childhood version of myself and find out what her priorities were:

1. Learn new things
   1. Read more books
   2. Watch more movies
   3. Learn a language
   4. Learn to play an instrument
   5. Learn about world history
   6. Learn about world politics
2. Travel the world
3. Meet new people
4. Converse in English
   1. Improve vocabulary
   2. Improve pronunciation
5. Build her own home
6. Grow plants
7. Achieve goals
8. Grow hair long
9. Be a boss
10. Write everyday, be a published author

When you are a kid, there are set goals in life. After you get a job, the goals are not that clearly defined. When do you switch your job? How much money should be you saving every month? When do you start planning for your marriage? Will you ever find true love?

None of these questions have textbook answers. Everybody’s situation is different, everyone is trying to find the answers in their own ways.

Anyways, the goal for me, for the remaining part of 2018 is to reconnect with that childhood version of myself, be the person who I always wanted to be as I was growing up.

Which is why, I am going to write a post every day for the remainder of May, no matter how difficult my schedule is. This is one of my first steps towards getting back on track. A lot of this writing is probably going to be very personal. But maybe, some of that experience might help some of you in some part of your life – that’s the only reason behind putting this online. Glad to have you all as part of my recovery journey.

Until tomorrow!

Love, unrequited

There is something beautiful in getting to know a person. To spend solitary moments with him/her in the wee hours of a morning, sitting in the balcony of a high-rise, watching the stars watch over the Earth and her inhabitants, fast asleep. There is something beautiful in munching on the past, a past that possibly has no bearing to the upcoming future, or perhaps, has everything to do with it.

There is something beautiful in sharing simple moments, without the expensiveness of food or extravagance of a well-arranged party. There is something beautiful in just discussing the past, looking at digital copies of a faded past – a past that is sepia in our memories, but still as colorful in their digital versions.

There is something beautiful in well-balanced silence. Silence that comes in between conversations, naturally, not because all that could be said has been exhausted, but because they add subtext to what has been told – in deep understanding and acceptance.

There is a lot of pain in hopes that will possibly never be fulfilled. I wish I could say there was something beautiful in love that is unrequited, something beautiful in the pain, something beautiful in the missing. But what is possibly beautiful in a flower that’s nipped in the bud? A promise of a beautiful future, a future that will never be.

Give me a solid promise. Give me a solid future. For once, give me something that I can hold onto, something as solid as the comfort of a hug in a restless night, something that calms me to sleep after weeks of insomnia.

Love, unrequited.

All these free moving feet, yet, freedom is a rare luxury!

As I write this, I am listening to In the End by Linkin Park. “I tried so hard… in the end, it doesn’t even matter.”

I think it nicely summarizes how I feel right now. Sometimes, when are you in a truly calm state, when you are having a conversation with yourself, you think about the deeper issues which you do not discuss with anyone else. For example, why is there so much pain in the world? Is there God?

Sometimes, I wonder, is life a forward moving journey? As your cells age, as your cheeks wrinkle and greys appear in your hair, do you always move in a linear progression, moving on from one experience to the other, learning things? Or is it rather a game of snake and ladder? You are constantly trying to move ahead, but circumstances, situations, keep pulling you backward. You feel you are moving ahead, but all the while, you are probably regressing. You might reach that final square too, but only if you are too lucky.

The answer is both. There are simple mistakes that we make, things that we learn from and make the correction part of our lives. But there are other issues which are deep-rooted. Sometimes, we don’t even realize these are issues. We jump from one mistake to the other, like a deer caught in a flashlight, confused, scared.

But today’s post is really about freedom. Everyday, each one of us, move from point A to point B, our free feet taking us wherever we want to go physically. Yet, how many of us are truly free? How many of us left last night behind ourselves, as hopeless as it was, and decided to live today like it was truly a new day, without the accumulated baggage of our lingering past?

Everyday when I go to bed and cannot fall asleep, I crave for a freedom from the thoughts swarming in my mind. Thoughts which are like buzzing bees without a hive to go back to. Thoughts which just swirl up, digging up the past in a new light, giving new meanings to things that have happened, giving new intonations to conversations that are long lost in the silent chambers of the past.

Meanwhile, the LP guys scream, “I will break away, and find myself today…”

I really want to find myself, that free me, who does things as she likes. She who does not require validation from anyone. She who is not a slave of the past. She moves like the wind through the present without the worry of the future being another version of the past.

Someday. Someday!