Notes to self

A set of reminders for a better everyday.

1.) Focus on being present in the moment . This has been a recurrent theme in my blog of late too. Learning the art of doing this from 14-month-old D.

2.) Set apart time for fitness. Work out at home, resume yoga, meditate for a while, go for a walk. Was regular with this but been lethargic ever since I got home to be with parents.

3.) Read good books. And read more often.

4.) Listen to music. Surprised that this is on the list because this is the one thing I used to do all the time. Now, though, my phone’s always on mute but I do play music in the background when D is eating or playing. But it’s mostly devotional or classical music, thanks to my family. Maybe pick different kinds of music too, so D is exposed to more variety.

5.) Mindless social media surfing needs to stop. My fingers and wrist hurt after a point!

6.) Start driving your car. Enough with the excuses and the baseless fears.

7.) Wear sarees more often, and learn to drape with more finesse. On a similar note, wear good clothes, give away stuff you don’t wear. Been doing this in regular intervals but wardrobe optimisation is a life-long process.

8.) Focus on self care. Seriously. It’s about time. Treat yourself to a good hair cut or a pedicure every few months at least.

9.) Practice patience. Easier said than done especially for someone like me who’s most impatient. But, but, I’m already doing a lot better than the last few weeks ever since I felt myself spiralling out of control. Point number 1 , aka, mindfulness, has helped.

10.) Get on top of your finances. Pending PF withdrawals, invoices, investment status, mutual fund returns, SIPs… get them all sorted one by one.

11.) Pick your projects. I’ve been turning down out a lot of work that’s come my way these days because I realise it’s not important now. Maybe it’s a good idea to say an outright No rather than reeling under the pressure once you’ve agreed to take on said work and then opting out. I want to spend more time with D. She’s my number one. Work scene seems more manageable now.

12.) Ask for help. You can’t and don’t have to do everything yourself. I can count on family and friends to help with babycare and more or just talk.

13.) Stay in touch with friends. And get out more to meet them. Also don’t shy away from forging new friendships.

14.) Do things you love. Sing, bake, cook, paint, photograph, write, work, laugh, play with abandon, with passion and zero expectations. And don’t think about how you’ll be perceived or if you’re good or bad. Treat everything as an opportunity to learn. Try it without holding back. Without seeking validation.

15.) stay grateful and positive. You are in a god place.

16.) Cut yourself some slack. It’s all right.

If it’s morning, it has to be Madras

2016 has not been an easy year. It will go down in history as a rubbish year ravaged by war, cruelty, natural calamities, of demonetisation and of Trump winning the US elections. It also saw the passing away of some of the greatest minds in the world of music and the arts, including some all-time favourites like Bowie and Prince.Closer home, December has been a nightmare for Madras-it was the floods last year, and now, it’s the demise of Jayalalitha and the brutal cyclone that has turned my favourite city into an apocalyptic wasteland. I’m sure the city will rise up it to it, like it always has.

Personally too, 2016 is likely to be a turning point in many ways, on retrospect. It has been a year of loss, but also one of learning. After M lost his dad, I find myself thinking a lot about death; it may seem morbid, but I’m trying to be more pragmatic about it, and find constructive ways to deal with the pain, and M and I now have conversations about what we could do to make our lives less complicated. Do we have nominees for our bank accounts? Do we know our financial credentials? Stuff like that. And trust me, while I would shun such conversations like the plague earlier, now I realise that it’s absolutely important, and it need not necessarily be uncomfortable or morbid.

Then there was my surgery after which I’ve come to the conclusion that health is indeed wealth. Extremely cliched, yes, but you never realise how much you take for granted until you have to spend months on end recuperating from an open surgery. So I’ve been off alcohol for more than five months, and while I was never big on drinking anyway, now I stay away from it completely. No sugary drinks either.

On the work front too, I’ve learned that it’s not enough to just be damn good at what you do, you need to make yourself visible, make some noise in front of the right people, all of which seem like too much work to me. I’m happy to be left alone, really. I’d gone to an office party reluctantly last night and spent most of my time fidgeting with my phone and got so bored after an hour or so that I booked myself a cab and left. I’m not one of those extremely socially awkward individuals though I can sometimes get restless if I don’t know anyone well enough. I need at least one person I share a good rapport with to sort of distract myself from the sea of humanity at a social gathering. And in my current office, I find it hard to connect with colleagues-they’re too intimidatingly cool (or they try to be), they dress up like they’re off to a party every single day, complete with make-up, and there’s so much emphasis on superficiality and showing off and I feel like I’ve nothing to talk to them about. It’s a very Delhi thing I guess, and something I’ve come to hate about the city and its flaky people. I’ll always be an outsider here.

While working in a travel magazine might seem glamorous and fun to a lot of outsiders, the reality is quite different. I don’t get to travel at all, on work, I mean; outside of it, I travel quite a lot, and whatever I write in the magazine is mostly based on my own holidays and rare occasions when I do get to go somewhere on assignment (Note: it happened just twice this entire year). You wouldn’t believe the number of promotions and research-based pieces and sales pitches I need to churn out, and the amount of time I spend chiselling copies to perfection or writing captions for pictures, changing fonts and following up with people to send in their stories. Besides, the only kind of articles I get to do are mundane interviews and uninspiring hotel and restaurant reviews in the city. But I don’t mind the job itself – the silver lining here is that it’s honestly been a learning curve and I’m sure this experience will come in handy. Plus I’ve been taking up online courses and I’m driven to learn new stuff and build my skills, so to that extent, the job gives me the time and space- it’s not all-consuming.

In other news, I’ve been waking up at 6 am every day, despite the biting cold. And I realise how much I love early mornings – the 6-am-filter coffee, Tamil news on TV, old Hindi songs on B4U, a shady channel – today though they seem to be playing only Ajay Devgun songs for some reason – the quiet, the reassurance that you can take on the day and the fact that I’m supremely efficient, well-planned and productive. For me, mornings are not a time to lounge or plonk in front of the TV; it’s when I get a lot of stuff done and out of the way and busy mornings are the best kind of mornings. Delhi, however, is not a morning city at all. Madras, on the other hand, is a proper morning city, much like most of Tamil Nadu. I miss the buzz around Margazhi; morning visits to the temple, pretty kolams everywhere, sumptuous breakfasts filled with steaming hot idli-vadai-pongal…and the morning kutcheris and lec-dems, walks in the park. Delhi, on the other hand, has the worst kind of breakfast. I do not approve of samosas, jalebis and desi-ghee-slathered parathas as breakfast material. Nope.

I’m also excited to announce that we might be shifting out of the city in the next three months, hopefully. And there’s a possibility that we may be moving to Hyderabad, a city I’ve only heard good things about. Fingers crossed.

5 types of people to ignore

I’m not a people person at all. I’d rather watch a sitcom and eat pizza at home than dress up to go for a party. Making conversation with a bunch of people is not my forte – it’s way too much effort. I need to rehearse some of my lines and hope I get an opportunity to deliver them, and if I do, then it has to come across as spontaneous, not forced. Too much pressure.

I always worry about what to do with my hands when I’m not holding a glass or not pretending to be busy on my phone.

Yet, over the years, I have made efforts to meet new people, make new friends, and it has been rewarding in so many ways. It has made me realise that there are plenty of people who’ve had worse life journeys than me, and who I can relate with and have meaningful, honest conversations with. Doesn’t matter if I’m socially awkward.

It has also helped me re-assess some of my own friendships. You remain friends with some people in your life because you were in the same college, same hostel, same room, same school, same neighborhood, but somewhere down the line, their masks drop and you see them for who they really are. And you don’t like what you see.

You understand that they’ve changed for the worse – you sense it in their accents (the way they suddenly seem to roll their Rs and Ls), in the fake hurried, busy tone they talk to you, in the way they always seem to brag about the parties they went to, in the way they seem to always cancel their plans to visit you, in the last minute, without even bothering to call, because ‘something just came up’, in the way they subtly put you down in front of people or feign happiness for the good things that happen in your life, when deep down they couldn’t care less.

I have categorized some of these people, so it’s easy for me to not take them too seriously.

Special snowflakes

These people were/are obviously pampered by their family, so they grew up believing they are unique and awesome, and everyone else is shit. Also, no one has ever told them the truth – they suck. They never know what it’s like to fight for something – everything’s handed to them on a platter. Yet, they screw it. But it’s not their fault, because they are frikkin special.

Self-righteous bores

The ones who seem to have solutions to all problems plaguing the world today – from the internet to ISIS to consumerism to relationships, but feel that they are somehow beyond these petty issues and other worldly pleasures, because they did Yoga once, or tried to be vegan at some point. Well, you are part of the problem, peeps.

Big talkers

In school, we were told that empty vessels make the most noise. It’s usually the first thing that comes to my mind when I’m with people who can’t stop talking about these big plans they have for themselves. They usually don’t follow it up with action. I never trust these people. Shut up and do something already.

Superficial douchebags

I have seen some people I know turn into shallow, superficial douchebags in front of strangers and other friends – they flutter their eye lashes annoyingly often, nod more vigorously and do that little fake-laugh thing, pretend to enjoy dubstep when they have no idea who or what it is and speak with a fake accent (I don’t understand why a lot of people do this in India. Like, how do you pick up a British or American accent while having lived all your life in south India? Also, why does that accent come up only when you talk to some people?). Besides, they don’t seem to have a grasp of anything they talk about – they know things at a superficial level, but not deeply enough to have a full-fledged conversation around it. You know what I mean? They kill my vibe.

The I-Me-Myself person

Granted, we are all narcissistic at some level, but there are people who take it up a notch and cross that respected thin blue line that separates tolerable from irritating. All conversations have to revolve around them; if not, they steer these conversations to make it about them. And they are not even interesting things but mundane details on what they cooked, how everyone raved about their amazing brownies or how that hot guy couldn’t stop checking them out. Well, you are flattering yourself folks. Also, no one wants to listen to you.

So now that this is out of the way, I can focus on all the good people in my life whom I love.

Humblebragging re-visited

So I read this piece in The Atlantic today on ‘Why Humblebragging Doesn’t Work’ and I’m glad that I’m not alone on this. The world hates humblebraggers. There’s some hope for the human race after all.

It reminded me of this post I wrote in March. Edited it a bit, so do read it, if you haven’t.

This is probably my shortest post ever. Which is good. I must not ramble.

Have a great day, people:)

Don’t look back in anger

I am quite angsty. If you’ve been reading my blogs, you’ll know that I tend to get somewhat annoyed with people in general. But if you meet me in person, I’m not all that angsty. I can be surprisingly pleasant and friendly, even funny. Because that’s how I am as a person. It’s only when I sit and think of things I hate and worry about, that all my negative emotions surface. It’s weird that I actually set apart time to obsess over things I hate.

I was talking to my friend (after a long time) last night and we were both excited about how much we have in common. Sadly, it turned out they were not exactly happy, positive things. For instance, we’d both had rough journeys right from childhood, had gone through depression and had overcome some pretty difficult times. Which we realised made us stronger, but unfortunately very bitter too.

We spoke about how we are bitter that people we know and love (like our close friends) have it so easy in life. It’s not fair that people have fancy beach weddings, supportive families and shitloads of money, when we had to work our asses off and risk everything to get what we wanted. It’s not fair that they get to travel the world and do anything they want, when we were never allowed to do any of that and even if we wanted to, it would have involved way too much unnecessary family drama; and besides, we were too busy dealing with much bigger issues and even thinking of something as luxurious as a solo trip or a night out was out of the question. So, while we are happy for the people we love, it’s difficult not to compare our journeys with theirs, and be a bit jealous too, in the process.

Does that make us terrible people? Are we being smug and snobbish? I don’t know, because I’d like to believe that deep down, we are nice people. We are fun, and we love our friends. Also, we feel terrible about ourselves for being so bitter, although we are not rude or hurtful when we speak to these people. Do we just embrace this quirk and live with it the rest of our lives, or should we change our attitude and work at being less angsty and hence, happier?

Of course, the latter, because don’t we all want to be positive and happy? So, here’s a thing I read somewhere. I’ve started applying it in my everyday routine and with time, I’m sure it will help. It involves writing down at least three positive things that happened during the day that you are thankful for. I’ve been doing it every night before going to bed, since last week. I’m hoping that I will soon be able to appreciate and respect everyone’s journey and feel genuinely happy for them without any tinge of bitterness. At least, that’s the aim.

Also, this little exercise helps people like me who are always seeing the worst in every situation. It forces you to focus on positive happy things, thereby shielding negative emotions. So instead of obsessing over things you hate, you can now start obsessing over things you love. And delight in small victories, so you don’t feel the need for someone else to appreciate you all the time.

In other news, my favourite band Alt-J is coming to Delhi next month and I’m super excited. Hence, Alt-J playlist on loop all of today, here and here