Cancel Culture

 In Indian mythology, women used to have a room to be angsty in. I won't say women in general, but queens did. They could go weep, cuss, curse, mutter, fling their jewels and wipe off their kohl and just brood. Like be passive aggressive to the point where everyone in the kingdom knew they were brooding and then at the end of the hissy fit, they either got what they wanted or they didn't, with the added bonus that they felt better. So this 'Kop bhavan' has been modernized by me and I call it my 'cope room' now. When I want to unplug, oil my hair, cry, not go out, sulk, I can just turn my bedroom into my cope room.  

I don't know if it's me growing old, or it's social media, but I just see a lot of people around me harking back to our cultures in the times gone by. CULTURE. Errrrrrgh. Tradition. Bleeeeghhhh. It's like a daily micro aggression for me. 'We used to live in joint families. Today's kids don't know to get along with each other and respect elders'. Duhhhhhh!!!  You didn't teach your kids to respect their elders. Most others did. You are the one who broke away from the joint family and don't want to live with your brothers in the first place.  I get that. No one wants to live in a village, tilling the land in the hot sun or worse, live in a two bedroom apartment in a city with 6 married siblings. But if you want your married children to live with you, it's not a joint family, it's just children living with their parents. Haven't we all enjoyed the merits of spending quality and quantity of time with our loved ones during COVID?  So yeah the universe has a way of balancing out our extremes. Also, (hush it's a little secret) you can be a cultured family, without being joined. 

Then there's thoseidiots, who will go on and on about our traditional attires. Let's do a saree marathon! Yeah it's fun to see a million sarees. But other than a nice insta post, it does nothing. It's not helping weavers. (most sarees come from a factory anyways). No one's going to shed their gym attires and start training in sarees. But you'll see people going ' Women can do whatever they want in sarees'. No they can't. And in the past, no they didn't.  Also women, are already going to offices, parties, cooking and sleeping in their sarees. Don't make them train with sweat running down their thighs and the sun burning their bare backs. It comes at a great cost to comfort. And please don't show me Milind Soman's mom running a marathon in a saree with no shoes. Are you serious? I need slippers in the house even, coz I have air conditioning and I need warm feet. And no, I'm not jumping in a swimming pool with 6 meters of pleated fabric either. And I'm truly grateful for all of it.

Then there's food. I was recently admonished for buying my son a drink of 'Bubble (Boba) tea'. Really? Should we all go back to a life pre-sugars? Yes we'll drink buttermilk and fermented cumin water or something but is that even a life? I believe in having a piece of fruit occasionally. But no instant noodles, no white bread, no chocolate, no greasy bacon? Just a balanced diet of a vegetarian thali every day? No one did that. And if they did, some wretched soul - mostly a woman in a saree - was slogging away over the cooking pots.  We were not healthier 'back then' - whenever 'then' was. We were dying of polio and rickets and tuberculosis. And child birth. But there was no diabetes and hypertension you argue. Uggghhh The latter two are manageable and hit you in your 30's and 40's. Our thali (read khichdi coz that's what they mostly ate) eating ancestors were long dead at that age. 

I'm not dead at 30.  I want my pakoras, pastas, pizzas, popcorns and pepsis. Yes they're all bad foods but if you haven't had a white- chocolate Frappuccino at Starbucks, have you even lived? Even a little? We have invented technology and processed foods to help us slurp it down instead of chewing and grinding and munching on grains and bones. Ditto with apparel. If we want to go full on old culture - we should say goodbye to anything covering the upper body and/or giving it support. But we want our lycra, and our padded shoes and our yoga pants. Why do we want turn the clock backwards? Ditto with living arrangements. We choose our families and our living arrangements. We shop for good quality semen, look for labs with clean petri dishes, hire healthy uteruses, and invest in the best i-pads available to create our own modern version of the happy family. 

We've moved on. There's no going back. We have to adapt. The past looks rosy but it wasn’t! The 'Kop Bhavans' in history were dank attics. My 'cope room' is a modernized space where I can sulk AND type AND blast music. I however cannot use it as leverage to get what I want because :

1. I'm not a queen and 

2.  It's 2024. 

I can only get better!

Marry and Gay!

 The God Thoth, was congratulating himself on having invented the alphabet when Thamus, the God-king of Egypt said to him "this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth (quoted in de Santillana, p. 348).” When I first read these words, I was taken aback. Shocked even. Isn’t the written word superior to the spoken one? 

So I pondered for days and concluded, that the debate between memory and the pen will continue forever. As a society, we’re afraid of change,  Weren’t we all told that once homosexuals enter matrimony, it will be ruined for the man-woman variety? Nothing happened. On the positive side, we got gay divorces. Two men at each other’s throats?  Ahh!! Juicy!! I’ve counseled many a girlfriend in their marriages, but counseling a man how to deal with another man is really something! 

In seriousness,  the LGBTQ +++++ community has done so much for women. You know, the cat lady oeuvre? Where a single woman sipping wine, reading a book with a cat on her lap blanket and another two snuggled in her slippers was the ultimate fate every woman was told to be afraid of.  The gay mens of this world have made it glamorous to have kitties, read Jane Austen and flaunt vintage accessories.  So, girls single or married are now flaunting their pussy cats, and the hand made lap blanket either bought from ETSY or knitted by themselves. We are displaying our crafts. It’s like we women have come into their own thanks to men. Who happen to be white - mostly. 

The influencer/podcaster called Chris Williamson said a very interesting thing the other day. He said and I paraphrase, he said  that most of us have had great moms, and yet motherhood is not aspirational anymore! It struck a chord. So true. Becoming a mother, is not aspirational? Yes let’s do the caveats first - motherhood is not for everyone, and not everyone will be a good parent. But most will. We need our education, and it is paramount that we have jobs and economic stability. And we’re taking huge strides in the work force. Yet we’re afraid of parenting. We are made to believe that motherhood will be a disuse to our education.  Every 20 year old dreams of being an influencer on the ‘gram but no way a mother.  They want the big wedding, the picturesque honeymoon, but no child. Wanting to become a mother or making motherhood a goal is frowned upon (like being a teacher but that’s another rant for another day). Why? What will you influence by becoming an influencer? Give birth to your own influenceés and you can own that cult forever!! 

And here, I look up to the men of the LGBTQ community for help, especially if they happen to be white. I know they will make motherhood aspirational again. Celebs are already doing it. Elton John and his partner have two kids and they do the school run and nativity plays. Pete Buttigieg, took paternity leave!! How cool is that? And Tan France (Not white but has a white partner) from the queer eye advertises baby products and lives a fab lifestyle with baby et al.  Ooh and who can miss mentioning Mr. Martin. Ricky Martin, with his kids.Yeah he’s Latino - but of the white, blonde variety.  I’ve mentioned the makeup issue before, where women are arching their eyebrows and contouring like drag queens to look ultra-feminine. So maybe motherhood will also be made cool by the LGBTQ team of white men!

Quiet a few!

 “Your life will be very different if you don’t look at your mobile phone every two minutes". I was staring at this refrain for a few minutes. It was posted by a woman who wanted to let people in on her success. I didn’t know what to make of it. Different, how? Like good different or bad different? And then it hit me, I’m reading this statement on a phone because I refreshed my social media two minutes ago, making this random stranger’s warning totally redundant. Worse, this stranger assumes I’ll take their advice because I want a different life.  Absolutely not!  I paid Apple big bucks (for me) so I could check the phone whenever I want. This is the life I desire. I’m on a swing surrounded  by petunias, knitting, and when I get a notification that someone has reacted to one of my messages,  I put the yarn away and make the phone scan my face so I can see the said reaction and then switch apps and crawl down into the internet abyss for a while until I reach the posts I saw a quarter of an hour ago and then I (re)take up knitting, satisfied in the knowledge that I have no pending social media occurrences. Yes, if I didn’t check my phone ever so often, I’d be living in 1988 and my life would be different

Another mantra I despise is "All bad situations teach us something and we should be grateful for those”. No and nope. I have no patience for people who were nasty to me in the past and although I learned to survive them, I’d be much happier being ignorant. Similarly, COVID 19 didn’t teach us anything worthwhile. We all already knew the world is full of greed, malice and racism. We all were well aware that SOME of our family members  love us. The only thing that the pandemic brought to the fore was ZOOM and Google MEET etc. They existed before but now employers can call meetings on Sundays and have quick group reflections in the middle of the night.  Corona put everyone through a mental grind. So do  situations like cancers, depressions, earthquakes and nasty people. They’re despicable. I refuse to learn anything from them. Nor am I grateful for anything they did to me. 

Forget the gratitude in the bad times, I like to complain when I’m good. Mercifully I live in these times where I have a lot to complain about and I’m glad I can rant about it.  I heard a comedienne recently mention that a blog post (or anything on social media) is a conversation no one is willing to have with you. And it’s absolutely true. That’s why I don’t write as much as I should. I only write stuff that I can’t talk to anybody about. And then it got me thinking, what about authors? Is the stereotypical, taciturn person who can pen an eloquent soliloquy, unable to engage in a dialogue in real life?

Artists, on the other hand can blab. Not being an artist myself and not having an artistic aptitude, I feared and revered anybody who could hold an exhibition. Age and circumstances ironically, make me interact with these beings regularly and I can say unequivocally that the only people who fib more than artists are politicians. And even those guys have some accountability. Once in a while, some journalist or editor will spill the ’T’ on a politician. But who calls out anyone in the art world? If you want attention, the spotlight, be pampered and want an award for having ‘struggled’, just call yourself an artist. 

I’m not dunking on the art, but really the explanations, artists give for their work is bizarre. A crocheted shawl on sand represents -  growth! How? I have a shawl flung on one of my chairs for nearly a month, it just represents lethargy.  A light on a plumbing fixture represents the unfinished. Duh! In my life, it’s called a hazard not art. Let me not even get started about people who use canvasses and brushes.  Most artists are pretentious prats who get by in the world because of their attitude. The confidence with which they explain their thought process, is often nothing profound but only verbose garbage. I have thoughts like those everyday and I dispel them, for the benefit of human kind. When I see a blue apple on canvas and the artist tells me he was thinking of innovation, I’m intrigued. What came first, the blue apple or the stupid explanation? It really riles me up that these folks take centre stage and go on and on about unity and peace and climate change. Has anyone peeked into the art world? A Miss World competition seems like a monastery in comparison.

Artists are insecure, backstabbing, spoilt, egotistic beings. The art world is a constant race for exhibition venues. They’re the ones who always say, money means nothing to them and yet they’re always scrambling to get buyers to shell out vulgar amounts of cash for their mind flatulence. An artist’s success parameter, like everything commercial, is the number of pieces sold. I’ve never come across a sculptor, painter, installer or whatever, that creates and exhibits for the love of it  and not for cashola. I think we’d all just be better off , if these professions were seen as professions and not as ‘arts’. The sculptors in the ancient world were sculptors, not artists. Maybe, there should be a graduation level, like if you’ve done 350 exhibits and not said a word about your ’thought process', only then you may call yourself a member of the club artistic. 

For now, I’m just grateful for people in my life to whom I speak with regularly or else I’d have to become an avid blogger! 

The calm during the storm

I once heard (on good authority) that orphanages are often quiet places. Babies don’t cry for help nor attention because no one responds to their cries. Being a new mom at the time I was shook up for weeks when I heard that. And since then have read much about the We can train babies to not seek out comfort THAT easily? Really? Little babies just give up when neglected? It’s awful and gut wrenching. And yet there are whole parental advice columns and theories how infants should be left alone once all their needs are met. They should learn to ‘self-soothe’. They can’t. They’re babies.  Humans cry out for a reason - they need food, they’re in pain, or just need plain comforting. It’s okay to need someone to hug.

 

Has our society forgotten this? Adult humans are expected to be stoic these days. Anyone who cries or asks for help is someone who ‘creates drama’. And if it’s a woman, then of course she’s hysterical. Why is stoicism not only acceptable but even encouraged? Just like babies, are people trained not to ask for help and comfort? Or do they give up after having hollered in every direction? Or is it both? 

What does an adult do to survive a life of neglect? A job loss? A loveless marriage? A difficult child? A friendship betrayed?  Does one self-soothe crying into a handkerchief ? Just deal with it without mentioning or asking for help. Isn’t humanity all about seeking help and connecting? 

Surprisingly a lot many relationships, romantic and otherwise die on the silent hill.  Teenage girls (mostly) hash it out and let it be known how they’ve been hurt and what amends need to be made. And then they break up with their friends or continue to be BFFs. When our friendships teeter we let go without so much as a protest.God forbid we're seen as needy. We shouldn’t grieve the time and effort spent on building a relationship, just let it go silently with dignity. Being dignified but lonesome trumps over being forthcoming and in a relationship. Lovers have spats. Marriages just die wordless deaths. Especially, the good ones. The magazines do tell us to ‘communicate’ within our community. Erm, except that the parent that goes to the school the most to fix pick-up times and recess rules is the one that is hated by both school admin and the PTA equally. Even though both benefit from the ‘issue raising’.  

The person that consistently communicates effectively is a bloody pest. The one who’s ‘uncomfortable and afraid’ to communicate is seen as the silent underdog and martyr by the individual himself and society as a whole. Crying, arguing, talking and asking for help is somehow considered less civilized. And yet as humans that’s what we’re hardwired to do. N’est ce pas? 

When our heads hurt, our hearts break, our guts burn and our egos shriek, why do we have to grin and bear it  and keep calm?  Are we supposed to see our rivers burn, forests deplete, children gunned and poor trampled in stoned silence? Or should we speak up?  Holler, rave and rant. Or do we have one set of rules for the individual but another for the collective? No one tells us to see a therapist when we’re enraged due a social cause, but if you got your heart broken - just get over it. A therapist will help. And yet adults don’t get over it, do they? The human spirit cries, begs, pleads and hopes - because it’s okay to need someone to hug.

Decent Proposal

My whole life sometimes feels unvalidated and unwitnessed because I don’t have a definite tribe. I don’t align with people based on ideology, region, religion, institution or even hobbies. I mean Ravelry is hardly a place to discuss philosophy. Don’t get me wrong, I still do manage to find friends here and there but they’re an eclectic mix and don’t necessarily share my love for Spooks and Eartha Kitt (or even know about them). Occasionally I’ll find a 'WEST WING' lovers group on social media or even see my passion for LOTR reflected in Stephen Colbert and James Franco but I don’t actually hang out with them. 

So it’s only a tiny coterie of friends and some family ( the ones I like) that either listen to or read my diatribes. And as it happens they’ve accepted some of the lingo that I've spawned and some that I’ve appropriated. Let me begin with one of mine. ‘Smugly’. Not the adverb ‘Smug-ly’ but the noun I’ve coined. ‘Sm-Ugly. I coined it when I was telling my daughter about a man with good facial features, he looked really ugly because of the smugness of his expression. He’s so smug he’s ugly. Hence SmUgly. 

                                   

At a recent Yoga session, the instructor told us to "hold the pose according to your comfortability”. Why say “comfort and ability” and use two words when comfortability says it all. 

Hindi speakers will understand this more clearly than the non-Hindi ones. It's a simple phrase ‘What goes of my father?’. Basically means, no skin of my nose but since it’s a trans-literation, the joy it gives when used aptly is infinite. I take no credit for birthing this one either, it just fell into my lap.

A recently coined word by yours untruly is ‘Vapidoid’. It’s self explanatory : someone just posting vapid garbage robotically.  Of course I coined it for a particular individual (he stays anonymous) and my friend (he needs anonymity) who heard it first liked it a lot and came up with the idea to use it in Hindi as well. ‘Vapidoid kahin ka'.  Love it!

‘Try Hard’ has been in use for so long in my coterie, I don’t know of its origins although I suspect it may be a friend with an army of brothers. A ’try hard’ is  a social climber but mostly an unsuccessful one.  You just have to say ,‘She’s a try hard’ and it’s implicit, that the said person will walk on glass to gain notoriety.

Then there’s ‘analyzation’. No, no hold your horses, it’s not what you think. I once heard a teacher explain how students will present the ‘analyzation of their work’. Yes she meant ‘analysis’ but since then, every time I see Pundits on TV giving us analysis that they’ve clearly pulled out of their own behinds, I call it ‘analyzation’. My people know what I mean. 

My favorite self-coined word is ‘villageous’. It basically means ‘villager like’. Simpleton and rural don’t just make the cut like villageous. You know some people have that manner, and look - you know it when you see it.  Jeremy from Top Gear is a prime example of someone being villageous. 

‘Attachmeant’ is a word I wish I’d known in 2003. It’s not about love or infatuation, it’s simply the e-mail attachment that you forgot to attach. The one you meant to send. It’s concise and the intranets are responsible for this perfection. 

Words are mere words. Friendships and relationships cannot be based on words alone. Let alone made up ones. What keeps me bound to my folks is that we’re all decent people.  Not brilliant, nor outstanding nor benevolent (we could be though) folks. Just run of the mill - decent. We are bound by a common love of everyday niceties. We say our Ps and Qs, we listen, wave at motorists who allow us to pass, and if we’re driving, we let pedestrians pass and wait for another car to honk at them.

However there has been a depletion of decency. We need people not to click on the Johny Depp - Amber Heard divorce trial videos, we need TV anchors who don’t cuss out their guests, we just need to choose to do the decent thing occasionally. Worry about pollution, surrender nukes, share vaccines, food and coming back to friends, we should take care of our allies. Not provide them with ammo to take on an enemy they have no chance of winning against. 

Ignoramus knows more!

 One of the things that I was completely unaware of, was the Pulitzer prize for criticism. It hurt! The moment  I heard this news, I was in despair. How can such a prize be in existence and how am I not a recipient for at least three years in a row? Knowledge is supposed to make you all-knowing, calm and serene and all that but this info just made me made jealous, ignorant and frustrated. The next thing they’ll tell me is that there is a prize, Pulitzer or otherwise for cynicism and, and, AND I’m not on that winners list either. I’m offended on my own behalf. Better that than being offended on another’s behalf, right?

Jokes apart, one would think knowledge is the most sought after commodity in the world but it isn’t. Mentees are. No matter how knowledgeable one isn’t, people seek followers, interns, probationers, students, fans etc. In short mentees. All of us want to be mentors. Every General wants a rookie,  every politician wants an intern (for more than one reason but let’s stick to the topic), every CEO desires a blue eyed boy, every artist wants an apprentice, doctors, diplomats and decorators are not far behind either. It’s astounding that being at the pinnacle of your career is never enough, what defines you is how many underlings you have managed to churn out whose successes can be claimed by you. Everyone, be it an athlete who takes up coaching, or an actor who takes up direction, everyone wants to invariably become a teacher. Even Oprah - the talk show goddess with the midas touch, has churned out Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Nate Berkus etc. and ended up opening a school.

We teachers are the lucky ones though. We don’t have to spend 30 years of our lives, making a reputation in order to gather valuable students. We get them on day one. The opportunity to dispense gyan, point to the right direction, open windows of thought and inquiry are handed to us on a platter from the get go. What child hasn’t gone home and emulated their teacher?  We are the ultimate profession and yet the worst paid of the lot. Everyone wants to become a teacher, but no one really wants to pay for those of us who actually trained to become one and are good at it.  We don’t just deal with new recruits, we deal with brand new humans!

The millennium has also brought out a whole host of ‘motivational speakers’. To do what?  God knows, but Mcphilosophy is being dispensed at a rate that will put the Deepak Chopra quote generator to shame.   This urge to assume you can motivate people has gone viral during the pandemic. Put six idiots on a screen and one of them is motivating the other five - to become a motivator. The need to become a celebrity and be known beyond immediate circles has somehow been amplified by virtual conferences. Again, we won this round of the lottery. Teachers were stars. 

Most of us worked year round with no vacations, but more importantly we hit the ground running. There was no lockdown for us. Not even for a day. We went from classrooms to living rooms even bedrooms in a matter of hours. We were performers. For the last year and half, we had a captive audience, not just of students but their plus twos. Parents, grandparents, helpers, extended family, cousins, siblings, just everyone.  We were in people’s homes and people were in ours.  We did our jobs pantless but with a full face of makeup! Our screens were carefully positioned in one of the most beautiful corners of our homes and we had 100 percent attendance. Kids skip school, but with parents working from home, the parents needed a structure to their day and we did that service. We had class picnics, Christmas parties and Diwali celebrations online. And like well paid celebrities, we had a massive fan following!

Teachers teach, teachers facilitate learning, teachers encourage students to teach and teachers create an environment conducive to learning so that they can do their jobs and do it well. Skills and knowledge need to be passed on - and mentors should do so only for the love of their subjects and to ensure a protégé's success NOT as a measure of one’s own.

As difficult as breathing!

My mom is like a Scotch-Brite dish washing scrub pad. She is all spongy and soft on one side but if she flips she possesses this thin layer of strong, abrasive stuff that is remarkably strong and resilient. So when yours truly, packed her bags and along with the husband, traipsed into the hospital to get treated for the ‘rona leaving behind two COVID positive teenagers with mom, no one had any idea, that a long arduous journey was ahead of her, and that she would traverse it with love and grit. Yes, I spent a whole lunar cycle (or a menstrual one) being treated for the virus, whilst she took care of the house and two ailing children. Her love for me was undeniable. 

As friends came to know that I was positive, or was hospitalized, a lot of them responded with versions of ‘you’re strong and you’ll overcome it’. I was livid, my response was visceral. I didn’t want to hear those words. My brain knew that my well wishers were willing me strength but I didn’t want to hear it. I hate the strong woman trope, despise it. We women are weak, soft, vulnerable, sick and miserable just like men. And my strength wasn’t going to cure me. Conversely, I didn’t get COVID because I was weak. 

The ordeal ended in May and it’s my birthday now in August. My birthday is followed by Diana’s death anniversary. Each year I’m reminded I’ve outlived her and many other women, men too. Not to mention children. It bothers me a bit. How people who're better, smarter, kinder, definitely wayyy cooler than I can ever aspire to be, died.  They always do, COVID or not. Now me, I’m a poster child for the imposter syndrome. In a good week, I’m anxious, in a not so good one,  the Dunning - Kruger effect is on complete display and on bad days my EQ hits rock bottom.

That’s what happened during my hospital stay. I couldn’t imagine why people were praying for me and they were. They were doing it in groups. Family members gave up meals for my recovery, friends sent me Reiki, whilst others checked on my mom and kids regularly. Friends on other continents wanted to ensure my treatment was effective and even offered to take care of hospital bills. It was mind boggling. I could not make sense of any of it. Why? Why were my colleagues checking up on me? When they couldn’t reach me, they called the husband. Why were my erstwhile colleagues reaching out to me? So much love, so much of it was just not something I could make sense of. Why me? Then there were my students and their lovely parents. Little kiddos sending me video messages for my recovery and their parents wishing me well. 

I kept myself shielded from most of this display of love. Hardly spoke to anyone. Could not speak to anyone. My kids were good kids. Recovering from COVID in isolation themselves, not bothering their grandmother and going with the flow. The boy worked at his homework and the girl at her exams. Between headaches and fatigue, they managed life without complaints and were always cheerful when I spoke to them. Such unconditional love. The husband of course was the reason, I lived. I continue to live. From busing me to the hospital in time, caring for me each day in the hospital, day in and day out for a month, to learning soup and food recipes that make me stronger is all just the tip of the iceberg. All whilst he himself was infected and then recovering from COVID. There is so much more that he did and continues to do everyday, but I don’t want to share it all. It’s all my personal little love story. 

I’d be remiss if I don’t speak about the doctors and nurses and hospital staff who worked tirelessly in the COVID wards. I can talk about how restricting  it was for me to not move out of a room and not see anyone because they were all in PPE kits. But if I change perspectives, then I can’t imagine working in PPE kits either. Docs and nurses walking around with sweaty brows. No way to wipe off that drop of sweat that threatens to get into their eyes. They would just tilt their head backwards and tap on their glasses or shake their heads to dislodge the pool of liquid.  How do you focus on little needles and whatnots with your face being in sweat all the time? You can’t snack whilst on duty nor access the toilets whenever you feel like it. And then comes the sickness and death. So much of it. All the time. Without a reprieve, day after day, with each patient being VERY sick, and trying to save every one of them. The numbers increasing, the helplessness of seeing patients collapse because there were no beds and no Oxygen. The worst was seeing these doctors work relentlessly, only to be undermined by idiots ( religious or medical) who gave out misinformation for their 15 minutes of fame. Where did my doctors and nurses have the time to claim fame. They were the ones who kept the cogs rolling in the second wave. Or any wave. Young people who were giving it their best in the worst of times. Isn’t that the country we dream of? We have it. We don’t value it. 

I wanted to value everything. My hospital stay was peaceful and calm. I didn’t have to worry about work, the children were safe and in competent hands, the husband was beside me and I felt super healthy all the time, thanks to the docs. At one point of time, I told my doctor about my medical history and how that was probably hindering my recovery. He just laughed it all off calling me ‘very strong’. I AM NOT STRONG. I didn’t say that. Just rolled my eyes inside my head and went back to my day dreaming. I knew how I was going to live my life. Happily. I am going to create pockets of happiness in my life. Somewhere between work and chores I had forgotten to focus on things that made me happy. All my family and friends that I loved, I have had most of them on ignore, I’ll make sure I spend time with them. I’ll make a little happiness corner in my home, and go sit in for 10-15 minutes each day. I’ll meet more people. I’ll give more, and more willingly. I’ll be happier. 

There it is, thank you for your love and for wishing me strength! Willing it onto me - so I could be happy!

The LABEL prize

 This is going to be a short read. I recently came upon a tweet where the author wrote that suffering from a loss of smell and taste due to COVID was particularly hard on him because he’s a foodie. No, he’s not a chef or a food critic. He’s a run of the mill, food eater. What on earth does a foodie mean? Who isn’t one? And you really have to be privileged if the worst that you experience during COVID is the loss of smell. For me it was the best thing that happened. I have superb olfactory nerves and the fact that I couldn’t smell the liters of sanitizers that the docs used when coming in and out of my room was fabulous. I couldn’t smell the meds or the injection swabs or even the cleansers they used to clean my bathroom was a boon. More importantly, I had to live on hospital food for a month, and not having a sense of smell nor taste was the silver lining to a very dark cloud. So yes, back to foodies. Who are you people? What does it mean? Does it mean you like variety? Who doesn’t? Or does it mean you really savor your food? So do cows. They don’t call themselves grazies. 

In India there is the #sareelover!   Much like the foodie above, what does that mean? That one likes to wear sarees? That people collect them?  Everybody and their grandmother is a saree lover by that definition. Same thing with fashionistas. What does that mean? Going to shops, buying things and discarding them in three months? That’s just a fear of commitment. If three fourths of your wardrobe is not half as old as you are, I think you’re characterless.

Also, What if you’re in the education industry? You become an educator? W. T. F. does that mean? I have never seen a teacher go into a classroom and say "I’m your educator". Show me an adult who’s not one. Kevin Hart has a drunk in-and-out of jail father and he says, his father educated him on what NOT to do.  Nobody hires an educator. They hire a teacher, professor or coordinator etc. Why do teachers think being a teacher is not enough? They have to upgrade their profession into a more meaty term. Why do folks have to APPEAR to be fancier than they really are? We can use newfangled terms like ‘alternative facts’ but we all know what that means!  

Worst World Problems

 It’s a hot night and I’m in need of a sip of cool water. So in the wee hours, I wake up, wee, go to the kitchen, open the fridge, pull a water bottle out and as I raise my head to take a mighty gulp, my eyes fall upon the insides of the fridge and my own insides churn a wee bit. Guess what?  A fridge packed with boxes of good homemade leftover food. Glass bottles of chutneys, boxes of chutneys, half nimbus, medicines, creams, a huge stainless steel pot of MILK. Even at 3:00 AM I am ashamed. I can’t have the perfect life. Why does Dabur sell its rose water in a plastic bottle? Why can’t it be a garnet colored glass urn like thingy? Why is my fridge cluttered? Why is there a reusable steel pot of milk? Why can’t I have a disposable plastic gallon stored on the fridge door? I trudge back to bed almost ashamed and then it hit me. This was a Desi fridge. My ideals were  western. I am all woke about the western influence on body images and I preach to everyone that we are humans and not all of us want to be like ketchup bottles - tall, thin and no head. That is as far as my wokeness goes. I am influenced by the first world deep down and I want a fridge that looks like it came from the home of a tomato ketchup bottle - woman. 

I crawl into bed and battle with another squirt of guilt. I was upset at having a full fridge? The ingratitude of it all! That’s how life is. We are so influenced by certain ideals that when we don’t match  up to them, we think it’s all wrong. Meghan for example, her whole rant with the mighty Oprah was a first world problem. Who after Diana, didn’t know what royal duties entailed? You become a princess and then  you rant because you are expected to be a princess, so you resign from being a princess but now want to cash in on the celebrity of having been one? The Ingratitude of it all!  And wanting to kill yourself is absolutely no measure of your misery. I want to kill myself every time a taxi driver opens the door, pulls down his mask and ejects a gob of spit on the road, wipes his chin and gets back to driving. EVERYTIME! 

Even in COVID times. Speaking of the entitled,  I really feel bad for people who went on only two vacations this past year. Not. What a difficult year it has been - they had to go to Kashmir to ski because the Swiss mountains were inaccessible, and had to make do with Goa because the wretched govt. didn’t have flights to Hawaii. Yes, they contracted the virus, were a burden on the national healthcare system, probably contributed to infecting others around them and put their own children at risk but they were victims. They had to stay home boo hooo hoo. All of us spend considerable time and money acquiring, building, renting, buying, decorating our homes and now we have all been forced to make use of it. How terribly sad and boring! Why make use of the shelter we built for ourselves? Why let it protect us from outside forces? How have we humans devolved into being this stupid that our instagram lives matter more than being alive in real life? The ingratitude of it all!