Fifty shades of grey

 For the longest time, I was a very binary person as far as the world of right and wrong was concerned. I am not sure if this is because I am an INFJ by personality type or because I devoured Enid Blyton literature more than food during my formative years….but as far as I was concerned, things were either right or wrong, black and white and there was nothing in between.  This thought process was so deeply embedded that I never even considered that one man’s meat could be another’s poison.

Then I left home, and my horizons widened greatly. I made some really close friends who sometimes did certain things, which in the world of old me would have been the blackest of black deeds. However, I knew them in and out, and I knew what led them to doing some of these things. I knew that they were fantastic people who got carried away and made a mistake. And gradually, a new thought process started to develop. Everyone is human and no one is infallible. No one ever starts off wanting to break the “moral code” out of pleasure...it just happens and one gets so swept away out of necessity/emotion/insecurity, that one doesn’t realise one has overstepped his/her boundaries until it is too late to turn back.

Spending time with myself also gave me a lot of opportunities for self-introspection. I gradually started to recall a lot of things that I had done gravely wrong, a lot of people whom I had hurt deeply. Had I been a dispassionate observer, I probably would have been the first to condemn the behavior…but I was the wrong doer this time round. Who was I then to judge people or adopt a holier than thou attitude?

I am not saying that hurting others or acting purely in one’s own interests is acceptable. However, it is sometimes important to get the full picture, to understand the reason behind a person’s actions before condemning him/her. We hated Severus Snape for six books, until we realized that all his actions were those of a man who loved deeply and had been misunderstood. We thought Louis Litt was an insecure, jealous creature until season 5, when we understand what caused him to be this way.

Life is too short for grudges, pain and hatred. Why spend our lives judging or criticizing people when we can spend it laughing, loving and dreaming?  If someone doesn’t live up to your expectations, distance yourself and move on…invest your energies in those that do. And recall those whose expectations you didn’t live up to…it will make forgiving the people that hurt you much easier.

Life isn’t the amalgamation of vacation selfies, high end cuisine and impressive job titles that our social networks would have us believe. Each and every one is fighting some battle or the other…so smile and be nice..it wont make the battles go away, but it will give you the energy and grace to win the battles with your head held high!

Home away from home

Dear girl who is leaving home for the first time,

Congratulations on taking this brave and exciting step. I am sure you feel scared, excited, uncertain and free, all at the same time. Don’t worry…this is a step that will change your life like nothing else would and take you to a new level of growing up altogether.

If you are anything like what I was, then you may be in quite a mess at first. Everything will seem tough, frustrating and undoable. You may have advanced degrees in finance, but those aren’t going to help you find the fuse box in your apartment when the electricity conks off or give you the insight that silk isn’t a fabric for machine wash. You may have been able emerge victorious in fights with your sisters or parents, but your fierce landlord or bossy flat mates aren’t going to give in out of love for you. When you see your pitiable bank balance after paying rent and household expenses each month, the expression “Aate daal ka bhaav janna” will become more than just something you mugged up the meaning of for your Grade ten Hindi examination. These, however, are still easy obstacles to deal with.

There will be times when you will return after a horrible day to an empty house and you will pine for the love and comfort your family provided you in similar circumstances. If god forbid you are ill and stuck in bed all alone, you will remember how all your friends back home forced themselves into your room during similar situations back home, tolerated all your tantrums and cheered you up. When you are unsure of yourself and suffering from low self-esteem because of judgmental peers, you will miss all the people from your past life who stood up for you no matter what and made you feel that you were born to grace the “Fortune’s list of top 100” cover story. 

When you look back at all the times you wanted to break down, quit and take the first flight back home but didn’t, you will feel proud of your tenacity, your fighting spirit and your evolution. You will develop a deep appreciation for all the unconditional love and support you have received in your life. Your parents’ nagging or over-protectiveness will now be viewed out of fondness because now you know that their love shines through. Your friends’ fond teasing and gentle advice will be longed for, because now you know that they had no ulterior motive other than to see you happy and laughing. Simply put, you will become a better friend, daughter and human being.

The best part of this entire process is that it is a journey of self-discovery like none other. In the silence of solitude, the voices in your head will finally be heard. You will start to understand your insecurities, vulnerabilities, strengths and fears. More importantly, you will strive to change what you can and accept what you cant. And with that will come a remarkable sense of peace and happiness.

Maybe you will return to your home eventually, maybe you wont. Maybe you will have a family of your own, maybe you wont. But one thing is for sure…you are the only definite companion you are going to have for the rest of your life. That’s why, however tough it is, don’t give up on this journey till you are perfectly comfortable with yourself.  Everything else, will then, eventually fall in place.

Best regards,

Casper

Be fearless, be free!!

A few weeks ago, in a completely unintended way, I visited my campus. It was the first place I had lived in after leaving home and landing up there after such a long time jolted me back in time. I walked all around the sprawling campus and my chain of thoughts took a new turn…as I walked across the lawn and watched some kids playing with their Frisbee, I wondered why I had never done that in the year I lived there.Or why I never studied in the huge open study area and instead, was always cooped inside my small room. And then it hit me…I had always been scared. Scared of being judged, scared of being laughed at. I was worried that my lack of athletic ability would become the subject of joke or gossip and so I never indulged in anything remotely athletic. I was worried that my comfy attire of old tracks and a t shirt would become the subject of ridicule in the study area and so I never sat there. 

Today, five years later, these seem like such silly reasons to have stopped myself back then. More so, because the people that passed snide comments and whom I mortally feared aren’t even in my life anymore. And yet I let them come in the way of some fun times and great experiences.

How often do all of us do that? How often do we let our fear of being judged, ridiculed or gossiped about come in the way of what we truly want to do? We are surrounded my images of perfection…glossy selfies, vacation check ins, linkedin updates of promotions and we end up feeling inadequate as a result. But that’s an unfair competition isn’t it-you are comparing yourself on your worst day to others’ on their best days.

Besides, most of the people who intentionally put you down or make you feel miserable are probably doing it to cover up some insecurities of their own. Why let their pettiness pull down your self esteem? As long as you are honest with yourself about your shortcomings and strengths, how does it matter what others think or say? When I was a child and someone hurt my feelings, my father used to tell me that in five years’ time, in all probability, I wouldn’t even remember that person’s last name. And that is exactly how things have turned out most of the times.

It took me a long time to realise some of these things, to make peace with some of my shortcomings and failures. It also made me make some difficult choices-let go of people whom I loved deeply but who put me down relentlessly and made me feel bad about myself, to stand up for myself at work when I felt I was being treated unfairly and most importantly, to make my happiness a priority. However, the peace, calm and confidence it has brought me is worth the while. I still have a long way to go…I still have many ups and downs…but at least the journey has begun! 

A call for Cupid

(Cupid is the Roman god of love, affection and desire. It is believed that anyone shot by Cupid’s arrow was stuck with deep love and longing)

Dear Cupid,

I don’t believe we have ever met. I always held a grudge towards you because I believed you shot me with all the wrong arrows over time and messed up my life. In recent times, however, that belief has been changing. I slowly started realizing that you seem to have gone on some sabbatical for the longest time. Either that, or you have outsourced your job to some BPO in heaven (or wherever you are based) filled with quacks and have instead started focusing on materialistic things like giving IT whiz kids “get rich quick” app ideas like tinder or transferring your romantic skill sets to wedding planners, thus ushering in an era of over the top weddings.

I say this because I see the abysmal state of relationships all around me today. It is ironic that we are a generation that made DDLJ run in Maratha Mandir for over ten years, got Titanic a permanent place in romantic movie history and gave Leonard-Penny and Ross-Rachel a cult like following, as we are the biggest disbelievers and cynics of love today. Getting a date for an evening on tinder is as easy as ordering a pizza on foodpanda. We are a generation that prides itself on convenience and comfort, but we seem to have forgotten that the best things in life come only when we throw ourselves out of our comfort zone and strive hard towards them. I am the last person to oppose divorce on strong grounds..after all, there is nothing more lonely than an unhappy marriage. But these days, people seem to opt out of marriage for the silliest of reasons. In fact, leaving a marriage has become as common a decision as leaving a job.

I am not exactly sure when things went wrong. I still remember rose day in college as the day many guys mustered the courage to tell girls their feelings. I still recall Shahrukh Khan being the epitome of romance, whom men scoffed at openly but idolized privately. When did tinder and trulymadly take over from the time a guy agonized over months whether to ask that cute girl out and worked super hard at impressing her when he finally did? When did arranged marriage become a market of broken hearts or a deal as practical as a corporate merger as compared to something that was taken seriously as a lifelong commitment that families got together and mulled over?

We are a generation that values ambition over affection, practicality over romance and convenience over commitment. It’s unfortunate that online marriage portals and professional matchmakers actually filter clientele based on income and family wealth, because I thought it was a well-established fact that money can’t buy love, fidelity or compatibility. It’s also unfortunate that the plethora of dating apps have made it so easy to find people by just swiping left (or right..not sure which. I have always had a pathetic sense of direction.) Because again, nothing that comes easily is appreciated or valued.

Relationships require a hell lot of effort and work. But since the time you have vanished, we chose to invest that effort in our entrepreneurial ventures, our passions and our travel plans.  There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just that after all of that, we still lead achingly empty lives.

So the bottom line is, please stop spending time in Arijit Singh’s studio or Yash raj’s office when “love shots" are being conceptualized. Please return to the real world, my friend. Please fill us with the longing and love (mind you, not lust) towards people and not things so that we work as hard towards our relationships as we do towards our careers.  The world has gazillion problems as it is, let’s at least keep love and compassion intact so that we can work together and focus on the more pressing ones.

Best regards,

Casper.

Looking into the rear view mirror

I was looking for something in my gmail inbox this evening, and the search inadvertently led me to a trip down the memory lane..chats, emails, photographs…it was amazing, the kind of things the search threw up.

I have a tendency to exasperate mankind with my telephonic skills (or lack of them). I never pick up the phone because I hate talking on the phone…give me whatsapp or BBM any day. However, before the existence of the smart phone, Google chats/emails/SMSes were the best way to get in touch with me. So I suddenly started reading chats and emails from way long ago and I was intrigued at the kind of conversations I’ve had with various friends and family members over the years.

It is always said that one must look forward and “move on” (oh how I wish I could ban those two words from the English language. You would think heartbreaks and broken relationships have been long enough in existence for us to have come up with some new cool term, but obviously not- I digress).  Although I do tend to either day dream about the future or romanticize the past, I have become more practical over time and  have gotten better at moving onward and forward. It was hence, after a long time that I looked back.

This time however, the old emails and chats didn’t so much upset or depress me, as they did amaze me. It’s fascinating how, when one’s eyes aren’t blurred by tears, heart by emotion and mind with memories, one suddenly starts looking at things objectively. I was able to read chat conversations more as a dispassionate third party observer than a wrong doer or a victim. I was suddenly able to understand why some of my friendships lasted and some didn’t. What had worked for me professionally and what hadn't.  Words which had hurt me deeply back then seemed like very astute feedback now. At the same time, praise and flirtations that had made me giddy with happiness back in the day amused me now with their shallow pretense. Relationship advice that I had given and received entertained me to no end..but the innocence and naive beliefs in some of them touched a chord even today. Its strange how we thought we could conquer the world in our teens, the corporate world in our twenties but now, as we approach our thirties, even finding a life partner and an engaging job seem like impossible tasks.

Clichéd as it will sound, time is the best healer.  However, it’s not a bad thing to look back sometimes. You will gain confidence by seeing how much you have grown, how much you have endured and how you have still survived. Recollections of those mornings when getting out of bed seemed like an arduous task will amuse you because you have now dealt with bigger blows that life threw your way.  Mails of  genuine praise from old bosses, heartfelt gratitude from friends for standing by them will give you the confidence that you do have your core nature intact…it just needs some encouragement and nudging to display itself again. You will also see what your world seemed like when you didn’t know fear, didn’t know pain… maybe it will motivate you to imbibe that perspective again today.

Do take a look in the rear view mirror of life…it may well be the elixir you need to get out of your humdrum existence, march ahead in life and make your dreams reality.

A closet full of memories

She opened the door of her closet, and the clothes began tumbling out. She had stuffed it to the brim with twelve years’ worth of clothes, and she now began examining each item.

The yellow and grey tshirt she had worn the first day they had met and he had shyly introduced himself to her..little had she known then that the encounter would leave such a lasting impression over the coming years of her life.

“Pink is your color…I can’t stop staring at you when you wear pink”. As she picked up a faded pink top, she could hear his voice clearly in her head as though it were yesterday.  She was so besotted, so eager to please him- it was hardly a surprise that more than half the clothes she was surrounded in now were in myriad shades of pink.

She picked up and held a black cashmere scarf closely and breathed in his typical aroma…a combination of nicotine and aftershave. She hadn’t worn that scarf in six years, and she could swear that his scent was still on it.

She stepped back and tripped on a navy blue Mango dress. She had worn it on his 22^nd birthday and as she had tried to fall asleep later that night, she had read over and over a text message from him that said “Just wanted to tell you that you looked beautiful today”

She lunged out and pulled a white and blue salwar and felt a sudden pang as she recalled him telling her fiercely , “Don’t ever wear that to class again. How am I supposed to concentrate when you look so pretty!”

Entangled with the dupatta of the aforementioned salwar was a blue sweater. Even today, she could feel the warmth of his hand on her arm while holding the sleeve of the sweater, as he said in cheesy SRK style "Aur paas" and pulled her closer to himself.

At random, she picked up a plain, collared tshirt and remembered the feel of his head against her shoulder when she was comforting him over a low CAT percentile. She also remembered how much he hated that tshirt and had chided her once by saying, “If we have a daughter, I will choose her clothes. She is NOT stepping out in asexual t shirts like that one!”

From scarf to saree, every single item held some memory of his and took her back to the times they had laughed and loved. Waves of nostalgia passed over her as she savagely picked up each and every piece of clothing and dumped it into a bag. Within an hour, her bed room floor was cleared of clothes.

For a long moment, she looked at a newly uploaded photo of him and his fiancée, his arms wrapped around her possessively, both of them beaming blissfully. She then turned and looked at her closet, which was now completely bereft of garments.

She had cleared the cupboard of twelve years’ worth of clothes..now if only she could free her mind from his memories and rid her heart of the pain.