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.

A heartfelt plea to students today

                                                 

I have been in a very reflective mood lately and one of the things I have been thinking about the most is my education. I was a good student and while that may seem like a good thing, it actually is one of the biggest regrets of my life. When I look back at my school days, I can’t recall friendships, pranks, crushes or boyfriends with the same depth as I can the exams, scheduled tests or results. I never learnt to celebrate a 29/30 in a Sanskrit exam-I only knew how to sulk about not getting full marks. I never learnt how to be a gracious loser and clap for the person who beat me in tests….I only felt a wave of jealousy and humiliation at being beaten. I never realized that in life, what matters is humility in victory and grace in defeat…but God has his own plans and it took me years of insecurity, competitiveness and personal, academic and professional failures to make peace with the fact that one can’t and shouldn’t always be first. Sometimes, being first makes you win the battle, but lose the war.

 

I wish I had let go of this competitive attitude at least during my college years…but old habits die hard. Today when I look back at my college years, I regret not hanging out in the canteen after classes were over, or not participating in more inter-collegiate events. What I regret the most however, is not learning how to deal with failure or rejection. I never let guys I liked know that I liked them because failure wasn’t an option in my life. This stupid mantra in my academic life spilled over to my personal life as well and the cost was huge..probably  something I am paying for even today.

The mania to succeed became even more ridiculous with every passing year and degree. It didn’t help that I chose degrees that required a grueling spirit-The CA degree for example. Even today, years after that torture is over, I feel pangs of sympathy and pain in May and November, the two months when thousands of innocent kids sit down to write those exams. I feel even more sympathy for those who write the exams under the pressures that Professors/CA Parents/their study circle enforces on them-“clear on first attempt”, “get a rank”, “get marks so that you get into the Big 4”…seriously? Ask any one ten years into their qualification if these truly matter. I know for a fact that I was one who succumbed to these fanciful notions and they got me no where. If anything, I wish I had studied to learn accounting and taxation rather than to get marks. That would have stood me in better stead.

And as if CA wasn’t enough to test my patience, I also decided to take the CAT one year. Good lord, that made CA seem like fun. Not because of the academic part, but just because of the ruthless competitiveness of the entrance exam. The way one’s self worth was determined Sunday after Sunday with mock CATS. The way one felt like a complete idiot if one couldn’t solve a question on probability. The way CAT professors treated their “not so smart” students like second class citizens and split them into batches depending on their aptitude level and then only gave respect to the ones who were scoring 95+ percentiles in Mock CATS. The experience scarred me so much that in spite of cracking the CAT, I decided I never wanted to do an MBA in a CAT scored B-School because it would ruin my self esteem and take away whatever little human emotion I was left with.

I know my rant so far makes it seem like I hate these degrees and the education system-I wish to clarify that I don’t. This very education system has produced extremely successful corporate honchos, so there must be something that I am missing. The only reason I write about all this is because I wish to voice a heart felt plea.

Don’t let your education, grades or qualifications determine your self esteem or your life course. I now know tons of highly successful people with very “mediocre” education.  In the big scheme of things, it doesn’t matter if you took multiple attempts to clear your CA final or if you got 60 marks in Economics in TYBCom or a 34 percentile in a Mock CAT.  What matters is the friendships you made and the relationships you fostered. What matters is that you tried out all sorts of things…perhaps you succeeded, perhaps you failed..as long as you learned from the experience. What matters is how self aware and secure you are, what your value system is, what your motivations are….those are the things that will determine your success, in both, your personal and professional life. 

We have only one shot at life, only one childhood and one teenage life. Don’t squander it away in the quest for marks and grades. By all means, give your academics your hundred percent..but because you want to learn and grow and satisfy your intellectual curiosity. Never be afraid to fail, personally or professionally because when you look back, it will be those failures that have made you a better person.  Live your life fully, doing things you love with people you love, and do things for the right reason..else you will be writing a similar post, filled with regret on your blog someday.

The teacher named 2014

As I made my new year resolutions (and broke one within 3 hours of writing it down), I was forced to reflect on how far I had progressed with my 2014 resolutions. The answer was a disappointing and demotivating 0%. I hadn’t managed to fulfil a single resolution. Was 2014 a waste? No. It was probably the year that brought me closer to myself, my fears, hopes, dreams and insecurities. A year that made me pause and think. It was the most difficult year I have had in a long time and was emotionally and physically draining…but has taught me lessons that will stay for life.

It was a year in which I lost a lot that I had formerly held very dear, whether it was the best work project I had ever done, the best colleague I had ever had or some personal relationships that were so close to my heart that I could feel searing pain when they ended. But that was perhaps the biggest learning I had- to let go and move on... to become emotionally detached from my work and from people.

In the solitude and the act of picking up pieces of my broken heart, self-respect and self-esteem, I found myself. I learnt how to stand up for myself and for what I thought was right. I cut off from anyone that made me feel unfairly bad about myself or that didn’t treat me with the respect or love that I deserved.

Was it a bad year then? No..not in the least. I cant remember the last time I have felt emotions to this degree of severity. I cant remember the last time when each month has come with a lesson so great, that it would remain etched in my memory for life. 2014 made me realise who really cared for me. It helped me understand and work towards becoming the person I aspire to be.  It got me to me witness some dear friends settle down, nudged me to do some high impact social work after a long time, ensured that I look after my health and helped me to develop the courage to express myself through this blog.

I have no idea whether I will tick  off  even a single item when 2015 ends…but I do know that I am entering into it wiser, stronger and braver. Wish everyone all the best for 2015! 

A birthday wish

The first memory I have of Cool Cat (the name of my coolest, nicest and craziest friend) is of me sitting in her house in 2^nd grade and making a collage with pictures of wild animals for some school project. Suddenly in the midst of it, she stopped working and started telling me how much she loved Akshay Kumar and started doing some steps from Main Khiladi Tu Anari. That obsession didn’t last too long…unfortunately, the obsession that followed i.e. the one with SRK, last until this date. (I was hopeful that Happy New Year would reduce it, but that hasn’t happened.)

She was hands down the smartest kid in my class at school. When the rest of us poured over our books before exams, she was busy listing the merits of the Irish coffee in Prithvi theatre and yet managed to effortlessly secure top grades.

We became friends only towards the end of school, and it took me a long time to forgive her for ditching me and taking up science in a townie college, instead of studying commerce at a suburban college as we had originally planned. We had this routine-she would call me at 11 am when she woke up (I still get panic attacks when she wakes up early these days) and then we would catch up on every single event in our lives that had taken place in the hours gone by. We would repeat the same thing at night. At that time, there was an Orange (What Vodafone was then known as) 9 to 9 scheme, wherein calls made between 9 pm and 9 am were free, so we would get onto a conference call with a few others and discuss all sorts of nonsense. By that token, and figuratively as well, she was my 5 am friend.

As with everyone else, I cut off from her too during a bad phase in my life. She did something at that time that brings tears into my eyes even to this date. She showed up at my house on one birthday to wish me and when I tried to explain the reason for my disappearance, she told me it didn’t matter-all that mattered was that I became fine. It was that very day that I met her then boy friend, now husband for the first time ever. He is the finest guy I have ever known and I couldn’t have been happier for Cool cat.

I call out all these random instances because, for some reason, I can’t compose a coherent post to do justice to her. (And its not for lack of trying-I have been at it for the last several weeks).   She is one of the most genuine and caring persons I have had the privilege of knowing. She has a fantastic sense of humor and is this complete madcap party person. I have yet to come across someone as large hearted and forgiving as she. She is so completely comfortable in her own skin-its refreshing to know someone like that in today’s world.

I don’t know what I did right to have her put up with me until this date-but I do genuinely hope she stays in my life and remains someone I can look up to and emulate, because she is a role model innumerable ways for me.

Wish you a very happy birthday and all the happiness and love in the world. Please do visit me-I promise on this semi-public forum that I wont ditch you and vanish somewhere!