Confessions of an angry mind

The art of not being offended by casually and thoughtlessly offensive people, is something I am very bad at. I lose my patience with such people and then I go into my shell and sulk. 

I sulk until I am very hungry and ignore the dreadful headache which is the first sign of my growing hunger, falling blood sugar levels and consequently growing temper.

What I do, is not mature, but in this state of mind, all I really want is some understanding, some attention  and very importantly, some good comfort food.

Needless to say, these people are not clued in to realise what is going on. Their emotional intelligence is pretty low, but instead of cutting them slack for that, I get into a spiralling race to match that level myself.

Of course I don’t get what I want, and instead I go through the phase of silent seething anger. 

I make plans in my head that I will never deal with these people again - but usually there is always something stopping me from taking it to the drastic (read verbal) ‘goodbye’ route.

Maybe it is my upbringing that prevents me from being completely honest with these people. 

I can be very blunt with people I love/like, but I am not all that good a communicator with the rest of the world. It is, I think in my gene to pretend that these people don’t affect me, even when they do. To admit to them that they make me feel this bad, would reveal my secret vulnerable side to them, and I am hardwired to hide my weakness and insecurities from people in general.

What then follows is a cold war with my self and I just absorb all this hatred and anger, stash it into the deep freezer part of my brain (perhaps best described as the heart) where it stays, never forgotten, and always semi fresh, ready to be thawed back into life when the situation demands (or during a few particularly bad days of PMS).

p.s. This is going to be part of an ongoing series called 'My notes on anger and taking offence' where I will try to decipher my feelings around getting angry instead of simply cooping up. Let's see if I can continue this effort. 

Superpower : The reawakening

After the last superhero flick I watched (because it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere and that is what Hollywood floods the silver screen with, this time of the year!), I realised that I no longer walked out of the cinema hall, pretending to be one of them - it seemed that I had lost my superhero mojo, and this realisation really saddened me.

I began wondering if this is again one of those ageing effects. Now grey hair, slow metabolism, I was getting used to, but this new phenomenon of less and less ridiculous day dreaming, I was not prepared for!

As children and teenagers, we feel so invincible, and with time, we, the same people are filled with insecurity, self doubt and above all - fear.  Fear of the unknown, known and even of the non existing.
So, what causes this shift in mindset? And is it really possible to prevent this transition?

Some of the top reasons I could think of are:
1.You now have something to lose. Be it reputation, money, family you love, social acceptance - whatever it is that you have accumulated over the years and the fact that you want to hold on to it.

2. Death becomes reality. As you start to age, certain people who were the pillars of your life begin to weaken and eventually disappear into thin air. The fragility of human life becomes much more obvious and stares right at your face. It is not possible to look the other way and ignore the ugly question, who will be next?

3. Life becomes a race against a ticking clock. There seems to be very little time for anything and you start to reprioritise and push back on certain things. And in some cases constantly readjusting your life goals can make you feel a bit defeated.
For instance, my very first slam book entry as a kid read 'I want to play football on Pluto'. In a few years this was modified to 'I want to live in Antarctica', which later became 'I want to visit Antarctica' and for the last couple of years I have been asking myself do I really want to spend £15000 on this? I am probably not even physically fit to take this trip.

But how indeed do we fool ourselves to not fall for these traps of real life? How can we stop acting our age, and instead let the age be us - whoever that may be? (Or for that matter, how can we cut the drama, and tell ourselves that we are not marching towards an apocalypse!?)

The art of living an involved life and loving every aspect of it, yet retaining a sense of detachment from the same, so that you can always take the necessary risk when you need to, be able to give in, give up and at the same time know when to never give up - seems to me like no ordinary task.

Perhaps this is a task that needs reawakening the inner superhero within me.

Too much 'content', less 'ment'?

Why is it so important to make sense?

To know who you are, what you want to be, where you want to go?

And for that matter why do I need to have an outline of a story before I can start writing anything?

Sometimes, this consistent need to define everything feels like such a boxed up way to live life. Many times this is the reason I don't write as much as I used to before. 

If any of you know me since my 'Better half' blog days, you will remember, I wrote so much random stuff. I never had a structure to my blog. My blog did not represent anything except perhaps a talkative mind. Often this was in the shape of verses which did not even rhyme (but had a rhythm - I was always very particular about the rhythm somehow). 

Back then I wrote poems because I was too lazy to write paragraphs - such as this one I am currently writing, where I have to write whole sentences to make any sense. Poetry on the other hand gave me the license to be experimental, suggestive, minimal with words, cryptic when I wanted to be, and most importantly, tell a story without having it all laid out in front of me. My readers filled in the gaps, and created their own stories and interpretations, and so did I, whenever I re-read any of my piece.

Not everything I wrote were great pieces on an artistic scale, however I never had to limit myself to writing about something that made full sense to me before I could start. There was a strange sense of freedom in this.

But today, in the day and age of content/data/(over)information/noise you cannot possibly ramble randomly without representing a central theme. Not if you want to be heard or understood. Especially not if you want to 'make it' in this big(data) world.

The need for classifying yourself and creating a single style has become crucial. You need to create a brand, a name, an image, a single catchphrase or a word that will define your content that will stick in that one second attention span that people of a certain demography may give you. You can run stats on it to analyse your audience, and yes you can grow your audience by tweaking your content. 

Now I highly value data and analytics in my day job as an engineer, but when it comes to creativity and art, somehow it makes me feel a bit stifled. Like I am betraying my absolute naked need to create, by shoving it down a branded pipe so that it conforms to a pre-decided image.

I am sure there is another side to this coin, and I know I have taken an extremist view and over-simplified this whole content vs art (box office vs art-house?)argument - but to me creativity is born out of the desire to express and not sell. 

And that does not mean art does not need attention or the audience. We all need that little pat on our backs from time to time, and it is always an amazing feeling when someone else relates to you - but should it be at the cost of losing our instinct? Also, if an artist always produced content of mass-appeal, who would raise the bar, break the barriers and truly gift their audience with a brand new experience?

So, while we are all jumping onto this analytics bandwagon (me included, I can't help checking which country has my highest number of readers :), and being all practical and efficient, I just hope real creativity does not somehow get compromised, and that we can always take the risk and have the courage to go against the numbers or simply ramble - if we feel like.

The craft of capturing motion

From the last few weeks I have had this urge to experiment with motion and create short stories through moving frames. At the end of the day, the urge is always to tell a story, the only difference here is the medium.

Perhaps it is all those hours I spent watching other people's videos, that I felt a bit inspired to try my own hand at it.

Of course, I have nothing to call equipment really. So all my shots are captured by a phone camera, with me manually zooming in and out and focussing. I think this is the most basic form of what is called as guerrilla shooting/film making style. 

I don't have any control over my subject either, so everything depends on the way I edit the shots once I have captured a few footages.

The very first attempt was a trailer of our recent trip to Puglia region in Italy this Easter, but this was greatly aided by iMovies software. (link here, if you want to check it out :)

The one below is my very first movie. It is only about a minute long, but I wanted to capture the liveliness of the Peterborough city centre. 

Peterborough being an underdog of a city, always fascinates me, and for a while I have been meaning to find a way to tell it's story. Let me know what you think of the one below.

I was also very surprised, that I enjoyed the process of editing even more than the filming. The whole process of taking lots and lots of random shots and being able to stitch a few of them together in a certain fashion, such that a story evolves from it, is possibly the essence of motion picture creation for me.

(still from the movie)

I really hope this will not be yet another seasonal interest for me, and that I dedicate time and effort in learning this craft.

Great expectations, an interpretation

Friends and family mean a lot to me.

But sometimes I take myself too seriously. And it does not help that I also have a big and bloated ego. A combination, that at times, works against my relationship with the same set of people, who I hold so dear.

The last time I had high fever, I had come up with some complex algorithm to measure and control/manage a person's expectation. Somehow I had made the connection between high expectation and a false sense of self which leads to distorted reality and a life where you are afraid to look into the mirror.

The question that stayed with me however was, is the conscious part of my brain even remotely aware of the difference between the real and the image of myself?

(I call these my high-fever-rmoments, and in general the next morning I can never quite make sense of the same thoughts, which the night before had felt like life changing epiphanies.)

In any case, the reason I wrote this long winding introduction to my manic behaviour, was not to bring to notice my Freudian slip while renaming my blog to 'Life is an iceberg' (refer to Freud's Iceberg theory of Id, ego and super-ego), but really to make an attempt to describe my trip to Kolkata and Sundarbans in February this year.

At this point, I must warn those who are after a chic travel story, that this is not. This is a post about what the trip was meant to be in my head, and what it really was.

For the longest time, I have been a person without a home. And absolutely no sense of belonging. For those who know me, you will know that when asked where I am from, I go through the most uncomfortable few minutes trying to come up with something that would make sense, is witty, remotely true, but nothing simple and straight-forward. I have even tried rehearsing an answer for these kind of situations. Since I moved to the UK, the answer has automatically simplified itself to 'India'. But I struggle to say it loud and clear, since I don't believe it.

It is not untrue of course, I was born in Kolkata, India and lived there for a good few years before moving with my family to Mumbai and eventually to Nashik. And there are certain memories, and a few things from my birth-city, that I remember and have idolised in my head over the years.

Most of these memories are centred around my grandparents house. As a child, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents (especially with dida (grandma)). It just so happens that the female folk of my family from my grandparents generation (both maternal and paternal grandmothers and their sisters) have been such strong and influential characters that a good part of my adolescent years I just wanted to be like them.

And as an adult I felt like I have let them down somehow - I am nowhere as much of a freethinking, independent, fearless and creative person as they were and in a time far less conducive to free thinking women. Someday I will find the courage to write each of their stories individually. But for now, let me simply relay my much more mediocre experience.

When Dida died, I went into denial. I did not want to visit Kolkata ever again, because it would make it real. (I don't even like mentioning this in a post and just spent ages on this line, deleting and re-writing it.) Another reason was also the fear that the nearest thing to what I could call a home, will not be anything like the memories in my head. The green windows will not stand out, the fuchkas will not taste as good, the people will not be smoking cigarettes in a small coffee shop debating the country's future. I have been writing a collection of poems called 'In search of home' for quite some time now, which is still unfinished, and maybe in my head I thought I will write the final chapter when I finally visit Kolkata.

None of these things happened. I was very ill when I reached Kolkata. (I fall sick a lot these days, any change of weather simply kills my immune system for some odd reason.) Sundarbans, though not a place I had been to as a child, was beautiful. We were on a boat for three days, looking for tigers. Sundarbans is one of the tiger reserves in India - and this meant that people visiting, ignore all the other wild life that they do see there, and keep looking out for the elusive tiger. We did too, and the closest to tiger that we saw were some tiger-pug marks, nothing more.

But I was fine with that. It reinstated the joy of a quest and a journey, over mere achievements. And to me that is a far more fulfilling feeling to take back with me.

And my birth-city, well it took a while for it to evoke emotions in me. Being sick meant that I could not enjoy the food that much, although I still ate a lot of fuchkas and absolutely loved it.

I may have a messed up sense of reality and I know that I look at life through a distorted lens, but I think there are indeed little dots of absolutes hidden within the relative versions of this universe, and the Kokata fuchka may just be one of them.

Hello stranger!

The first rule of friendship, is to spend quality time with your friend.

Sometimes, when I walk home after a long day's work, this is what I day dream about.

Me in a pair of shorts and tee with a longish loose hanging checked shirt and canvas shoes, a cute sling bag crossed over my shoulder, walking along unknown cobbled streets of a smallish town - not a village - nor a big city - just a small town, good for walking around, but big enough to see people going about their daily lives. Where no one knows me, but people are nice and friendly, so they smile at me once in a while.

Where I am a stranger, but not a tourist. I am curious, not about monuments and museums, but about everyday things. Like the inviting aroma of freshly brewed coffee and bread from a local bakery. Or a mural painting, casually adorning a building wall.

Of course I carry a book with me, that I occasionally take out and read from, and then spend loads of time looking around reflecting. I also carry my journal, where I note down ideas, sketch cartoons -  perhaps of the bartender, while he is busy serving beer to the locals, in a familiar-lazy manner - just like any small town local bartender would, while talking and fooling around, lending an ear to those who need, and giving an earful to some other.

I feel light and free, and I seem happy. I am travelling light, and I don't seem to care about my destination. I am so integrated with my journey, that it doesn't even seem like one.

In fact, it seems like I am floating through time and space, and my being is as inconsequential as it is meaningful. My struggle to prove myself and my race to find and define myself seems like a distant memory. I look comfortable in my own skin, and I seem to enjoy the moment.

I am fully aware, that this is only a moment, and it will pass - but I don't seem to be in a rush to find out.

Then of course, I reach home at the end of the walk. And the first thing I do, is distract myself.

I pull out my laptop, check facebook, then gmail, then back to facebook (since I have forgotten that I've already checked it a few minutes back, until I see the same shared article, by someone I don't quite remember too well, but I am too lazy to unfriend anyone) and then to youtube (my newest thing is to watch Indian stand-up comedians, and a few lifestyle vloggers, though I am not committed enough to subscribe or like anything.)Then I log on to an online shopping website, but luckily get bored within a few minutes. So next I come up with some 'girly' movies that I haven't seen before - but I am so restless, I cannot even watch the first ten minutes without the need to fast forward. And all this time, I try hard to ignore the small voice inside my head judging me for wasting my life on junk (well some of it is quite creative, but most of it is junk).

And then finally, finally I realise, that whenever I get some time, I just keep running away from myself. And I have to stop doing that.

But, how do I go about reconciling the image of me that I have in my head, to the reality that I have become? All I know is that, there is a gap that needs bridging. A fear, that I need to lose, and some baggage that I need to shed. Though, it's mostly in my head, and that is what makes it so much more tricky. But I know I have to make time for this journey...

... before I forget how to look into the mirror and smile, not for the camera, but for myself.

No age limit to baby steps

While running through this express mission that is life, in the past year, I have at times suddenly stopped and noticed that I am growing old.
And while that is not such a shocking observation on its own (no Newton's laws were broken in the making of this fun fact), it is still an awareness that I cannot easily push to the back of my mind.
(And the birthday month is of course the best time of the year to think such happy thoughts :)

But it is not just the lack of black and the addition of grey hair, that makes me stop and accept this painful realisation. Nor is it the noticeably less number of alcoholic beverages that I can stomach lately and still stay awake. But strangely, it is more evident in moments that I catch myself philosophising in between conversations.

Now, I have always had the habit of delivering punch lines in a dramatic way. I know I do that when I write. But did I always do it while speaking to people as well? I don't know. Seems like one of those things that 'bade, buzurg (old and respectable)' people do.

The other day I caught myself advising someone, that while there is nothing wrong in loving your job (I never understood why it is cool to call those who love their jobs as 'sad'), we should have another hobby. The minute I said this aloud, I felt like an awkward old lady. So I stopped abruptly wished him good night and left. But I would like to continue my line of thought here on this blog.

I have seen, that no matter how much you love your work, there will always be days when things won't be perfect. There will be days when you may even hate your job (yes the same one that you love so much).
It is for these days, that a completely different hobby is extremely important. It allows you to disengage your emotions from the first point of focus, your work, to something else that you like equally. And this helps in keeping the passion alive and getting less frustrated in general.

This is what is meant by 'work-life-balance' I guess. I have heard this many times, but like many other corporate terminologies, I have dismissed it before. So caught up was I in winning my daily battles.


***stopped writing here in December, and picking this up in March, with exactly the same thought -- Get a hobby***

My mentor advised me the same last time I spoke to him. And I really need one. But you cannot grow one overnight.

I only ever had two, before the time that I started defining myself. Right from my pre-self-aware days,
1. Write (create stories, characters) and
2. Dance

I do little or none of both of these now.

So I am going to go ahead and post this note up on my blog, even though it is written haphazardly over multiple time lines, and without even bothering to edit it, just because I have to learn to put myself out there again. Little by little. Tiny baby steps.

Just because you grow old, doesn't mean you perfect the art of living life - to me it is still a learning curve, and a steep one at that.