A mindful conversation

For a long time now, I have always evaded paying a visit to my sister’s home by giving the weirdest and very unreasonable excuses, purely because of traffic chaos that I have had to endure to reach Nelamangala. But circumstances this year were totally different, thanks to the unprecedented times in the family and I am a regular visitor now. My nephew who is now a student of a residential school, 400 km away from home, is studying eleventh grade. He had come home for a week for holidays. This time, my sister had asked me to come home and specifically talk to him because ever since he has gone away from home, it has become hard for her to connect with him and that he is behaving weird. This was making her very anxious. 

I've seen my nephew growing in front of my eyes. From his super mischievous deeds like him painting my bike with a weird colored enamel paint, to both of us doing Harry Potter and other superhero quizzes online, we have always been on good jovial terms. We never discussed academia or had intellectual conversations together in the past. The conversation that I had with him this time was so different, that I took some time to come to terms with it. It made me see remarkable changes in his attitude and thought process, and I realized quite a few things have changed for good. This blogpost is all about the conversational epiphany that I experienced. 

The conversation started with me inquiring about his hostel life. He said he is enjoying this life. He started talking about how his life has changed. From waking up at leisure 8AM in the past to 530AM, doing the laundry himself; how the absence of luxuries of zomato and swiggy is controlling his hunger pangs; how he has been accustomed to the meditation that he is forced to perform everyday for 15 min and in spite of being able to sense that he is sleep deprived, how the meditation is actually helping him concentrate better with his academia; I could feel a drastic change in his tone. 

He was then saying that it took him a lot of time to get used to this hostel life without gadgets and gaming. He said he has made very good friends and they all spend quality time; he explained the non-academia things they do to rewind after a busy day at college. To my surprise, he was appreciative of the conducive environment within the campus due to non-availability of mobile phones. I recalled all the games he played on the mobile phone in the past and told myself “not bad”.

And then came the most important thing, his future plans: He said he was confused about his future plans. He said he is unable to decide yet whether to go for both JEE-Mains and Advanced or just prepare for JEE-Mains so that it would help him prepare for K-CET and Comed-K in parallel. He spoke at length on why he thinks getting into an IIT would be difficult for him. He said he doesn't know if it is just insecurity with all that has happened recently or fear or both, that is stopping him from knocking the doors of IIT. Then he spoke of his hatred for chemistry. He took a pause to recall his dad’s love for chemistry and then went on talking about how he finds Chemistry so boring and difficult to even balance simple chemical equations; how he thinks those IUPAC names are just crazy and how chemistry alone has pulled his GPA down by significant margin. He was sad that he was still a seven point someone :). 

At that moment, I took a pause. For someone who has always discussed movies, super heroes, gaming and fantasy novels with me, such serious conversations were a little hard for me to absorb. My nonchalant nephew that I saw just six months ago was having such a mature conversation with me. 

I did not express any emotion, but I realized that he sensed that disconcerting look on my face too. This entire conversation lasted for about an hour and a half. At the end of it, the realization that I am in my late thirties already was hard to come by *winks*.

I just nodded happily and gave a subtle reply “Well, that is youth for you. It sets its own boundaries without even asking whether the body & mind can take it or not”. I advised him to start preparations for K-CET, COMED-K and JEE Mains, with a vision to get into a good NIT. When I said “As a fallback, we always have very good engg colleges in Karnataka too” he looked somewhat convinced and the conversation ended. I went inside and just told my sister “Don’t worry about his behavior. He is in the process of defining himself”. 

Until now, I was not a proponent of the belief that adolescence is a stage in life. But I am convinced that it is changed now. The saying "Chronological age is not a biological marker" is more evident than ever; even more so with the millennials. This entire episode felt like reading a Paulo Coelho’s novel. Phew; the fingers of time played a heavy chord selection on the emotional strings of my guitar!

Lessons from Covid-19 lock-down

While driving back home on the 11^th of Mar, little did I expect that I would be locked inside my house for the next 30+ days. Since then, a month has gone by and it already seems like eternity. The worrying trends from across the globe, those horrifying videos from Italy and NYC has forced many armchair thinkers to change the way they look at life. Aam junta like me are no exception. I too have a few experiences from this lock-down. This COVID-19 lock-down has not just exposed my own inabilities and not possessing (m)any of the basic survival skills, it has also changed a few perceptions that I believed to be true for long time.

When lock-down started, I thought it is a good opportunity to catch up with all my pending reading. This lock-down forced me to do a few things by self and I miserably failed in doing simple tasks. Firstly, my sincere efforts to make a cup of coffee even after reading the instructions on Nescafe sachet went haywire. Secondly, since house maid was also in lock-down, we decided to share chores amongst ourselves and do our own dishes. And I was getting into a brawl with even smallest of the utensils while doing the dishes. I did some temporary arrangement for the wasted RO water to be collected and use it to wipe the floor. But my wife put the task on me *sobs uncontrollably*. I took hours to wipe the floor with a mop which my maid did in 10 min without it. I realized I couldn’t do even the simplest of the chores at home. I started feeling like a civilized Neanderthal. I have not taken a shave since a month; so, I also look like one *adding to the effects*.

On one hand, COVID-19 deaths increased exponentially which led to the extension of lock-down period and on the other, I was feeling ashamed at my own incompetence of not being able to make even a cup of coffee for myself. I decided to catch up on the pending reading later. I realized I must up the ante and get better at stewardship at home, for my own good. I am at it now and in the past 20+ days, I’m still at square one, but the intriguing lessons learnt are worth sharing.

Household chores are easy is a myth

I always had this perception that household chores are easy as they neither require brains nor a great physical effort and that they are routine and mundane tasks. Only when I saw my mother and wife doing the dishes so flawlessly and effortlessly, I realized I was wrong. It is certainly not a mundane task. It is a three-dimensional art with time, accuracy and water conservation as its dimensions. The same goes with doing the dishes/ mopping/cleaning. I realized that all household chores can be mastered only with practice. Household chores is easy is a presumption of stupidity.

You can survive with just Doordarshan

The re-telecast of Mahabharata and Ramayana are truly blessing in disguise for me. While it is preposterous that few of my friends have branded me swamiji for watching the great epics *tears rolling down my cheeks*, I was like “Hey vats, keep calm”. Mythology was one quizzing topic which I wanted to improve on since a very long time. So, the timing was just perfect. I also started watching a few episodes of Chanakya, Jungle Book, Buniyaad; they all had one thing in common; they were so brilliantly made with major focus on content. Prasar Bharti has so many classics in its kitty. But is it worth with contemporary programs also? I’m pretty sure that DD entertainment would surely be finer than all our private channels combined. Any sane person cannot stand private channels’ camera overplay on a woman protagonist’s cleavages for 10 min in every episode. DD National, DD-Bharati and DD-Retro are more than ample necessities for our entertainment needs.

More importantly and  surprisingly, by Indian standards, DD News has remained a news channel. They are ethical, news readers put forth the actual news without any exaggeration and let the viewers decide. On DD News, dolts do not read tarot cards, there are no resentment filled debates, they do not run Homeopathy helpline and Asian sky shop programs. More importantly, dimwits and lamebrains do not predict the future of this country. So, I have decided to stick to DD news for news and watch private news channels for entertainment.

Watch DD News for a week. Trust me; you’ll concur.

Home cooked food can do wonders

After I entered corporate world, there was never a time I did not suffer from GERD. With my office canteen food, my burps are so strong that I’m sure if converted to energy, it would work wonders; thanks to the adulteration levels even in simple Idly and sambar. Eno and Digene are always on my travel checklist and are always stocked up. Even though Ayurveda helped me keep it at bay for some days, my coffee addiction has always made burps an integral part of my life.

But since last 30+ days of lock-down, we’re washing veggies more carefully than ever, thanks to the disturbing behavior of single source event attendees. I am eating healthy, home cooked food and zero junk food because the junk food in supermarkets are selling like hotcakes. I would be lying if I say stopped eating junk food. After seeing the panipuri pics all over the SM as if people are celebrating April as National Panipuri month, I was tempted too. But even that is homemade. *winks*. This has worked wonders for me. To my own surprise, my acidity, burps, GERD induced chest pain and every other symptom of hyper acidity is gone. Thanks to COVID-19 lock-down for instilling in me, the amazing benefits of eating freshly cooked food. Not just eat healthy, eat fresh is a very big lesson for me, that I’ll try to stick to.

There are other pleasant changes that this lock-down has made possible. Our entire family is spending quality time together. We are watching TV and dining together after ages. Dad and I are watching Roger Moore’s bond movies together, with him recalling his good old days. I am reminding my mom to monitor her blood glucose levels regularly. My credit card statements are at its lowest, which has also made me think of spending carefully on unwanted luxuries. Whataybaby is happy that “appa corona no aapees”. In other words, covid-19 has made a lot of things possible, which were even otherwise possible, but, meddled in the mediocrity of our own lives, we just didn't find it necessary. Especially us, Bangaloreans, have that one reason for all our hopeless time management skills, "Traffic jam". It's time we learn to manage time, prioritize what is important, draw a line between professional and personal urgency and start giving importance to spending quality time with family, at least occasionally.

When I read Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom”, I couldn’t connect on an emotional level with his 27 years in Prison. But now, I cannot even fathom his struggle. Imagine being locked up inside a jail on a remote island for so long! Here I am, locked in for 30 days and every day seems like another race to be won. I am still trying to cling to some form of normalcy hoping all this ends soon and we can get out, buy stuff, get back to office, hit gym, go on long drives and to be ourselves. But looking at the increasing numbers, it is still a dream.  

I like this dream; dream of freedom. Hope it becomes a reality soon!