Category: Thoughts uncut

An endless search

I walked out of the doctor’s room, dazed. Nothing made sense anymore. Of all the people I knew, I was meticulous, and the most watchful about what I eat and drink.

Some would say I bordered on neurotic obsession. I’d be mindful not to overindulge in deep-fried butter or pigs in a blanket blanketed with pork fat. And yet, there I was, despite stringent diets and careful observations, holding a report that deemed my cholesterol levels nigh too high.

I lamented. 

At 22, I knew no one as careful with their diet as I. I had to, too—diabetes, heart complications, blood pressure, and a hint of a brain tumour induced comma, all clogged my mother’s bloodline. I inherited, along with a few crumbling, unintelligible letters and premature graying, a lengthy list of disorders that could make my adult life miserable.

Therefore I took enough precautions to keep diseases away for as long as I could. I succeeded too-by choosing more fiber-rich alternatives to white rice and flour. I thrived on vegetables, millets, red rice, and bananas. Lamb meat and chicken were occasional because we’d get fresh meat every time I visited my parents.

Life seemed good-except for my weakness for peanut brittle, I’d become comfortable without artificial sugar, empty carbohydrates, and unhealthy fats. 

And then came the verdict: high cholesterol.

My doctor denied medicines. He suggested I stick to a proper diet, instead, and that everything should be fine then. Eat lots of vegetables and fruits, he said. “Eat,” he cupped his palm to indicate portion control, “but don’t overeat, meat. And get regular exercise, too” he raised his eyebrows at me, who hasn’t skipped yoga even for a day in the last five years.

What he didn’t know, and wouldn’t listen either, is that I’d been doing everything he said since 19.

Still, something had to change, I knew. Sure, I was cautious, but caution wasn’t enough anymore. I looked through my habits yet again. I was taking eggs and a generous amount of milk every day, in addition to a decent amount of meat every week, and a tad bit too much of it every two weeks. It seemed to me that I wasn’t distributing my meals as efficient as I should, and because of that, I was getting too much of one thing and too little of the other. 

Oh, trust me, you can have a careful diet and still be way off course.

I tried quitting eggs. It wasn’t hard because I never liked them much anyway. They involved too much work cleaning up without a stink that it was a relief not to deal with that anymore.

I felt good.

I wanted to keep feeling good and forget the fiasco that was my cholesterol.

I tried quitting milk. It would’ve failed had I woken up one day and stopped drinking tea altogether. It would’ve driven me mad. Instead, I switched to low-fat milk. I scanned labels analysing differences between skimmed milk, 2%, and fortified milk. But I soon learnt the risks of skimmed milk, and not too long afterwards, the vague health verdicts on milk altogether. I realised it could do more harm than good. From full-cream milk, to skim, to skim milk powder, I hopped on and off, before getting tired of them all. 

Good food shouldn’t be so hard to get. By the time I realised the potential risks of consuming adulterated daily and meat, I no longer craved it.

I was beginning to feel great.

Black lemon tea and drip coffee never tasted better after that.

I crave other things now-stuff that has little to no room for contamination or heated debates in lifestyle magazines-vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Not only did they taste great, but these foods also made eating a less stressful practice. The idea of relying on a plant-based diet freed up my mind from worrying about the side effects they could cause in future.

Now that I’ve acquired a taste for plants, I don’t think I’d want to go back to a meaty diet, to feeling bloated every morning or being uncomfortable after lunch on Sundays.

The best part is that I’m discovering new plant-based foods every day. My options, unlike popular notions, are abundant even to the point of overwhelming. This search could never end.

Crawling around Austin

I love exploring a city on foot. I enjoy walking so much that I don’t even care if the place I’m visiting isn’t ideal for walking. Take Austin, for instance. Unlike where I’m from, Austin has dedicated sidewalks and decent pathways. In spite of that, though, you can’t help but feel that the city is more of a car owner’s paradise.

No matter where you want to go, whether a grocery store, a shopping mall, the Texas State Capitol, or even to see the Congress Bridge bat show—it takes you at least 45 minutes on public transport or almost an hour and a half on foot to reach from anywhere else in the city. Although that makes it sound like Austin is so widespread with massive ground space, it isn’t. It’s a tiny town—gorgeous, mind you—but with such twisted bus routes that take forever to cover a distance that’d take 10 minutes in a car.

Walking in Austin, Texas
Walking in Austin: 33 minutes on the bus to cover 0.8 miles.

Regardless of all that, what’s great about visiting for just two weeks, is that Austin’s hard-to-navigate systems didn’t dissuade me. Instead, I took it as a challenge to explore as much as I could, by walking or taking the bus whenever possible.

And so you can imagine my amusement when I saw an activity where tourists got drunk and biked throughout the city.

It’s called the Pub Crawler, and five minutes of searching on Trip Advisor will have you spend a good amount on this mad, but a rather fun tour. Even though I’d heard of it before, I didn’t trust myself to drink and ride around the city while on a solo trip. Not to mention that I’m quite stingy when it comes to engaging in typical touristy stuff.

I was returning from a splurge at the Whole Foods Market (fun fact: Whole Foods was founded in Austin), and as I turned into Bowie Street, what should I see but the Crawler in front of me! I’d seen it not long ago, full of enthusiastic tourists and locals alike, laughing at themselves and the ridiculousness of pedalling and drinking at the same time. They seemed to have such a great time that I couldn’t help but smile at them myself. Now, however, the crawler stood empty with the owners sitting on either side of the vehicle, their chin on one palm and a phone on the other.

Pub Crawler, an interesting tourist activity in Austin, Texas
Pub Crawler is an interesting tourist activity in Austin, Texas.

Compared to the high-level energy I’d seem emanating from the Crawler earlier, it now resembled a deserted and haunted building. Most of Austin’s streets don’t see a lot of pedestrian activity, and so as far as the eye could see, the road was void of anything but the Crawler and me.

It wasn’t scary—far from it. It was weird to realise that without tourists and their crazy fixations, everyday life is quiet, routine, and boring even. For a moment there, I saw what the city would look and feel like to a local. That’s when I understood that we take things so much for granted that we seldom appreciate the blue skies and the fruit-studded trees.

We all seem to rely on aliens to show us how fun our lives can be.

What’s in your backpack?

When I cast my t-shirt aside, I had only one thing in mind—it’s one less thing to carry. Not that a single t-shirt acquires too much space or weight, but it’s the little things that accumulate faster than we can count. That’s the mentality I always assume when I pack.

How much would you carry if you’re returning from visiting your parents, and have a five-and-a-half-hour train journey ahead of you? And mind, this isn’t Amtrak—we’re talking about congested and almost always unclean train compartments that allocate 80 seats but accommodate upwards of 150 sweaty humans and even more bulging bags of what-knows-what.

It was a Sunday morning—6:50 am to be near-precise—and I was on a train back to the city, back to my routine work. I’d spent almost a week at my parents’ for what’s supposed to be quality time with family. Despite how that turned out, I was now heading back to take care of my own life. And I didn’t have a reservation on the train. I’d tried, but failed because the website wasn’t able to cope up to the traffic of the Indian population. And so I stood, almost plastered to the walls of the compartment to avoid the incoming crowd trying to find their seats.

As I watched, from my corner of the car’s wall, I saw most adults carrying a child, a piece of luggage, or a bag of breakfast—in addition to their one baggage.

Now, Indian Railways doesn’t have a limit on baggage. And for a good reason too, because it’d make no sense. The only reason people throng the trains is that they’re cheaper and accommodating to the growing needs and waists of the average Indian.

And so every person struggled to get on and navigate through to their seats. Bags overflowed in the overhead racks, they lined the aisles between the seats, and some even sat snug at people’s feet.

A grin escaped my face as George Clooney’s “what’s in your backpack?” came to mind. Every time someone wobbled past me or heaved at the weight of their bag, I couldn’t help but wonder why they’d inflict such discomfort upon themselves. I had one backpack, which I’d placed in the overhead rack, but even then it was a lengthy and uncomfortable journey. To go through that with additional bags made no sense to me.

It’s a pity that while there’s a cult doing everything in their power to reduce luggage and prioritise convenience travel, there’s another group altogether that doesn’t even try. What’s more, Indian train stations are so crowded that it’s not uncommon to see late passengers sprinting through waiting crowds, swerving by long queues, and high jumping over people sleeping on the floor. Imagine going through all that with a bag you can’t even lift.

The more I wondered, the more convinced I became that people don’t know what matters most to them. They’re so feeble and craving that they can’t bear the thought of leaving things behind. Our intense desire to cling to material things, and our inherent fear of death and denial of its permanence has led us to live in constant fear of losing what was never ours.

Pfft. Let it go.

Pray, tell

Tenkasi, South India

Pray tell, thee, wise tree
how many lives have you seen
crushed beneath the human weight
staved off for their meat and desk
your tenants and their housing whole

Oh, dear, wise old tree
pray tell us truth with glee
who’s the vainest of us all
the one who orbits in space
taking away praise medallions
giving back footprints of carbon
or the one making firewood
felling earth from her roots
for a week’s worth of meals

Ageing, waning, wise tree,
how many times have we seen
heroes emerging on the face of the earth
biting the poor and sucking the wealth
to be rich and famous, at the cost of all

Because that’s how it’s always done

I’ve seen my share of dictionary definitions, but so far, I haven’t found a single resource that equates traditions with obsessive compulsiveness.

Let’s back up a little.

Today’s a special day where I live. It’s the first day of the Tamil new year, and this means people wake up at 4 am and make “pongal.” It’s a rice-based porridge made in two flavours: savoury and sweet.

Today’s better known as the rice farmer’s festival, because its purpose is to thank the sun god for their year-long kindness to the crops and to wish for the same goodness in the upcoming year.

Farmers and their families celebrate this day with abundant gusto, dedicating today, the first day of the new year, to the sun, and tomorrow, the second day, to the livestock that labour through the fields year round. They deep-clean and decorate their homes, and serve pongal to the gods and cattle as a sign of their appreciation. They then gather round as family, wishing each other a good year ahead, and gobble up pongal all day.

Now that’s a nice picture: Thanksgiving for farmers.

However, it evolved into a generic Tamil festival which led people to adopt the habit of porridge-making in their own homes. What happens when townsfolk and ultra-urban dwellers celebrate Pongal? Well, they wake up early and make both kinds of pongal, serve it to the gods that reside in the kennels they’d built in their houses, and then devour porridge all day.

You could say it’s not too different from what the farmers do—except the underline purpose and the divinity associated with thanking nature for a prosperous crop-yielding year has depreciated altogether.

And so now, every year on this day, we make a big deal of making pongal early in the morning. And if you’re in a village where everyone wakes up at 4 am every day, it’s rather a competition to see who serves porridge to the gods first. If the auspicious time begins at 10:30 am, they try and finish cooking well ahead so they can pray to the gods as soon the time’s right.

That’s just one aspect of the Pongal festival. Another is the custom of making pots-full of both flavours even if it’s too much for a family of three. Farmers live in extended families—they have children, nieces, nephews, and cows to feed.

In the city though, it’s just the parents and a child or two. Since everyone in the neighbourhood also prepares the same pongal, there’s often too much to give around to others.

Regardless of making this mistake every year, and feeling bloated, people repeat it again and again—just because making pongal on this day is a tradition you shouldn’t skip.

Now if that isn’t obsessive compulsiveness, I’m not sure what is.