I owe you…
You own me.
You can find more of my ramblings and sometimes sensible posts on Medium too.
Category: Thoughts uncut
Being Busy
For some weird reason, we associate busyness with productivity. But being busy has nothing whatsoever to do with productivity. Kierkegaard sure thinks so.
My Day, Every Day
I have a journal.
I used to write in it every day. But as time went by, I reduced my correspondence; unconsciously, I wrote on it only when I got too stressed, too sad, or upset over something.
What began as a medium of sharing my life, soon became a medium to vent. And then I realized, that’s not how you treat a diary.
My diary is my friend, and what’s the difference between me and other people if I’m using my diary only to complain?
And then I read in another blog about the good things the author had in her life. That’s when it hit me: I’m not pathetic; I have a life, and a thumping good one too.
People might think all I ever do — from 7 to 7 —is sit in my place and stare into my laptop, but no one knows how much there’s within my screen.
I read some excellent and funny articles on McSweeny’s, I watch food porn on Facebook, I chat with friends from far away, I share a photo status, I write a blog post or two, I read a few blogs, I comment on some more, I like plenty. Then I go for a coffee break, and I get back, hating myself for not sticking to the ‘drink less caffeine’ rule. Chiding myself, I get on with work — because I have to be sincere to what I earn — and then in the middle of it, I leave for a quiet lunch with a colleague, then some tea, and more Facebook, and again my personal blog, a little bit of reading, editing, writing, and rewriting.
And all the while, my headphones never come off.
And then as the sun sets, I leave for dinner and then back home. I take a good twenty minutes to relax and get out of the office-mood, and lying on my bed, I unwind — for now, with Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
What do I have to complain?
Of Greatness
People talk so much about mothers and the sacrifices they make. For ages, people ignored their mothers and the sacrifices they made for their family.
But that’s changed now. Every mother’s day, people thank their mothers, speak so highly of their greatness and share photos on Facebook to show their gratitude to the rest of the world.
What about the other mothers?
She’s the one who starts work before you’re awake, sweeps your floors, cleans your bathrooms, refills your tissue rolls, clears away your empty cups, dusts your desk, rearranges your dishevelled papers, eats after you, and works on Sundays.
And yet, she’s not your mother.
She’s a maintenance staff. The people who make an office of a piece of construction.
So many of these maintenance staffs are mothers too. And it’s painful to see them working so hard for the people who don’t even spare a second look at them.
Most of them are my mother’s age. Every time I see one of them mopping the floor for the third time in a day, I wonder if I’d want my mother in the same situation.
I wouldn’t. Because it’s a sad job. Because people don’t see you for who you are; people don’t see you at all. And yet, not one of them walks past your place without taking away the cup you were too lazy to throw away. And if you happen to catch their eye, they smile at you — not the false smile you give your boss, but the one your mother gives you. What makes them do that?
I don’t think it’s passion for their work. A sense of conscience? Are they just loyal to their salary?
It’s not about the money. It was never about the money. Yes, it’s their job to clean, but it’s their choice to clean satisfactorily. Because they care. They care about you, they care for me.
It’s the human vulnerability. They look at me and they see their own daughter. The mother within drives them to do more, to do better.
I sat staring at the laptop one morning. It was the festival holidays and the office was almost empty. A maintenance staff came up and asked me why I didn’t go home for the festival holidays. We spoke for a while and she wondered aloud how hard it must be, living in a foreign city, away from family, not being able to go home for the holidays without getting crushed under poor roads and the terrible traffic of monsoon rains.
She works a 12-hour shift and her every break is valuable. She didn’t have to spend her time talking to me. But she did. She spent her free time consoling me. She didn’t know why I didn’t go home, she didn’t know I was too lazy to trudge through traffic.
She just assumed I couldn’t go, never once suspecting that I didn’t want to go. Because she’s a mother. And mothers don’t judge.
If that’s not great, what is?
Written for a contest run by Tata Motors to promote their campaign, #madeofgreat.
Loyalty
I’m loyal.
To brands. And it’s not at all weird.
The best example is the truest example. Like so many others, I’ve subscribed to Brain Pickings. I get my weekly emails on Sundays. But— Sunday is when I take the day off from everything. From people, from work, from going out, from dressing up, from even being civil. Except eating. Sunday, I devour.
Sunday is the one day I sleep all day. I don’t care what happens in the world, or outside my room, I will neither wake up nor care.
So when I get my weekly email on Sunday, I don’t often feel like reading it. Sundays are the days I’m too bored and lazy to lift even a limb, let alone prop up my laptop and read.
So I just convince myself I’d read it on Monday. And I now have 22 unread emails from Brain Pickings. That’s 22 weeks of procrastination. That’s almost half a year.
I’m a little dull when it comes to numbers, but even I know that was a long time. But the thing is, I don’t know what to do about it. Brain Pickings newsletters are interesting and long. And if I just manage to get started, I know I wouldn’t be able to stop. It’s the starting that’s problematic.
Sometimes, I look at all the subjects of the emails in bold and feel so helpless. As if there’s nothing I can do to read them without reading them.
And it doesn’t help that I don’t like having unread emails in my inbox. I like my inbox clean. It’s something to do with closure, I hear.
Of course there’s one thing: I can just unsubscribe. But I won’t. It’s the one thing I will not do. I’ve unsubscribed from loads of other online magazines and blogs that became too strenuous to follow — but I won’t unsubscribe from Brain Pickings.
Because I’m loyal.
Yes, it freaks me out too. I’m so in love with what they do that I want to know everything they publish. But it’s also overwhelming, I accept. And though I accept it, I will never unsubscribe. Because I’m loyal that way.
Every time I think of unsubscribing, I feel a hot rush of guilt running through me. As if it’s a wrong thing to do. Wrong as in, morally wrong. I feel so guilty even thinking about unsubscribing from the magazine. Because I love their work.
But guilt changes nothing. I still have 22 unread emails from Brain Pickings. Talk about obsession, huh?
The Chaos Within 