Jaded January

#121 Post in Dauntless

A writer cannot resist same letter nouns or verbs or adjectives on titles; the dictionary informs me that one of the meanings of jades is “worn out”. January was that kind of month.

            Transporting the sofa set from one building to the other was some adventure. I have friends who go trekking to different unexplored peaks, my adventure quotient is reduced to sofa set shifting. But the funny thing is the mind goes through similar exhilaration and despairs. “Shifting headaches” was one blog post I earned for my labours.

            Yesterday I was speaking to Vikas my batchmate and we are connecting after 26 years and I said, “I am a writer perhaps a self-claimed best creative writer in India. Don’t get impressed for it nets me no earnings at all. I have a choice to think of myself as a best writer if only to delude myself and shored up self-esteems.” I loved this thought: Either I can look at myself as a colossal failure at three months short of 50 or I can look at myself as a hero. I choose the latter perspective for it serves me better but the point is this: We can change our self-image as many times as we want to suit our current advantage.  It’s no good telling myself that I am a wimp though it might ring true to a dictionary definition rather I say “What a great trier I am. What a great soldier of life?”

            This month was brutal lessons in TRADING. I made 30 k in Infosys, 20 k in Sun Pharma before losing over 1.3 lacs on Zee Entertainment. Entirely my stupidity as avarice took over reason. I should have sold Zee at a stop loss at 420 rather I saw it sink to 300 and I lost my shirt in a hour’s time. But these are early days and this taught me a lot of lessons and the first and foremost is PROTECT YOUR CAPITAL. The second is “Your profit earnings come in increments while one big wave can drown you.” The stock market plays fair and it brings out your personality. Now I go slow on trading for February.

            I had a viral fever last week and that got me dispirited and glum. Being alone on such days feels the full weight of abandonment, the fever recedes but the mind takes longer to come back after reaching this bottom thought.

            I listen to Sadhguru a lot these days. He is truly one giant of an intellect with opinion in every field. He brings deeper and newer perspectives.  Very few people make me think and revisit my premises, Sadhguru does it all the time.

            I am loving the new house. Being on the second floor, this is more a vantage point to watch traffic and life below on to a busy street. It’s breezier too.  There are no crow nuisances and at this height, I am nearer the tree tops. Also there is much less of vehicular pollution and so I can sweep and mop the floors once a fortnight as opposed to once a week.

            It does hurt that my life has now been reduced to trading in stock market for my earnings and engagements in the day. I would prefer a soft skills training or even mental health counseling. But then nature does not flow the waters of my life to my shore rather it floats and kicks me to a flotsam. I like this humble side of me; it’s taken decades to reach this wisdom of NO RESISTANCE to the PRESENT MOMENT. I will accept whatever comes to my hand and then try to work things around.

            I saw the movie ACCIDENTAL PRIME MINISTER and rather liked it. Not Hollywood class but it had enough to show what happens in the corridors of power. It also reinforced my natural distaste of Congress and Sonia Gandhi; they mean only evil to this nation.

            This month also served me this jaded experience. YOU CANNOT FORCE WISDOM ON ANYONE EVEN AT THE POINT OF A GUN.  I tried my best to drive sense in my siblings through persuasion, reason, threats, shaming, education, ridicule and nothing worked and only stoked antagonism and animosity. This is a great beautiful lesson: LEARNING IS ALWAYS A SOLITARY ACTIVITY. Only you can learn and only you choose from whom and what experiences in life to learn. At times it gets so frustrating that you feel like drilling a hole in someone’s scalp hoping and praying they get a whiff of wisdom but you only end up hurting yourself more.

            Another is this comforting thought: Lots of IMT batch mates read these musings. I was so happy connecting to Ashutosh Mishra yesterday and he has an unquenchable thirst for Ganga River and trekking unexplored mountains. It’ rare to meet people who have passionate hobbies and it’s a sort of a kindred feeling. His achievements are much greater; he conquers mountain peaks untrammeled by human beings in the last 200 -300 years. My only feat in comparison is moving a soft set from one building to another with the same level of heightened tensions and emotions. Nature certainly chooses its winners alright.

Why blog? Why so personal??

I will keep this short with zero waffle.  Writers, mediocre ones especially, fill reams of pages much like school kids filling examination sheets with the mistaken belief that longer the essays the better the marks.

            Why blog? First, to store memories. I have my writings from early 1990s and when I read them today they give me electric shocks as it were. Nothing captures a moment than a written word; it takes you back to that day.  I was so enthralled in Bahrain during 2003 days that I would write 5 pages of notes every day. When I read them 15 years later, I relive those memories. They are not dimmed by time but it’s as vivid as it happened yesterday. So that’s one reason for writing.

            Two, my story of life is damn interesting. If I had a MNC job, a careerist woman for a wife, and all my kids in the best convents then this is the best what life can offer. But these don’t make for interesting lives. If you are Vice-President or Managing Director then the number of people you are scared is more than a fresher; there is so much more at stake and so much conformity expected. But my life is damn interesting – a man who suffered parental emotional abuses as a kid, moodswings in adulthood, discovering spirituality, heart surgery at 29, romance with a Sindhi woman (which is the North pole to my South Indian genes), almost did myself in in 2016, discovered Vipassana a decade back and Mindfulness couple of years back. Again I reiterate my life is so damn interesting. There are not very many people in this world who have not celebrated any festivals for three decades; there is heroism in my tale. There are not very many who have healed bipolar without family support or without mood-stabilizing drugs.

            Why go so personal? I only write superficially. I have had some really dark moments in my life that I am scared to write. For instance, I still can’t get to write my near death experience (NDE) after my heart surgery in 1998, or my meeting different miracle men in 2015-16 years when suicidal thoughts floated on the surface and underneath, to near self-inflicted death in Theni 2016 and so many very, very dark experiences. I have not written most of these tales for I have not processed them as yet. And even if I did write they will not be published in a blog forum.

            Writing heals. Writing gives perspective. Nothing in the world captures a person’s moods and times than the written word. Writing if honestly done is a study of movement of time and space and aspirations. Writing also is the celebration of human emotions. Writing inspires for quite often the experience of one person is the history and pathos of mankind. We don’t live in numbers of GDP and population density but we all live in terms of our daily experiences – the thoughts we think, the feelings we feel, and frozen emotions that so helplessly drives all over lives around. We are a universe to ourselves no less interesting and exciting than the cosmos. We are the oceans and mountains and the valleys and the storms and the depressions as we navigate in our search for peace and happiness. We are verily the creators of the universe not just a passing visitor. That is why we still read a Harriet Beecher Stowe, AJ Cronin, laugh at the antics of Wooster in a PG Wodehouse, follow the trails of a Sherlock Holmes and get inspired by a Alexander the Great who believed he had conquered all of earth 300 years before Christ. 

            So that is why I blog. Standing in front of a mirror and my honesty with words gives the rest of the world a chance to look at life’s possibilities. Life is infinitely interesting in its permutations and combinations; there is so much of energy and passions. Do I need say more?