Losing out

Last weekend my family and I went to a super mart to buy some groceries. While my husband stood in the billing queue, I decided to sit in the waiting area while my daughter’s plan included doing short dashes between both of us.

As this was continuing , I happened to meet one of our neighbors in the exact same situation – husband in queue, wife in waiting area and daughter doing some cardio exercises between both of them. As is natural with Indian parents,( or maybe it’s this way everywhere) when they fall short of conversation topics they start to discuss their kids; We ended up doing the same. School admissions is quite a safe topic to discuss and we started talking about play schools and formal school options for our respective kids. When I told them that despite being eligible at most schools, we had decided to delay formal schooling for our daughter by an year, I could almost hear the couple gasp for more oxygen. They could not understand why we wanted to “waste” one precious year of her life. The man eventually pointed that this will eventually end up in our daughter “losing out” to kids her age whose sane parents send them to 5 days a week, formal school in a class of 40+ children, as soon as they turn 3. As inviting as it may sound to some, we gave all of this a pass for another year for some reasons that are quite compelling for us. When that conversation ended I came back with a heavy heart, not because it instilled some sense of regret in me for the decision taken by us, but due to the fact that people are so used to running in their daily lives that they think it is the natural way to go, for their own children also.

It seems as if life is a match, where we are constantly battling the people around us. This mentality seems to start right from the birth, the folks of little infants compare whose child experienced teething first, , who starts to sit/crawl/walk first, who can talk sooner than the rest. Who can recite rhymes better, so on and so forth. The one whose child is meeting these tiny milestones sooner than others tends to feel like a winner and the other starts to worry if they are going to lose out on this race. Not only kids, we have invented various ways to help us feel superior to others. Better exam scores, better house, better car, better job, better looks, better looking spouse/sweetheart, better clothes, better social life somehow give us the sense of being better than the rest who score not as well in some of these categories. Likewise people experience a sense of defeat if someone ‘beneath them’ explores an exotic holiday destination first, wears better clothes or gets promoted first or ends up doing something that they feel he/she did not deserve. We assume that a child who passes out of school at age of 17 is better placed for success in life than a child who does so an year later. All because we value reaching the destination first and not the experience of the journey in between.

Sad, that we measure our success and failure in relative terms and hence make them sort of inversely dependent on success or failure of others. A lot of people around me need to be unsuccessful for me to establish my success. Yes, this maybe the world order established by the mankind, but it depends upon each one of us to decide if it is a suitable order.

So, if life is a race for you then you’ll probably not see me around, since I would have wandered off the track, to a path of my own choice.

Turning Vegetarian!

It’s been 10 complete months of vegetarianism for me. I let go of my meat eating habits in the month of January this year. It’s been a tough ride for me considering my love for non-veg food, but somehow I stayed put at the decision. Subconsciously I had been aware of the benefits of turning vegetarian since a long long time, but it just remained that - awareness. There was no motivation to make this lifestyle choice, especially when the existing option involved lip smacking food. Also my family and in-laws comprise of staunch non vegetarians and at both sides celebration has a common expression – non-veg food. So there was never any social or religious pressure on me to quit. Infact my quitting may have disappointed a few considering now there would be someone paying attention to the vegetarian dishes in the menu that earlier no-one cared to cook and if cooked, no one really cared to eat.

To tell you frankly, the day I decided that I would turn vegetarian, I did not believe that I’d travel so far without faltering. Not that I did not want to succeed, just that I thought I could not J The rationale behind this decision was as follows:

• Didn’t want to carry the guilt of being responsible for the sorry life of an animal which is bred for eating purposes.
• Didn’t want to carry the guilt of being responsible for another animals death, only so that it can become part of the food on my plate.
• Guilt or no guilt - Didn’t really want to participate in another animal’s death so that it could become food for just 1 of my meals.
• It’s a healthier lifestyle choice – Vegetarianism comes with lower risk of many diseases like - hypertension, heart diseases, stomach ailments, cancers of different types. They say non-veg food is also bad for your overall temperament.
• Wanted to test myself and see if I can give up something really dear to me.
• It’s a greener lifestyle choice, 1 less non-vegetarian meant 1 less person to breed CO2 emitting animals for.

The arguments are arranged in order of strength, meaning the first point was the strongest motivation and the last one being weakest.

I have since been questioned by people about why I did so and mostly I tell them the truth unless it is more entertaining to lie. More often than not I meet a cynic who tells me that even plants are living beings and I should have mercy on them too. I tell them if my life did not depend upon it, I would. But since it does, hence I can’t show mercy towards them(just like the idiot who asks me this question). Then there is another set of people who find it incredulous that a girl in her right mind would give up something like that for nothing(yes the points above are nothing for them). I just smile at them and tell them to consider it as one of my quirks. Another category of detractors are people who want to prove that despite giving up meat I am still an animal hater/sinner/whatever. These people are generally non-vegetarians themselves and they’d tell me how the lipstick I use has animal fat in it or the leather bag I bought 5 years ago killed an animal or the new stilettos caused a death. That’s right, but I never claimed to turn anything but a vegetarian. Although I could say that there is no match between the frequency of buying a bag or a pair of shoes vs eating non-veg food. The former, one does once in a while(considering there are so many beautiful non-leather products available) but you eat non-veg food several times a week. Since I don’t explain my choices to vindictive people, especially when they are the right choices, I just tell these people how smart they are.

That said, let me tell you that giving up meat is by far the toughest thing I have done in a very long time. It requires enormous amount of self discipline, especially when you have to occasionally cook a non-veg dish for some guests or when you have to feed a chicken drumstick to your 2 year old. Eating out has also lost its sheen for me, since I always end up peering in the non-veg section and the veg section looks so slim(in terms of number of dishes) and pale in comparison.

Everyday when I travel to work(which I do relatively earlier than most people), I see many chickens, that look tired and sick, head over feet, travelling in cramped little cages on a dingy little bicycle or a scooter, probably to their death. I feel so sorry for them but then I feel good that I am not responsible for their condition. Atleast, not anymore!

No Regrets!

More often than not , when a celebrity with a pretty much messed up life is asked about regrets, he/she will always say that they have no regrets and the experiences in their life have made them the people they are today. But this is not limited to celebrities, I often hear people around me say that they have had no regrets in life. For a very long time(mid teens to mid twenties) I really liked the sound of this phrase – ‘No Regrets!’ Wow! Makes you sound so profound, so strong, so right! Not only the sound of it, I thought that it is possible for people to feel no regrets for the bad choices they have made in their lives. But lately I find myself questioning this statement and doubting the truthfulness of people who say it.

What is it to regret something? I looked up the dictionary and it says - “to feel sorrow or remorse for a fault, act, loss, disappointment, etc.”

How can one spend a lifetime without feeling this even once? Saying that you have no regrets means that you don’t acknowledge the mistakes in your life. It means that if given a chance you’d lead your life in exactly the same way that you have lead till now. You will fall at the same places, trust the same worthless people, hurt the precious ones, rue over minor failures, miss the good but small things in life while working, all this and more even if you knew better at that time. I find it hard to believe that any logical person would want to repeat the same mistake? If you knew there was a ditch on a road, would you want to fall into it to know the experience of falling or would you be careful on that road and want to experience falling(if at all) on some other unknown path?

Makes me wonder if this ‘No Regrets’ attitude is just a tough façade over a weak interior. Such a person must find it difficult to admit it to himself/herself first and then to people that he/she just messed up. To own up and admit to oneself that the decision backfired, that the said words were spiteful and bad must be way tougher than saying “I regret having done that”. Does admitting to regret something make you a weaker person? Not in my opinion. Infact I think if ‘regret’ is something it is - first acceptance of a mistake, then it is an apology to self about having made that choice despite the ‘voice in head’ saying otherwise and lastly it is a resolve to make things better and not repeat the mistake again. None of these three things are qualities of a weak person, but qualities of a person willing to grow internally as an individual instead of focusing on projecting himself/herself better.

That said, do you have regrets in life?

Are you OK?

How many times in past few weeks people have asked you that? Especially when you have been having a bad day or a week or a month or a year of maybe a bad life? Some people(mostly women) have the gift of detecting negative emotions in others at a very early stage, some don't. But irrespective of that when someone asks you if you are OK, what would be the right answer?
I don't think truth is the right answer here. People don't want to hear your sob stories, they don't want to get into the muck of your life. They have their own muck to deal with. If at all someone is keen on knowing the reason behind your unpleasant demeanor then I guess mostly it is for gossip reasons.

Sober Yet Drunk.....

So, I decided to write a blog...
The decision to write was not based on the premise that I "had to write" but on the fact that I could. No compelling reason to start penning my thoughts, just the inability to satisfactorily answer the question - "Why not write a blog?"
My profession concerns computers and software but my thoughts about these are not going to figure here. This blog is going to be about my opinions, perceptions and some random thoughts on anything but my profession.
About the title of the blog, currently it is "DrunkOnLife" For those of you who don't know me, I am not an eternal optimist or a very "happy-go-lucky" kind of person; the sort of person who would be expected to have title like that for their blog. Just that "DrunkOnLife" sounded interesting and I also believe that there can be many dimensions/meanings to being "drunk on life" not just the "happy happy" one.
So here I am with this blog. I am not going to be a regular here, you can expect sporadic posts that will be sensitive at times and at other times senseless or profound at times and at other times superficial or precise at times and totally ambiguous at others.

See you soon!!