Wear your attitude

Whether it is friendship groups or work circles, uniformity in dressing seems to be hard-wired

 

Last week, at an event to felicitate a visiting celebrity chef in Delhi, I found it hard to take my eyes off his shoes. They were standard Converse sneakers, but in a very non-standard colour of parrot green, set off by gleaming white laces, and perfectly embodied his iconoclastic image in the food world. But even as I was admiring them, my eyes were drawn to his staff, following in his wake. Each one of them were wearing the same kind of sneakers, albeit in colours ranging from sherbet pink to bright red. Clearly, this was a look that the entire team, following quite literally in the footsteps of the master, had adopted, presenting a united (in footwear at least) front to the world.

 

I guess I should not have been so surprised. If you pay attention, you see this happening across workplaces. If the boss comes to work wearing handloom saris and chappals, those further down the food chain gravitate towards the same sort of sartorial choices. If the boss rocks a business suit with conservative shoes, then that becomes de rigueur office wear. Nobody really needs to lay down a dress code. Most people tend to conform out of choice, not wanting to stand out by dressing in a more, shall we say, individualistic manner. Of course, there are always exceptions, but as always, they simply exist to reinforce the unwritten, unspoken rule.

 

You could perhaps explain this in a work context, where everyone wants to blend in with the senior staff so that they don’t make any waves. But what accounts for the same phenomenon happening in friendship groups across the board?

 

Take a good look at the bunch of women lunching together at a restaurant. If one of them is wearing a salwar kameez and carrying a giant designer bag, then the odds are that every other woman will be dressed in exactly the same manner. If they are wearing short dresses, then the hemlines across the group will hit the same above-the-knee mark. And you can bet that if one of them has blonde highlights, then so will all of the others.

 

And it’s not just the ladies. The same sort of uniformity can be seen in groups of men as well. If one of them is in a suit, then the others will be just as formally attired. If they are wearing collared T-shirts with jeans, then the look will be adopted by the whole group. It’s almost as if there is a tacit understanding that they must present a united front to the world with a similar choice of outfit.

 

Even people who are not in friendship groups or work situations, will find a common sartorial theme if they have to interact with one another over a period of time. Take a group of mothers who drop off their kids at the school gates every day. They may begin the school term dressing in their individual styles but over a period of time a certain homogeneity will set in, decided by what the alphas in the group are wearing. 

 

I guess at the end of the day, we are all pack animals. And to stay in the pack, it is essential to look like you are part of the pack. And the simplest – and the most visible – way to do that is by wearing your allegiance on your sleeve.

 

Mind over matter

There is no one way to meditate - do whatever works for you 

As part of my resolution to try something new every time I go on vacation, I signed up for a guided meditation class last week. I have dabbled with yoga in my time, have done my share of breathing exercises, but somehow I have never really got around to meditating in earnest. 

It began well, with the mandatory inhales and exhales and many chants of ‘Om’, all of which I am familiar with. But as the instructions got more and more complicated (“put the backs of your hands together, place them on your chest, and move your thumbs in a clockwise motion”) my mind, instead of being cleansed of all thought, began to focus on all the aches and pains that my body was experiencing, almost as if in protest against the indignities it was being subjected to. 

My legs were twitching in discomfort at being pinned down in lotus position for ages. My back was protesting against being held upright on a hard floor for such a long period of time. And my neck developed a crick in a matter of minutes as I tried to hold one ambitious pose after another. 

I tried hard to get into the spirit of things, but in about half an hour I had to concede to myself that this was not going to work. I was too focused on my physical discomfort to transcend to a place of spiritual calm. 

So, did this mean that meditation was not for the likes of me? Was I one of those people who can never rid their minds of extraneous thought no matter how hard they try? Was I doomed to go through life without experiencing the beatific calm that comes from a mind cleanse?

Well, yes and no. 

I have come to the conclusion that formal mediation - as in the yoga tradition - is not for me. But that doesn’t mean that I can never achieve meditative calm. I just arrive at that end through different means. 

To me, meditation is not sitting cross-legged in a darkened room, intoning ‘Om’ and breathing deeply. But there are some simple, everyday activities that fulfil the task of meditation for me. 

Taking a long walk in a beautiful park at the end of the working day, listening to bird song, brings with it a calm that lulls my mind into a zen-like state. Sitting in a sun-dappled corner of my living room and losing myself in a book has the same effect. Lying on a beach, watching the waves splash endlessly against the shoreline, can wash away my everyday cares. Peeling and cutting vegetables or just stirring a curry in the kitchen is a meditative act for me. 

The truth is that meditation can take many different forms for different people. For a new mother, just concentrating on her baby’s gurgle of laughter, can make the rest of the world fall away. For devout people, spending time in prayer can be a meditative experience. Some do their meditation in the bath, letting their minds go blank as they immerse themselves in soap suds. 

There is no one way to meditate. And there are no good or bad ways to meditate. It’s just a question of working out what works for you. And then, making it work for you. 

Picture perfect

 Old photos can transport you to another world and another time

 

During one of my periodical clean-outs of my study, I came upon an unmarked white envelope tucked away in one of my drawers. I opened it cursorily and was immediately transported to another world. There was the teenage me, wearing a red silk sari, posing alongside my college friends, all of us holding up trophies that we had obviously won at some tournament or festival, long since lost to memory. 

 

Those faded colour prints brought all my college-days memories vividly to life. Those days spent daydreaming at the library window, while pretending to study Chaucer and Petrarch. The afternoons we sneaked off college grounds to loiter around Park Street getting up to no good at all. And even though I could no longer put a name to all the faces in the picture, I had crystal clear recall of how excited we had been posing for this farewell photo, taken to mark the last day of college. I remembered how our spirits had been imbued with a wild optimism about the future as we set off on the wild adventure called life, the possibilities of which seemed endless.

 

See, that’s the thing about old photos. They are like windows into another world and another time, tinged not just with nostalgia but also with a soupcon of insight. 

 

Sometimes when I look at old pictures of my parents – posing self-consciously in their wedding finery; staring into the camera in some studio that no longer exists; caught off-guard laughing at some long-ago dinner party – I suddenly see them as human beings in their own right, not just as my mother and father. I wonder what was going through that 18-year-old girl’s head as she sat beside her groom, who was a perfect stranger to her. What awkward conversation did these two people, who had been thrown together for a lifetime, make with one another as they came face to face for the first time? And how did they go from being those two stony-faced strangers to that couple that laughed so uproariously, their eyes fixed on one another? What was their journey? And why didn’t I ask them about it while I still could?

 

That’s not the only regret I feel when I look at old photos, though. Rifling through photo-albums (remember those?) from my younger days, I can’t help thinking that youth truly is wasted on the young. All through my twenties and well into my thirties, I was tormented by the feeling that I was never good enough: never thin enough; never tall enough; never pretty enough. But now, when I look at photos of my younger self, I am struck by how much better I look in retrospect. Why didn’t I appreciate what I had going for me in those days, I ask myself. Why did I keep beating myself up, measuring myself against some standard against which I kept failing? Why was it so hard for me to love myself for what I was? Why didn’t I realise that I was enough just the way I was?

 

And it is that realization that actually prompts me to be kinder to my middle-aged self. When I find myself obsessing about my expanding waistline and incipient crepiness, I tell myself that I will be looking at my current photos in ten years’ time and thinking: Hey, I wasn’t that bad at all!

 

Bloom time

We are finally taking the time to smell the roses…

 

The last time I visited Japan was seven years ago. Watching the Sakura (cherry blossoms) bloom had long been on my bucket list. And in 2016 I was lucky enough to arrive in Tokyo on the very day when those amazing white and pink flowers bloomed across the city. I spent the next week doing what the Japanese call ‘Hanami’, which basically means sitting quietly and taking in the beauty of the flowering Sakura. In this I was joined by what seemed like all of Tokyo, Sakura-watching being a national pastime during the fortnight when the flowers are in situ.

 

I remember coming back to India and writing a column bemoaning the fact that while we have plenty of flowering trees in India – amaltas, saptaparani, tesu, palash, to name just a few – which are just as pretty, we didn’t seem to make much of them. We didn’t take time off to sit in parks or simply by the side of the road to admire their beauty.

 

Last week, I was fortunate enough to visit Tokyo again during the Sakura season. And as I travelled from park to park, feasting my eyes on that miraculous burst of colour that is the flowering cherry blossom, I was struck by a sudden realization. I don’t quite know when it happened, or what brought it about, but in the last few years, we in India have begun to celebrate our own flowering trees and spring blooms with a similar enthusiasm that the Japanese show for Sakura.

 

I see it all the time during my walks in the sundry Delhi parks I haunt during the spring. I am surrounded by people, both young and old, who are more interested in taking pictures of the flowering plants – petunias, salvia, pansies, hollyhocks, roses – than in getting their 10,000 steps in. The tulips in Lodi Garden this spring, for instance, were an Instagram staple, with hundreds of posts dedicated to their beauty.

 

And it’s not just spring flowers that are getting eyeballs. Flowering trees are becoming as much of a crowd pleaser. The bright red flowers of the tesu, which are a harbinger of Holi, bring a spot of colour to my social media feed, as does the palash tree, which blooms soon after.

 

During the peak of summer, when the amaltas begins to show off its golden hues, everyone goes a bit mad posting those yellow-streaked trees as they shimmer in the strong sunshine and brighten up every city street. The Pujas are heralded by the flowering of the shiuli tree. But while earlier, it was just the Bengalis among us who would celebrate its arrival, now those delicate white and orange flowers have fans from almost every community.

 

In my house, it is the saptaparani tree outside the balcony that signals the arrival of winter to me. The moment the temperature drops, the tree starts to sprout tiny white flowers which give forth the most heavenly fragrance. But it’s not just me that is taking in that perfume, the rest of the world is just as enthused by it.

 

So, what accounts for our new-found passion for flowering trees and blooms? Is it just another way of brightening up our social media feeds? Or are we finally becoming sensitized to and appreciative of our environment. Or is it a bit of both? 

  

Whatever the reason may be, I am very happy that we are finally stopping to smell the roses.

Don't worry; be happy!

India’s low rank on the World Happiness report should not dishearten us so

 

There was much angst on social media when the annual World Happiness Report was released recently, and revealed that India ranked a lowly 125 (out of 137) on the index. India’s position had improved from 136 in last year’s report, but it still came below its neighbours like Pakistan and Bangladesh. And strangely enough, even the two nations that are tearing themselves apart in a war – Russia and Ukraine – were ranked above India.

  

But even as pitched battles were fought on Twitter about how the questions asked in the survey were skewed towards Western societies, and how the survey was biased against India, an entirely different question was agitating my mind.

 

What does happiness actually mean? Is the definition the same for every person out there? Does it depend on extraneous factors? Or does happiness lie deep within ourselves? And is it up to each of us to excavate and find it? And in the context of the World Happiness Report, does it even make sense to try and measure happiness on a sliding scale when happiness is an ephemeral feeling rather than a readily quantifiable property? 

 

Of course, there are conventional markers for happiness: having a steady job, disposable income, a stable family life, good health. The presence of these may not necessarily make you happy but it would be fair to say that the absence of any (or all) of the above would make you actively unhappy. 

 

But if you were conducting a happiness audit on your own life, how would it go? What would be the things that contributed to your happiness? 

 

Speaking for myself, it is the small pleasures of life that make me happy. They may seem insignificant in themselves but they have an incremental effect, adding up inexorably to contribute to my sense of overall well-being. 

 

·       The pleasures of a good book. It doesn’t matter whether I am reading a physical book or on my Kindle app. It doesn’t matter if it is an improving tome or a bestselling thriller. As long as I have a good book to get stuck into, all is right with my world.

·       A few hours spent in nature. It doesn’t have to involve travelling to some scenic spot and marvelling at the mountains or exclaiming at the sea. It could be something as mundane as taking a walk in the park and exulting in the vibrancy of spring blooms, or watching the leaves of trees change colour with the seasons. Just breathing in some fresh air is all it takes for me to feel better.

·       Pottering in the kitchen. There is something so uniquely relaxing about mechanically chopping and cutting, meditatively stirring a pot on the stove, and being rewarded by a dish that lives up to the promise implied in its recipe. Not to mention, the pleasure involved in feeding those you love.

·       Writing for myself. By which, I mean the writing that is not meant for the eyes of others. Writing that is personal and private; writing that helps me negotiate my own feelings; writing that helps me make sense of my world. If I didn’t have that, nothing else would suffice to make me happy.

 

So yes, I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true. Real happiness comes not from outside, but from within. And how can you possibly measure that on an index?

 

Pandemic praise

Now that life has returned to normal, here are some things I miss about Covid lockdowns

 

I suppose it was bound to happen. After many months of celebrating the end of Covid lockdowns and rejoicing in the fact that life was returning to normal, I suddenly find myself in the decidedly odd position of missing the pandemic. 

 

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to go back to the bad old days, when we were all locked in our houses and had to wear N95 masks even to open the door for deliveries. And, like so many others, I suffered personal bereavements at this time, the sorrow of which still lingers. But strangely, there are moments when I find myself thinking back to the pandemic with nostalgia rather than dread.

 

What can you possibly miss about those dark days of Covid lockdowns, I hear you ask, in tones of utter incredulity. Well, here are just some things I miss, in no particular order

 

·       What I loved best about the days of the pandemic was how my world shrank down to my core group. All those casual acquaintances, distant family members, professional contacts, all fell victim to social distancing. And what I was left with was the people I truly cared about: my immediate family, my best friends, my closest neighbours. It made me realise that we don’t really need the vast social circle we build around ourselves. All that matters is the handful of people who make your world complete. Everything else is extraneous – and that is a truly liberating feeling.

 

·       The thing I treasured most about this period, when we were all locked up in our homes, was that I had almost unlimited time to myself, where I could do exactly what I wanted without the thousand other distractions that are usually a part of life. This is what allowed me to concentrate on the writing of my novel, Madam Prime Minister (a sequel to my first political thriller, Race Course Road), ensuring that I finished it in record time. Now that I am struggling to finish the spy novel that I am currently working on, I find myself longing for those Covid lockdown days, when it was so much easier to concentrate on my writing.

 

·       Going for walks in my favourite parks when the lockdown became less severe was, without fail, the highlight of my day. There were very few people around because not many folks were venturing outdoors. So, I had vast, vacant spaces to myself for the most part, and I could enjoy the spring flowers and the summer blooms in splendid solitude. Now that the parks are overflowing with picknickers, those Covid-tinged days seem like a dream that ended too soon.

 

·       It was during the pandemic that I rediscovered the romance of the road trip and discovered the charms of places closer to home. Not only was it a relief not to have to brave airport security and long flights to go on holiday, but I also found that road trips brought me closer to the country that I was driving through, giving my experiences an immediacy that air travel sorely lacked.

 

·       But the absolute best bit about the pandemic days was the air that we got to breathe in Delhi. Thanks to the lack of construction work, and absence of vehicular traffic, the pollution virtually vanished. Every day was a blue-sky day and the air quality varied between good and moderate.

 

So yes, the pandemic brought with it death and desolation. But it came with some blessings as well – which can perhaps only be appreciated in retrospect. 

 

Pandemic praise

Now that life has returned to normal, here are some things I miss about Covid lockdowns

 

I suppose it was bound to happen. After many months of celebrating the end of Covid lockdowns and rejoicing in the fact that life was returning to normal, I suddenly find myself in the decidedly odd position of missing the pandemic. 

 

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to go back to the bad old days, when we were all locked in our houses and had to wear N95 masks even to open the door for deliveries. Perish the thought! But increasingly, there are moments when I find myself thinking back to the pandemic with nostalgia rather than dread.

 

What can you possibly miss about those dark days of Covid lockdowns, I hear you ask, in tones of utter incredulity. Well, here are just some things I miss, in no particular order

 

·       What I loved best about the days of the pandemic was how my world shrank down to my core group. All those casual acquaintances, distant family members, professional contacts, all fell victim to social distancing. And what I was left with was the people I truly cared about: my immediate family, my best friends, my closest neighbours. It made me realise that we don’t really need the vast social circle we build around ourselves. All that matters is the handful of people who make your world complete. Everything else is extraneous – and that is a truly liberating feeling.

·       The thing I treasured most about this period, when we were all locked up in our homes, was that I had almost unlimited time to myself, where I could do exactly what I wanted without the thousand other distractions that are usually a part of life. This is what allowed me to concentrate on the writing of my novel, Madam Prime Minister (a sequel to my first political thriller, Race Course Road), ensuring that I finished it in record time. Now that I am struggling to finish the spy novel that I am currently working on, I find myself longing for those Covid lockdown days, when it was so much easier to concentrate on my writing.

·       Going for walks in my favourite parks when the lockdown became less severe was, without fail, the highlight of my day. There were very few people around because not many folks were venturing outdoors. So, I had vast, vacant spaces to myself for the most part, and I could enjoy the spring flowers and the summer blooms in splendid solitude. Now that the parks are overflowing with picknickers, those Covid-tinged days seem like a dream that ended too soon.

·       It was during the pandemic that I rediscovered the romance of the road trip and discovered the charms of places closer to home. Not only was it a relief not to have to brave airport security and long flights to go on holiday, but I also found that road trips brought me closer to the country that I was driving through, giving my experiences an immediacy that air travel sorely lacked.

·       But the absolute best bit about the pandemic days was the air that we got to breathe in Delhi. Thanks to the lack of construction work, and absence of vehicular traffic, the pollution virtually vanished. Every day was a blue-sky day and the air quality varied between good and moderate. Bliss!

 

So yes, the pandemic came with some blessings as well – though we may have been blind to them at the time.