When healthy lifestyle is deemed uncool!!

For the most part of my life I was oblivious to taking care of my body and sailed along with all kinds of unhealthy habits. Perhaps the illusion of invincibility during youth does that to you. I made a switch to be watchful only very recently, and I say this to convey that I am not here to judge or demean the characters I seek to highlight here.

India Gate Quinoa Ads

This is the playlist of the India Gate Quinoa ad. A guy hogging on a bowlful of kebabs and thinking of paying his dues by early morning cardio. A lady having had three bowls of halwa and considering eating oats for breakfast, doing yoga, and paying the price by wearing salwar-kameez instead of jeans and t shirt. Another hero calculating a juicy burger's keemat with gym at 5 am, green tea, take his dog out for a walk/run. And all of them educate us ignorant masses that everything is under control because they are eating stuff made of quinoa!!! Nothing can touch them now!!!

I find this wrong and offensive at SO many levels. And I find it very unfortunate that a food brand actively reinforces so many unhealthy misconceptions.

My primary objection is to the whole idea that doing exercise is a punishment that detracts you from better things in life. Doing yoga, cardio, going to gym is NOT a huge sacrifice. It actually feels good after a workout people!!! To someone who is just beginning to exercise, it will seem like a torture session. That is just the mind's inertia. Once you cross that hurdle, in a few weeks time, you will look forward to your workout session.

Secondly, I am dismayed with the projection that just because something is made of quinoa, one can eat like there is no tomorrow. Ask any health or fitness professional, they will tell you this - there is no super-food that will keep you immune to piling on weight. It is a combination of smart choices, eating in moderation and exercising.If three bowls of moong dal halwa is wrong, so is three bowls of quinoa halwa. Period.

And finally, I am completely against the shaming of certain type of people. What is so uncool about salwar kameez? And why is jeans and tshirt superior? Why should the woman worry about her husband's roving eye to the sexy neighbour? Why does a man without six pack and with a paunch have to take his girlfriend to more expensive dates? When did these body types become so wrong? We are all normal people and we are all imperfect as per the mirage of perfect body that is thrust down our throats by media. Do this over and over again in digital and print media, you have a generation of people who only like to 'look' good and are not bothered about their physical and mental health.

I would love to see brands making ads within the framework of the greater good! Sell your quinoa, am not against marketing and branding. But do it the responsible way. Do not feed into the fears and insecurities of your audience and seek mileage out of it!

I would love to know your thoughts on this!

Be the change you wish to see

This thought has been running in my head since morning and I had to try and put it into words. And when I did sit down to do so, my son asked me to look at the mouse-pad. It was very same thought!

When we encounter something that affects us, roils us up, saddens us, how do we act? After all the inner dialogue and perhaps discussion with peers on how wrong the event was, what do we do?

Some don't get affected. What happens in their surroundings does not matter much to them. I believe its called apathy. I am no one to judge anyone for being apathetic and my write up is not about it either.

There are some who just LOVE to crib. They can complain about anything and can blame the entire system for the state of affairs. Those are the very people who won't lift a finger to change anything for the better. Its easy to just complain and do nothing more. I know it is, because I did that till very recently.

And suddenly I understood one day, that its not enough to just complain. I need to do something about whatever it is that I don't like. It need not be a huge community altering change that I had to effect. Every small bit in whatever capacity I can, will help.

And with that, I had this second epiphany. I stopped complaining. Not because all problems vanished, but something inside me shifted.

Maybe that's why you will hardly see that the actual drivers of change hardly complain. They quietly do their work knowing fully well that things take time to ripen and mature. They are prepared to encounter and face challenges in the way and still continue their good work. They do not get bogged down or derailed by even the most vitriolic opposition. And by sheer will and good work, they inspire others to do the right thing.

Now I think I finally grasp these words 'Be the change you want to see in the world' by Gandhiji.

Share the pain.....

We have often heard and read that it helps to talk to someone about negative feelings and experiences. We do not hesitate to share good tidings with all and sundry. But when it comes to aches and pains that life throws at us, we are very choosy about sharing it. Most times, it gets buried without finding expression.

There are rare occasions I vent out. And I now realise that it has helped.

When Sid was very small and I was still working, I landed an opportunity for an overseas assignment, albeit a short one. Since we did not want to leave him completely at the maid's care for the entire duration, we decided to leave him at my parents'. I went to Coimbatore, left him there and returned to Mumbai by flight. Ahh… this whole event is easily covered in just a sentence. But leaving him and returning alone was hell. The wait at Coimbatore airport was unadulterated misery. I do not remember the rest of the journey, I still remember the terrible wait at the Coimbatore airport. 

From then on, every time I stepped at Coimbatore airport, the same misery would rise up like bile. Even when Sid was with me, I would still tear up at the association. 

After several years, in one of my chats with Appa, I narrated the whole thing, stressing upon the pain I felt every time I went to the airport. And now, I suddenly realise, Coimbatore airport is no longer an evil place in my mind. It is like any other airport. 

I can attribute this cleansing to time. I would rather attribute it to expressing it to a person, who was in tune with what I said and felt what I did. Or it is a combination of both.

Do you have such experiences? Or do you feel it is cathartic to just live out the pain and emerge clean after.

The Levellers

I remember reading this poem long back, during school. I was mighty impressed then with the thought that there is this great equaliser to which everyone must bow. I quote this poem here

Death the Leveller

By James Shirley (1596-1666)

---

THE glories of our blood and state 
         Are shadows, not substantial things; 
There is no armour against Fate; 
         Death lays his icy hand on kings: 
         Sceptre and Crown 
         Must tumble down, 
         And in the dust be equal made 
With the poor crooked scythe and spade. 

Some men with swords may reap the field, 
         And plant fresh laurels where they kill: 
But their strong nerves at last must yield; 
         They tame but one another still: 
         Early or late 
         They stoop to fate, 
And must give up their murmuring breath 
When they, pale captives, creep to death. 

The garlands wither on your brow, 
         Then boast no more your mighty deeds! 
Upon Death's purple altar now 
         See where the victor-victim bleeds. 
         Your heads must come 
         To the cold tomb: 
Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. 

____________________________________________

While death is the greatest leveller, I can think of a few more. 

Seen a school while the process of admissions are on? Anxious parents and well prepared kids. The blackberry toting father has left his baggage of ego and aggressive demeanour back home. Parents are their humblest selves at the schools of their kids.

Hospitals? A sick person, however high and mighty, has to experience the pain. He cannot escape the course of the disease. At best, he may manage to get the most effective treatment, but still cannot escape the side effects, the pain.

I am in the process of renewing my passport. For those, who haven't seen the system in India, I can succinctly say, passport office is extremely crowded, but not chaotic. There is an order and its only the sheer numbers that increases the wait time and not the process by itself. So yes, the passport office is yet another leveller. There was this uneducated, elderly man right before me in the queue. There are couples with very small babies, mothers with several children in tow. There are those who are patient to wait and those who manage to get irked at the smallest imagined slight. You wait with all of them.

It is at such places one is reminded of the ground under their feet. Such places jolt one's head out of the clouds. 

So what other experiences can you count as levellers? Any thoughts?

What are we missing!!

A particularly long and stressful day when everything happened to need immediate attention and when every single task had to follow Murphy's Law (if something can go wrong, it WILL), had me desperate to relax and wind down by the end of it.

Reading a book was out of question. I was too stressed to even read, come to think of it. Mindless iPad games did not do the trick either and hence I found myself take a walk when the boys had dinner. Halfway through my walk, a cat startled me by jumping out of the mini-tree on the pathway and we both looked at each other straight in the eye. Neither of us broke the gaze, and I actually liked looking into the clear eyes of the cat. It would be presumptuous of me to say that the cat communicated something or that it showed me a large depth. Naah....

All it made me think of was that animals are colour blind. They do not see colour. They completely miss out on the blue sky and green grass and pretty flowers and everything else. I assume they see things in blacks, whites and greys? But then, a cat sees much better in the dark than we can ever hope to. It can see in the dark, so what if its all grey? A bat can emit sound waves at a much higher frequency than our ears can ever comprehend. A dog can smell things that we cannot. Our intelligence helps us understand that there are things we do not see, hear, smell. But that will never replace the experience, will it? Maybe we are built only to see seven colours and their combinations and not more. May be there are more colours. Yes, we know about infra red and ultra violet, but we do not see them anywhere do we? And may be there are colours of a totally different dimension than below red and above violet? In which case, we don't know what we are missing? Just like the cat will never know that it cannot see colours.

This train of thought humbled me and so it happened that the eyes of a stray cat did what no other activity could. I went back home, my normal calm self.

Sweet teens or the seasoned thirties

Anyone who has been through the daily commute in Bangalore by semi-public transport, will know what I mean when I say "it feels endless, no hope that you will ever get home". The exhaustion of simply waiting in a traffic snarl rises up like bile in your throat, but you simply swallow it down and wait, resigned to the rut.

There are those industrious few, who would get printouts of techy stuff like Java, Swing, Servelet and what not and use the wait to read up. There are the sensible who would either listen to music with ear plugs or would read a book. There were even the blessed few who would doze off the entire duration!!

Well, me was neither industrious nor sensible nor blessed. All I could do was gawk outta the window at other vehicles or observe people inside my own.

It was in one such gawking time, that a very tiny incident happened. The protagonists were two ladies in their thirties, good friends of each other, chatting with each other engrossed in whatever topic it was at that moment. All of a sudden, there is a gust of wind and a sheet of paper flew in through the window, and landed smack on the face of one of the ladies. She calmly pulled the paper off her face, gave her friend a tiny smile, threw it outta the window and the two resumed the conversation.

This was sufficient for me to get into a tailspin of thoughts and what ifs.
Have you seen teenage girls? Put any two of them together in any situation, and within no time they would find something to giggle about. If the same sheet of paper had landed on a teenager, it would be sufficient fodder for giggles for a long long long time. Where does the innocent happiness go to feed the demands of day-to-day life? Can't we retain the child like laughter while still being responsible to our duties? What should we do or rather what should we not do, to retain the basic simple intrinsic happiness in each of us? Any thoughts?