Decluttering during pandemic

Decluttering has been one of the many trending concepts during the pandemic. While most of it has centered around removing the clutter from the house - those unused artifacts gathering layers of dust on them due to limited use all these years, those long forgotten pairs of jeans (and umpteen number of such unused garments) which you always wanted to wear after shedding those extra pounds of oh-so-loyal weight, those books you have so carefully stacked up in your closet and never bothered to use - there's a long list of such items as potential targets for decluttering. Those who prefer a little serious mode of thinking, got into decluttering the mind - cleanse the thoughts, forgive and forget, prioritize positive thoughts, let bygones be bygones and so on.

 

Yours truly got down to a different kind of decluttering - target being the 45,000+ unread mails (or for that matter, the 200,000+ mails) in my Yahoo inbox. While I have developed this habit of not giving a lot of importance to this number, and do not dread missing out on any important mail for the simple reason that if it is important, I will be bluntly reminded of its importance on a phone call. But still, the thought of having a "clean" inbox is too tempting, when people around have been doing all sorts of cleaning and boasting about the same on social media.

 

Having successfully brought down the number of unread mails to ~35,000, I accidentally opened the SPAM folder and, lo and behold, I was mesmerized to see all the unsolicited love and affection showered on me by so many leading brands of the day. I mean it is touching to see five different brands showing their concern for my health by trying to sell me a glucometer, with a 100% cashback. They seem to have somehow figured out that my family medical history and personal eating habits have destined me to acquire one of these. Going one step ahead, there were three others forcing me to avail the 50-80% discount on a full body health checkup - what with all the excessive work I have been clocking for last ten months (unfortunately, the right person, read "the boss", doesn't see that), and the excessive calories Missus has made me consume through the innumerable dishes she has experimented on me during the lockdown. And, as if they came to know about the drop in my fixed take home salary because of the ingenious adjustment and variabilization done by my organization, there are so many remote working job opportunities, assuring me INR 10,000 of extra monthly income just sitting at home. The job sites perhaps got the estimate of variabilization as well as my skills level a bit wrong - I have actually received offers for interesting roles like Entry-level Software Engineer, Insurance Agent, Junior Process Executive, Direct Selling Agent and so on - I swear I have not mentioned any of these skills anywhere on my LinkedIn profile (if that is the source of their "targeted campaigns"). I almost felt like "commenting for better reach" on these mails, but there was no such option available.

 

Similarly, Tata AIG perhaps picked up my 15 years old Facebook feed and hence has been offering me an immediate renewal of my expiring bike insurance policy. FYKI, I last owned a bike in the first half of the last decade, and with the fantastic job being done by the local administration on maintaining the roads, I have no intention of owning one in the near future. And thank God for small mercies that Missus doesn't spy on my SPAM folder - with the number of mails from Kalyan Matrimony and Shaadi.com, giving me a sneak peek into the profiles of brides on their portals - enough to give someone an idea that I am still active on these sites, to stalk or for some voyeuristic pleasures. Another interesting frequent visitor is someone offering me UPSC coaching or a scholarship for a UGC-recognized online BBA degree from Manipal University. They somehow caught hold of my responses in the latest HR Pulse Survey and understood that I am not quite happy with the job I have got after doing my Engineering and MBA, am looking out for alternate career opportunities and am busy reskilling myself, like so many others. Dude, if you are reading this, which I know you are for sure, please note that I have already crossed the eligibility age for UPSC entrance. And more importantly, there is no fun putting these degrees on my LinkedIn profile - I would rather have my Udemy and Coursera certificates up on my profile. That is the pandemic trend, isn't it?

 

In all this mad rush of helping me set my life right, I really appreciate the efforts put by this group of spammers hell bent on selling me a car insurance without any paperwork, or BAJAJ FINSERV asking me to avail a zero documentation personal loan. I respect you for all you are doing to save the environment, by not using paper in conducting your business. Also thanks to "HDFC Life - no reply" for reminding me to be aware of spurious calls and fraudulent offers.

The pandemic post, finally!!

We have finally reached the last month of the year. Needless to say, and for obvious reasons, unlike other years of our lives, this brings a sigh of relief, instead of the usual regret that one more year of our lives is over. But as they say, and perhaps one of the oft repeated statements in such situations, it all depends upon one's perspective.

For the lucky few blessed souls, whose life remained unaffected by the pandemic - no adverse impact on job, little or no impact on income, no fatal infections among near and dear ones, essentials like groceries and basic necessities taken care of - this pandemic brought multiple opportunities to do things they had never done but always wanted to do. Zillions of bytes on the Internet have been taken up by the "thinkers", "innovators", "motivators", "thought leaders", "eternal optimists" or "evangelists", bombarding the lesser mortals on how to make good use of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But, alas! None of these golden words could enthuse me enough to do one thing that helps "keep my sanity", "defuse my stress", "calm down my nerves", "take a break" or "let my creative juices flow". It finally took this quote from a New York based comedian I read in the newspaper a couple of days back for me to stop procrastinating, put a structure to my random thoughts and make my long pending contribution to the blogosphere:

"We're finally at that point in the pandemic where you can regret how you've spent the pandemic."

- By Molly Brenner

Yes, this quote pushed me to question my seriousness about this hobby, and in a way threatened to ask me the question - "If you could not take out time to pen down a couple of dozen blogs in these six months, are you really serious about this?" Of course, I did not want this to be my regret. Sometimes there are small triggers like these which push you out of your reverie. I have been feeling bad that I have not done justice to this hobby for a long time. But I am happy that I am finally ON it. Well, too early to call it out, but isn't well begin as good as half done?

Ever since the pandemic began, I kept on thinking about picking this up. There were the standard ideas (hate to call them ideas though) to write ... ABCDs of COVID, full form of COVID, lessons to be learnt from the pandemic situation, something about God's way (or nature's way) of giving us a "certain" message and so on. On one hand, as I said, these were not exciting ideas. On the other hand, I wanted to write something different, and these topics were already covered in umpteen number of articles or blogs. And even if I started thinking along these lines just for the heck of it, putting "Appreciate what you have" for the first letter in the alphabet, "Exercise regularly" for the next vowel, "Increase your immunity" for the next or C in COVID for Caring or Compassion was too boring. So many people I know found this the best time "to re-skill" (and upload all those Udemy and Coursera certificates on LinkedIn), "to find the purpose / meaning of one's life" (and share their "having reached a stage right next to nirvana"), "to set the past mistakes right" (and make me feel either I have not committed any mistakes in life, or am too shameless to accept them so as to correct them now), "to equally share household chores / financial planning responsibilities with the spouse" (ain't I already doing enough?), "to reconnect with childhood / school / college friends" (and make me feel so unwanted that nobody suddenly reached out to me or remembered me even during this life-threatening pandemic) or "to rediscover and unleash the hidden artist in me" (and remember asking Mommy dear about the unique scenery I had painted which had the unheard of combination of the rising sun, smoke coming out of a hut's chimney, the mountains, the road and the birds flying in the sky). Finally, I decided to just rant about not finding anything to blog about, and get done with it.

In the meanwhile, there were numerous such occasions, when my ruminations were triggered. A frequent one has been the ephemeral nature of resolutions few people made at the beginning of the pandemic. This is when the initial euphoria had subsided and people realized the change was perhaps not so sustainable. Analyzing the transient nature of these resolutions will take me into the realm of preaching, hence resisting the temptation of using that to write another blog.😈

P.S. Well, it has not been so unexciting.  I did put a few tick marks against certain items of my wish list. To begin with, I always wanted to play "find the word" game with my son. Ask is to find words of three or more letters, in any sequence, out of the letters of a long word, say CONSTANTINOPLE. We were around the 325 word mark at the last count. Another one was solving the Einstein puzzles with my family. Boy it was fun! For once, missus was speechless, and I could successfully confuse her. It was great fun sitting with my son, thinking about the puzzles, eliminating options or justifying a particular selection, all day long, sometimes late into the weekend nights. Simply memorable. Then there was one task challenging myself - for one of the virtual fun meetings, I recorded myself performing the famous steps of the Las Ketchup Asereje song. Hats off to the missus again for the motivation. 😍

Why this Kolaveri Di?

"A developed country is not where the poor have cars, but where the rich people take public transport."

Cognizant of the fact that this quote has its origins in a statement made by the Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, an upper middle-class economy, I picked this up from one of the local newspaper articles during my visit to Singapore a few years back. It somehow got stuck in my memory. And now, when I have just spent some time in Hong Kong, my ruminations are humming - "Why this Kolaveri Di?" Incidentally, this song was released and became famous around the time I was frequently traveling to Trinidad & Tobago, more of Trinidad & Tobago, more of a high income developing country, but at the same time contributing equally to this train of thoughts.

No, it is not only about rich people using public transport. It is about the whole attitude. The attitude of behaving oneself on the road. The emotion of being responsible, being disciplined. It is about respecting the coexistence of other human beings around you when you are on the road. It is about courtesy. Not that there are no traffic violations in developed or high income developing countries. It is about the frequency with which you observe such things on the road, and end up making comparisons. Comparisons become more pertinent in case of places like Hong Kong because you experience the same number of heads around, similar population density, similar narrow streets, lack of space to walk, people in a hurry ... so many similarities, but far better when it comes to the experience on the streets. For the sake of this post, let's not bring in the incomparables like the per capita income, literacy, negligible number of two-wheelers and so on.

Overtaking from wrong side, sneaking in after taking the other side of the lane to overtake, obstructing the free-left lane when you want to go straight and unnecessary honking are so common-place in our homeland that your hands itch to take control of the vehicle when the cab-driver in other countries does not do-the-obvious. Icing-on-the-cake are the instances below where your stomach really grumbles, the head shouts out aloud and asks you to get down from the car to whack the offender mercilessly, and make you a proud member of the road-rage-bully club.

First and foremost are the Ambulance-Obstructionists. These are the nincompoops who do not turn and see which direction is the sound of the siren coming from, who can not care to check whether they are in the ambulance's way and who do not try to figure out if they can do anything to make way for the ambulance. They are ensconced in their own little world, with the ear plugs helping them to remain cut off from such worldly pursuits. A blessing in disguise for them are the traffic cops who will not bother about doing anything to expedite the movement of the poor soul, who, perhaps fighting for life, is still wondering why the ambulance has not taken a wrong side of the road to reach the destination faster. And the entire drama becomes more ridiculous when a select group of good citizens start honking in an unsuccessful attempt to attract the traffic cop's attention and coax him to act, and end up getting stared at because they have disturbed somebody's reverie. Salt on the wound is when you see the same breed shamelessly taking advantage of the ambulance's trail once it has somehow made its way.

Then come the Snakes-and-Escorts. These are those two-wheeler riders, and some times the big brothers, who, at a traffic signal, find it insulting to stop for it to turn green. Wherever they see some space, or scope of maneuver, they will squeeze in, slithering in a serpentine motion, putting the rear view mirrors and bumpers of the good boys at risk, gifting a scratch here and awarding a dent there, triumphantly making their way through the patient morons, to see the black-and-white flag to be waived at the end of the race. These snakes have close country cousins in the escorts, who, hunting in pairs or groups, go too close to and on both sides of a patiently moving four-wheeler, just to ensure their prey is not targeted by anyone else. You'd feel tears flow down your eyes, the tongue itching to tell them not to give you so much respect, and keep it reserved only for those squadrons you see flying in the skies during the Republic Day parade. Their friendliness becomes all the more profound when the lane width is slightly more than that of the bigger beast they are escorting, and they take it upon themselves to save us from the representatives of our next category, the Right-of-Way Atheists.

There is a fraternity of non-believers who have utter disrespect for the concept of right-of-way. They only believe in Darwin's Theory. Be it the nonchalant interrupter from the side lane who joins the big lane traffic without waiting for as much as the way given by the other motorists, or our friend coming out of the apartment joining the street traffic straight away without bothering that is is creating chaos. These atheists indeed have a religion with a single motto - Drive to deprive. This reminds me of an  observation in Trinidad and Tobago, where the vehicle getting a shoo in used to blow the horn almost in a silent acknowledgement, just about sufficient to let the other person know about it. Back home, the horn, much louder and longer in duration, is usually blown by the big lane guy, in utter frustration, because the jolly good fellow was just caught by surprise at the audacity of the intruder. However, not every time is the intruder at fault. Think about times when you wait endlessly on the side lanes, seeking permission to join in, and are not allowed because the bully has the right-of-way!

Last but not the least are the Thankless-Opportunists. These are the champions of shamefulness, and for a change not exactly on the wheels. These are the people who are not obstructed, who are in fact given the right-of-way by certain souls of a fast diminishing breed called Patient-and-Courteous-Drivers. In absence of this breed, it will take the opportunists an eternity to cross the road, or join the traffic, or merge. Thanklessness comes from the fact that there is no acknowledgement to the permission that has been given, risking incessant honks from the innumerable nincompoops behind, some times risking the inflow of some flowery language. A smile helps, but it is more of a smirk, making fun of the courtesy. What is outrageous is the key-chain or the sharp nails, hopefully unknowingly, making their way on the bonnet, or for that matter the far end of the hand craft, kissing your tail light, as if giving you a certificate of appreciation. To top it all, sitting right there at the pinnacle, are the pedestrians, who chose to cross the road, red signal or green, seemingly oblivious of the traffic as if it is the motorists' problem to avoid hitting them, thereby leaving the foot-over-bridge, just a few meters away, questioning its existence.

And when you experience all this on your way back from a full day in office, kolaveri is inevitable. Isn't it?

Of tolerance and inclusion

A book I was recently reading made a reference to the following lines said my Swami Vivekanand in his famous Chicago speech around 125 years ago ...

“I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth.

I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: “As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.”

The more I think about these lines, the more I feel disappointed with where we have wandered. Has the trigger for these thoughts seen any change in last 125 years? Has the society evolved beyond the "Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism" or is still clutching these tightly, ever closer to the heart? Have we lost more advancement because of their continued existence?

Respect the invisible labels

Received this as one of the forwards ...

"A car ahead was moving like a turtle and not giving me way in spite of my continuous honking! I was on the brink of losing my cool when I noticed the small ticker on the car's rear - "Physically challenged; please be patient."

And that changed everything! I immediately went calm and slowed down. In fact, I got a little protective of the car and the driver. I reached work a few minutes late, but it was OK.

And then it stuck me. Would I have been patient if there was no sticker? Why do we need a sticker to be patient with people? Will we be more patient and kind with others if people had labels pasted on their foreheads? Labels like - "Lost my job", "Fighting cancer", "Going through a bad divorce", "Suffering emotional abuse", and more like these.

Everyone is fighting a battle we know nothing about. The least we can do is be patient and kind. Let us respect the invisible labels."

And the ruminations started, reminding me of an acquaintance. While everything else was going fine ... exchange of messages, going for dinner together, husband behaving in the same old bohemian self, wife behaving like the same old submissive self. However, we gradually observed that the lady started behaving weird ... limited communication, no customary messages and a long list of never-before's. The one-sided no-communication gradually turned into a cold war. A lot of insinuations and guess work followed. And one fine day we came to know the couple is on the verge of splitting. We were blind to this label.

A perfect example of you noticing a set of labels which were completely over-shadowing the real labels. When and how do we find out which are the real labels?

For those blessed souls who do not have any of these labels, or not a big one but a few small ones, what does it take to realize the essence of what is said above? While everybody thinks of his / her label as bigger than that of the other person, who gets to decide which label is the biggest? Isn't it best to give everyone else a benefit of doubt, and move on?