It’s a rat race out there. Dog eat dog world. The survival of the bitchiest. And all sorts of other animalistic and atavistic analogies one can cite. So for the new and not so new professionals on the threshold of a career;
Presenting the Cynic's 7C-GUIDE to Surviving the Corporate Jungle (CCC for Short) *Tadaaaaa*
Rule #1: CHANNEL the power of FUKITOL!!!
Are you living the lifestyle? Start your weekday with 1000 mg of Fukitol tablet. On Mondays, don’t stint – have two. The super powerful Fukitol tablet releases endorphins such as
“Illegitimi non Carbodium” (don’t let the b****** get you down),
“Every dog has his day and so will you”
And all other such delightful adages to help you stay fortified through the working day.
Rule #2: CALL a friend.
Telemarketers are extremely annoying specimens of humanity who WILL call and irk one in the midst of professional chaos – right? Wrong! Telemarketers can be your friends. All you need to do know is how to use them well. When a telemarketer calls, one does not snap “Busy – not interested.” Instead, one says:
"Oh thank you so much for calling. For xyz reasons I cannot afford your credit- card/housing loan/ personal loan – however I know a person who has been searching DESPERATELY for it - Please DO call him up – his name is Mr. X (Mr. X is the particular not-so-gentleman who might have pissed you off on that particular day) – oh and also, you have got my name wrong – its not Cynic but Cynelle – just so that he doesn’t get confused in case you give him my reference”
Rule #3: See the CC
Have you looked at your outlook or Lotus Notes carefully? There is a very useful invention called the CC. its not there for decorative purposes. USE IT. Use it wisely and use it WELL. CC everyone – don’t stint. CC bosses, colleagues, their wives, their pet dogs. Don’t underestimate the power of CC in another very important C in your life – the CYA.
Rule #4: The CoCo principle
And you thought CoCo meant CoCo Jambo or CoCo Chanel (depending on your gender or musical affiliations)? The CoCo principle has its genesis in advertising industry – where there is a great deal of interaction which takes place with fairly clueless but stubborn-as-hell clients. This useful principle can be adapted to all corporates as well and can be used judiciously on colleagues and senior management. The underlying principle of this is if you can’t CONVINCE, Confuse. Use multi coloured graphs. Use hyperlinks. Use cross tabs. Use arrows and the other entire useful thingummy which Power point has specifically made for this purpose. Wow them with the designs – overload them with numbers - annotate their heads with bullet points- and sock them with English which is open to various interpretations. Confuse the s*** out of ‘em until their eyes glaze over and their heads start drooping from fatigue.
Rule #5: CHUCK De Work
Have you ever played beach volleyball? Well it has some very interesting features that MUST be appropriated into your workplace viz. the art of lobbying! One can’t underestimate the role of lobbying in the workplace – it is CRITICAL. Whether it’s lobbying insults with moronic colleagues, or lobbying bills from one department to another or lobbying work to others.
Master this art until you are a professional lobbyer – especially lobbying work to the boss.
If uneasy voices protest, tell them to shut up and remind them that the boss is paid five times your salary. And remember, when in doubt ALWAYS UPWARDLY DELEGATE.
Rule #6: CLASS Participation
Did you know that your promotion and growth in an organization is directly linked to the amount you can gas fluently? Therefore, meetings provide a wonderful vehicle for growth and prosperity. ALWAYS state at least thing with a great deal of passion and vehemence and conviction at every meeting you attend. It does not have to be relevant to the topic on hand – it can be anything. On the state of the economy or the weather or what nail polish the CMD’s wife is wearing. This has often been referred to as the rule of CLASS participation.
Rule #7: CALCULATIONS for Success.
And the unfailing formula for success? Here is one which works every single time. Take your monthly gross salary amount – a nice round figure with lots of zeroes (hopefully). Divide it by 30. And every time you can feel your hair whitening and ulcers mushrooming, - chant the following mantra 1001 times.
“For every F****** day I spend here, I get these many (the daily figure) nice, green notes in my bank account .Some weekends I get this for NOT working!”
The day, and week will magically seem brighter!
To be continued: Cynic’s Tools for the Corporate Trade
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Mangoes and nostalgia
Ate the first aam of the season .
One whiff itself of it was enough for me to go all maudlin and sentimental and take me down a lane full of half forgotten memories
... of blissful, long, lazy, summer holidays at my grandmothers house in Goa..
..of idyllic, untainted childhood….
…of cousins and companionship ….
.... of eager anticipation of the mango season …
…of expectant, almost uncontainable excitement at seeing the truck full of mangoes coming home from the orchards in the ancestral village..
.... of a roomful of raw mangoes stacked up in hay (so that they could ripen slowly)….
.... the room pervaded with that sour-sweet heady smell of heaven...
... of furtively sneaking to the mango room in the afternoons (when all grown-ups were having their siesta), and pinching them, and tip-toeing out to the shaded verandah while my eldest (very soft-hearted) unmarried aunt, pretended not to see us..
...of hushed conferences and whispered conspiracies– who will dig out the rawest, khatta kairi ( green mangoes) ? Who would get the chili powder and salt from the kitchen ....
…of feigning outraged indignation at mango-stealing accusations, while surreptitiously wiping our hands on the back of our clothes …
...of climbing the wall and sneaking to neighbor’s house to pinch the mangoes and guavas from their trees (which were always so much sweeter, no matter, how many mangoes we had at a home)...
...of cricket played in the hot sun and glass panes broken, to come back to semi-exasperated-semi- amused scolding and cool mango shakes ...
…of beaming, satiated, sticky small cousins with golden mango pulp all over their faces ….
...of debating the relative merits of mankurad versus alphonso versus musrad...
..of seeing who could eat the maximum and eating so many ( mangoes as well as imli and cocum) that we couldn’t stand the sight of them anymore...
Those were the days before...
...we realized that mangoes were fattening and thus to be rationed ...
...before summer holidays ceased to be with college and work taking over ...
They don’t make childhood like that anymore!
Posted in April 2004, still feel like that. Second nostalgic post in a month - but its summer and i am overworked and underpaid and pining for summer holidays!
One whiff itself of it was enough for me to go all maudlin and sentimental and take me down a lane full of half forgotten memories
... of blissful, long, lazy, summer holidays at my grandmothers house in Goa..
..of idyllic, untainted childhood….
…of cousins and companionship ….
.... of eager anticipation of the mango season …
…of expectant, almost uncontainable excitement at seeing the truck full of mangoes coming home from the orchards in the ancestral village..
.... of a roomful of raw mangoes stacked up in hay (so that they could ripen slowly)….
.... the room pervaded with that sour-sweet heady smell of heaven...
... of furtively sneaking to the mango room in the afternoons (when all grown-ups were having their siesta), and pinching them, and tip-toeing out to the shaded verandah while my eldest (very soft-hearted) unmarried aunt, pretended not to see us..
...of hushed conferences and whispered conspiracies– who will dig out the rawest, khatta kairi ( green mangoes) ? Who would get the chili powder and salt from the kitchen ....
…of feigning outraged indignation at mango-stealing accusations, while surreptitiously wiping our hands on the back of our clothes …
...of climbing the wall and sneaking to neighbor’s house to pinch the mangoes and guavas from their trees (which were always so much sweeter, no matter, how many mangoes we had at a home)...
...of cricket played in the hot sun and glass panes broken, to come back to semi-exasperated-semi- amused scolding and cool mango shakes ...
…of beaming, satiated, sticky small cousins with golden mango pulp all over their faces ….
...of debating the relative merits of mankurad versus alphonso versus musrad...
..of seeing who could eat the maximum and eating so many ( mangoes as well as imli and cocum) that we couldn’t stand the sight of them anymore...
Those were the days before...
...we realized that mangoes were fattening and thus to be rationed ...
...before summer holidays ceased to be with college and work taking over ...
They don’t make childhood like that anymore!
Posted in April 2004, still feel like that. Second nostalgic post in a month - but its summer and i am overworked and underpaid and pining for summer holidays!
Update: Recycling
Rediff blogs seems to be gobbling up random posts I had written. There is no way I can import it to blogspot apparently so I shall resort to recyling posts.
Don’t think anyone from that era is reading my blog anymore so I suppose it should be ok.
Don’t think anyone from that era is reading my blog anymore so I suppose it should be ok.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Waiting for Godot
Shifting to Pune, had brought a number of new experiences along with it – some pleasant, some not so. The not-so-pleasant list seems to include stuff like dealing and managing recalcitrant bais or keeping a JIT inventory of the groceries or stalking plumbers to fix one leaky tap (only for the other one to conk off on the next day – NEVER the same day mind you). By far the most harrowing rite of passage to domesticity is the Great Wait for the Gas Cylinder.
Now why so, all these living-happily-with-their-parents-or-eating-dabbawalas-food-supremely-unconcious-of-importance-of-gas-cylinders will wonder. All one needs to do, they think, is call those fellers and viola the gas will come gushing happily home.
Not so, says the living-stressfully-away-from-a-gas-cylinder-booking-parent-who-hankers-for-the-earlier-era will hasten to assure and disillusion the other type.
The gas booking exercise is a test of determination, iron will and unbreakable and unshakable resilience.
It starts innocuously enough – step one – BOOK IT.
In an ideal world, the protagonists would book the cylinder ON the day it runs out. But we are living in a less than ideal world isn’t it –( Mr. Murphy, might be smugly sitting in some warm climes down there, chortling away to glory about how smart he was. ).
So one can safely assume that the cylinder WILL get over on a Sunday or public holiday – a day which one unfortunately cannot book a refill.
So one, files away a small note in the job-lists area of the brain – stating “BOOK GAS CYLINDER NEXT WEEK”.
Subsequently there are a number of other post-its which get stuck on top of this particular one. So that poor little note goes and lurks in some poky corner of the mind. Until the day – a few weeks later, when one accidentally bangs into the cylinder and instead of hearing the warm, comfortingly deep sound of a satisfactorily full cylinder, one hears an ominously hollow clang.
Then starts the panic.
One tries the phone. Then tries it again. Then redials it in a staccato tattoo for the next fifteen minutes. Then tries to imitate the exact nasal cadence of the woman who says “Theees number is buzeee pleeeez try later”. Then one tries it from one’s cell phone and every other phone in the household (and some at the neighbours) – making mental bets with self on which particular phone which will strike gold. After a point, one starts reciting the phone number in the sleep – heck, one probably IS dialling the buttons in one’s sleep.
There are a couple of false alarms – where it rings rather than beeps busy. One’s heart leaps to the mouth in anticipation – usually, only to plummet down after the a) phone not being picked up at all or b) after a brusque “abhi lunch (or tea or snack or early morning or evening or any time of the day) time hai – baad mein phone karo”
On day 4 or so – one actually gets someone who doesn’t say its lunch time. The celebratory jig is hampered a bit by the less than friendly tone of a person, busily engaged in the serious pursuit of avoiding work, disturbed by annoying interlopers. Somehow, one manages to sneak in the consumer number and get a “Haan ajayega”
At this point, ye ladies and gentleman, don’t, EVER do the mistake of asking her/him “ki KAB mil jayega”. That is suicide. That carries the risk of them conveniently forgetting to note down one’s consumer number in the books that are all important.
The immediately following week is relatively stress-free. The lull before stormy days ahead so as to say. No self respecting cylinder delivering agency will tarnish their reputation by prompt performance of service. The only risk the current cylinder running out - so there is a tendency to extreme frugality with the scarce LPG resources (in fact maybe having a bunch of matchsticks under the vessel could have been more efficient)
Come Saturday the hyper activity begins.
Thus starts stage 2 – the wait
One calls up the people (repeat step 1 until you get through) and after nerving self, one tentatively whispers “my cylinder (rattle of consumer number) when will it come?”
She/he snaps back “ Aaaj aasakta hai , kal ho sakta hai – agle hafte ho sakta hai”
One, even more hesitantly (any overt aggressiveness can tilt the fragile balance of power) say “ Aaaj bhej do please? Hum dono office jaate hai – doosra khatam hone ko aya hai”
“Cylinder chahiye ya nahin? To phir? “
And one slinks back with ears and tails flattened and quietly hangs up.
The next week is agony. Does one take leave or not? If the cylinder chap comes and goes away full handed, one will be PRETTY much cooking on matchsticks of making fire out of twigs.
But the all important question is WHEN does one take leave? Besides mutters of “I have to stay home because the gaswala chap is coming” somehow have not gone down very well with the boss.
Is it on Monday or Wednesday? And to this complicated algorithm - add a job which involves extensive travel and a spouse’s job which involves late nights and if you are mathematically inclined do those probability thingummy and chances are the twain ( cylinder chaps + cylinder desiring folks) will never meet.
The week passes somehow in an agony of suspense. Next Saturday – again do step 1 and get a curt “aaj ayega”
And one waits. And prays. And runs to the window and peers down. And tries not call the place again. Even husbands and boyfriends have never evoked that much eager anticipation in the heart. Going out of the house of course is out of the question. What if he arrives?
After about six hours of frazzled waiting the doorbell will ring, just as one is dropping off from a heavy hearted, dejected siesta (“he wont come today either”) and one flies to the door.
The prodigal Gas Cylinder has come safely home!
Now why so, all these living-happily-with-their-parents-or-eating-dabbawalas-food-supremely-unconcious-of-importance-of-gas-cylinders will wonder. All one needs to do, they think, is call those fellers and viola the gas will come gushing happily home.
Not so, says the living-stressfully-away-from-a-gas-cylinder-booking-parent-who-hankers-for-the-earlier-era will hasten to assure and disillusion the other type.
The gas booking exercise is a test of determination, iron will and unbreakable and unshakable resilience.
It starts innocuously enough – step one – BOOK IT.
In an ideal world, the protagonists would book the cylinder ON the day it runs out. But we are living in a less than ideal world isn’t it –( Mr. Murphy, might be smugly sitting in some warm climes down there, chortling away to glory about how smart he was. ).
So one can safely assume that the cylinder WILL get over on a Sunday or public holiday – a day which one unfortunately cannot book a refill.
So one, files away a small note in the job-lists area of the brain – stating “BOOK GAS CYLINDER NEXT WEEK”.
Subsequently there are a number of other post-its which get stuck on top of this particular one. So that poor little note goes and lurks in some poky corner of the mind. Until the day – a few weeks later, when one accidentally bangs into the cylinder and instead of hearing the warm, comfortingly deep sound of a satisfactorily full cylinder, one hears an ominously hollow clang.
Then starts the panic.
One tries the phone. Then tries it again. Then redials it in a staccato tattoo for the next fifteen minutes. Then tries to imitate the exact nasal cadence of the woman who says “Theees number is buzeee pleeeez try later”. Then one tries it from one’s cell phone and every other phone in the household (and some at the neighbours) – making mental bets with self on which particular phone which will strike gold. After a point, one starts reciting the phone number in the sleep – heck, one probably IS dialling the buttons in one’s sleep.
There are a couple of false alarms – where it rings rather than beeps busy. One’s heart leaps to the mouth in anticipation – usually, only to plummet down after the a) phone not being picked up at all or b) after a brusque “abhi lunch (or tea or snack or early morning or evening or any time of the day) time hai – baad mein phone karo”
On day 4 or so – one actually gets someone who doesn’t say its lunch time. The celebratory jig is hampered a bit by the less than friendly tone of a person, busily engaged in the serious pursuit of avoiding work, disturbed by annoying interlopers. Somehow, one manages to sneak in the consumer number and get a “Haan ajayega”
At this point, ye ladies and gentleman, don’t, EVER do the mistake of asking her/him “ki KAB mil jayega”. That is suicide. That carries the risk of them conveniently forgetting to note down one’s consumer number in the books that are all important.
The immediately following week is relatively stress-free. The lull before stormy days ahead so as to say. No self respecting cylinder delivering agency will tarnish their reputation by prompt performance of service. The only risk the current cylinder running out - so there is a tendency to extreme frugality with the scarce LPG resources (in fact maybe having a bunch of matchsticks under the vessel could have been more efficient)
Come Saturday the hyper activity begins.
Thus starts stage 2 – the wait
One calls up the people (repeat step 1 until you get through) and after nerving self, one tentatively whispers “my cylinder (rattle of consumer number) when will it come?”
She/he snaps back “ Aaaj aasakta hai , kal ho sakta hai – agle hafte ho sakta hai”
One, even more hesitantly (any overt aggressiveness can tilt the fragile balance of power) say “ Aaaj bhej do please? Hum dono office jaate hai – doosra khatam hone ko aya hai”
“Cylinder chahiye ya nahin? To phir? “
And one slinks back with ears and tails flattened and quietly hangs up.
The next week is agony. Does one take leave or not? If the cylinder chap comes and goes away full handed, one will be PRETTY much cooking on matchsticks of making fire out of twigs.
But the all important question is WHEN does one take leave? Besides mutters of “I have to stay home because the gaswala chap is coming” somehow have not gone down very well with the boss.
Is it on Monday or Wednesday? And to this complicated algorithm - add a job which involves extensive travel and a spouse’s job which involves late nights and if you are mathematically inclined do those probability thingummy and chances are the twain ( cylinder chaps + cylinder desiring folks) will never meet.
The week passes somehow in an agony of suspense. Next Saturday – again do step 1 and get a curt “aaj ayega”
And one waits. And prays. And runs to the window and peers down. And tries not call the place again. Even husbands and boyfriends have never evoked that much eager anticipation in the heart. Going out of the house of course is out of the question. What if he arrives?
After about six hours of frazzled waiting the doorbell will ring, just as one is dropping off from a heavy hearted, dejected siesta (“he wont come today either”) and one flies to the door.
The prodigal Gas Cylinder has come safely home!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Terra Verra Firma
There is an art to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.— Douglas Adams, 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'
One of my old blogger buddies Kraz (Wreck Tangle) recently went sky diving - I saw a you-tube (Fabulous video) of the whole event right from the take off stage to the landing.
I know it’s my duty as his friend and occasionally blog-flirt (or at least one of them, hmpf!) to bat my eyelids and ooh and aaah about how brave he is (which I do think, incidentally) and how the whole adrenalin rush thing looks like fun (which it doesn’t).
But I also have to state here for the record that I think Kraz is completely insane. That’s also what I think of S’s sister who went bungee jumping a few years ago. And all the other people who go paragliding or parachuting or doing any other of those gosh-darned silly things God never meant us to do.
Why anyone would voluntarily jump, nay, pay money to voluntarily jump from places very, very far above the ground is something I have never quite understood.
What is wrong with the good old terra firma I want to ask them? It’s nice. It’s solid. It’s utterly comforting. There are no sudden winds that can take you off course. There are no birds of floating around who might fancy a tasty morsel of you for breakfast. There are no sharp edged rocks which might split your head open if you land upside down on them. Why would one want to leave that and go floating around in the air for no rhyme or reason?
Why not, people have argued with me. Adrenalin rush they say. Bah I say to them.
I once thought I would try and figure out what all this fuss about adrenalin was.
Being the cautious and sensible type of person - at least when it came hazardous-to health activities (I always wear my seatbelt when the husband is at the wheel and the MIL is backseat driving for instance); I thought I would start with the most basic of adventure sports.
Thus, one fine day a few summers ago, I and some jobless friends went to get our first taste of adrenalin – at a suicide-camp in amusement-parks clothing.
Egged on by these same moronic friends I climbed onto a ride called the “Super Heart Stopping Ride of Death” or something equally silly (name I mean not ride).
My love affair with terra firma began during the course of the ride. To be precise, it began round about the time I was suspended upside down contemplating the top of a 15 foot tree (from a height of about ten feet) for about three minutes, with nothing to break the sheer fall to the ground. And when I say nothing I mean precisely that. Nothing. Not even the odd rod or bar twenty foot below – just a flimsy rubber belt which those people optimistically hoped would hold us in place.
That’s when I discovered how much the desh-ki-dharti meant to me – and how I had been taking it rather for granted, and promised myself that I would in future I would not so .
As far as possible, I have stuck to my resolution. I don’t part very easily with terra firma. In fact any attempts to part me are met with it (even if it is to climb a stool) are met with vociferous protestations. (Fortunately I have now acquired a husband instead of a stool who can take care of whatever task needs to be done in the rarefied regions of the stratosphere)
The only time I willingly part from my much loved solid ground is if I have to take a plane to go somewhere. Somehow, my office seems to have a strange antipathy to people taking more than three days to reach their destination. But if truth be told, I disapprove of planes as well.
Give me the Good Earth I say. Flying it seems. Bah.
One of my old blogger buddies Kraz (Wreck Tangle) recently went sky diving - I saw a you-tube (Fabulous video) of the whole event right from the take off stage to the landing.
I know it’s my duty as his friend and occasionally blog-flirt (or at least one of them, hmpf!) to bat my eyelids and ooh and aaah about how brave he is (which I do think, incidentally) and how the whole adrenalin rush thing looks like fun (which it doesn’t).
But I also have to state here for the record that I think Kraz is completely insane. That’s also what I think of S’s sister who went bungee jumping a few years ago. And all the other people who go paragliding or parachuting or doing any other of those gosh-darned silly things God never meant us to do.
Why anyone would voluntarily jump, nay, pay money to voluntarily jump from places very, very far above the ground is something I have never quite understood.
What is wrong with the good old terra firma I want to ask them? It’s nice. It’s solid. It’s utterly comforting. There are no sudden winds that can take you off course. There are no birds of floating around who might fancy a tasty morsel of you for breakfast. There are no sharp edged rocks which might split your head open if you land upside down on them. Why would one want to leave that and go floating around in the air for no rhyme or reason?
Why not, people have argued with me. Adrenalin rush they say. Bah I say to them.
I once thought I would try and figure out what all this fuss about adrenalin was.
Being the cautious and sensible type of person - at least when it came hazardous-to health activities (I always wear my seatbelt when the husband is at the wheel and the MIL is backseat driving for instance); I thought I would start with the most basic of adventure sports.
Thus, one fine day a few summers ago, I and some jobless friends went to get our first taste of adrenalin – at a suicide-camp in amusement-parks clothing.
Egged on by these same moronic friends I climbed onto a ride called the “Super Heart Stopping Ride of Death” or something equally silly (name I mean not ride).
My love affair with terra firma began during the course of the ride. To be precise, it began round about the time I was suspended upside down contemplating the top of a 15 foot tree (from a height of about ten feet) for about three minutes, with nothing to break the sheer fall to the ground. And when I say nothing I mean precisely that. Nothing. Not even the odd rod or bar twenty foot below – just a flimsy rubber belt which those people optimistically hoped would hold us in place.
That’s when I discovered how much the desh-ki-dharti meant to me – and how I had been taking it rather for granted, and promised myself that I would in future I would not so .
As far as possible, I have stuck to my resolution. I don’t part very easily with terra firma. In fact any attempts to part me are met with it (even if it is to climb a stool) are met with vociferous protestations. (Fortunately I have now acquired a husband instead of a stool who can take care of whatever task needs to be done in the rarefied regions of the stratosphere)
The only time I willingly part from my much loved solid ground is if I have to take a plane to go somewhere. Somehow, my office seems to have a strange antipathy to people taking more than three days to reach their destination. But if truth be told, I disapprove of planes as well.
Give me the Good Earth I say. Flying it seems. Bah.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Dead Man Walking
A couple of days ago, S came to know that a colleague of his had committed suicide over the weekend. S told me the whole thing was completely surreal. A talented, thirty something man, with apparently nothing wrong in his life (on the face of it) chose to end his life.
It was S’s first encounter with violent self inflicted death. We spent some time just thinking how it would be – to get up one day and decide that life was so unbearable that you had to end it THAT particular day. Whether this man, had second thoughts while leaving his house, how he said goodbye to his family, whether he had taken his house keys along, whether he had taken his cell phone along or just left it behind because he would never need it again. The ordinary minutiae of leaving for work every morning – how strange it must have been.
My closest encounter with suicidal tendencies was a few years ago. A friend, who stayed in the US, broke up with his girlfriend of eight years. He was devastated and used to come online to seek solace through chatting – often with me. At that time, he was on pain medication for a fractured leg and after a point of time; he started regularly overdosing on it – to numb the pain he said– not so much the one in his leg, as the one in his heart.
I was petrified. Petrified that he would take that one pill too many consciously or inadvertently. And here I was in a different country, with no friends on the spot who could actually do something to help him. And all I could do was talk through the night knowing that it was not enough, but hoping desperately that it would hold him and stop him doing something stupid, if only till the next day.
I have battled with mind-numbing, paralyzing grief and despair in my life as well – where I didn’t know where to turn and who to turn to. Where death might have seemed like a welcome relief. But there was this one tiny self preservation voice, or voice of sanity or cowardice or something which held me back from seriously contemplating suicide.
So I know what it is to be in such a black place, that even the air you breathe is viscous with dread, but yet, not give up on life. But I still wonder what that point of no return is for the people who do.
Are the thresholds of pain different for different people? Or is it the levels of cowardice that are different (the jury is still out on whether suicide is the most courageous or the most cowardly act of all)
Is it the ultimate exhibitionist act of a self centred person? A part of me says that people who do take away their lives have to be necessarily, absolutely, selfish since they don’t think about the trauma they cause on those left behind. I had met a gentleman whose daughter had just committed suicide a few months before I met him ( for the most INANE reason imaginable) He was going through the motions of being alive – In reality, he looked completely wrung out, as if his whole life force had been drained out of him.
But then yet, another part says, that in mind which is so tortured with pain and hurt, can hardly understand and empathize with the pain their action will have on someone else-just like people suffering in the last stages of a debilitating disease like cancer, might behave atrociously –be wounding and nasty with family members –where it’s the pain speaking rather than the patient.
I wonder how long people stay in that zone between deciding to end it all and the actual deed. The shadow zone. The figurative dead man walking – self condemned but functioning. Trapped in a festering, tormented mind – but with the knowledge that he needs to appear normal, lest people find something amiss.
Do they count the last times – this is the last time I go to my bank, this is the last time I kiss my child goodbye, this is the last time I will feel the drop of rain on my face, watch a sunset or walk down a road traversed daily for the last thirty years …
I wonder how they decide that this is the way to end it all. The man, who died two days ago, threw himself on the tracks – a particularly macabre and gory way to end his life.
How they go about the mundane actuality of it – going to a chemist shop to buy the sleeping tablets or the innocuous razor. Deciding the merits of two equally distanced railway stations. Choosing which dupatta shall be the fatal noose.
And I think my heart bleeds for those left behind – always. A death, even in the ordinary scheme of things, invariably leaves a residue of regret and guilt – of things unsaid and fences left broken. How much more will it be in such a case – the burden of remorse and self reproach, the weights of all the could-have, would-have, should-haves, is something they might need to deal with through out their life, even if there was actually nothing else to be done, nothing else they could have done.
The greater tragedy is that there is no easy way to pick up these signals of a person who is contemplating death. No red flags which one can see and do something about. Body language and depressive talk is too simplistic, there are many, who quietly go about the business without making a fuss.
Even if correctly diagnosed, the way to help them, how to prevent it, how to do something thus becomes a matter of chance and individual skill. The skill to take them to the counsellor, the skill of the therapist in counselling, the skill of the person to come out of it and be motivated to live again.
I wish therapy wasn’t such a bad word in the Indian societal system – where a person who claims to be taking counselling sessions is automatically assumed to “mental” thus unfit – where depression is something to be derided, hidden away, avoided, not acknowledged rather than something which can be set right – if only with a little sensitivity and empathy. I wonder when society will have the maturity to realize that clinical depression is a malaise just like a viral infection and the person can’t just snap out of it and be happy, no more than a person can will a fever to go away but given the right treatment WILL go away.
P.S This is going to be a two part post because I would also like to write soon about the non-clinical urban depression – the malaise which seems to be hitting a lot of people I know. Young, urban professionals which I fear is grossly underreported and understood.
P.P.S. Very morbid post this. Hmm.
It was S’s first encounter with violent self inflicted death. We spent some time just thinking how it would be – to get up one day and decide that life was so unbearable that you had to end it THAT particular day. Whether this man, had second thoughts while leaving his house, how he said goodbye to his family, whether he had taken his house keys along, whether he had taken his cell phone along or just left it behind because he would never need it again. The ordinary minutiae of leaving for work every morning – how strange it must have been.
My closest encounter with suicidal tendencies was a few years ago. A friend, who stayed in the US, broke up with his girlfriend of eight years. He was devastated and used to come online to seek solace through chatting – often with me. At that time, he was on pain medication for a fractured leg and after a point of time; he started regularly overdosing on it – to numb the pain he said– not so much the one in his leg, as the one in his heart.
I was petrified. Petrified that he would take that one pill too many consciously or inadvertently. And here I was in a different country, with no friends on the spot who could actually do something to help him. And all I could do was talk through the night knowing that it was not enough, but hoping desperately that it would hold him and stop him doing something stupid, if only till the next day.
I have battled with mind-numbing, paralyzing grief and despair in my life as well – where I didn’t know where to turn and who to turn to. Where death might have seemed like a welcome relief. But there was this one tiny self preservation voice, or voice of sanity or cowardice or something which held me back from seriously contemplating suicide.
So I know what it is to be in such a black place, that even the air you breathe is viscous with dread, but yet, not give up on life. But I still wonder what that point of no return is for the people who do.
Are the thresholds of pain different for different people? Or is it the levels of cowardice that are different (the jury is still out on whether suicide is the most courageous or the most cowardly act of all)
Is it the ultimate exhibitionist act of a self centred person? A part of me says that people who do take away their lives have to be necessarily, absolutely, selfish since they don’t think about the trauma they cause on those left behind. I had met a gentleman whose daughter had just committed suicide a few months before I met him ( for the most INANE reason imaginable) He was going through the motions of being alive – In reality, he looked completely wrung out, as if his whole life force had been drained out of him.
But then yet, another part says, that in mind which is so tortured with pain and hurt, can hardly understand and empathize with the pain their action will have on someone else-just like people suffering in the last stages of a debilitating disease like cancer, might behave atrociously –be wounding and nasty with family members –where it’s the pain speaking rather than the patient.
I wonder how long people stay in that zone between deciding to end it all and the actual deed. The shadow zone. The figurative dead man walking – self condemned but functioning. Trapped in a festering, tormented mind – but with the knowledge that he needs to appear normal, lest people find something amiss.
Do they count the last times – this is the last time I go to my bank, this is the last time I kiss my child goodbye, this is the last time I will feel the drop of rain on my face, watch a sunset or walk down a road traversed daily for the last thirty years …
I wonder how they decide that this is the way to end it all. The man, who died two days ago, threw himself on the tracks – a particularly macabre and gory way to end his life.
How they go about the mundane actuality of it – going to a chemist shop to buy the sleeping tablets or the innocuous razor. Deciding the merits of two equally distanced railway stations. Choosing which dupatta shall be the fatal noose.
And I think my heart bleeds for those left behind – always. A death, even in the ordinary scheme of things, invariably leaves a residue of regret and guilt – of things unsaid and fences left broken. How much more will it be in such a case – the burden of remorse and self reproach, the weights of all the could-have, would-have, should-haves, is something they might need to deal with through out their life, even if there was actually nothing else to be done, nothing else they could have done.
The greater tragedy is that there is no easy way to pick up these signals of a person who is contemplating death. No red flags which one can see and do something about. Body language and depressive talk is too simplistic, there are many, who quietly go about the business without making a fuss.
Even if correctly diagnosed, the way to help them, how to prevent it, how to do something thus becomes a matter of chance and individual skill. The skill to take them to the counsellor, the skill of the therapist in counselling, the skill of the person to come out of it and be motivated to live again.
I wish therapy wasn’t such a bad word in the Indian societal system – where a person who claims to be taking counselling sessions is automatically assumed to “mental” thus unfit – where depression is something to be derided, hidden away, avoided, not acknowledged rather than something which can be set right – if only with a little sensitivity and empathy. I wonder when society will have the maturity to realize that clinical depression is a malaise just like a viral infection and the person can’t just snap out of it and be happy, no more than a person can will a fever to go away but given the right treatment WILL go away.
P.S This is going to be a two part post because I would also like to write soon about the non-clinical urban depression – the malaise which seems to be hitting a lot of people I know. Young, urban professionals which I fear is grossly underreported and understood.
P.P.S. Very morbid post this. Hmm.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Two’s company
These days, occasionally S and I have to go to these ‘couply’ dinners – not too often (Thank God) since most of S’s friends are single and confused ( but in Pune) whereas mine are married and confused ( but not in Pune).
Why ’Thank God’ you ask? They remind me of the gatherings my folks used to have – fancy dinners and parties (with fragile dining sets and aperitifs and shining cutlery and other stressful paraphernalia) – too stiff and serious to be enjoyable.
I am slightly more casual. Okay that’s an understatement as friend fishcalledgoonda might point out- I once disgustedly told her to eat like a human being when she was trying to be ladylike.
When I invite friends over, there is a very high likelihood that I will make them run and get things from the fridge (if not the grocer).
Not of the sophisticated school of diners, in other words.
But coming back to what I was saying; - occasionally some odd acquaintance or colleague traipses into town and then we (S&I) have these outings.
After about a year of this, I have come to the conclusion that couples vary widely in their behaviour at gatherings such as this. I have made a study and figured out six typologies of dinner-couples.
The Lovey, Dovey and Whyee(!) Dinner Couple
There will be the coy nok-jhoks, the private jokes, the holding hands under the table, the holding hands over the table, the brushing of hair away from the way, the gentle kisses, and other private, intimate moments, which would have perhaps been rather sweet in a movie, but are exceedingly excruciating if you are the accidental voyeur sitting across the dining table.
The Participative School Of Marriage Dinner Couple
This is a variant Lovey-Dovey , minus the mushy bit. These couples in a magnanimous gesture invite one to be a part of the minutiae of their marriage. There will be chatty conversations about Kavita aunty from Kothrud and Satish Mama from Sadashivpet and how the former spoils her children and how its such a drag to go all the way to the latter’s house, and how the prices of onions are rising and how the husband forgot his dental appointment and much else in the same vein. And for the other pair of dinner guests – well, it’s just like watching a Reality show sans the television screen.
The Therapy Session Dinner Couple
A less happy variant of the participative school, ( maybe a older marriage) whereby the dinner becomes a forum to air grievances about how husband dumps his wet towels on the floor in the bedroom and wife HAS to clean up after him. Or alternatively how wife has no financial sense and will spend her money buying stuff from Good Home rather than invest in paying off the loan for the Good Home. The other dinner guests will be willy-nilly forced to support one parti and usually annoy the other spouse.
The Uska-Pati-Mere-Pati-Se-Safed-Kaise Couple
This is the dinner where one couple is trying to prove conclusively without reasonable doubt that they are
a) more in love ( “Oh you know he got me five diamond rings for my birthday – it was such a surprise *bats eyelashes- what did he get for your birthday?” )
b) more suited ( “We have EXACTLY the same taste in music and in books and in movies and in everything – we never disagree about these things")
c) marriage is made more in more refined and higher level of heaven than the other couple. (“She knows exactly what I am thinking, even before I have the time to think it. In fact half the times, she is the only one thinking for the both of us”)
The We-Are-Not-Married-Married Dinner Couple
Here, the couple apparently call a temporary truce and pretend to each other that they are not spouses, just casual acquaintances sitting at the same dinner table. The Husband will use this as an opportunity to ogle at people at other tables (and occasionally provide an extremely graphic commentary on the clothes or lack of them) while the wife will try and flirt with the guests at the dinner table (in this case, a usually bemused and embarrassed S. I don’t mind these so much, I am completely redundant- so can shamelessly sit back and enjoy myself)
The Mardana-Zanana Dinner Couple
Males and males and femmes are femmes and the twain shall never talk – you might be forgiven for thinking you have traipsed inadvertently into another century (well, okay, another decade). There is this invisible line which segregates the conversational ambit of the genders; the men SHALT talk about work and sports and the females SHALT talk about shopping and children. Now if you are one of those confused WORKING, fairly sports-mad, shopophobic, not-grown-up-enough-to-have-kids-female, then well, you will end up with a bit of an identity problem.
After penning these typologies down, I spent all of ten minutes trying to figure out which type do we belong to. Have regretfully come to the conclusion that my ma is probably right when she says “You two, bah, don’t behave like you are married only – squabbling all the time like children!”
Ah, well
Why ’Thank God’ you ask? They remind me of the gatherings my folks used to have – fancy dinners and parties (with fragile dining sets and aperitifs and shining cutlery and other stressful paraphernalia) – too stiff and serious to be enjoyable.
I am slightly more casual. Okay that’s an understatement as friend fishcalledgoonda might point out- I once disgustedly told her to eat like a human being when she was trying to be ladylike.
When I invite friends over, there is a very high likelihood that I will make them run and get things from the fridge (if not the grocer).
Not of the sophisticated school of diners, in other words.
But coming back to what I was saying; - occasionally some odd acquaintance or colleague traipses into town and then we (S&I) have these outings.
After about a year of this, I have come to the conclusion that couples vary widely in their behaviour at gatherings such as this. I have made a study and figured out six typologies of dinner-couples.
The Lovey, Dovey and Whyee(!) Dinner Couple
There will be the coy nok-jhoks, the private jokes, the holding hands under the table, the holding hands over the table, the brushing of hair away from the way, the gentle kisses, and other private, intimate moments, which would have perhaps been rather sweet in a movie, but are exceedingly excruciating if you are the accidental voyeur sitting across the dining table.
The Participative School Of Marriage Dinner Couple
This is a variant Lovey-Dovey , minus the mushy bit. These couples in a magnanimous gesture invite one to be a part of the minutiae of their marriage. There will be chatty conversations about Kavita aunty from Kothrud and Satish Mama from Sadashivpet and how the former spoils her children and how its such a drag to go all the way to the latter’s house, and how the prices of onions are rising and how the husband forgot his dental appointment and much else in the same vein. And for the other pair of dinner guests – well, it’s just like watching a Reality show sans the television screen.
The Therapy Session Dinner Couple
A less happy variant of the participative school, ( maybe a older marriage) whereby the dinner becomes a forum to air grievances about how husband dumps his wet towels on the floor in the bedroom and wife HAS to clean up after him. Or alternatively how wife has no financial sense and will spend her money buying stuff from Good Home rather than invest in paying off the loan for the Good Home. The other dinner guests will be willy-nilly forced to support one parti and usually annoy the other spouse.
The Uska-Pati-Mere-Pati-Se-Safed-Kaise Couple
This is the dinner where one couple is trying to prove conclusively without reasonable doubt that they are
a) more in love ( “Oh you know he got me five diamond rings for my birthday – it was such a surprise *bats eyelashes- what did he get for your birthday?” )
b) more suited ( “We have EXACTLY the same taste in music and in books and in movies and in everything – we never disagree about these things")
c) marriage is made more in more refined and higher level of heaven than the other couple. (“She knows exactly what I am thinking, even before I have the time to think it. In fact half the times, she is the only one thinking for the both of us”)
The We-Are-Not-Married-Married Dinner Couple
Here, the couple apparently call a temporary truce and pretend to each other that they are not spouses, just casual acquaintances sitting at the same dinner table. The Husband will use this as an opportunity to ogle at people at other tables (and occasionally provide an extremely graphic commentary on the clothes or lack of them) while the wife will try and flirt with the guests at the dinner table (in this case, a usually bemused and embarrassed S. I don’t mind these so much, I am completely redundant- so can shamelessly sit back and enjoy myself)
The Mardana-Zanana Dinner Couple
Males and males and femmes are femmes and the twain shall never talk – you might be forgiven for thinking you have traipsed inadvertently into another century (well, okay, another decade). There is this invisible line which segregates the conversational ambit of the genders; the men SHALT talk about work and sports and the females SHALT talk about shopping and children. Now if you are one of those confused WORKING, fairly sports-mad, shopophobic, not-grown-up-enough-to-have-kids-female, then well, you will end up with a bit of an identity problem.
After penning these typologies down, I spent all of ten minutes trying to figure out which type do we belong to. Have regretfully come to the conclusion that my ma is probably right when she says “You two, bah, don’t behave like you are married only – squabbling all the time like children!”
Ah, well
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