How long can you keep this up?

Conclusion? Hold on to those hateful feelings!

Now I don’t know about you, but I find it very emotionally stressful to continue holding resentment close to my heart. The number of times my wife and I have fought, would be enough – if I were to so choose – to fuel a lifetime of grudges. Instead, I find the “forgive and forget” attitude much more beneficial. However, it is indeed true that sometimes I would have benefited had not forgiven so easily. In fact, this attitude of mine puts me at a great disadvantage! I’ve often felt that such battles are won by the person who has the greater capacity for holding onto their anger.

What does this mean? Does it indicate a weak sense of will on my part? Perhaps it merely indicates that I’m unwilling to put up with discomfort for a prolonged period of time and that I find my peace of mind too valuable to waste. Whatever the practical disadvantages, I feel that the state of mind which exists in a person who easily forgives is in general more relaxed than a person who does not.

Sometimes however, I can hold a grudge by forgetting about the other person entirely. As long as they don’t come near me, have contact with me, or affect my life in any way, I can just wipe them out of my private existence. But being constantly exposed to such individuals is extremely taxing on my physiology.

My blood pressure rises, I can almost feel my adrenaline glands pumping out their enervating essences, my heart rate increases, and my breathing is uneven. This isn’t a state which can continue for long, and I don’t believe it’s healthy either. How fortunate for me therefore, that I’m able to live a lifestyle where I have almost complete control over whom I meet and choose to interact with! It means that my primary task is to maintain a state of harmony with my wife. Everyone else is inconsequential.

I crave a peaceful life. Not everyone does. I must be one of the few persons in this world who is living a life almost in complete harmony with their character. But what about others? How do they handle the necessity of exposing themselves to people whom they dislike, or hold a grudge against? Perhaps they’re able to “box away” their feelings when the time comes to interact with these people. Some survival mechanism is surely necessary. Or perhaps it’s just not too much of a big deal for most. Maybe I’m just overly sensitive.

Either way, I’m pretty grateful for the way things are :) . What about you?

1. Transfer all my passwords

I currently have 324 accounts with various sites. No two passwords are the same and none of them are “dictionary” words either. Those I leave behind need to have access to important accounts like banks, investment portals and sites to pay the household bills.

The simple solution I’m using is Lastpass.com. It’s the best free password management solution hands down and I highly recommend it. The security is absolute and no one – not even Lastpass themselves have access to your passwords. Sensitive data is encrypted using your master key which is the only item you need to remember.

I’ll give my master password to the person I designate. I’ll either tell it to them during my life or leave it in my will as a sealed document with my attorney. So I’ve got this little problem throttled.

2. Tell everyone I’m dead

As a courtesy, I just want all my contacts to know I’ve gone to a place with free Internet, Pepsi which doesn’t spoil your teeth, and meat products which haven’t been extracted from screaming tortured animals.

This is pretty simple too. Compose the message you’d like to send everyone and save it in your “drafts” folder of your webmail. Then tell the person you’ve selected in Step one to log into your webmail, and hit the “Send” button. Your last words will reflect your personality. So make it interesting!

Second problem solved.

3. Keep my blog up

In many ways, my blog will be the most lasting effect on this world. The rest of my life is unremarkable. I want my large collection of thoughts and stories to stay online for as long as the Internet exists. Those of you with free blogs on WordPress or Blogspot have nothing to worry about. Poor sods like me with a hosted domain need to do some extra work. I’d move to a free account eve  now, but I’m a writer and my domain helps with brand recognition and my online reputation :(

One solution is to wait till I retire and then move to a free hosted blog site. Blogspot would be my choice as of now since WordPress.com doesn’t allow javascript and has a bunch of other restrictions. It’s a tedious process involving the redirecting of links via a 301 permanent redirect to pass on PageRank juice. I also need to inform those linking to my blog to change their URL’s. I’ll need to update my Feedburner settings as well.

But what if I die suddenly tomorrow? Alas, the procedure is more clumsy then. I’ve told the person in step 1 to just create a new account for me on Blogspot or wordpress and simply export all my posts. I can’t ask them to do more than that since they’re presumably be too busy dealing with all the other crap that happens after a person near them dies.

4. Write a Final Blog Post

I gotta keep this one in my “drafts” section and tell the aforementioned chosen one to publish it. My final message to the world at large where Step 2 is only for those who know your personally. This will be your epitaph.

5. Put up a QR code on my tombstone

You’ll probably have seen a QR code somewhere or the other. It’s like a barcode with encoded information on it. Just point your smartphone camera at it and it should extract all the important info. So anyone passing by who cares to know more can simply scan it and know when I lived, died, my name, my blog address and any other info I want to leave for posterity. It seems this has already been done before.

And that wraps up my list of to-do things after my death :D

Sure I’m a writer and possess an average skill with words. But sometimes I finish writing and feel…hollow. As if I’ve tried my best to get my feelings out there and haven’t succeeded. As if it’s still inside me struggling to find a proper way out and my writing has only scratched the surface. The best example I can give is my failure to convey my outrage over people abandoning their pets when the going gets tough. I did my best – truly. But at the end, I was frustrated. I even admitted as much at the end of the post.

I envy artists. Take painters or cartoonists – even those who draw stick figures. They convey in one pane what I would need pages to do, and still fall short. Look at this hilarious sample from the awesome site xkcd.com:

Someone is WRONG on the Internet!

You see that…you SEE that? Isn’t it funny? It hits the spot. One pane – that’s it. No need to say anything else. No cloud of letters getting in the way. The mini explosion around the guy’s hands indicates the warmth of the typing…the scene is just freaking perfect. And stick figures!

How do they DO that? A picture is truly worth a thousand words.

I thought I too will try this to get my feelings across. I wanted to show show how horrible it is to abandon a dog after you bring it into your home as a puppy along with your first child. How it grows up and is part of your life on important occasions and how it loves you back without restraint. And then you leave him or her on the road to starve and get bitten to death by other dogs.

So my first pane needs to show the introduction of the puppy into the home. I thought perhaps a crib or something to represent the baby…but I just couldn’t form the scene in my mind. And even though I was aiming for stick figures, turns out that they require quite a bit of skill to use properly. This was the best I could come up with…

This is NOT worth a thousand words :(

Ironically, the only message this picture gets across eloquently is my utter incompetence as an artist. So even though I find words incomplete and ineffective, they seem to be the only tool I have. I fare no better with other art forms either. Take this music piece by Ludovico Einaudi:

Words can’t begin to describe how I feel when I listen to it from start to finish. I feel I’m exploding with the need to express, but it’s trapped. The surge of feeling beats against my chest for release as if struggling to erupt. I want to reach out and transmit my state of mind to another person, but there’s a black void between us that can’t be crossed.

I envy those who have the gift of being able to use art to beam their feelings across – whether its painting, sketching, music or sculpture. The lower class of beings like myself will need to be content with the pathetic medium of words.

I am truly an island. Forever.

In this every day world I wield no power, have no impressive influence on humanity and am resigned to my fate which is controlled in large part by the circumstances I was born into, random chance and the largess which the powers that be deem fit to shower on me. My modest role as a writer brings little true value to humanity. Governments, corporations and everything in between are the real masters of my universe. My voice is tiny – and though it occasionally joins with millions of others to produce a crescendo, I have no illusions about its individual impact.

I am – in other words – a nobody.

My Outer Personality

But unbeknownst to anyone else, I have a hidden personna. My true self which far removed from the mundane existence of this common world. An existence filled with greatness, glory, meaning, and power! And now for the first time, the breach between the two worlds is shattered as I unveil my real identity in the MMORPG game called Guild Wars.

My Secret Identity

In this world, far from being a nobody, I am in fact “Insidious Crippler” – a somebody! Such is my fame that I go by many names – titles I have acquired through various great deeds and marvels. Here are some of them:

1. Holy Lightbringer
2. Legendary Spearmarshal
3. Legendary Guardian
4. Elonian Grandmaster Cartographer
5. Slayer of All

In the world of Guild Wars, I am the conqueror of three continents, wear Obsidian armor, wield Destroyer Weapons, have freed the slaves of Sorrow’s Furnace and have aided the God of War Balthazar in purifying the Fissure of Woe.

Here, I have power. I have a true mission in life and go about it with selfless dedication, daily putting my life at risk for those unable to protect themselves. I bring justice and succor to those who need it most and travel the world in search of adventure and comradeship.

Given the difference between my two lives – my two modes of existence, is it any wonder that I’ve played this game for a grand total of 1,092 hours in the past 11 months? That’s almost 46 continuous days in less than a year.

On second thoughts, perhaps I just need to get a life :D . In all honesty though, what can compare?

How can you do this to someone??

In brief, Saif Ali Khan who’s the “hero” of this flick used to be a rich guy who then fell into dire straits. His family consisted of two daughters, a wife, and a family dog who apparently grew up with them from the start. As part of his “cutting back” measures, our grand and noble stud shamelessly does something which is a punishable offense and also one of the vilest acts imaginable.

He abandons the dog on the streets.

Mind you, this is supposed to be the hero of the frigging movie! Not portrayed as some slimy vile bugger without a shred of decency. Indian audiences are supposed to be compassionate and cheer a person who leaves a loyal, loving, trustworthy and innocent member of a family on the streets to starve without love, affection, or the knowledge of what they did wrong.

And the screenplay writers! How could they even think that this is a quality which they want their hero to possess? Would they have made him abandon his children as well?

For those who don’t understand, here’s the skinny. When you get a dog, you take full responsibility for him or her. They are your child. If you can’t handle that responsibility, don’t bloody get a dog in the first place. Abandoning your kids is a crime. Doing the same to a dog is also a crime- not figuratively, but legally as well. You can’t just walk away from your responsibilities when the going gets tough.

For those using the argument that one’s own flesh and blood is more important than a dog, ask yourself whether you’ll do the same to an adopted child just because they’re not your flesh and blood. No you wouldn’t.

What really irritated me was that this insensitive man is portrayed as the “good” guy. To me, a person who does something like that borders on the psychopathic and should be locked away. They treat animals like objects who don’t have feelings. In return for a companion who loves them and doesn’t know a thing about how the big bad world really is, they give them pain, and despairing loss.

Remember when you were a child and you had a desperate fear of being abandoned by your parents? I’m sure there were a few moments like that. Every child has them. Now imagine your worst fears come true. Would you visit that upon even your worst enemy?

I’m still seething while I write this and I’m frustrated by my inability to get my feelings across through the pitiful medium of words. But I hope something of what I’m trying to say reaches those who read this.

Can you Blindly Obey?

But would I give up my life for it? After some thought, I’ve decided the answer is…No.

A “nation” is too vague an idea for me sacrifice something so precious. I can imagine giving my life to protect someone close to me – someone, or some people I love. Such as a family for instance if the threat is serious enough. But I can’t imagine dying to protect man made borders to which I have no real close connection.

In short, I would make a poor soldier.

It’s because I’m unable to blindly follow anything. I can never fully submerge myself in a larger entity, a larger cause, and will myself to shut my eyes to everything else. My core individualism simply doesn’t allow that to happen. I’m glad there are some people who can do that – put their lives at risk in unquestioning obedience to their superior officers. But there shouldn’t be too many. After all, that’s what fanatics are made of.

Just Following Orders?

I view my life as too precious a gift to squander away without a tangible benefit. I get one shot at living and will dissolve into nothingness when I die. It’s so brief a spark after all. We’re all born alone, essentially die alone – and that’s the end.

Sometimes tactical sacrifices are needed in war. Maybe a contingent to delay the enemy for a while. They’re expected to fail. And often, only the superior officers know the expected outcome. Only they know the overall strategy. The rest of the soldiers are pawns. Pawns who don’t question why they’re asked to do whatever they’re asked to do. I could never be that pawn. To relinquish my grip on life just to serve a higher cause under someone else for purposes I don’t fully understand…not for me.

What does this mean as an Indian? I know it’s patriotic to say that you’ll give your life for your country. I know there’s no law saying that you must want to give up your life. And that’s one of the reasons why I love India. But how much is it expected informally? Are Indians expected to lay down their lives to protect their borders?

How many people are like me? Would you give up your life for your country in the manner outlined above?

1. Combing my hair

When I was in college, I would avoid the effort of combing my hair simply by cutting it as short as possible. But my wife doesn’t like the really short style so I’m forced to have it cut to a somewhat longer length. Unfortunately this reduces the time between haircuts which is irritating since I’m forced to walk to the barber’s shop across the road once every two months and have it cut.

I do this only when the effort of combing and shampooing it twice a week exceeds the effort to get it cut.

2. Trimming my nails

It’s an absolute shame that in the 21st century I have to do something so boring as to cut my nails. Unfortunately I haven’t found a work around for this since I need short nails for fast typing.

3. Filling my water bottle

It’s depressing to see the speed with which my water bottle gets emptied. At least once a day. And my house is too large by far. It takes me at least ten seconds to walk to the sink from my laptop. Throughout those 10 seconds I’m thinking to myself “this is what my life has come to.”

4. Washing the dishes

The single most annoying part of making your food. I despise washing dishes and I’m cursed by the fact that I also abhor unwashed dishes lying in the sink. Catch 22. I hate washing so much that I avoid cooking altogether. I eat frozen food almost exclusively and even then complain about washing the spoon I use to eat. Frozen is also somewhat easier to cook – though most of the dishes require me to take it out of the microwave, stir it, and then microwave it again. Very frustrating.

Cornflakes are ideal. I don’t use milk with them since then I have to wash the bowl. If it’s dry, I can just use my hands to eat it directly from the package – so need for a spoon which needs to be washed either!

I also use my glass for just one thing- drinking Pepsi. This removes the need for me to wash it since there’s no benefit. After all, I’m just going to put more Pepsi into it later.

5. Bathing

I hate doing this every single day of my life. Not just bathing, but brushing my teeth (twice a day), going to the loo, shampooing/conditioning (on Tuesdays and Saturdays), drying myself off, shaving, putting moisturizing lotion on my face (the US gets very dry) and oiling my hair (on Tuesdays and Saturdays.)

Then I have to put my clothes on. I tell you, the tedium kills me. There should be a button where I wake, press it and bravo I’m ready to start my day.

6. Working

The unkindest cut of all. I detest working for two hours five days a week. But one needs to earn money and there’s no getting around it. I try and take some of the pressure off myself in the mornings by finishing half of the day’s work the previous evening. But then there’s the pressure of working in the evenings and now I’ve started finishing that in the afternoons, but then the pressure….aaaaah!

Life is too bloody inconvenient. Too much useless stuff to do and too much effort. I try and avoid these things as much as possible, but so often I just have to suck it up and bear it. Such is my fate.

Indians Boarding Flights - A lack of trust is our problem

But I disagree that it’s because we can’t or don’t want to follow instructions. Indians behave just fine when abroad. When boarding a flight which has non Indians or westerners on it, they stick to the rules as scrupulously as anyone else. When on foreign soil and amongst foreigners, they don’t jump queues or disregard rules. They do it only when they’re surrounded by other Indians. And many Indians are relieved when they come abroad that people follow the traffic laws and that order is maintained in general. So it’s not that Indians don’t like regulations. They love it when everyone else is following them and they don’t mind doing the same.

And here’s the crux. The real reason why Indians don’t follow rules in the presence of other Indians is that we don’t trust our countrymen to follow them! Following rules is good only when everyone around you is doing the same. It’s nice to stand in a line knowing that your turn will come only as long as you have faith that others won’t jump the queue. It’s the same with traffic rules. If you’re the only guy on the road scrupulously driving within the lanes and following every rule to the “T,” you’re at a massive disadvantage. When you don’t trust others to behave properly, there’s no incentive for you to do so.

This is the secret of the Indian’s refusal to follow rules and behave in a dignified way. Which is why the same person when abroad will behave in one way, but when they return to their homeland, they adopt a different behavior. We have a very low opinion of other Indians and when we’re in a group, we sink to the lowest common denominator in our own minds.

This is quite sad really because it’s a self reinforcing mindset. Say you have a set of Indians who all would like to follow rules, not jump queues, and board flights in a dignified manner. If they don’t trust each other to behave properly, they will all break the rules at the same time since the last one to behave properly loses. Then they come away satisfied that their analysis of their countrymen was correct.

If my analysis is correct, it’s time to stop beating on Indians for being inherently uncivilized, rude, or disregardful of rules. We’d like to not be like that. And when we’re in a society where we know others behave properly, we do the same, reap the benefits, and thank our luck for being amongst such nice people. But when we don’t trust the people around us, we turn into the kind of obnoxious jerks we all like to think Indians really are.

So it comes down to how we view ourselves. As long as we think in terms of “Indians are like this” or “Indians are like that,” it will become a self enforcing idea. When sufficient people change and start having a better view of our fellow men, then things will improve. But it’s not easy. Someone has to take the first step after all and be punished for it. I guess we just need to give it time. A lot of time.

Discussing Death is Taboo

This incident got me thinking – why are we so touchy about the subject of death in general? Anupa assures me that the hesitancy is pretty widespread and that I’m the anomaly for not minding. Perhaps it has something to do with both my parents being doctors. We discuss death all the time at home. Just the other day, my mother and I were discussing the best way to commit suicide without pain and expense in case my parents get so old and pain ridden than life is just not worth living anymore. In fact, whenever my mother used to go on a trip somewhere, she would pull us aside before leaving and tell us where the important keys and documents were kept just in case she never came back. I have a file in my Google docs which has all these important details so that we don’t have to go into a flap in case someone in the family dies.

So as a person who’s quite comfortable talking about death, I find the tendency to avoid the topic in Indian society pretty puzzling. I mean sure, no one wants a loved one to die. But talking about it won’t cause it to happen. Keeping quiet about it won’t prevent it either. Unless of course it’s a superstition, in which case I understand. We’re all superstitious about something or the other I guess. But if it’s not superstitious, what is it?

Strangely, I find that it’s Indians who dislike talk of death more than people here in the US for example. It’s strange because Hinduism is arguably a very chill religion when it comes to the final end. Other religions postulate that there’s a final judgement which is pretty scary if you ask me. Hinduism on the other hand simply treats death as shedding your clothes. The soul finds a new body and things go on as usual. Krishna told Arjun not to grieve for loved ones because they’re not really dead.

If anything, it should be the Atheists who hate discussing death because everything literally ends for them. No rebirth, no heaven…nothing. But I’ve met quite a few Atheists who don’t mind discussing their death or the death of others in public. But I don’t know whether it’s a religious thing, or a cultural thing here. Perhaps the problem is philosophical and people feel that since death is a horrible and bad thing, then talking about it is in poor taste.

It’s like the elephant in the room. Every knows it’s there but no one wants to acknowledge it. We all know we’re going to die and everyone we love is going to die and yet we don’t talk about it. This despite that fact that talking about death can be very interesting since it presents concepts such as the soul, mortality, God, the value of life etc. One of the most important distinctions between humans and animals is that we seem to be the only creature who is aware of our own mortality.

Could someone who is more clued into this help me understand this recalcitrance?

Unfortunately, there are some principles which I break – sometimes regularly. Either by violating the spirit if not the substance, or because of my all too human weaknesses. Some principles I maintain only under certain circumstances. Here are three principles which I would like to live by in both spirit and in substance, but fall short of regularly.

Driving motorized vehicles

I don’t drive either a bike or a car. Apart from never liking cars in the first place, I feel they contribute way too much to pollution, take up entirely too much space on the road per person and make living in cities quite a bitch. But sadly, though I personally don’t drive, I’ve never shirked from hitching a ride. Anupa drives me around all the time and I’ve never once refused. True – many times I prefer to walk instead of taking the car a short distance, but this doesn’t really count towards absolving me of guilt.

What can I say? If I determined never to use a car or a bike again, my life will become pretty inconvenient. One way for me to get around this is to by an electric vehicle. I’ve had my eye on the Reva for a while and if I ever do buy a car, it’ll be an electric one.

Tipping Waiters in the US

I despise the kind of “mandatory” tipping system in the US. I feel waiters have no business demanding a tip even for poor service. When we arrived in the US, my wife and I stuck to this principle. We didn’t tip. Or at least we didn’t tip anywhere near the “minimum” 15% in restaurants. And we had some bad experiences. Every time we used to eat out, we used to worry about the tip right from the beginning – what would the waiter say? Would they be rude to us etc. etc. It used to spoil the entire experience and negate the purpose of eating out in the first place!

This time around however, we decided to just cave in. The flip side of not tipping was simply too much hassle. Now the only place where we don’t tip is in buffets where there’s no waiter service anyway, and they can’t do anything about it when we don’t leave anything. They don’t serve us our food so they can’t spit in it!

Eating meat in the US

Some time ago I watched a documentary about how animals are mistreated when we kill them in mass factories for meat. It affected me profoundly and I made a determination never to eat meat again. I was in the US at the time and anyone who’s lived in the US knows what that means. The veg food here is simply horrible. There’s no variety and everyone gives you a strange look when you tell them you don’t eat meat. Even the salads have meat in them, and a “Cheeseburger” isn’t vegetarian despite the name!

I manfully stuck it out without eating meat in the US for around three months till I couldn’t stand it anymore. I went sick at the sight of the veg food I was forced to eat everyday. At around this time we went back to India and then of course everything turned out ok. India is a vegetarian’s delight and I hardly even missed eating meat. Dosas, Appams, Andhra meals, Lemon rice, Chaat, Dal fry and Aloo Paratha kept me busy and happy :)

When when we returned to the US again, I couldn’t bear the thought of suffering once more for an indeterminate amount of time. So I swallowed (pun intended) my pride and ethics and decided not to skimp on the meat. It’s one of my biggest regrets that I eat meat here. All I can say is that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak :(

And those are the three biggest compromises I make in my every day life. I don’t like to make them, but I do nonetheless…