Tell me what you want

It was a seemingly ordinary morning. The girls were at school and the house was quiet. But inside my mind, it was everything but. I had been offered an opportunity – a remarkable one at that – and I was turning it down. The choice was obvious, but that didn’t mean it was an easy one. I had made my decision – that wasn’t the difficult part. What was difficult was trying to come to terms with it. So I was on the phone with my sister, trying to give the turbulence inside my head some shape in the form of words. My sister, being the fiercely protective woman that she is of the people in her life, was telling me to reconsider. That maybe I didn’t have to turn it down. That maybe I could rethink my decision because what she saw down the road was a better future for me. And I understood all of that; of course I did. I knew where she was coming from too. But it wasn’t helping the turbulence inside my head. If anything, it was getting worse because now I was having to justify a decision that I made that I myself was grappling with. So I pressed pause.

“Wait. Stop,” I said. “Ask me what I want from this conversation.”

“Huh?” my sister replied.

“Ask me what I want from this conversation,” I repeated.

“Okay, tell me what you want from your conversation,” she said.

“I want your understanding, and your support, and your presence,” I said.

“Of course. I understand you. I support you. I am here,” she said, and just like that, I found myself calming down.

At that point, I thought I had stumbled upon something revolutionary – a way to let people know exactly what you want from them. Too often, when people come to us with issues of their own, our first instinct is to want to help them, to make things better. Who wouldn’t want to help a close friend or family member who is struggling? So we try to provide them with solutions. We try to tell them what they ought to do, and sometimes, even how to look at things. I mean, how many times have you caught yourself saying, “But look at the bright side… “?

One of the first things that I learned as a therapist was to believe in my client’s ability to solve their own problems. We are not here to hand them out solutions. We are here to hold their hand while they work out difficult emotions, give them a safe space to explore thoughts and feelings they don’t explore anywhere else, and sometimes we are just here. Listening.

Case in point? On one particularly overwhelming session with my own therapist, a few weeks before that conversation with my sister, I ended up talking for the better part of half an hour. I kept going on and on, the chaos inside my head spilling out into words that tumbled over one another, while she kept listening. At the end of it, all she said was, “What do you want from me at this point?” I ended up crying, telling her I wanted her to tell me that this was hard and that I was doing my best. She said all those things, of course, and mentioned how she always admired how I worked so hard, whether she told me explicitly or not. Until that day, I don’t think it had occured to me that I could actually ask her what I wanted from her.

Now that I think of it, I think the seed was planted by her. The seed that turned into this seemingly brilliant concept of mine – you can always ask what you want from a conversation. And if you’re on the listening end, you can always ask what they want from you. I think it is perfectly fine to call up someone and say, “I am going through a tough time, and all I want from you is to listen without judgement. I don’t want a solution. I don’t want you to tell me what to do. I just want you to listen and be here.” In fact I have started prefacing my conversations with such disclaimers. Like this time I called my best friend and said, “Listen, I am in a mood, I am mad, and I am going to rant and you’re not going to dismiss my issues and tell me it’s okay.” (Because she has a tendency to do that, my best friend. She’ll tell me, “Oh leave it, it’s okay,” and most of the times maybe it is, but there are times when it isn’t) Or yesterday, when a friend of mine told me they were having a bad day but they didn’t want to talk about it and I asked them if they wanted me to be with them while we didn’t talk about it.

Why I am writing this today is because I realise that even though I am getting better at listening, I still haven’t been able to turn down that deep desire in my mind to want to actively make things better for the person in front of me. “What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. Isn’t it perfectly fine to want to make things better for someone you care about? Well… because you see, sometimes what you think is best for the person isn’t necessarily best for them. I remember this one time when I was trying to tell a junior of mine that she should rethink some choices because I could see a lot of myself in her, and I was trying to stop her from making the same mistakes I did. It came from a place of good intentions, of course, and the way I saw it, I was simply using my experience to help her out. But then she said, “You know what, it’s okay if this is a mistake. Because guess what, it is MY mistake to make. Maybe I need to learn my own lessons from my own mistakes.” And that really stopped me in my tracks.

In the book “How to be Sad”, author Helen Russell talks about how, as parents, we are wired to do anything to keep our children from experiencing pain – starting with something as simple as painkillers, sometimes offered to babies in anticipation of pain, because society tells us that we are bad parents if we let our children suffer in any form. I think not just as parents, but even as well-wishers, friends, family members – it is our natural tendency to jump in and do whatever we can to stop the other person from suffering. Hence the unsolicited advice. Hence the taking over conversations and offering solutions that are well intended, but too often, not really what the other person might need at that point.

The point of it all? The next time someone reaches out to you because they are going through tough times, maybe ask them what they want from you, what would make them feel better. If they don’t know – maybe just listen. And if they want you to go out with them on a crazy night out that ends up temporarily distracting them from their pain even if you know that it’s not the best idea and they might just end up feeling more miserable the morning after – well, you do that too. Because guess what, it’s not about you. It’s about them, and what they want from you.

P.S. That junior of mine stuck to her decision and proved me wrong so there you have it, proof that what’s best for you is not really what’s best for the other person.

P.P.S If you’re one of those 12 people reading my blog, chances are we are already know each other so feel free to preface your conversations by telling me what you want the next time we talk.

From strength to strength…!

It is 3pm in the afternoon. I’ve spent most of the day in bed, feeling myself melt onto the mattress in a pool of my own sweat. The elder one had brought the bug home, and like it usually happens with illnesses, the rest of us fell like dominoes soon after. As if my own agony is not enough, the little one is running a fever too. I am worried she isn’t eating enough, and I’m wondering if I’d have to keep her away from school for another day. 

Amidst all this is the one thought that has taken room in my mind and refused to leave me – I can’t believe I couldn’t go to the gym today; would I be better enough to go tomorrow? The very next thought that accompanies it is – how on earth did I become a gym junkie?! 

How indeed.

I think I should start from the beginning – makes sense to do so. Because it is at the beginning that you would find me resisting the gym with every fibre of my being. The gym was a place where already fit people went to get fitter. It was where you would find macho Neanderthals who had relegated to using grunts and groans to communicate as they compared the size of their clubs – I’m sorry – the weight they could lift. It was also where you would find girls with minuscule waists and flat bellies who looked like they survived on air, water, sheer willpower and nothing else. As I was neither, the gym wasn’t the place for me. No, sir. Thank you very much. 

And then my elder sister, my waif of a sister who’d spent most of her childhood evading physical activity of any form, choosing to stay with her nose buried in a book instead, went ahead and started strength training sometime around 2019. She didn’t just go to the gym and train, she made it a part of her very existence and identity. Which is why it made sense that in just over a year’s time, she went from being a gym rat to a gym owner. Yep, she became a business owner and fitness trainer and badass bitch all rolled into one and I witnessed it all. I scrolled through her perfectly shot photos on Instagram as she posed and flexed her muscles. I watched videos of the various aspects of her training, whether it was her running 10kms or executing a perfect barbell squat. Instagram, of course, took it as a sign to fill my feed with tons of “before-after”s, of fitness transformations and fit people who told others that they could also be fit if only they followed so and so routines and ate so and so food and avoided a whole long list of others.

 And I thought to myself “That could NEVER be me.” 

Being pregnant twice and giving birth twice had taken its toll on my body, and I was giving it all the compassion it needed. I had found a space where I could exist in my body without constantly fighting it. Through body neutrality, through workouts that aimed at feeling better more than looking better, through a balance between restricting and indulging, I had found a sort of equilibrium – albeit a fragile one. In fact, so delicate was this balance that it was always only one insensitive remark, one failed shopping trip, one unflattering photo away from teetering unsteadily and dragging me down me in its wake. Maintaining the equilibrium itself left me exhausted. 

To her credit, my sister never pushed me to join a gym (her gym was too far away from where we lived and not a practical option for me) She urged me to start strength training at some point, citing the multitude of benefits it offers, obviously, but also let me take my time. It was almost as if she knew I would be ready someday. I continued watching her, not failing to notice that somewhere between the posed photos and the eloquent captions, her focus had shifted from aesthetics to longevity, from shape and size to strength and endurance, from washboard abs to a core that supports you through your old age. 

At the beginning of this year, when the husband was asked by his doctor to lose weight to manage his backache, all I could think of was my sister – who genuinely loved working with clients with mobility restrictions, simply because it allowed her to be creative with their training programs. I told my husband to ask my sister if she could train him, and then, as if it was the most natural thing to do, I told him I would join him too. 

Also to her credit, my sister didn’t gloat when I finally told her I was ready. Neither did she make a huge deal out of it. 

And so, on a seemingly ordinary Saturday, with no idea that my life was about to get a complete overhaul, my husband and I surrendered ourselves to the capable hands of my sister. We had a proper sit down first, where she talked nutrition and I took down notes. It was only when she felt that we had gotten the basics right that she finally took us to the gym. And there, for the first time in my life, I held a pair of dumbbells, and raised them above my head for a shoulder press. Even as I giggled (my husband will verify that I actually did) at the massive shift I felt within myself, my sister said “You can lift heavier because you are strong.” In that moment, I knew, I simply knew that lifting weights was something I would not only enjoy, but actually crave. I carried that feeling and her words like a talisman with me. I rolled those words in my mouth to taste them, tentatively saying them out loud, “I’m strong, am I not?” until eventually they were imbibed in me. “I am strong. I AM strong. I AM STRONG!”

More than anything though, it helped assuage my qualms about fitting strength and hypertrophy training into my body neutral mindset. Body neutrality, by definition, takes focus away from one’s body – more specifically, its appearance, and to me, it felt like hypertrophy, by definition, was all about changing what your body looked like. That first time lifting weights though and feeling something shift within me phenomenally, I realised that I could still make it about feeling better rather than looking better, and thus, I found this beautiful space where both could co-exist.

Armed with my sister’s basic training and a five-days-a-week training program, that also included two cardios per day to ensure fulfilling my step count of 10,000, I tiptoed my way into our condo gym the next Monday – thanking my lucky stars that I was all alone. Cliched as it may sound, I haven’t looked back since. It has been 8 weeks since that day, and barring that one day when I was sick this week, I haven’t missed a single day of my training.

At the 5 week mark, my sister insisted that I “upgrade” to a proper gym with full facilities and not restrict myself to just free weights. Even as I walked to the gym to sign up for membership, I could hear that voice inside my head, reminding me why I hated gyms, telling me it wasn’t a place for someone like me. One step at a time, I told myself, and the first step was simply signing up, of having the choice to train there should I want to. Having done that, the next step was to actually go to the gym and get comfortable with the machines and their settings. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without my sister, who literally held my hand on that first day and walked me through everything. I came out of the gym that day equal parts excited and scared, because I knew – the next time I would have to navigate that intimidating space by myself. 

The next Monday, I had to brace myself to step inside the gym. Would I make a fool out of myself? Wouldn’t everyone know that I was a noob? Would they laugh at me because I clearly didn’t know what I was doing? The whole way I kept repeating to myself “I belong there. I belong there. I belong there.” I envisioned walking out of the gym that day after my training, having conquered my greatest inhibition, and I told myself that I was willing to sit with my discomfort because what lay beyond it was far more important for me. That day, if someone had told me that in three weeks’ time, not only would I walk into the gym with a spring to my step but that I would sing along to the playlist between sets and even groove to the songs without sparing a glance at the person next to me, I would have laughed. But I did it. I conquered my trepidation. I walked out that first day grinning ear to ear, knowing that nothing could stop me from returning the next day and the day after and on and on. 

 In these 8 weeks I have learned and executed squats and deadlifts, presses and flies, split squats and step ups, lunges and push ups. I have educated myself to learn the difference between push and pull movements and how to create a program around those. My phone notes are filled with various options for supersets and circuit training. And while just a week ago I deadlifted 50kg, yesterday I raised that number to 60kg – admittedly with a dull backache to show for it – and you bet I can’t wait till next week to see how further I can push my body. I have started enjoying feeling sore after a hard workout because I know it’s my body doing what it’s supposed to. I specially enjoy how hungry I get after my training, because that’s my body letting me know that it needs food. I feel way more connected with my body, attuned to its needs, knowing when I can push it and when I need to be kind.

My clothes have started fitting differently, but honestly, at this point it doesn’t matter. I haven’t even stepped on the weighing scale since I began. And while people around tell me I look different, no one is privy to the real change that has happened within me – no, that is mine to experience and marvel in. Among those experiences, the topmost has to be this conversation I overheard between my girls. 

3 year old: “Look Baba, I can lift this beanbag!”

10 year old: “Wow… you are so strong!”

3 year old: “I know, I am as strong as Babu!”

10 year old: “You most certainly are!”

3 year old: “Am I the strongest in this family?”

10 year old: “Nope, Mamma is.”

3 year old: “I think Babu is stronger.”

10 year old: “Nope, still Mamma.”

Why yes, little ones. Mamma is the strongest. Not among others, but she is definitely the strongest she has ever been. And Mamma plans on only getting stronger.

I blinked

The nine year old doesn’t want a pink backpack anymore. “Black, or blue,” Mon declares are her favourite colours; the same girl who, until last year, wanted matching unicorn bags and lunch boxes and made googly eyes at anything shiny and glittery, specially if there were sequins involved. Each morning, she sticks her journal and pen (“This is not for you to read, Mamma”) in her black Adidas bag, shoves in her black water bottle, puts on her black shoes, and is out of the house before I can hug or kiss her goodbye. Sometimes I demand that she come back to give me a kiss. More often than not, I let her leave with a “I love you!” yelled to her back. In a few months’ time she will turn ten. TEN. In the words of best friend Audrey, “I refuse to believe this. I reject your reality and would love to replace it with mine, please.” Same, Audrey. Same.

It’s not just the fact that she doesn’t like pink anymore. I see it everywhere. I see it in how she takes charge when she is with her younger sister. When both of them are in the playground and Momo, the three year old, is clumsily climbing on the bars and I rush towards her “just in case”, it is Mon who tells me very calmly, “It’s okay Mamma. She’s done it before. You don’t have to hold her.” Sometimes, there are other younger kids playing there, and I see Mon taking everyone under her wing, making them laugh, making up games. The other morning as the husband and I had coffee at our regular Starbucks – the one which gives us a view of the same playground – I saw another little girl standing right next to Momo as Mon did one of her “Whooops I am falling down” act to make them laugh. What I really noticed though, was the way Momo was laughing and looking at her new friend to make sure she was laughing too, almost as if saying, “Do you find my sister funny too? Isn’t she really cool?” I see it in the way Mon insists on changing Momo’s clothes and diaper and categorically refuses my help. I also see it in the fact that Momo wants her Baba – that’s what she calls her sister – to sit next to her in the cab, or in the flight, or even at restaurants. I particularly see it on days when the husband and I get to enjoy lunch at peace, secured in the knowledge that Mon is taking care of Momo and both of them are playing quietly by themselves.

It is obvious. The signs are everywhere. My little Miss Munchkin has grown up. In the blink of an eye too.

I no longer shop for her clothes because she will not be persuaded to wear anything she doesn’t like. Strappy dresses? No, thank you. Frilly ones? No, can’t run in them. Crop tops? Heavens, no. Indian wear? Only if it is a comfy kurta that is easy to run in. She has vehement opinions about how she wants her hair (“Don’t you dare touch my bangs!!”) She sends us text messages each time we run slightly late, demanding to know where we are and when we are going to be home and could she please sleep in the master bedroom instead of her own room tonight?

And right there, I know that my little girl is not lost to me. Yet. She still loves her morning cuddles, mercifully. And is still at the phase where getting her own room and bed is not as cool as getting to sleep with her sister and her Mamma on Fridays. She still thinks indoor playgrounds are super fun, even the ones with baby slides and sandpits that others around her seem to have outgrown. She might know most expletives (I made sure she knew them just so she knew to not use them – and also so if anyone else uses them she knows they are expletives) but still thinks that the bad S-word is stupid.

Which is why, on days when I feel like the world itself is spinning way too fast around me and I almost see time slipping away through my fingers regardless of how hard I try to hold on to it, I press pause on my own thoughts. I take a deep breath, ground myself, and take in that moment wholly, completely, and dare I say, mindfully. I stare at my little girls as if I am seeing them for the first time. I marvel at the twinkle in Momo’s eyes, the one that lets me know she’s up to something. I take in Mon’s lanky legs, and the way they seem to have a mind of their own. I listen to their voices, let their laughter fill all the crevices of my being. I open up my heart to be present, be fully present, because this is all that matters. Tomorrow I might blink and find the years melting away again, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now I have a Saturday yawning in front of me, hours to fill with memories and a swimming pool that’s beckoning us.

Of boondiya-bhujiya, hasnahana and saying goodbye

There’s a lot to unpack. Yes, and the suitcases too.

You know what, the funny thing is that I thought I was okay. I mean, I hadn’t been home in four years, but hey, COVID sucks and I do talk to my parents on video chat all the time and wasn’t being safe better than anything else? After all I had a teensy baby and then a toddler to worry about.

I have two words for my own self now : defence mechanism, or the classic case of “the grapes are sour”. Because I couldn’t go home, I told myself I was okay with not going home. How wrong I was.

From the moment the flight attendant announced that the flight was about to land in Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport, I started bawling like a baby. My eyes peeled to the window for the sight of the familiar blue hills, the lush greenery nestled within, I kept thinking, “This is home. MY home. I am home.” I couldn’t stop crying, try as I might. I should have known that it was just a preview of what was to follow- my hurricane holiday home after four years was an overwhelmingly emotional ride.

Guwahati was, well, as jarring as Guwahati can be. It’s growing, that’s for sure, but for now it feels like it’s in that awkward gangly teenage phase where it’s trying out new trendy things and still hasn’t figured out which one it wants to be. There are grand malls with hundreds of brands under one roof, and right when you step outside you see paan-stained walls. There are ride hailing apps like Uber, sure, but try get one to take you anywhere within 15 minutes drive, and you’ll get at least ten cancellations before someone finally arrives at your doorstep. There are flyovers being constructed left, right and centre, but the road that cars are actually driving on are a network of potholes stitched in gravel. The RJ on the radio talks in an accented Assamese that I barely understand but roadside brawls are still conducted enthusiastically in crude colloquial khar-khuwa and bal-kela kuwa Oxomiya (pardon my language, my Assamese speakers)

But then again, this is the same Guwahati I’d spent three years in as a student, and while it might have morphed into this enigma of a place that I still haven’t come to terms with, it is still where a piece of my heart is. And so, as we crossed the road from the Pantaloons in Downtown to go to Govindam’s across the road for saah-mithai while navigating a full flow of traffic and the elder one giggled at this obvious travesty, I simply held her hand a little tighter and hitched my mekhela a little higher. As we rode the auto-rickshaw back home, I tried to shield her from the dust by covering her with my sador but she violently shrugged it off, saying she couldn’t see anything. She was obviously having fun, grinning ear to ear, while the poor husband “sat” with his bottom hovering slightly over the seat while passing speed bumps and potholes to save his already broken back. Needless to say, the whole experience was saved in the elder one’s holiday file as “the most fun ever”.

The littler one, surprisingly enough, adjusted right away, despite never having met her grandparents or been in Assam before. The moment we reached home, she took upon herself to explore all the nooks and crannies of our place, and promptly decided that murhas are the most interesting objects ever. She found two, a big one for her Mamma and an itty bitty one that was just right for her, and was entertained enough to ignore the ominous swarm of mosquitoes following her wherever she went (tsk, tsk, Guwahati)

And then of course, there were the people – some I met for the first time, and some I met after over a decade. Only at home will someone bring me boondiya-bhujiya because I’d mentioned that I missed it terribly here, and shower the whole family with gifts just because we were meeting for the first time.

(Forgive me the aside, but isn’t it the most ideal snack ever? The sweet from the sugar soaked boondiya versus the savouriness from the bhujiya; the soft and squishy boondiya versus the crunchiness from the bhujiya. I think us Assamese have really hit the perfect spot with that one.)

But yes, meeting old friends was such a revelation, in the sense, it made me realise that “Toi ekei aso” (“You’re still the same”) is really the best compliment anyone can give. Makes me wonder though – time changes and shapes us all the time, and we grow through our world experiences. Why, then, is there the hankering to preserve that bit of us that others knew? I myself am proud of how much I have grown over the last few years – heck, I have worked hard to grow and change. And yet, when my friends from university tell me that I am the same, I take pride in that as well.

Onwards then, to Kaziranga, where the whole family gathered for a night’s stay at Borgos Resort. It was definitely colder than in Guwahati, but the fireplaces strategically placed in the gardens really helped. My highlight there has to be the authentic Oxomiya meal that we had right after we reached – I loved the omitar khaar so much I ordered just that and rice with a splash of mustard oil for lunch the next day. The elder one went with her Dad and uncle on the elephant safari early in the morning, while the littler one and I snoozed on (I am not a hundred percent sure but I think I heard wild jackals call out at night, and it creeped me right out) She came back filled to the brim with emphatic words to describe how “super cool” it was, to the point that she was babbling until breakfast – which by the way, had sira-doi jolpan options, much to the pleasure of my Oxomiya heart.

And then, Tezpur my Tezpur. I was torn into two – aching to see my home, but also dreading going to a home where my Aita was no longer sitting on the patio waiting for us. In the end, it was painful, but also cathartic. I stood at the doorstep of my grandmother’s room and let out the deluge that had been building inside me ever since we set off for Tezpur, but then, I forcefully set aside the thunderstorm brewing in my heart in favour of a warm cup of tea in my mother’s newly refurbished kitchen. But then, right as I started cooking dinner, I was greeted by the most wonderful smell ever. It was the huge bush of hasnahana – night blooming jasmines – in full bloom right outside my mother’s bedroom window. The heady smell filled the air until I couldn’t smell anything else. It wasn’t a smell I’d ever associated with home. We used to have jasmines, of course, and gardenias, and once in a while the quite sharp Kamini-Kanchan and the xewali or night-flowering jasmine (yes, they are different) But standing there in my mother’s kitchen, a tiny voice inside me said that maybe the hasnahana was blooming just because it wants me to make new memories in this new Aita-less place.

Then there was the fireside of course, or the jui-kaaxot like my elder one likes to call it. She was five the last time she’d been in Oxom, and all she could recall was how “her bum would be all toasty” from the fireside, and the smell of garlic and mustard oil that I would rub on her chest and back before bundling her up to her bed. It has now become a winter ritual, of course, and I am glad to report that we didn’t miss sitting by the fireside for a single evening during our stay there. It was by the fireside that my Ma and I had deep conversations about life without Aita, and it was by the same fireside that I consoled my elder one who hated the thought of leaving her grandparents after such a short duration. While I rubbed warm oil onto my little girls’ backs, my mother massaged some onto mine, making me feel like I was a little girl again. I think that’s also what being home does to you – it makes you forget that you are an adult, even if for a little while.

Of course, there’s the part of the holiday where I fell violently sick, slept a whole day, then spent the next day doing stuff at the bank and our humble chowk-bazaar only to fall sicker in the following days. Or the part where I took a literal walk down memory lane in my old university campus, only to find that it has changed beyond recognition, even though my old hostel room looked still the same. As did the room in the student activity center where we had spent long hours practicing for the band. Or the part where the elder one found the strangest places to read her books and the littler one rearranged all the furniture in my mother’s living room.

Before we had to leave, I spent some time in my Aita’s room by myself, soaking up the incense-laden air, flipping through the prayer books that my fingers know so well. I replayed the video montage my mind had made of my time with Aita in that room – me as a child cradled in her lap while she told me stories from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, my sister and I sitting on the prayer mat singing borgeet, me as a teenager coaxing Aita to let me dress her up and pin up her sador much to her protest, me as a young adult having conversations about boyfriends with Aita in a way I never could with my Ma. What it finally landed on, was a tune. I was flipping through the Kirtan-Ghuxa and landed on a naam I had never truly learned from her. Suddenly, loud and crystal clear, it started playing in my mind, in her voice. And just like that, I knew what my Aita wanted to tell me. That she is right there, in my heart, in the prayers I sing, in the tunes I hum. She has not gone anywhere. That it truly isn’t really goodbye, after all. It is just the beginning of life with her in a new form.

Of not doing and being okay

I haven’t been writing. No, strike that. I have been writing assignments. I have been writing mails, I suppose. Does writing messages count? I hope they do. But the point is, I haven’t been writing the way I used to – sitting on my laptop with an empty screen in front of me, weighing my words, tasting the way they feel in my mouth as I read them aloud. Or simply letting my wind wander and land on whichever words they want to and let the post write itself because it is cathartic. No, I haven’t been doing that.

I haven’t been playing the ukulele either. In fact the last time I posted a cover of a song must have been six months ago. Other than replying to comments on my YouTube channel (most of which are requests for tutorials that I simply don’t have the editing skills for) I haven’t been doing much in that scene.

I haven’t been socialising. I am off all form of social media for a month now, and I feel ridiculously liberated. I am no longer governed by numbers and pointless comparisons, and yes, I am turning into a hermit and no longer updated about what’s trending and what’s not but at least I am at peace.

I haven’t been painting. It has been ages since I picked up my brush and lovingly created messes on paper. Just the other day, I was inspired to make a hand-painted card, and had gathered enough motivation to create a whole new palette of colours, only to realise that there was a sample card I had made a few months ago that fulfilled the purpose, so I didn’t really have to make another card.

So what have I been doing? I’ve been reading – trashy whodunnit novels that lull me into a sense of faux productivity (after all, isn’t any kind of reading better than not reading at all?) I’ve been trying to convince total strangers to bare their most intimate secrets to me as part of my internship for my PG Diploma in Counselling Psychology which requires me to clock in a certain number of hours before I can get my diploma – not that I have been very successful at that, even if the sessions are pro bono. I have been getting ready and packing to go home after four whole years, and worrying a lot about how the littler one would be around grandparents she has never met, while experiencing winter for the first time ever.

And I have been having conversations. Long, deep, meaningful conversations with the few friends I am still in touch with, the people I genuinely want in my life. Conversations about life and existential crises (because let’s face it, we all have one of those from time to time), about religion and spirituality, about our unrealistic expectations from ourselves and how we are our own harshest critics, about love and hatred and everything in between. I have been practising being wholly present for the people around me. I have been advocating mindfulness – no, not in the “sit and meditate and avoid distractions” way, but by acknowledging the flow of thoughts and being present in the here and now and embracing the impermanence of it.

I have been prioritising my health – not in a “I need to look thin” way, but by doing what makes me happy. I love the fact that when I am doing my The Be.Come Project routines and my two year old asks me, “Mamma are you having fun?”, I smile and nod and gasp between breaths and say yes, I am having so, so much fun. I have also been spending time on the treadmill, letting music lead the pace, allowing my heartbeat to sync with the beats, soaking up the dopamine rush and thoroughly enjoying the release it offers me.

Sometimes, friends ask me, “Why have you stopped writing?” or “Why have you stopped singing?” or even “Why don’t you paint anymore?” And I realise that it is not something I have been consciously avoiding. Maybe this is the chapter in my life where I am learning to be okay with not doing something all the time. Maybe this is the part where, by giving myself that freedom to not be constantly creative and productive, I am learning to be more compassionate with myself. It’s okay, I am telling myself. It’s okay if you don’t feel like writing. It’s okay if you don’t feel like doing anything at all. Maybe one day you will. Maybe one day, when it’s raining outside and you feel restless, and your fingers itch to type out words, you will sit on your laptop and write a post after ages, without thinking about what it is like to be away for a long time. Because just like your home, your blog waits for you. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve been away, cause home is the one place you can always return to.

P.S. I have also been very actively seeking out discontinued and rare to find perfumes to add to my collection. It’s been over a year and my obsession with perfumes shows no sign of abating. Maybe I should just admit that I will be the crazy perfume lady when I am old. But hey, at least I will smell good 🙂

The Eternal Struggle with Numbers

I must have talked about this before, how I struggle with numbers. The irony, am I right, when my very name means number? I don’t mean mathematical numbers here though. Fortunately, math has always been my forte. Which is precisely why I did so well in Physics and Computer Applications and then went on to teach English and study psychology. But I digress. When I say numbers, I mean quantity. The number of followers someone has. The number of likes a post gets. More recently, the views my reels get. The number on the scale. The number of kilometres I have covered during my morning walk. The number of steps I took and the calories I burned. You get the gist. I have always maintained that if your happiness is tied to a number, you can’t be a very happy person because there is always a higher number. Quality versus quantity, I keep saying. I try to put it into practice too, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds. I’d like to focus on how much I enjoyed my walk, but if I forgot to record my outdoor walk on my watch, did it even count? I want to focus on the fact that I am learning a lot in my course right now, but if I get low marks, what does all that knowledge matter? Like I said, it’s not so easy. To put it in the succinct words of Christina Perri, “I’m only human.”

How this started was because of my perfume page on Instagram. Earlier this year, I chose to start posting reviews and photos of my perfumes on a separate Instagram page because even I could tell that the people around me were getting bored to death of hearing me go on and on about perfumes. I remember this brother of mine warning me on the phone, “I’ll listen to all your stories as long as it is not about a perfume.” So yes, I started the page and I posted stuff and I thought it would be all great fun. And it was! I met so many people who were equally obsessed with perfumes as I was. I made friends with whom I could talk perfumes without boring them. I chronicled my scents of the day and scents of the night and used beautiful songs to make beautiful reels that meant something to me. I kept note of the perfume layers I make and shared them with people who then tried them and liked them. As a bonus, I gained a decent amount of followers, crossed that 1K mark, then the 1.5K mark and was looking at the 2K in the near future.

Then suddenly, it stopped being fun. I realised I was a) spending way too much time on Instagram, scrolling mindlessly, b) focusing on the numbers, and c) compelling myself to make content every single day even if I didn’t feel like. Not to mention the material aspect of it – the desire to add more perfumes to my already significant (and in the eyes of a normal person, obscene) collection because of others’ reviews. I tried to make my peace with it and tried to focus on the best parts of it (the friendships I made over there, of course) while navigating the not so nice aspects of it. I told myself I was there not because I wanted to be an influencer and get free PR packages but simply to share my passion with people who understand. I told myself my worth wasn’t associated with a number. But it came to the point where it no longer sparked joy. I was done. I deactivated my perfume page on a whim, without thinking twice.

For the first few hours, I was distinctively uncomfortable. I pushed through that feeling of emptiness. It was like my eyes were getting adjusted to the darkness after I suddenly switched off the light overhead. But one thing I did was message two of the amazing friends I had made there through my personal profile so I wouldn’t lose them. That made me feel marginally better. I also deliberately wrapped my day around other habits I had before Instagram took over my day. I painted after a long time. I picked up my ukulele. I finished the book I had borrowed from the library. And just like that, I stopped looking at my phone as much. As I sat with my little girls, watching TV, my phone far away from me, I realised how mindful even watching Bluey can feel when I am not mindlessly scrolling through the likes on my recent post.

It’s not been many days and I can’t really say I will never go back to Instagram, but I am trying to have a better relationship with numbers. I deleted my author page on Facebook because I am trying to improve my relationship with my writing. In a way, I have gone back to where I was when I first started – sending my blogs out to the void without knowing how many people have read and “liked” them. I don’t even bother to look at the numbers on my Youtube channel or my ukulele page because the numbers there don’t seem very important to me (for perspective, I have less than 300 followers on my ukulele page and less than 700 on my YouTube channel and I have no intention of trying to increase that number) In fact, that thought almost liberates me – that I can be creative for no one but myself. I am chronicling my scent of the day even now, taking notes of the layers I’m wearing, even making short videos. But I’m not posting them, because I want to find out which part of the process I enjoy. Is it the creation? Or the validation? I don’t know how this will go, but at least I’m doing something about it?

There’s one part of it that brought me immense joy and I can’t deny that I miss it. Just the other day, I was chatting with a seller on Carousell (the online place to buy and sell second hand items!) about the perfumes she had, and like it always happens when two perfume lovers meet, it ended up as long conversation about our collections. We ended up sharing our Fragrantica links, and she went “OH MY GOD I FOLLOW YOU ON INSTAGRAM!” And she told me how she bought a rare discontinued perfume just based on my review of that one and how much she loves it. And I realised I really do like that – when people trust me enough to actually invest in something that I said was good, and then end up liking it. For now though, I am okay. I mean, hey, I am sitting and actually writing a blog post after ages, so that must mean something.

Wrapping it up on that positive note. My struggle with numbers remains, but it doesn’t have to consume my life. Let’s see how well I do in my self imposed abstinence. Wish me luck!

Of salons and eyebrows, and mothers.

Dear Mamma, 

I sit here in a beauty salon, waiting for that dreaded beauty ritual – the only one I still drag myself to once a month- in which a woman is going to twist a bit of thread and use that to ruthlessly tug and pull at my eyebrows to coax them into a shape that’ll hopefully make me prettier. I used to be ambivalent about it – pain has never been an issue for me – but of late, I find myself resisting it. Why? I ask myself. Why do I put myself through this? Today, this feeling is heightened because even as I sit here, there’s a woman who’s brought in her teenage daughter for what appears to be her first threading session. “It’s okay,” the mother coos, “just let me know if it hurts too much.” The girl, who was buried in her books just minutes ago, looks like she would be anywhere but here (I can tell from her eyes, which is the only thing I see because she’s wearing a mask, of course) The mother tugs her skin and holds it for her while the beautician continues plucking and threading. And just like that, another young girl has been taught to equate pain with beauty. 

I remember the first time I went to get my eyebrows shaped. I was seventeen, going on eighteen, and really, really wanted to feel grown up – just like Baidew. I drove the scooter that day, to take her to the salon. I sat and watched all these women getting their hair done, their eyebrows done, getting facials. I remember thinking to myself how it looked like hard work, being pretty. And then suddenly, before I knew it, the words slipped out of my mouth “I think I wanna get my eyebrows done too.” Baidew looked at me quizzically. “Are you sure?” She asked. That was the moment- my chance to back out. But all eyes were on me, or at least it felt that way. Which is why I shushed that little voice inside my head telling me to run, run for the hills, and instead took my seat on that wooden chair. My eyes watered that first time – it really hurt. But when I saw my reflection in the mirror, all I could think was, who is this grown up young woman? The woman in the mirror was me, and yet, not me. How could something so simple as shaping my eyebrows make so much of a difference? Little did I know – that first time set the tone for the lifetime. And here I am, 18 years later, still waiting for my turn on the chair so a woman can tug and pull and pluck my eyebrow into shape. 

Do you remember Mamma, the year before the wedding how my beautician made it her ultimate goal to make me the bride with the best skin ever? And how I religiously got facials every month, until my skin looked like porcelain? Only to break out into rashes the day after the wedding! How miserable I was during the reception, my face red hot and itchy! I still look at the photos of me from that evening, and wonder how I survived it at all. But then, little was I to know that it would be the last time my skin would get that sort of pampering.

That first time in Hanoi when I went to the neighbourhood salon wanting to get my eyebrows shaped, I realised that A) because I didn’t speak Vietnamese and they didn’t speak English, even communicating what I wanted was an issue and B) they had no idea what threading even was. When the lady brought out a small blade and asked me to lean back so she could shape my brows, I almost cried. My eyebrows bushy as ever, I returned home. And the first time I had a fight with my brand new husband, I went to the same salon and got myself the most ridiculously expensive facial ever – to prove what point I don’t know. For the next ten months, I rocked the bushy eyebrows style. Which is probably why now when I look back at those photos from my newly wed days, I look so heartbreakingly young. I look like a little girl playing wife in her tiny little kitchen. But then again, maybe I was that little girl. 

I digress, Mamma. But coming back to the point (was there ever a point, though?) I want to say thank you. Thank you for not being the mother who dragged me to the beauty salon to get my eyebrows done, and thank you for also not being the mother who scolded me for choosing to do so. Thank you for understanding when I wanted to make face packs for myself and wasted quite a lot of masoor dal in the process, but thank you also for not pushing me to do any of that, for not once commenting, “You look so tan, don’t you wanna do something about it?” Thank you, for not batting an eyelid when you saw my ankle tattoo for the first time – which, by the way, was three whole months after I actually got it. And thank you for not banishing me from the household when you found out about my belly button piercing – a whole year after I got it. But thank you, most of all, for that gloomy evening a month after Mon was born, when I cried about how ugly I feel, with my still bloated belly and bushy eyebrows and messy hair. And you said, “Look at this tiny creature in your arms. Do you think it matters to her how you look? You are her world, her entire universe, and that’s all that matters.” 

Thank you for teaching me, by example, what it really means to be beautiful Mamma. Thank you, for being you. 

Love, 

Mamon.   

Sisterhood of the Inboxed photos

“Here’s the thing,” I said in the video I posted to my Instagram Stories, “It’s Bihu tomorrow and I am missing home so much! So if you’re dressing up this Bihu, if you’re wearing a mekhela sador, will you please send me your photos? Will you please make me feel like I am a part of your Bihu?”

The day before Bihu, and I was miserable. While it started with a mild case of homesickness, towards evening it had descended into full blown melancholia. That’s when I turned to my Instagram friends for help and asked them to share their Bihu with me. And how they delivered! Within minutes, a junior from university shared a photo of hers draped in a white and red mekhela sador saying how it was because I share her love for white and red. Another follower sent photos of her draped in muga mekhela sador, complete with the kopou in her hair and jetuka on her palms. “I’m not wearing a mekhela sador,” yet another friend wrote, “But I am sending you all my love and hugs for Bihu.” The photos kept coming. Juniors I hadn’t talked to for years reached out through my inbox. “Do you remember me?” one asked, “I’m from the 2008 batch.” She even sent me a video of a live Bihu performance, and the sound of the dhul made me want to cry. One particularly sweet junior sent me a photo of a platter of food. “Because Bihu isn’t complete without food,” she wrote. My heart was full, as was my soul. This, I realised, is what Bihu is ultimately about. It is about love.

I think this is a time for a disclaimer. Once, when I was talking to my best friend about a woman I call my sister, she interrupted. “Wait a minute,” she said, “Why do you refer to these women as your sisters?” “What else would you refer to them as?” I asked, confused. “Juniors, perhaps. Or someone I knew at college,” she replied. I thought hard about it, and realised that while I have just the one elder sister by birth, I have quite a few sisters by soul. There’s one who used to be in Delhi and is in now Pune. She’s the one I handed my phone over for one whole day without any hesitation. Then there’s one in Bangalore who is my chosen family. She shares my ukulele videos on Instagram and says things like “That’s my sister, folks!” I have a short but sweet list of such sisters. So I thought I should let you know that when I talk about a sister of mine, more often than not I am referring to these women.

Meanwhile, the celebrations continue. A classmate of mine, who married a junior of ours, uploads a video where his Assamese wife dances to the Bodo bagurumba as part of the Bihu festivities and it melts my heart to see her embracing his culture so wholly. Yet another sister of mine (now you know what I mean) shares a video where her entire family is dressed in similar attires and dancing Bihu in sync, aunts and nieces, cousins and sisters all laughing and dancing as a family. “I envy you your big family,” I tell her. My nuclear self, who has unknowingly strayed far away from the extended family, can’t even wrap her head around what it must take to keep the entire family together like that.

As for me, I wore an old mekhela sador that my Ma-in-law had sent years ago for Bihu, put on a new perfume that in my mind will now always be associated with spring, and sat with my feelings for a while.

My nephew was home with us that day, and so I spent some time doing puzzles with the kids. Then I went to drop him off at my sister’s, and we spent some time talking. It finally started feeling like Bihu. How lucky are we, we kept telling each other, to have each other? To have family living in the same city? To see our kids grow together as best buddies? Once I returned home, I made some calls. And we talked – my cousin in Dibrugarh, another in Diphu, a sister who lives in Bangalore, a sister-in-law in Tezpur. And as I talked and shared and cried and laughed, I started feeling whole. I might have been far away from home, yes, but I carry my home in my heart. It is not about the place but about the people, after all. And if anything, this Bihu proved to me that I am surrounded by the best kind.

That time of the year again

It is a particularly unexceptional day. The weather’s sultry as always, with the promise of rain looming in the horizon, like the sky hasn’t made up its mind yet. The crickets, for some reason known best to them, have started singing choruses for the last few weeks, in broad daylight too, making me feel weirdly out of place – like I should have been in a holiday resort somewhere, where my windows would open to a thick forest instead of my condo here. Things are crawling back to normalcy, Covid-wise that is, after over two years of stringent rules and regulations, and constant anxiety. But to be honest, two years later, it doesn’t feel like victory. It just feels like yet another change to get adapted to. We are no longer required to wear masks when outdoors, but everyone’s still wearing them. Half the time, I forget that I am outdoors and am allowed to take off my mask. The other half I wonder if I would stand out because everyone else is still wearing theirs. My notes on Psychological Theories – our current module in my PG Diploma course – stare at me accusingly. I am supposed to be adding notes, learning stuff, doing something – anything besides lamenting the fact that I am not home for yet another Bihu.

April had always been my favourite month, after August of course, because apparently just because I have grown old doesn’t mean I have stopped being excited about my birthday. After I got married, April gave me yet another reason to love it – my husband’s birthday. Two years ago, when we had our littler one, April was bumped up to favourite month. Two birthdays in the family in one month, how does one beat that? As a child, I would count down the days till Bihu, which was smack dab in the middle of the month. Crisp new clothes, cultural events to attend, the long Easter/Bihu holiday to look forward to – what more could a girl ask for? Just the other day, when the elder one lamented that she had outgrown all her ethnic Indian outfits, I nudged her. “Go ask Babu,” I said, “Tell him to take you Bihu shopping for new clothes.” Because bihu bojaar is an event in itself, all of us went to pick out new clothes for the girls. On the way in the cab, I tried sharing the significance of bihu bojaar with the elder one. “We wouldn’t get new clothes all the time, you know,” I said, “We’d get two dresses a year – one for Bihu and one for our birthday.” No wonder it was one of the highlights of the year. She didn’t quite get it, but I didn’t expect her to. She’s used to her father, her Babu, getting her outfits anytime he sees something on sale, or something particularly “cute” (that my husband is capable of using the word with abandon is a miracle in itself) In the end we did have a lot of fun picking out their new clothes. The littler one was specially happy, dancing around the store, stopping in front of each mirror she saw to admire her reflection. As for me, what I’d really wanted was a new pair of mekhela sador for Bihu morning, but since that was a far-fetched ask, I settled for the next best thing – a new sari. Only it turned out that I can’t wear it until I take it to the tailor to get some cutting and stitching done, so there goes my plan of wearing something new for Bihu.

The last time I spent Bihu in Assam was nearly six years ago, and I remember demanding new clothes from my in-laws, claiming that it was my first Bihu at home after our wedding. My father-in-law happily gave in to my demands, taking me to the store so I could pick out a paator mekhela sador. The husband was traveling on the eve of Bihu from Dubai, and we were meeting after two months of being away from each other. I was probably the happiest woman on earth that Bihu.

My Ma sends me pictures of the orchids that have taken over her garden – whole bunches of them swinging gracefully from a branch. As a child, I remember that one lone kopou that would bloom belatedly. Bihu would have come and gone, all other kopou flowers would have withered – that’s when ours would slowly start blooming. Ma would bring the flower pot – because it hadn’t been transferred to a tree back then – inside the living room where it would be displayed with pride. That one lone bloom would make the entire living room smell of Bihu for a whole month, when it would also finally wither, until next year. Now though, she’s got company, that lone bloom of ours. A few years ago, my Aita painstakingly shifted the kopou from the flower pot to a branch of the mango tree in our yard, and since then, it has not just survived but thrived. This year, my Ma reports, one of them bloomed prematurely. “No sign of the others,” Ma texted me, “This impatient diva wants all of the attention to herself. Look at her blooming all by herself.”

My parents are busy people, especially after retirement. I called them this morning, just to confirm that today isn’t the new year. Today is actually goru Bihu, the day farmers would bathe and feed their cows, and it has been a running joke in our family. Deuta would wake up in the morning and say to us, “Come out you two, let’s give you a bath.” When I tell them I would call them tomorrow so the girls can show off their new clothes, Deuta says, “Don’t call in the morning. We have a Bihu meeting to attend. And then in the afternoon, another one.” Meanwhile, this woman I call my younger sister calls me on video to wish me a happy Bihu – her first after her wedding last year – and she looks like the daughter-in-law from Bezbaruah’s stories, adjusting her red bindi. Her gold bangles glint just so, as she fixes her hair. She looks like a vision. And just like that, my heart is a puddle of mush that settles somewhere in the pit of my stomach. I am homesick. I am sick of being away from my home.

Maybe tomorrow will be different. Maybe I will wake up and dress the girls in their new outfits and find an old mekhela sador to wear to greet the new year. Maybe tomorrow when I go outside the air will feel different, like it used to on Bihu mornings back home. Maybe I will sing a few verses, teach the little ones a few steps of Bihu. Maybe when I call everyone to wish them a happy new year, it will feel like a special day, who knows. For today, I indulge this melancholy. I sit with it – it is an old friend after all. I tell my melancholy that we’ve been through this before and we will go through it again. There’s always next year, I suppose.

Why do we do what we do?

First of all, I have news. Big news. But before I give my news, I have to set the stage, so to speak. So bear with me.

Nearly fifteen years ago, when I graduated with Physics honours, all my love for the subject had been drained out of me. I knew, I simply knew that pursuing Physics any further wasn’t an option for me. The very thought of being in a laboratory doing practical work would make me break into cold sweat (my worst nightmares, even now, feature the laboratory from my college) Anything remotely related to the sciences didn’t appeal to me. So I begged my father to let me do something else. I didn’t care if I had wasted three years of my life studying for a degree I wouldn’t use. I didn’t care that I would have to start all over again. All I’d wanted was a fresh start in a discipline that my heart truly desired. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, too. It was something I realised I was good at, and something I liked doing, and something that appealed to that part of me that wanted to help others feel better.

What I ended up doing, as most of you know, was a masters degree in Computer Applications that I gave yet another three years of my life to. I didn’t end up using that degree either. What I found the most fulfilment was in teaching, and so I got myself a CELTA certificate so I could teach English language. But then I realised that I wasn’t technically qualified to do what I loved (teach English at higher levels) and what I was qualified for (any job related to computer applications) I didn’t want to do.

And so, after fifteen years of desiring this, after fifteen years of holding it close to my heart like the wisps of a beautiful dream, I have – drumrolls please – enrolled in a PG Diploma course in Counselling Psychology! It’s a fifteen-month long course at the end of which I will be qualified to practice, but more than that, it’s one step closer to a masters degree, which is what the plan is eventually. I wish I could reach out to twenty-year old me, pacing the living room of our house on the phone with a therapist, asking her what I needed to do in order to become a therapist like her, even as Deuta told me in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t let me waste my Physics degree. I wish I could tell her that the plan was in place. That it wasn’t time for it yet, and if she was patient enough, it would come her way, fifteen years down the line.

My first class was last Thursday, and I couldn’t stop smiling! From the minute our lecture started, I felt like I was finally home where I belonged, that this was exactly what I was meant to do. It wrapped me in its warmth, soft and comforting like a pashmina shawl, and then settled in my very core, humming and singing. It took me some time to identify it was for what it truly was – unadulterated happiness. Meanwhile, the inner nerd in me was rolling up her sleeves, dusting off her old glasses, bracing to write miles and miles of notes. Yes, colour coded ones. We received our textbook three days before course started, and I couldn’t wait to break into it. Even as I read, I couldn’t help thinking about how this was the first textbook in my life that I read of my own volition, because I wanted to, and not because I HAD to. As for class, we are diving right into the good stuff. We’re talking about ethics and morals and values, and talking about how our culture and upbringing plays a role into shaping who we are. At the beginning of the class though, our lecturer told us that talking about ethics isn’t really complete without talking about philosophy, specifically our own philosophy in life, and that indeed, can be condensed into one thought-provoking question – Why do we do what we do?

What is it that drives us to do what we do? It might seem vague at first, but once you take a closer look, or rather, a deeper dive, you will realise that there is one unifying theme that defines everything you do in life. For me, the realisation came almost a year ago, when trying to plan a surprise for my husband’s 40th birthday. It is what I succinctly call the philosophy of “the bigger bottle of cologne”.

If anyone’s read Little Women – or even the first chapter of it, really – they would know that it opens on Christmas Eve, when the four girls are lamenting the fact that they don’t have presents that year. Through their conversations, we get a glimpse into each of their personalities. Meg, the eldest, is sensible and practical, Jo is a tomboy and a writer, Beth the very milk of kindness and Amy is, well, vain. Then that evening they receive a letter from their father, who is a chaplain away from home during war, and they are reminded once again that they should be grateful for what they have instead of whining about what they don’t. The next morning, when they put together their presents for their mother, the girls realise Amy’s present is missing. In a while the mystery is solved when Amy herself appears, holding a bottle of cologne. She then sheepishly admits that she had bought their mother a smaller bottle of cologne so she would have enough money left to buy herself a box of crayons, but after reading their father’s letter, she realised that she was being selfish, and so she went to exchange the small bottle of cologne for a bigger one.

Why I talk about Little Women is because two years ago, I found myself in a similar situation – quite literally indeed. I’d decided to go all out for my husband’s 40th birthday. I’d had everything planned – 13 gifts for (almost) every waking hour of the day, starting from bath products at 7am to a bottle of gin at 7pm – each related to what he would do during that time of the day. He’d had no idea, of course. So when he brought home a sample of a Chanel perfume and kept raving about how much he loved it, I told him I would get him that for his birthday. As I scrolled through the website, trying to find the perfume for him, I was faced with the same option as Amy – the smaller one, or the bigger one? After all, he didn’t know that he already had twelve other gifts in store for him. Would it really make that much of a difference if I got him the smaller bottle? I didn’t hesitate though, and I got him the bigger bottle. That, right there, was my aha moment, when I realised that all my life, I have always been giving the bigger bottle of cologne, so to speak.

While my husband’s birthday and the perfume was quite a literal interpretation of “the bigger bottle of cologne”, everything else in my life is somehow governed by that philosophy. If I have the capacity and ability to give more of myself, I will never give less. I was sharing this with a friend of mine, someone I quite enjoy having philosophical discussions with, and he refined it to one word – being genuine. Suddenly it made sense – why “To thine own self be true” is something that resonates with me the most.

It has been a long and arduous journey, accepting that above everything else, I need to be true to myself. Having been a people pleaser all my life, it has taken me a long time to accept that sometimes, people will not like me. Sometimes, they might straight up despise me. It used to be an uncomfortable thought – the idea that someone somewhere hates my very guts because I don’t conform to their ideas of a good friend or even a good person. But I am learning to sit with this discomfort and be okay with it. Because at the end of the day, I need to look myself in the eye and say that I have stood up for myself. I have stayed true to myself.

What I love about doing this course is that it promises to be an introspective journey, and I am all for it. I think it all adds up really. In order to be true to myself, I need to know who I really am, and what makes me, me. At the end of fifteen months, I should be in a better place to gauge why I do the things I do. Even the ones I am not proud of. Like not answering calls and answering texts unless when I truly want to, or cutting people off my life left right and centre if that relationship doesn’t give me joy.

So what is your philosophy of life? What drives you to do what you do? It’ll be so interesting to see what motivates different people in their life.

TL;DR – I’ve enrolled in a PG Diploma course, I have found that being true to myself is what drives me to do everything in life and I’d like to know what drives you in your life.

P.S. I have moved on from watercolour pencils to watercolour paint and I suck at it even more, but there’s nothing stopping me from making messes on paper every single day!