Squid Game with desi touch
As you grow old, you have stories. Lots and lots of stories. Some happy, some sad, some stupid, some mad. And all your experiences are magically condensed into these little stories that you tell and, more importantly, to yourself. If you aren’t careful, they will take hold of themselves and sort of change their contours. It’s amazing how words can be so organic that they could evolve whatever style they like to. You’d obviously blame it on poor memory or something else but the baseline has changed. Your stories have changed without your permission. But then, that’s the thing about stories and lived experiences: they come into their own with time.
Speaking of time, have you learned your lessons yet? Have you turned into a better person? Or are you at least making some progress in this department? Are you? You see, we human beings, remnants of a species that walked for way too long before learning how to run properly, are hapless creatures in one way and quite magnificent in other ways. On a good day, some of us beat the shit out of procrastination. On a bad day, we succumb faster than a toddler can spell yo. We are the most accurate living representation of the sinusoidal wave that is taught to students pursuing electronics & telecom degrees, before they pursue an MBA. Yet, all things said and undone, we must continue to fight whatever battles we have chosen for ourselves and whichever demons have chosen. There is no other way. One day at a time.
My workout phase lasted from May 9th to September 8th of this year. Four months of studied diligence. Made zero noise about it and kept going steady. Now that I am done with my traveling and back to my pad in Mangalore, nothing should stop me from reviving my rather healthy routine. In fact, I think about it everyday but for some reason, I am either occupied with work or too lost in domestic responsibilities that I am failing to pick up a solid hour for myself. My best bet is, once I go back to my disciplined lifestyle—with or without 8 hours of sleep in total—I will be shredded. That’s for sure. Some definitions stay on your body longer than a thesaurus. My two paise: if you are aiming to get fit and fab, try to create a temple out of your body. That way, when people kick you, they would remove their shoes first. In defense of my current bohemian-ness, my body is exactly like the ancient temples I admire: both are perpetually in ruin.
It’s quite normal to have sexual fantasies. You know what’s more normal than that? None of those fantasies ever coming true. If you have a great sex life, you must spread the word on how you did it. The reason why a majority of us are not having the best of carnal progressions is due to utter lack of information. People don’t talk about it as openly as they should. We would rather spend weeks talking about how great Game of Thrones was or how amazing Squid Game is but wouldn’t let others know what’s working for us in bed or bathroom. Too private, apparently. Letting the world know—much against its wish—how well you are doing in life, what you had for breakfast, why your job sucks, where you went for vacation and what you think about a controversy is supposed to be public knowledge? Maybe it’s high time we grew up a bit.
Now that we are on a crucial topic, I’ve finally understood that most of us appear sexually repressed but in reality, we are not. We are sexually depressed. There is a difference between the two modes. Sexually repressed is when you haven’t come to terms with what you desire. Sexually depressed is when you have come to terms with what you desire and are not liking it one bit. The former condition—if sex is an event and orgasm is a state of mind, then what you are left with is a condition?—is akin to chasing clouds. A sexually repressed individual wants candyfloss out of the sky. Never happened, not going to happen unless you accept yourself for who you are. The latter condition is when you have found the candyfloss to be a hoax. Good luck with both.
My brother has two of the most adorable cats you’ll find in the whole of Navi Mumbai. Very graceful, entertaining creatures. But they are high-maintenance compared to the other pets that I am aware of. For instance, Pili and Giri are lactose intolerant and if this wasn’t terrible enough, they puke after having fish. Strange characteristics. Anyhow, it’s lovely to have them in the house; they are emphatically the most positive feature of that apartment. Touch wood.
To make things worse for their dietary case, I had this conversation with a former student who has a pet.
Me: “What do you feed her?”
He: “I don’t. Whatever she wants, she goes and gets it from the market.”
Me: “.…...”
He: “Some days, she will bring a head of a big fish and some other day, there will be chicken liver. She brings whatever she likes.”
Me: “Very independent of her.”
He: “Yes, she only lives with us for the roof.”
I am at that age where all my friends either have kids or are on their way to having them. It’s a joyous situation, to be frank. I love kids as long as they are not mine. When I press my lips against their supersoft cheeks, I am certain there are gods out there looking out for us. Like I keep repeating, children are wonderful. During my recent visit home, I met my old friend (who introduced me to Twitter in 2008) and he has an 8-month-old daughter. As expected, she is quite a handful and keeps him on his toes. We were talking about expenses and the change in mindset after attaining fatherhood. He sounded optimistic but did joke that sometimes, he looks at her fondly and hopes she will pull him out of his urban poverty.
I don’t know much about fatherhood. My tryst in this field is limited to taking care of an old dog who later came out as a cat. Anyway, I feel that of all the things that humans wait for earnestly, a father waiting for his son to grow up so that he could have a conversation with him must feature in the top-5 for sure. Although my dad was the quiet type—he became extremely vocal after his retirement—I can bet that he was waiting for me to grow old enough so that he could tell me that we are poor and I should keep my expectations but efforts high.
This blog has often touched upon my everyday observations, some perhaps worthy of studies by behavioural economists. You never know where the goldmine of answers lie. Anyway, let me add two more observations to your overflowing plate, regular readers of this prestigious black & white page:
As you must know, I’ve been actively conducting zoom quizzes since the pandemic started and it’s been over 1.5 years of our enterprising quizzing community—other members conduct quizzes as well—that enjoys spending an hour or two per week answering questions about random topics. What’s more interesting is a majority of the active members, in the range of 8 out of 10, never had COVID. I am not suggesting that being quizzically active created immunity. All I am saying is when you stay home and quiz, you don’t step out and in turn, you stay safe(r).
Have you noticed that the functionality of an ATM is directly proportional to the efficiency of the AC inside? If the AC isn’t working well, chances are the ATM acts spooky too. Similarly, if the AC is sound, then the ATM is super-smooth too. I might be wrong (as usual) here but I strongly feel there is some connection here — at least in the metropolitan areas of India.
Since I’ve already mentioned Squid Game above, let me paint a more realistic picture for you. The year is 2075 and Elon Musk is 104. Apart from being alive and kicking with transfused Eurasian blood flowing in his veins, he is finally realizing his long-nursed dream of transporting humans to Mars. But there’s an ugly catch here. Instead of rehabilitating people on the new red planet, he is conducting the real-life version of Squid Game and people are getting brutally killed because that silly generation had its face sunk so deep in screen that it never played lagori, gilli-danda, langdi or aaba-doobi.