Anthropologically

I first heard about No Whine Wednesday while watching a talk by Iyanla Vanzant and decided to pursue it, rather, challenged myself. I confidently declared my next No Whine Wednesday to my closest friends so I wouldn’t back out or have any second thoughts about it.

Wednesday arrived, I ritualistically sat down infront of my laptop gathering my thoughts for the rest of the day and impulsively wrote down “No Whine Wednesday” on a post-it and put it up on my laptop where I could see it everytime my eyes darted across the screen. 

Before the challenge started, I decided to set a boundary- No complaining or whining in my thoughts either. 

In the beginning, I had to be mindful of every conversation I had and it was surprisingly difficult to stick to my intention. I found myself stay quiet where I would have usually retorted back some complaint and in that silence, I observed the conversation around me. 

Most of us have a tendency to whine a lot whether it is to strike a bond over a common issue with someone or just out of habit. 

When was the last time any of us held a long comfortable banter over the possibility of something positive to come out of everything or just have faith in things to work out?

I reaffirmed my intention to my friends every time they’d ask about my silent demeanor in hopes that they’d adopt it or atleast realise that it’s an option too. 

I’ve concluded that No Whine Wednesday is no less than meditation itself. By the end of the day, I felt so good about every single conversation I’d had that day and even though a lot of things didn’t work out according to what I’d planned, I’d never felt better. 

No Whine Wednesday is no easy task, you have to be really mindful of your spoken words and thoughts but it’s something I wish for everyone to follow and if you’re reading this, I recommend you try it or rather challenge you. 

Here’s to all the No Whine Wednesdays in our future and hopefully, all days henceforth. 

Cheers. 

The last week or two had left me quite disoriented. I was aware of the paradigm shift of my conscious but I couldn’t pin point to what had caused this change in the centre I usually maintained in my head. I am a stoic, I consciously savour the peace of mind and contentment I have come to enjoy by training my brain for the last couple of months. Naturally, I couldn’t for the life of me construed the ingeniously warped turn my conscious had taken.

I revel in self talk, it is your best bet at your own sanity and it works wonders to consciously mark the difference between reality and the one you’ve created and helps you develop a wide set of eyes to change your awareness between both to decide- of all the possibilities that could stem, which one you want to live in.

The change made something clear, I wasn’t in touch with my archetypes. I wasn’t conversing anymore, I was striving hard to bring to fruition goals set by an older version of me, from an older spiral and I blamed the lack of connect with myself on being too busy get shit done. But I knew the detrimental path I’d set myself on. When every second of every day, my gut would be all over the place, only asking me to fix it.

My new intention on this new moon was a weak attempt at getting myself back on track. Weak because I didn’t work for it. I didn’t make as much effort, I kept forgetting the exact intention too.

A couple of days back, I watched an archetype die.

There was backlash that materialised in the physical world and it came out of nowhere. It charged like a battering ram and collapsed into my cosmic space to shatter my citadel. Disappointment coloured every single spectrum of my existence. It was coming from a close friend, at first I didn’t know why it happened until I did. If I was the same person as I was a couple of years ago, I would have said some unsavoury, hurtful things to my friend. There were so many instances where I could have said something hurtful to stop the hurtful words being hurled at me from the other side. It took me all the courage in me to muster as much understanding and love to deal with the situation as a level headed person. It was successful, my friend apologised for the unintended consequences of his judgement call and the situation was dealt with. Well, not for me, I continued the rest of my day by putting my head into all the work coming my way and then at night, I came undone. Turns out, as I gently acknowledged my friend’s misdeed and gave my most understanding and loving self to prevent bitterness, I also acknowledged the archetype who didn’t work for me anymore or didn’t want to work for me and as I dissuaded the fight with my close friend, I bid goodbye to the other.

Putting myself into my work just delayed my realisation to shift from the betrayal of a physical friend to letting go of my spirit one and as I wept that night, I poured out tears to fill the space in my conscious left empty. The death of an archetype, my dear friend.

Technology should be so seamlessly woven into our lives that it leaves no room for question.

But how do we decide which technology should get the privilege to such great universal acceptance in the fabric of our lives? Do we question?

We live in a time where humans are as fascinated and delighted with their own intellect. Like babies understanding the mystical function of their own fingers and toes.

We live for creation. To look for new possibilities, new answers to age-old questions in the quest to make our lives easier – better. While the makers make, we consume – without questioning. Marveling at our own ingenuity, much like the babies and their fingers.

We have something to remove leftover toothpaste from its plastic tube so there’s no wastage.

We have a product to help put a thread through a needle head.

Are we genius or just lazy? What happened to our natural instinct to differentiate between need over want?

We have to go back to being babies fascinated by their fingers and toes but in a different context than what we’ve followed so far. We need to rediscover the capabilities of our own body.

Our fingers – The finest tools our material world has tried so hard to replicate but only to some level.

Our ability to repair and rejuvenate ourselves day in and day out.

The fact that we can think for ourselves has made us the most complex organism on their planet.

We need to be smarter. We need to go back to our ancient ancestors in animals and see how they meticulously try to survive and thrive in their ecosystem with their sense of community.

We have everything we need and want to live longer, survive against all odds and explore to satiate our curiosity to feed our minds and yet why are we unhappy?

Why, in the world of the most evolved organism to ever walk on earth, does terrorism and poverty still exist?

We’ve conquered the planet in a bid to make our lives more comfortable, now lets start living in it and let it live.

If you’re constantly stuck with your eyes glued to your smartphone- liking, sharing videos, dank memes and swallowing all the new information pouring into your feed all at once, this letter is addressed to you.

 

What’s the worth of your time?

 

Is the question too vague? Let me construct it better.

 

What are 30 minutes of your time worth?

 

Is it one episode of your favorite show?

Five levels on an online game?

One thousand posts on your feed?

What are 30 minutes of your time worth and how do you measure it?

 

All the content you see on social media and other websites- the cute puppy videos, the heart churning stories about an incident two thousand miles away, the memes- are all curated and created by professionals to illicit an emotion from you. The algorithm understands what captures your attention every time you like or share and then gives you more content tailored to your interests. Professionals look at the trends and manufacture structured information to keep you hooked.

“So what?”, you might ask, “I get all that content for free. I’m not spending my own money.”

 

But at what cost?

 

Your time? Your peace of mind?

Losing control of yourself to the addiction of social media is reducing the value of every second you spend on it.

 

So what’s the worth of your time? How do we measure it?

 

Let’s design a better world where ‘community’ isn’t just a hollow word redefined by social media.

Let’s build a world that really cares for us and what we really need as opposed to what we want.

A world that works to increase the value of our time.

If you’re like-minded and would like to know more/ start a conversation. Drop in a message/ email so I get a chance to know more about your ideas as opposed to a ‘like’ that’s devoid of any opinion.

 

What do we look for in our everyday lives? That small fleeting glance of the little something we search for even with our eyes closed? Trying to keep track of what we did, what we ate in the last few hours when we don’t even remember the day anymore. Looking for a piece of ourselves to hold on to as our bodies start to float aimlessly with the warm summer breeze that reminds us of a faint melody from a song someone played one summer day when the earth seemed to stand still. When your life perfects sums up in an indie playlist that reminds you of your teenage years. The space between your warm sheets and the chill of the early morning. All the times you look away hoping to find yourself in the middle of a generic conversation with another person. Feel yourself leave your body and stare back at you- learning about yourself all over again. Urging yourself that life’s worth it and looking for reasons why. Everything- even your memories- look like old leaves forgotten in yellow pages years ago. Remembering what sober feels like when you’re so drunk on your own feelings. When you feed your body like clockwork- only to keep to the schedule you’ve tied yourself to as a price for one constant in your dizzy life. What do you stay awake for when the first thing you want to do when you wake up is to go back into your sheets. Watching days go by like a in state of dreamless sleep. Why does every trail of thought lead us back to the same truth- we’re social creatures and we always will be. In search of a heart to share your love with would you sell your soul?

Who decides where your destiny’s meant to be? And when you realise you’re the captain of the ship, who do you have to blame your misfortunes on?

Youth, I’ve decided, is one colossal quicksand that you live in where existential crisis is one of the most natural things to happen to you. That blur in your memory you can’t replace in your head because as you grow, you define it in your own sweet way. It makes you who you are and you come to embrace it, like that phantom limb you’ve come to love; with it’s flavour spreading throughout your body as you relish in the familiar feeling coursing through your veins.

We shed a part of our memory everyday just like we shed our skin, naturally, to make space for the person we’ve become today. It’s bittersweet and as we grow each day, we come to learn and love the little things that bring a smile on our faces. The pleasure and the pain- we welcome with our arms open like we’re greeting a long lost friend we’ve been searching for in our hearts to make up for all the stolen summer kisses on a rainy day and just like that, we embrace our past, live in the present and let the future reveal itself in it’s own sweet pace.

I’m so sick and tired of hearing about degenerate leaders of insignificant religious, political groups spouting nonsense about fashion and how it influences indecent behaviour. I’ve been interning in Bangalore for about four weeks now and daily my girlfriends and I have new stories to tell each other about our commute. We’ve seen men lech at us, follow us and shamelessly check us out every day even though our clothes cover our entire bodies (Hear that, Mr Azmi?). The Bangalore incident has only brought to light the murky underbelly of the world we live in filled with pervy men we see around all the time. My PG is an unsafe area where after it’s 8.30, you won’t even see many women on the road, just creepy local men watching your every move as you quickly make your way back. I have walked on the road with my friend in broad daylight to witness men on bikes whizz past me close enough to almost touch me only to quickly change lanes before I can see their number plate. The walk to the bus stop and the commute to our offices is an uncomfortable ordeal because we see men lech at us and there’s nowhere to go to escape their eyes.

You and I are privileged enough to be able to avoid situations like these by taking private modes of transport and living in safer, upscale areas but this isn’t about you or me. What about the innumerable women living out there who can’t afford it? Who have to live all their lives afraid of their own shadow?

The Bangalore police commissioner Praveen Sood said that the police checked camera footage from 45-60 CCTVs that night and found no evidence of the mass molestation while here I am, sitting in my office listening to my friend talk about how he was at Brigade road and MG road that night and saw so many unruly men grope and push women around right in front of his eyes and he yet, he was helpless because he couldn’t even move in the crowd. The density of people in that area was so high that you couldn’t stand still even for a second, the crowd would move you along with them. My colleagues and his friends lost their shoes in the crowd, unable to make the slightest effort to bend down and pick it up because they were sandwiched between so many other people in that small space but sadly, many women lost more than that- their faith in the system and their safety in this country we call progressive.

I’ve had so many people advice me to keep a pepper spray or a knife handy for my safety but what I do when I feel so disgusted when I catch a man leering at me? Can I use the knife to gouge his eyeballs out? because I really wish I could do that. I know you’ll probably tell me that some colourful words ought to put him in his place but am I wrong to feel scared to do that because I’m afraid the consequences could lead him and his friends to stalk me to my Pg and take revenge when I’m at my most vulnerable?

The Bangalore Molestation incident you’ve been reading about in the newspapers and watching on news channels happened in the same area where I’m working at right now. Just a few meters away.

My colleagues tell me that they’ve heard of so many incidences like these but they’re just inconspicuously brushed under the carpet so no one gets to hear of them.
These cases don’t happen to everyone, we might still argue that it’s a small percentage of these incidences occurring- An average of 6 rapes and 15 molestations daily but anyone could become a statistic and that’s a scary reality we have to live with.