The Best Food In The World

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There are some things you don’t speak about to people generally, money and your problems, right? Money is even sometimes considered taboo or gauche to talk about even with your friends. Why is this? We all know that we need money to survive in this capitalist world, and either you have enough, not enough or too much. No one admits to the last two though, it’s like they’re ashamed about not having enough and afraid of having too much and admitting it in case it goes away. I’m guessing at the too much because I have never yet been in that position.

I come from a family where money wasn’t spoken about, and my father who was the only earner until us kids grew up, always always acted like he didn’t have enough, even when he did. It instilled in me, from a young age, a mentality of scarcity, one that I am trying to ditch still. If anyone has figured out how to do this, please let me know and make this easier for me.

Anyway, my point is this – we are in the grips of a pandemic (for anyone reading this in the far future [hahahaha, look at me being optimistic]). Covid-19 has grabbed the capitalist world where it hurts and given it an extra mean twist. A lot of countries are in recession, including the one I am living in. I am here without financial backup and the company I worked for fell apart a month into the pandemic hitting this country. Gone. Poof. Everyone lost their jobs and a lot of them got a handsome payout. I did not because I left for 2 weeks in the middle of my employment and that cost me dearly. Rent is very high and I am starting to panic with the current job situation, really starting to panic.

So what does this all have to do with the title? The place where I can penny pinch is groceries. Rent is fixed, monthly payments are fixed, bills are non-negotiable, so what’s a girl to do? And when you really reel your grocery spending to the bare minimum, you sometimes start to feel sorry for yourself, especially if you’re a foodie. There’s food everywhere, in the supermarkets, in cafes and restaurants but you are choosing to eat all your meals at home, so this means rice, lentils, whatever vegetables are on special, eggs, you know, the basics. Like I said, if you’re a foodie this can be difficult.

And let’s not talk about the mental stresses that a lot of us are dealing with. So one day when I was in an especially self-pitying mood, feeling just shit and eating my nth meal of rice and lentils, I almost started crying. But I stopped, because I was always taught to not cry while eating, because that disrespects the food. And while I stopped for a second and really thought about what I was doing, I realised that the best food in the world is the food on your plate.

There are so many people in the world right this second who don’t have the means to even one meal a day, hell I just passed a homeless man begging for spare change just 2 hours ago. He did not look like he was hungry, but let’s not go down that route. So friends, I pulled myself out of that little pity session, and thanked my lucky stars, sent a quick prayer of gratitude to the universe for the food I had to eat and got some perspective. That’s all for today, folks.

Who We Become

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I remember being asked what I wanted to be my whole life, I don’t know when it started, but I do know when it stopped. It stopped when I enrolled in my undergraduate degree – that was it, that was the day the world of uncles and aunties (If you’re not Asian, this isn’t only people who are related to you, but all people approx. 20+ years older than you, and you call them this as a sign of respect. We do not call our elders by name.) and my father decided I had become whatever I could be.

The question I’ve never been asked is who I want to be. Have you been asked this question? Since this isn’t a real conversation, I’ll just go ahead and assume that you answered ‘no’ to that. Why aren’t children asked this, or young adults? I guess it would be a heavy question to ask young ‘uns but so is asking them what they want to be. I had no idea at 17 what I wanted to be, and this is the age at which I was asked to choose to study something that would become my career. I also had no idea of all the career options out there, and most importantly, something we completely do not consider is that there are new career options that will come into existence every year.

Did we ever see a career in being a social media influencer (full disclosure, I do not consider this to be one of the great options, just an option), or becoming a YouTuber, or managing someone famous’ social media, being a meal prep chef, or even arranging someone’s closet all in exchange for money? My point is that there are just so many options! And there will always be more than you are aware of.

Okay, digression done away with, who would you have chosen to be if someone asked you? Yes, there are many options here too, but I believe that if you choose a few principles as your guiding factor in this fleeting life, then you can make other decisions better. Yes, we all become. We become something or the other, you can be negative, optimistic, adventurous, persistent, hard working, honest, loyal, kind, cruel, fair, biased, skeptical, so much. There is much we become, and my point is that we don’t always choose these things consciously.

If we are lucky, we are aware that we have become certain things, and with some introspection we can understand how these qualities became a part of who we, and others, are. It is life experiences, and when we find ourselves become a frustrated individual, quick to believe the naysayer, too ready to accept criticism and internalise it, I think we need to pause and evaluate if this is serving us well.

I am in my thirties and for the last 7 years or so, I have been working hard to unbecome certain things and become others. Is it easy? Hell no! And I am sure many of you reading this will have had the same experience if introspection has led you to the conclusion that you need to question who you are and how you got there.

Indulge me in this, if you go back to your childhood self – perhaps close your eyes and let your imagination stretch – and asked this child who they want to be, would their answer match with what you have become? Do the qualities they’re naming make you cringe, smile, or feel like you are on the right path even if you got a little lost somewhere along the way? Indulge me also in this – would these qualities which you could choose to be your lighthouse as you navigate tricky waters help make your decisions easier, quicker, less fraught with doubt? Would these principles (which you would practise daily in this ideal situation that I am creating) help you choose a career better, help you weigh up the options available to you, help you to not choose something because it will pay for the house, car and fancy vacations while slowly eating away at your soul?

What do you think of this train of thought? Does this make sense or am I absolutely nuts?

Flannel Pyjamas

When will we talk about mental health?

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My previous post spoke about the loss of an actor that I did not personally know and my grief. This is probably not something that a lot of people can relate to. Heaven knows I did not understand it before – people openly crying, grieving, refusing to eat because their favourite celebrity died, whether due to old age, in an accident, due to illness or because of suicide. I thought these people were being unnecessarily caught up in the tragedy of another that did not directly impact them. I don’t know what that past me would say to the me that is grieving today.

As I said in that post, I did seek answers, but of course looked in the wrong places. Yesterday, realising that I needed to understand what I was feeling, for the sake of my own mental health, I looked to psychologists’ perspectives on the grief one feels for celebrities. I listened to a couple of podcasts and this is some of what I understood:

  • Grieving for celebrities is common – the major reason for this is because we project so much of our own dreams onto these larger than life people whom we admire or idolise.
  • It is okay to grieve for their loss, but not for too long as it is also important to understand that you do not have a personal connection to them.
  • Death comes for all of us, and if this person’s death shook you to your core, then use it as a reminder to live more mindfully because we all just get the one chance and never know when our moment will come.
  • Seek help if their death has either caused or aggravated your own mental health issues.

Depression. I have had it, I have been at the very bottom, in the pitch black of my mind, from where I didn’t have the energy to crane my neck upwards to look for a pinprick of light. I have had fleeting thoughts about taking my own life, but which were just those, stupid thoughts. When I contemplated suicide, it was with the aim of teaching the person who hurt me a lesson, which we all know does not work. Our life is lost and we leave behind grief for those who loved us, especially family and close friends. I would not do that to them. So it was very difficult for me to understand the mentality of someone who has seriously thought about taking their life. My little sister has told me she nearly did – I did not even probe the topic further at the time because to me it seemed like a hollow cry for attention. But I will speak to her about it now, even though I know she has worked through a lot of her problems and probably will not think such thoughts again.

The irony is that I finally understood how someone seriously considers suicide from a comedian. Daniel Fernandes. I “found” him today on YouTube, watched an excerpt from a show he did on his own mental battles. His explanation is the first I have heard that was articulated in a way that made sense to me. I am about to paraphrase heavily but what he said was that for someone whose mind has become their enemy, suicide is a way to make the inner demons stop. That it is an act of self preservation, a way to escape their own mind.

This hit me deep, because my mind has been my enemy too, dissecting every single joyful memory until all that was left was an empty husk where nothing positive dwelled. It started externally, with the ending of a marriage, but it also took with it all I thought I had experienced. And this is a terrible place to find yourself, in the labyrinth of your mind for which you suddenly need a map because it now looks alien to you. You fall to your knees, scramble amongst the rubble of what was your life mere seconds ago until your knuckles bleed, looking for something, anything you might be able to salvage.

Spoiler alert: I did not find anything. Almost 7 years later, I am working to thin the stone walls I put up around my heart back then. It’s an arduous task, but every day I chip away at them a little, tell myself “I am enough” and train my mind to work for me, not against me. I did not go to therapy when I didn’t have the energy to raise my head, I only went (for a few months) last year, because I found that my mental sewage was seeping into the newer areas of my life. Was it helpful? Yes, to a point. I did have some breakthroughs, and it has helped me relieve some extra loads I had taken upon myself which I did not need to.

The rest of the work is being done alone, and with some help from my sister. It isn’t easy, especially when you learn to feel and realise you are an empathetic person and this can sometimes work to your detriment because you can get swept up in the collective energy of the world. Which is why this heavy year has been three steps forward and two and half steps relinquished to the chaos. That remaining half step is still in the right direction though, so for now, I am moving forward.

All of this has taken years! I should have sought help and gone to therapy 7 years ago. Yes, I know, better late than never, but the reasons for which therapy wasn’t even considered were pure ignorance. I did not know a thing about mental health, the importance of it and how to identify something going wrong in the mind and how and where to seek help. It was still such a taboo subject, and it is only in retrospect that I am able to see the depth of my depression and I am able to appreciate the strength of my mind that I am here.

This seems to have become a rambling, mental unloading of all the thoughts that have been knocking around inside my head over the last few days. I am not really writing this for anyone to read in particular, so I will not apologise. I need to put these thoughts, feelings, debates, realisations out here, I have to see it in black and white, my words spilled across this digital page for me to make sense of it all. I will probably be back to unload some more but now I am going to make myself some toast and then go to bed.

Remembering

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Over the last few days, I have written and rewritten this post in my head, never thinking I would actually put fingers to keys and make it solid. The speed at which the thoughts ricocheted around in my head would never have been conducive to an understandable bit of writing. These thoughts have mostly been about Sushant Singh Rajput, a 34 year old actor who took his own life on the morning of the 14th of June, 2020. Yes, 6 days ago today. Did I know Mr.Rajput in person? Not at all. However, his death has affected me in a deep, personal way that I do not understand and I have been grieving. This is the reason I am writing this post, not to pay tribute to his life. That should be left to the people who did know this man, who seems to have been a wonderfully complex, intelligent, curious and kind human being.

As I said, I did not know him in the slightest, then why has his suicide affected me this way? I have searched all the places on the internet where others have asked this question, and in doing so it has become apparent that I am not the only one feeling this way. I found many answers, some sympathetic to the questioner and expressing their own grief and some asking the questioner to get a grip and think about the thousands dying every day through no fault of their own. The latter seems to be the logical route – a couple of weeks ago I was weeping at the news of a pregnant elephant that starved to death after accidentally eating a pineapple stuffed with firecrackers. And around the same time I was also sharing stories about the Black Lives Matter movement triggered by the devastating death of a black man in custody, in broad daylight as multiple civilians recorded a police officer kneeling on his neck, slowly killing him. The atrocities of the world are many and it would be so easy to just give in to despair and feel utterly helpless, but we do not, we live.

It’s been a heavy month. It’s been a heavy year. The Coronavirus pandemic, the loss of my job (albeit one I did not like nor considered a career), the collapse of the company I worked for and now living on the superannuation which is my government mandated savings for old age. I am luckier than a lot of people, I live in Australia, I am leasing a beautiful house and the savings are a blessing and for this I am grateful, grateful, grateful.

To say that it has been a challenge to stay positive this year is an understatement. I usually do not give any importance to a new year, it is just a new day in the calendar, just a new day, period. However, this year, I did feel positive, like change was in the offing and it was a wonderful feeling, which did not last, of course. So is Mr.Rajput’s death just another blow in a year plagued by blow after blow?

When I lived in India, I did not see the serials he acted in (soap operas), but must have come across some entertainment news articles which featured him and I thought he had a charm that went beyond his looks, which however unconventional, were supremely appealing to me. I did not watch all his movies, only three of them, so it isn’t as if I was a devoted fan. However, on Monday, the 15th of June, when I logged into Instagram after a week-long hiatus, and saw a photo someone had shared of the actor with the caption “R.I.P”, I remember vividly saying, “NO, NO, NO!” with a hand to my head while the other frantically typed his name into Google, hoping that what I had seen was a hoax. And then I cried. And I have cried every day for the last 6 days for this brilliant man, who was as unconventional a celebrity as they come, as I learned afterwards.

I myself will turn 34 at the end of this year, a mere 10.5 months after Mr.Rajput. Is that it, is it the age, knowing that someone who was as old/young as I am, who was successful, loved by millions, and rational (as evidenced by his considered answers to even frivolous questions put to him by the media) could think life wasn’t worth living? He was intelligent, cared passionately about the cosmos, space, the mysteries of the universe, and also did not set much store by either fame or money. Outwardly, while he was alive, he seemed cheerful, full of energy and quick to flash his charming smile that caused his eyes to sparkle, winning the hearts of millions with his candour and vulnerability. Of course, everything I have seen is related to interviews and promotions, but those who knew him seem to be of the same opinion. In retrospect, all his deep answers seem laced with a sadness, an underlying current of it, ready to burst forth, if only someone dug a little deeper. He himself said in an interview, when speaking of Box Office success that no-one knows the formula for a movie’s success, but that they make connections in retrospect. Perhaps that is all I, and everyone else, is doing.

If we are honest, there is no-one, not a single person other than ourselves that can feel what we feel. Our feelings are all our own and who knows what he was feeling, what he could not rationalise, or what he was feeling, that he could rationalise into ending his life. All I know is that my heart is broken right now for this man I did not know, but for whom I can’t stop feeling so sad.

Perhaps the atrocities, the challenges and grief of this year have all been building up and this last event is the one that broke the dam. In writing this, I believed I might find clarity, but I have not. I hope, Mr.Rajput, that you are amongst the stars that you loved, with your mother whom you missed so much and forever free of all the pain you felt on this earth. And if you find yourself in the cycle of life again, I hope it will be one of joy and filled with all the love that millions feel for you, and that you will want to stay.