With one week before either a nationwide lockdown is extended or people are let loose to get infected and die as they please, I am at home– safe and restless. For an introvert, a lockdown and social distancing may seem like the best of both worlds, but as is the trending term of the age, it all boils down to “consent”. Now that I have no choice, I feel trapped?

My family and I are coexisting quite nicely and it has only felt like one of those unplanned family bonding trips you see in movies, but without a major fiasco that causes the freaky road trip. Oh wait, a pretty major and global fiasco landed us on this  voyage in the ship that is our own home, which is as good as stranded in the middle of the ocean with no other human in sight and voila! A supporting character has gone overboard and died. Classic family vacation movie plot. RIP dadaji.

Weeks after dadaji’s depart and a little over a month into our lonesome voyage, I was restless beyond measure. Not because I am stuck indoors but because of FOMO. I was afraid that I have not utilised the abundant free time and have wasted a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity to get my shit together while all my peers have quite possibly drawn a line way longer than mine while I have continued to remain, yours truly, the same old stump.

As my academic career came to an end, I got a summer vacation that I didn’t ask for and unlike Phineas and Ferb, I have pretty much wasted it, apart from taking the time to unwind myself and reviving the bond with my family.

After a tiny freak-out session, one or two sleepless nights, and a long intense email to a friend, I was able to straighten out my thoughts and finally get started on my quest to self-improvement and… kicking ass, basically.

Quick side-note: it has been exactly 40 days since my smartphone died of old age, much like dadaji, and I haven’t purchased a new one, because before I could decide on a model, things went from pudding to poop real quick, and it has stayed poop for 42 days and counting.

In its entirety, my life has pretty much been a combination of the death of a homie and lack of smartphone in a time of potential apocalypse with a topping of prolonged exposure to parents who, ironically, have smartphones.

Let’s segue to the point I’m trying to make. After I got my thoughts untangled and other poetic jargon, this is what I’m up to now.

1. Learning French

I have been learning le français on Duolingo for a while now and I have a streak of 46 days. French has easily been the sole thing to have kept me from losing my mind during this rough tide.

It is scientifically proven that learning a new language increases the neuroplasticity of your brain, and if you really get your toes into the benefits of learning a new language, you’ll find that it actually makes your brain bigger! It turns out that it saved my brain from imploding.

I would highly recommend Duolingo for it, it has a very fun and game-like approach, a competitive environment and a classy, slick interface. I use the mobile app if I am in a hurry, otherwise, the website is a true blessing. If just 5 minutes a day with Duo could actually teach you a new language and save you from Alzheimer’s and Dementia while making you smarter and your brain bigger, why not just do it!

If you don’t believe me, here’s an article that explains it better and here’s a Ted Talk.

2. EdX course on Statistics and R

Like most students, I received about 50 links to free online courses. After staying in a state of overwhelmed for a month, I consulted a friend.

The thing about friends is that they are lifeboats. But you need to know exactly which lifeboat to jump in, much like exactly which free online course to invest time in. This is the paradox of choice.

Now you know I’m smart, I know who to ask about this, and you bet your ass I am best buddies with a resourceful person like that. So I enrolled in a nice course and started drinking up the sweet statistics juice.

The course provided me with great recommendations for learning R, like R Studio is such a handy tool that I didn’t know about. The course also pointed me to an R package called Swirl. Swirl is an interactive course written in R itself, it allows you to learn the syntax and features of R within the R console and I am blown away by how awesome it is. Highly recommend.

3. Yoga and Excercise

My parents and my sister drag me to workout every evening. We indulge in a very sweaty family bonding activity every day. To say the least, I don’t have it in me to actively make the choice to leave my comfy bed and say, “Let’s make our muscles ache!” So I can’t be more relieved to have parents who are more willing to exercise than I am.

You already know how much we need to exercise and stay fit. These are lousy times, but if you had to imagine yourself in either of these two scenarios, which would you rather have? At the end of the lockdown when everything is fine and dandy, you see your friends for the first time in ages, and all of them have put weight on from chilling at home 24×7 and so have you, OR, everyone is fluffy but you are one crisp hot snacc, fresh out of the oven, oomph!

4. Starting an English e-class for my Gujju friends

This is the absolute greatest thing I have ever come up with. Some context. In my last year of college, I made some great friends among my juniors. These kids are UPSC Aspirants and they are like little black holes, thirsty for learning everything and anything that comes their way. Again, you know I am smart and so you can bet your ass I am best buddies with these kids as well. They seemed to be lacking in the area of English language and I happen to have some advantage in that area so I offered to help.

Better late than never, I decided to offer my help online for whoever would find it useful. It is in the making at the moment and I am so excited to be working on it, it makes me jump right out of bed in the morning (noon) and say, “Let’s make our eyes hurt from looking at the computer all day!”

5. Studying Sanskrit with Dad

Although we haven’t gotten quite far with it, we did start learning Sanskrit after feeling like complete heathens for not knowing anything about our own religion and scriptures. Thank you Ramayan reruns for this guilt-trip.

We decided that we must start with learning the Sanskrit language before we dive into religious scriptures and set off on a path of spirituality. I am not kidding at all. I was miserable enough for all and any ideas to seem promising. Besides, I am already learning French and I did extra research before I started so I know more about how to learn a new language than I know French itself. Obviously.

I gathered some resources on Sanskrit and between the two of us, we have spent a total of two-ish hours on it so far.

6. Cooking and Cleaning

I try to rush through cleaning and laundry every day but it usually takes up a good chunk of my day. Before I picked up all these activities, for weeks on end, it was mostly clean, cook, eat, sleep, repeat. It can make you miserable, especially if you can’t go out and have no smartphone to latch on.

I am currently trying to build a routine around cooking and cleaning so I can make the most of my day, what with all the fancy stuff I have on my plate now. The only important feat, and the most difficult, is to wake up early and even with all the excitement I am brimming with right now, I don’t see myself getting there just yet, godspeed.

7. Oh, and writing blog posts!

The best way to explain mental illness to someone is to say
“It’s like getting a common cold, sometimes a fever, or even asthma. Except it is in your brain.

Anxiety is like common cold. Comes and goes, sometimes persists. But is frequent.
An anxiety attack is like asthma attack in the head. You have difficulty thinking straight, just the way you have difficulty breathing in an asthma attack; and of course there’s panic.

Depression is like a fever. It comes in episodes, makes you wanna die. You don’t want to eat, or sleep, or work, you’re not interested in anything, you’re feeling like shit, and you’re just fucking sad all the time. Clinical Depression or Major Depressive Disorder is like malaria or typhoid. You have high fever for a week, or a month. And everything else just gets worse.

Above all, mental illness is like a troubled stomach. Except your brain is troubled. It’s not producing some chemicals, not functioning properly, making daily life hard. But with help, relaxation and correct food, it can be dealt with.

Mental illness isn’t like AIDS though. It isn’t fatal on its own. But it does make some people suicidal. It isn’t anyone’s fault. It can’t happen by mistake.

But still, just like AIDS, mental illness is not something people pretend having. It isn’t fancy, just like AIDS isn’t. Being suicidal isn’t aesthetic.

And just like AIDS, in mental illness the person needs to be loved, cared for and to not feel alone.

Their mental state is not in their hands. Just how the blood sugar level is not in the hands of a diabetic. You can hold back on eating sugary foods and carbs. But that doesn’t cure diabetes.

I wrote this short story for an open online writing competition under Shailee – Synapse Fest 2015 held at DAIICT, Gandhinagar. I was awarded a second prize by author Shikha Kumar.

There is a slight tint of weariness on her face as she lay numb, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, are the hallmark of her state. Oblivious of the accentuated ether veiling her, her body sways slightly from side to side with the carriage as it speeds and weaves its way out through the colossally swarming city-traffic.

The peaceful aura she radiates, the one that I love her for, is still prominent while she carelessly breathes in and out the anguish-sated air. She is as careless as she has always been about the plight she is in, and has apparently taken as gospel truth whatever she is destined to. She does not have any hope of the situation getting any better and has chosen to live with whatever she is left with.

It appalls me to realise that the look on her face, right now as she lay asleep, is the same as it was while she teased me, “You owe me a lot, my son, a lot!”, a few minutes back in the kitchen.

Living 18 hours away from Ma-Papa and studying, makes me want to run back home every weekend but I only get to run back home once in two-three months. Today was the morning I reached home, as elated as ever, resolved to spend every single second of the two weeks I have with Ma and Papa, and Ma again.

I had waited for this day so bad, I was more than happy to have those lame jokes with tea and cinnamon-toast for breakfast with them. Ma looked weaker than the last time I saw her, but her carefree attitude effectively concealed the dark side of our life. The summer morning awash in our kitchen through the glass windows, was filling up the spaces between Ma’s delight about my presence and my worry about her. It amazes me how Papa survives so much torment with countenance to her fate. I sipped tea with Papa at the table while she worked her miracles with the bread and presented to us the toasts.

“The new owners have agreed. We can finally visit the old house. And guess what”, she suddenly announced, and without waiting for me to respond, she blinked at Papa, then back at me and dramatically whispered as if deciphering some mystery, “I convinced the nagging old woman to let us stay a night in one of the rooms!” and tipped her chin up like a queen.

Amused by her theatrical way of announcing the news, I turned to Papa, we gave each other an approving nod, for which Ma bowed down to us, as filmy as she is, and sat down on her chair. I beamed at her and said, “You are a stubborn woman, Ma. For this, I owe you one.” In response, I got my cheeks pinched hard and an ear-to-ear grin from her, which also made those wrinkles appear around her eyes, making it more difficult for me to hold on to the happy moment.

She had just arranged our stay at the house in countryside where I was born. We lived there until Papa’s transfer to the city, about three years. The old house is now owned by an aged couple who want to run an art school in the house, the rooms and corridors being so huge.

She stood up, turned around and walked to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, paused for a second and said, “You owe me a lot, my son, a lot!” Papa snorted a laugh and I was meant to laugh too, but what Ma said pierced all the way through me.

I owe her a lot. I really do.

I owe the trust she had in me in times of disapproval when even Papa didn’t believe in me. I fought those battles with her by my side to be what I am today. I owe her the patience she kept up while I strived to prove I was worth the trust. I owe her for the fears she and Papa helped me overcome and pushed me up the hill. For every single cup of tea she made for me in the middle of winter nights to help me stay up and study well enough, I am too indebted to pay her the love back.

I am here in front of her and Papa, seated, doing nothing. What have I ever done for her? I never even told her I wanted to do something for her! I could at least have said that. I can say now! I was staring into nothing, my head lowered down, wondering whether I should tell her how indebted I feel.

“VARUN!”

Papa’s exasperated outcry woke me up from my pointless trance to find Ma blacked out as she dropped the water bottle from her hand and herself on her knees before Papa leaped and caught hold of her now unconscious self.

With my breath hitched and heart beating the blood out of my head I watched her collapse lifelessly into the puddle of water spilled from the bottle as Papa held her.

It all happened in a fraction of a second, leaving me and Papa to watch her rock gently from side to side, asleep like a baby in a cradle, with each sharp turn the ambulance takes through the belabouring traffic.

She was found to have Benign Glioma of Grade 2, the type of tumor which has slow growth. She knows Benigns are less likely to grow back once completely removed and Chemo-treated. If only she had not lapped up with the idea of death, she is so stubborn that with a desire to survive this fatal ailment, she would actually survive it. She says “Everything in life is uncertain but death.” This she read somewhere and chose to live with the malady, and refused to spend any money for the treatment.

We are quite used to her headaches, seizures, drowsiness and blurred vision which she wouldn’t admit she has. A stubborn woman as she is, Papa and I gave up convincing her a long time ago. She is ready for when she will need a surgery but she has no expectations out of it.

Her face now illume with the summer morning gushing all over the inside of the ambulance through the doors open, the hospital workers pull the stretcher out, down from the carriage. I admire the expression on her face as Papa wakes me from my reverie, “Varun, come on…..Varun! Varun?”

My jelly feet somehow carry me all the way up the Cancer Ward. I watch her lie on the stretcher being slid rapidly towards the Emergency Area, running to keep up the pace with her. I want to tell her what I didn’t tell her at the kitchen table.

Can’t you just wake up for a minute, Ma? Listen to me. I owe you everything. I know you lie about your reason to refuse the treatment. I know you would rather spend on my college tuition than your treatment. Hear me say it once, please. Are you all prepared? Ready? I can’t figure out if you still want to visit our old home and stay there tonight; I want to hear all your stories about my wailing and about my mischiefs and all the sleepless nights you spent, Ma, to look after me. They say you’ll be operated on immediately. The O.T. is close, Ma, I want to say what I should have said. Everything had a price. I have paid none yet. Please tell me you are not the price I’ll have to pay…

The name panel above the hefty double-door screams ‘Emergency’. Ma leaves me behind and the door swallows her as I watch her go. We’ll buy the old house from the nagging woman once I earn enough, I promise. I want to pay my debts. I won’t let anything go for free, I owe it all to you, Ma, WAIT !!

For once, I want to be on the receiving end of a string of twenty texts. I want to say, “shit, I’m sorry, I fell asleep” in the morning, and go about my day like usual. I want to wake up with seven missed calls and I want to be able to clear notifications right away and I want to be so busy that I can’t call back or leave a text. I want to buy a portable charger for my phone when my phone’s battery keeps draining from all the vibrating all day.

I want my phone to have notifications other than promotional SMSs and data usage warnings. I want to look at my phone’s screen before picking up when it rings, to see who is calling because I want dad to not be the only person I receive calls from. I want to have more than just 30 contacts on my phonebook and I want to converse with real people I know, not strangers online.

But sometimes I want to damn it all and lose my contacts, unfriend fifty people at once on Facebook, and not care. It doesn’t make a difference because none of them was blowing up my phone anyway. Neither does it matter because the contacts, ironically, I never contact in the first place​; the friends I unfriend do not even know me anymore. I do it and I tell myself I don’t need them; truly enough, I don’t. But I’m the one who gets labelled ‘not very social’ and ‘she’s always been like that’ and I couldn’t care less until one gloomy morning I need to reach out, I want to talk to someone about myself or the weather; someone from the 30 contacts I didn’t really end up losing because I had backup, thank God. Half of them are ruled out for being uncles and aunts who I doubt I would contact even in an emergency and the rest of them get me depressed by being the acquaintances and colleagues whose numbers I got from WhatsApp groups and who I barely speak to. Times like these are when I wish I was more outspoken, more social, less awkward, less clumsy, less choosy, less different, less me.

Other days, I am glad I am not enslaved by the smartphone and I, over and over again, read the letter dad wrote me once, for I can’t replay his phone calls on loop. I would if I could. And I feel content for not having to look who is calling me when the phone rings. Sometimes I complain but most days I’m fine and I say “never mind” when my phone vibrates and asks me to plug in the charger.

I want to learn how to sail a boat. I want to learn how to play a piano, a guitar, a drum set. I want to train in fighting, I want to be able to deliver a good punch, one that breaks a jaw. I want to travel and try different ways of life and live in different cultures and learn new languages and see the world and experience nature and fall in love. I want to fall in love with roads, with sunshine, with music, with rivers, with stars, with people. I want to find myself, know myself and gauge my feelings and accept them. I want to push my limits. I want to be different things. I want to be different people. I have one life, it is short and I want to live a hundred lives in it.

I want to paint, I want to surf the waves of different seas, I want to adopt animals. I want to adopt and raise less-fortunate kids. I want to labor hard, I want to lead when I have  a vision and follow when I find someone who knows​ their way forward. I don’t want to climb the Everest. I want to hike up to green mountains and snowy mountains and camp by a cliff. I want to wake up to the view of trees with red roofs. I want to fall asleep to the sound of fire crackling on a night so cold, it hurts. I want to live by the sea and pick pebbles and shells to make adornments for an arrangement of damp wood I shall call my furniture. I want to explore valleys and canoe my way down rivers. And that’s the only way I shall have it. I can not gamble with my life.

I wouldn’t regret if I starved to death or slipped off a cliff or became breakfast to a bear. But I would regret serving breakfast to the same unappreciative​ faces every morning my entire life. I would regret birthing ungrateful children. I would hate having to live upto the world’s expectations. I couldn’t make myself live in a mega-machine fuelled by money and minutes. I couldn’t make myself function among sharp edges and white noises and traffic and fake smiles and pointless statuses and vanity and endless expectations and loveless concerns and forced relationships and selfish favors and opaque eyes and rigid visions and low IQs and innumerable unnecessary unasked-for opinions. I do not seek to be respected. I respect myself and that’s all that counts. I would never be able to live a life as someone else, not as someone I’m told to be. I’m glad I know who I am. I know I can be so many things.

But above all, I know what I can’t ever be.

At this point in life, I do not know where I am headed, what life has planned for me next and how I am coping with not knowing the answers to these questions when it is most needed.

I woke up from a nap this evening and asked myself what I’m doing with my life and I did not know, but I knew what all I wasn’t doing. I looked in the mirror and told myself:

so blog it!