IAW

12 March 2024

If you have been following me, you’d know that I’ve not written anything significant to publish in the last three weeks. That’s quite rare after a streak of putting out about 10 pieces every month. But I didn’t mind, as I was having quite a nice time in life. I was happy and not writing didn’t bother me much. But here we are. Also, because during the time I didn’t feel like writing anything significant and anything that came to my mind wasn’t deep enough for me to carve out time to write. That’s also quite surprising because last month I also joined a very famous writing course by a podcaster from India, and it was expensive. But again, the cost and everything I learned during the writing course didn’t motivate me enough to write more.

I turn 27 next month. What I’m going to write about today has been the only larger thought, writing-wise, that’s stuck in my head. Many greats passed away when they were 27, like Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, etc. I hope that won’t be the case with me. Not just that, I personally know someone who tried entering the 27 club, and that gives me jitters when I think of it. Their story was a very uncomfortable listening.

In Oct ’23, I wrote a piece that more than 11,000 words. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the piece actually contains everything about me. If you were to know me better, I would have already shared that piece with you. That way, we’d have unlocked a new level of our bond. I think it makes sense to write another long piece that contains a lot of stuff. Random and not random, my musings, people that touch me, stories, tears, laughs, change, and while doing that reflect on what’s gone and might go and also what might come ahead.

As I’m writing this, there’s some amount of friction I am experiencing since it’s been a while since I’ve written anything to be published. You might wonder, why and how has the sun dawned today and I am writing this piece?
The answer lies in a book and a movie that I just finished reading and watching — Slumdog Millionaire. The book and the movie both left me in tears. It is as realistic as a fictional story can get and touches the right notes in the story and the build-up. The writing is amazing as well. And as someone whose bread and butter comes from quizzing, this was surely a hearty story on how random things connect in life (also see scout mindset).

A friend called me just as I had started watching a movie in the afternoon. I thought he might ask me to meet for our usual weekly chai session in the evening. The probability seemed low because he usually calls me around 4 PM for chai. However, to my surprise, he shared two pieces of good news! He had been searching for a new job since he left his previous workplace last summer, and he finally found one! Moreover, it’s in Pune, and not just anywhere in Pune, but in central Pune!

Since last year, I had been thinking of moving my base to a city like Pune or Hyderabad. Finally, here’s one more piece of news that will motivate me to put this into action. If my friend is looking for accommodation and things are feasible for me, then surely I’ll go with him. * Edit: he did not join that place. But the temporary happiness combined with the average pseudo confidence and convincing power of a typical male made up for the light that I saw at the end of the tunnel and a new beginning.

As soon as the movie ended, I was emotional. Finally, the Slumdog Millionaire reunites with his long-lost love, and as they walk towards each other, there’s a flashback of all the troubles the Slumdog went through. Now he has escaped, and it’s a new beginning of his new life.

I might move to a new city in the next few weeks and months (or anytime in the future); chances are high. But what happens to all the stories, places, people, objects, and memories that I’ll have to leave behind? They won’t be with me anymore. And let’s be real, keeping online-only connections is really difficult. It’s surely not the same as meeting someone every week for a casual walk or visiting a library close to your home.
I know that whatever will happen to me in the new city will also be equally rewarding and there are a million opportunities and possibilities that will open for me, but this time I don’t wish enough to move my base, still I want to. I cry particularly because I will loose contact with my close friend who sees a side of me that nobody else does. I won’t be able to meet them anymore. I cry thinking of all the thinking I’ve lost in the last two years.
That’s where I am at this point in my life.

It’s existential, and it slows down my decision-making process. I fear things; I fear that I’ll lose things from my life. I know the potential positive side of things, but the fearful side of losing always comes in the way of whatever I do and think. All the time. One of the pros this type of thinking has is that it prepares you for the bad situations in a better way.
Y m i lyk dis onli? Thanks to whatever happened in my life in the last two years.
Do I like being in this place? No.
The friction to do things that instinctively come to my mind has increased. I also know this is also my anxious attachment style kicking in.

Wisdom says life is a journey of letting go and accepting what’s ahead and with you. But for once, I just want everything to stop! Something I told to a friend of mine: ‘I’m at this stage of life in which everything I do from now, even as small as inserting the key in my scooter to head home, I’ll be creating trouble for myself’.
There’s nothing from the past life that needs to be resolved. I desire less and less in this world of distractions, and if given a choice, the only thing I’d like to do for the rest of my life is read, watch interesting stuff on YouTube, travel, and pick up and drop hobbies, in that order of importance. At this point on, I could actually be anything in life.

That makes me wonder, what were the chances of me turning out to be what I am today?! For all I know, I could also be a drug addict, have no bank balance, or I could also be a millionaire, like our Slumdog! Let’s pause and think — whatever you thought of five years ago: has it turned out to be the way you pictured it? That’s surely not the case with me. Whenever I had to choose between two paths, I chose some and a trajectory of some similar and some dissimilar decisions led me to who I am today. Heck! I am in the city I had promised myself not to return to when I got a chance to move out of it!

Hence, whatever you are and will be, this point on, is it all written somewhere?

There’s so much long term planning we tend to do for things but a lot of times that falls flat and fails miserably.

So wouldn’t it be fair to say that our story is already written down somewhere? There’s someone out there sitting in the clouds, pulling the strings to our lives. Sometimes the string-man gets lazy and doesn’t handle his strings well, and I get into an accident just two days before I had planned a solo trip to Southern India. As I write this, I am down with fever and have a horrible nose block. It is terrible, and I am unable to perform the tasks at work today. Today, I sit in my bed and simply take rest, call a friend or two, and write this. What I had in mind for today? Finish a work task before I leave for a brief Bombay trip on Friday.

After writing the bit you just read, I’m sitting again to wrap up this piece. I got hungry, so I had milk with toast and biscuits. The biscuit wrapper was a bit too tight and wouldn’t open from the pointed corners, causing some crumbs to fall onto the kitchen counter. I also accidentally knocked over a glass that was placed next to my bed while I was pulling the blanket for an afternoon siesta. Amidst all this, I received a call from a friend, then met another friend. We ended up playing a quiz league game before I finally settled down for dinner.
In the sequence of events above, surely, some of them were not urgent and important, so I had the choice to not do them and be less distracted. I could potentially read a book or finish writing this piece. But there’s no alternate reality, and I sadly don’t have access to a time machine to change the reality.
Hence, I have come to the conclusion that my story in life is already written, and I am just flowing with it like a river. I’ve tried productivity hacks, worked for entire days and weeks without breaks, attempted to start my own business, and engaged in enough long-term planning. But for all of those pieces to fit into what I am today — it was a journey. Was it all worth it? I don’t think so very much, but there are times when I’ve felt that I am satisfied with things.
No matter how much long-term planning I do, it’s easy to fall into things that distract us. There was a point in life when I had larger goals, but now there’s nothing like that, really! Almost all decisions are emotional decisions, and we make them based on the leniency that we’ve earned thanks to the good karma from the past. For example, someone who has $100k in the bank account won’t mind paying $100 for an ice cream, but someone with $100 would (and should) only fancy an ice cream worth $5.

I take the coin from her and toss it high into the air. It goes up, up and up, glints briefly against the turquoise sky, and then drops swiftly into the ocean and sinks into its cavernous depths.
‘Why did you throw away your lucky coin?’
‘I don’t need it any more. Because luck comes from within.’
- Slumdog Millionaire

The theme of the movie is the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” It opens with the question that you saw at the beginning of this page. The movie ends; our Slumdog is now not just a Slumdog, he’s a Slumdog Millionaire. His love is waiting for him, and they are reunited. We finally have the answer to the question we saw when the movie started.

I was forced to abandon the optimism of everyday life. I gave up television and the daily papers. I took time off work. I became obsessed by millennial disasters: the risks of earthquakes, floods, and avian flus. I felt the transience of everything, the illusions upon which civilizations are built. I saw in happiness a violent denial of reality. I looked com- muters in the face and wondered why they were unbothered by their own meaninglessness. I understood the pain of history, a record of carnage enveloped in nauseous nostalgia. I felt the arrogance of scientists and politicians, newscasters and petrol-station attendants, the smugness of accountants and gardeners. I linked myself to the great outcasts, I became a follower of Caliban and Dionysus, and all who had been reviled for looking pus-filled truth in the face. In short, I briefly lost my mind.
— Essays in Love, Alain de Botton

What will I do in my life ahead? I don’t know. I think I’ll have to wait for all the surprises it will throw at me.

Who, if not time (which lies in its own way), could possibly begin to tell?
— Essays in Love, Alain de Botton

I guess, it’s all written. IAW.

Notes for this piece.