Imagine coming into this world with the memories of your past life. It’ll paralyse your present.

Imagine remembering your parents from your past life. You’ll be curious about them, worried if they’re alive, and if they’re not, you’ll still miss them. You’ll live with the constant conflict of what your past-life parents taught you and what your new parents want from you. And if you died with a lot of greys on your head, you probably already know more than your current parents about life. Where does your loyalty lie, with ma and baba or with mommy and daddy?

Imagine remembering your friends from your past life. If you remember every game, every betrayal, every conversation. Would you make the same kind of friends in this life or would you be more open to befriending people who exhibit behaviour and challenges you’re not used to? As kids, making friends is easy. Find someone your age who lives in your neighbourhood, and done. Imagine that innocence, comfort, and trust being snatched away from you because you can read people so well that you’ll see how pointless this friendship will turn out in the future.

Imagine remembering your lovers from your past life. If you remember every compromise you made, every tear you shed, every intimate session you had, every heartbreak you felt, would you be able to give your hundred percent to your present lover? Would you even be open to the idea of falling in love considering you remember the pain and the futility of emotions and how they have shattered you before? Would you love yourself more because of that? And what if you are still in love with the spouse of your past life? Could you ever truly move on?

This curse of knowledge will alienate you. Make you wary of trying new things and forming new bonds. This cognitive bias will induce fear and apathy in you. Instead of default settings, if your system is preloaded with a certain set of settings and preferences, your biases will never let to start things on a clean slate. You will know exactly what you want and that eliminates the euphoria of stumbling upon something you didn’t know you could like or love. If you’re using your knowledge just to protect yourself, you will never have any beautiful accidents.

Imagine missing your favourite food from your past life because your current mom can’t make it the same way no matter how hard she tries.
Imagine yearning for a comfort zone your spouse of past life provided you and the regret of not finding the same in your current partner.
Imagine bursting out in laughter because your current friend did something quirky which reminded you of a friend from your past life.
Imagine warm tears trickling down your cheek as you lie on the bed reliving the trauma that hasn’t happened to you in this life.
I am sure you get the point.

We all have lived many lives in this very life.
Maybe if you forgive and forget you will un-paralyse yourself from your past life. Maybe.

2020, the year that packs many years in one.

Easily the most mocked year in the history of timekeeping. It has received hate, denial, and memes like none of its 2,019 predecessors. Hate it or hate it, it is a unique year for all of us.

Dear 2020, this is a love letter to you.
We were paying rent/lease for our houses on an autopilot mode. Now that we are all locked up, we actually ended up living in these houses. Not for 8-10 hours, but for 86,400 seconds a day. Yes, time slows down when a home is no longer a place you leave or come back to. 2020 gave us something we always thought we never had – time.

All this free time guarantees an abundance of thoughts. Good, bad, ugly, self-loathing, fearful, irrational, ‘am I asymptomatic?’, ‘if I were married, I wouldn’t be alone in this lockdown’, ‘oh, but I can’t live with someone 24×7, I want to divorce this thought right now’, ‘why can’t my rotis balloon up like everyone else’s?’, ‘why are advertising people more stressed than doctors during a pandemic?’, ‘why is my body type Paresh Rawal and not John Abraham?’, ‘is it rude to not show your face on a zoom call?’, ‘Can I stay on mute and take this zoom call while I relieve myself?’, ‘Oh, did I accidentally unmute myself, phew, it’s still on mute’, ‘How are these dishes piling up in the sink, all I make is chai and toast’, ‘Should I shave my head?’, ‘Should I shave at all?’, ‘Am I going crazy?’, ‘Oh no, I was always this crazy, I am just learning how to live with it now’.

The average person has about 60,000 thoughts per day(85% are negative, 95% are repetitive, and in my case, 99% are corrosive). Like an unwanted guest, these thoughts stayed with us for days, weeks, and months, but once you get comfortable with them and accept their presence you realise that neither these thoughts nor the year 2020 are the problem.

This year just showed us who we are, it showed me who I am.
I am bad at cooking because I am privileged and a brat.
I procrastinate pursuing my dreams, because of my inherent fear of failure and sometimes my fear of not being able to handle the side-effects of success.
I don’t have any 4am friends, because I didn’t call my friends back for 4 days, weeks and even months.
I am single because I was too ignorant to see my shortcomings and too lazy to work on them.
I am not in great shape, because I am a picky eater (I pick food and eat it).
I am running out of stories to tell because I don’t travel that often or read that much or make new friends.
I am bored with the way things are because I have been complacent for way too long.
I am all alone for the past six months because I burned my bridges, nurtured my superiority complex, fought with family, survived in solitude, and of course, my building manager won’t let any guests in. Not that I have any who would want to pay me a visit.

If you’ve made it till here I am glad you could relate to my rant, which is highly unlikely. So my guess is that only friends and acquaintances are reading this now. In that case – hi friends and acquaintances, apologies for being so non-responsive all my life. I do wish to improve.

And a heartfelt thank you to 2020. It would have taken me at least a decade to get to all these realisations. You are like a bumpy road with lots of potholes, but nonetheless a shortcut to wisdom.

Love you 2020
:*

I miss the days when my biggest problem was going home after dark because I extended my playtime by two hours or so.

Yes, it is a nostalgia piece. #Only90sKidsWillGetIt

Remember those roads less travelled which we turned into a pitch, with a piece of chalk or even a broken piece of an earthen pot? Three stones made up for a rather accurate width of a wicket, and for the height, all of us had our imagination. Remember how surprisingly most of the ‘pitches’ we selected allowed us to open our arms in only one direction (mostly straight)? Even though most of us instinctively played towards the leg side. What was more surprising was the fact that hitting the ball really hard actually got you out, and the punishment was to climb the fence, sneak into the house of a neighbour, which obviously housed a dog (Breed: Dachshund, Name: Laddu). Remember your heart beating out of your chest?

No pads, no gloves, no helmet (LOL, what do you think we were, rich kids?). We were tough enough to take the hits of a hard tennis ball (yes, the red one) and shake it off.

Remember waiting all evening for your turn to bat and not getting a chance after all? Remember swinging the bat to accidentally hitting the ball for a six? Remember that oh-I-didn’t-think-I-would-make-it-but-it-seems-like-the-ball-is-stuck-in-my-hands-and-now-my teammates-are-celebrating catch? Remember feeling like a hero?

Remember using Rajnigandha pack for a toss, because sometimes even a one rupee coin was a luxury? Remember how you had a better understanding of the phrase ‘money can’t buy happiness’ back then?

Remember that post-match scolding by your mother and post-match-post-scolding shower? Remember feeling fresh and contently tired at the same time as you waited for dinner?

Remember going to bed thinking about how you will repeat your success the next day?

We remember a lot, isn’t it? What I can’t remember is why I always thought I needed to become an adult to feel like the king of the world.

How I forgot my delicates and Rupa came to rescue.

Overconfidence and I are chaddi-buddies, we go back a long way. I can’t help it now, it’s in my genes (mental note – pitch the idea of jeans with an in-built underwear).

I find packing my stuff for travel a chore, so I delay it till the 11th hour, just to make it more challenging and exciting (1% of you will have a I-know-that-feeling smirk on your face, yeah, wipe it off, because we forget at least 1 item every time).

This time, I flew without my briefs (and boxers).

Not a big deal you may think, airport has those stores, but dear readers you have to keep my thrifty behaviour also in consideration. Also, paying Rs. 900 for Benetton boxers makes less sense when you can get Jockey for just Rs. 300 (5% of you are nodding your head in agreement, yeah, we are cheap and we know it).

So I touchdown Bombay at 10pm (yes, 10% of us still call it Bombay) and after checking into my hotel I take an auto, my instructions were clear – take me to any mall/market where I can buy underwear. Imagine how awkward the conversation would have been if we had more women auto drivers. #EqualityIsScarySometimes

My knight in three-wheeled chariot took me through silent alleys and deserted lanes (so much for a city that never sleeps) to JB market. I hopped from one shop to another, finding Jockey was a joke in these modest shops where Rupa, Shilpa and Sheeba ruled the shelves.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, I knew how packed my schedule for next three days was, and I knew how much I love my hygiene, especially waist down. So I did what the title suggests… (15% of you may remember Rupa Frontline ads. As kids, our favourite underwear joke was – Rupa ki underwear pehenoge toh Rupa kya pehnegi… gosh, we were dumb).

In a matter of hours, I was standing in front of a mirror, wearing one ill-fitting, ugly pastel coloured, snug in a surprisingly comfortable fabric. Those ugly ads at the back of auto rickshaws from my childhood became the harsh reality of my adulthood. A humbling experience this, it taught me one thing – that even if you stay at the best of hotels, concierge can’t help you with such brief hiccups.

#THINGSIAMTHANKFULFOR

1. An uninterrupted supply of entertainment. Be it a hard drive full of movies, a good broadband connection to stream TV series or a good old fashioned TV with the new and advanced HD channels, I have it all.
2. A pile of books that can make me wise. Now all I need to do is to pick them, wipe the thin layer of dust off them and turn a few pages.
3. SO MANY FOOD APPS. I remember a few years back I had to think hard about where my next meal is coming from, now, I have to think hard about where my next meal is coming from.
4. No addictions. Social media burst really did a number on me. I was active on way too many platforms. Now I feel repelled by most of the content and most of the people generating that meaningless content online.
5. My old age. I know I’ve cribbed a lot in the past about a few grey hair on my head and what not. But shutting elders up (the pesky ones) just because you’ve achieved more than those monuments of cynicism ever could, is a feeling you couldn’t buy with money or Mastercard.
6. Flaunt value. It’s kind of a wholesome achievement. You flaunt your skills, your wit, your possessions (the ones you dreamt of as a kid/teenager/jobless youth), your future plans (more when you are unreasonably ambitious like me).
7. The possibilities. Unlike many people of my age who are settling down, I am still enthused about life and all that it has to offer me. Yes, leading a relatively unstable life is scary, but hey, even those who play safe die in the end.
8. You guys. Who read, like and subscribe to my posts. Seriously why do all youtube videos end this way?

I’ll write more when I think of more. You have any?

UNFRIEND NON-BELIEVERS.

And no, I’m not talking about the ones who criticise you to make you better. I’m not talking about friends who pull your leg when you fail. In fact, maybe it’s not about other individuals. Unfriend the little pesky non-believer in you if you have to.

The reasons for doing so:

• These are people who never had their own “Everest”, so it’s not just that they don’t believe in you, they are probably incapable of understanding you. Isn’t that the first premise of any friendship/relationship?
• Their doubt is contagious. Even if your will is as strong and determined as Mohd Ali, sometimes these naysayers punch you out with their expert negative logic (secret: they put weights of their failed past in their boxing gloves).
• They sometimes make sense. And that’s the most dangerous part. If Edmund Hillary had a friend like this who constantly told him drop the very risky plan to conquer Mt. Everest, it would still be a virgin peak. Men who like to be on top, gimme 5!
• They will always be there to say, “I told you so” and if your dreams are big you’ll have many failures; you don’t want that kinda negative energy around you when you are already down.
• If you could time travel, you’d know these people won’t do anything spectacular with their lives. They would happily be the puppet of time/situation/peer pressure/so-called-righteousness/system/government/dysfunctional family and of course luck.
• So unfriend them today, because an year from now you would regret not taking an action even though a great post warned you about these demons who feed on your dreams.

Good night.

Not to brag, but I can smile in sign language.

For last 9 months I’ve been working with a great guy who’s deaf and mute. This is the first time I am doing something like this, and surprisingly it’s easy and awesome. At first, I had no clue how it was going to work out, as he is my art partner and I am in the business of communication.

So the exchange of ideas started with us writing stuff on a piece of paper. I couldn’t talk to him without my pen. And this is how it went sometimes:

Me: I think you should reduce the font size. 
Him: No.
Me: If you do it we’ll have more white space and the layout will look clean.
Him: Size is ok.
Me: Well, it’s totally your call. No pressure. But more white space means eyes will go straight to the message. It’ll be loud and clear and yet not in the face. It’ll be noticeable, but not shouting for attention. It’ll be there, but not there. You feeling me?
Him: Hmm…
Me: So will you do it?
Him: No.

From drawing letters on hands to typing on the phone to explaining stuff with hand gestures to laughing at client’s feedback, we’ve come a long way. Now I even know how to swear in sign language (just one word, and yes, mostly used for the same client).

What’s magical is that now he tells me about his family, how naughty his kids are, how hot the weather is outside, how much he hated Fan, and how bad Vodafone is, and that’s when I have to make calls for him posing as him to threat the telephone network. Sigh! We do all great things friends do.

Aren’t all human relationships similar? You can’t truly understand each other, but you still try to work things out. The only difference is that you expect the other person to understand you better, because technically you speak the same language. Maybe if you speak less and smile more (and obviously, smile it like you mean it), there will be less friction and more understanding.

Hey, it worked for me.

 

My advice at 29 – have more dreams.

I was always driven. Even as a teenager. I wanted to do something fruitful with my life, even though I was as confused as any normal teenager if not more. My teenage ended 10 years ago and now I have all that I imagined.

Sounds great, right? It is.

But what follows after you get what you want it an endless void, a vacuum, which sucks you in if you don’t have the next dream aligned in the barrel of your cannon that lets you shoot for the stars.

Having a dream is no wild goose chase. It actually determines who you are as a person and who you can be.

Today, I’m just a designation. Today, I’m just the salary that gets credited in my bank on every 1st of every month. Today, I’m just my boss’s apprentice. Today, I’m just a guy who wishes for a lot of things, but dreams about none.

All this, because I had a very few dreams.

Don’t let your dreams take the backseat.

It has already happened for most of us and we don’t even notice it. The daily grind is so overwhelming that we forget what we really intend to do. ‘Pursuit of happiness’ awaits while the mundane duties/responsibilities/routine  consumes us.

We’ve found our comfort zone in living the same day, every day. There’s something peaceful about a life with ‘no surprises’ and we are getting too used to it.

Buddha once said, “the problem is that you think you have time” and this captures our lifestyle in one line. We are waiting for a miracle to happen, for stars to line up, for perfect opportunity to show itself, for something to happen while we live the ‘busy’ life.

Ask yourself – what’s keeping you busy? And can it keep you happy forever? The answer might help you prioritise your life better.

 

He types HAHAHA with a straight face and sends emoticons when he runs out of words.

He woke up on a Tuesday morning and realised that he was late for work. Not late like ‘holy shit, it’s 10 am and I’ve missed a meeting’ late. Real life is not that dramatic you know. He was late by his ideal and a very ambitious wake up time, understandably so, because he missed his ideal ‘go to bed and sleep’ time, by a couple of hours. Sigh! His smart phone really makes him do dumb things.

He isn’t known to make great decisions and he goes to sleep again, because that’s how he competes with his failures, big or small. It’s 10 am and now he is late for real.

He does what he does everyday, miss his exercise and breakfast so he can later crib about his not-so-healthy lifestyle taking long drags of the cancer stick. He takes great pleasure in helping irony write itself.

He sits for hours in front of a computer and stands with his head down looking at the portable screen. He is more wired to the word and less connected to himself. He types HAHAHA with a straight face and sends emoticons when he runs out of words. He leaves office early like he has to be somewhere, drives his car through the same roads, listening to the same music, going past the same houses, sheltering almost the same thoughts he had yesterday… he reaches the same destination – the place he calls home.

Wait, he just lived his yesterday again and it looks hauntingly familiar to the day before that. He lives just one day, again and again. He is a victim of routine. He wonders how did he come this far and what he has become while scrolling for answers over the internet, finding solace with other victims; strangers he can empathise with. People who are like him – stuck, confused and capable of so much more.