The Bucket Of No Wishes

The thought struck after returning from Istanbul. For those who don’t already know, it’s the place I celebrated my 40^th birthday in; and with considerable panache, I would say… Over dinner as I entertained my friends with details of the trip: the madness, the BMW and the insanely large alcohol bill that I racked up, he asked me the question most people are wont to ask during discussions like these: What would I do for the grand 41^st? What was the next big thing on my “Bucket List”?

The thing is, I don’t have a bucket list. I don’t even believe in the concept. Which is not to say that I’ve done everything I wanted to in life; there are still plenty of experiences to live, places to visit and sights to see in this lifetime. But I just don’t believe in putting it down on a list and put little check marks against them as I go along.

By its very definition, a list is a plan. It could be a plan for things that need to be done, things that need to be accomplished, or simply the landmarks and milestones that we need to cross to see ourselves where we want to in 5, 10, 15 years. It could be about going to Harvard before turning 30, landing that dream job or finally taking the vacation we’ve been planning for years. A list in an accounting system, a balance sheet through which we keep score of the things that we managed versus the things that we couldn’t. The more the number of little check marks against the items, the happier and more successful we’re supposed to feel in life. But do we really want to turn over life’s happiness to an accounting system? And what happens when the check marks aren’t quite as many in number as we thought there would be? Should that decrease our happiness in the things that we did manage to do?

To me, the concept of bucket lists seems flawed on many levels… Life doesn’t come with a definite plan… I believe that the beauty of life lies in its uncertainty… Every day, it writes a new chapter, every day we live a new adventure… In this uncertainty, where is the place for a list??

I think Bucket Lists lead to disappointment. Imagine dreaming of Harvard all your adult life, imagine saving up for it for years, and then imagine something happening that doesn’t let that person go to Harvard despite all the planning and preparations. It’s not just the disappointment. Imagine if the reason for not going was a person… All it would lead to is resentment for the person who took away that item from our list. Why would we do this to ourselves?

I believe in treating life like a book that reveals something new on every page. A book that we don’t have the power to write, only live and enjoy. Only then can we feel a pure and unadulterated kind of happiness when we reach the last page… We don’t have the power to write our own destiny; if we did, everyone on the planet would be exactly where they wanted to see themselves… But we’re not all where we’d like to be, are we?

I somehow always feel that our joy in the things we’ve achieved always pales in comparison to the disappointment over the things we weren’t able to do. A Bucket List is like inviting this disappointment to our doorstep and letting the pressure of getting to the desired goals get to us… When did life become about ticking off things we have done from some list and not about simply exploring all that it has to offer? Why can’t we travel a road without a map and see where it goes and what it has to offer?

When do we start making these lists anyway??? As the years go by and we experience more and more of life, do we keep adding to this list and consequently, keep adding to the pressure of accomplishing even more than before?? When does this list end??? I’d love to meet a man who can tell me that he had a list of 10 things to do which he never added things to; and when he managed to cross all 10 of them, he was completely satisfied. I’m guessing we’d be hard pressed to find a man like this. Human desires are endless, so why should our desire to do things be restricted and kept in some bucket???

Lists are meant for chores to finish and groceries to buy… Let’s not treat life like a balance sheet… Where success is measured in how much red we see at the end of the day. Like someone once told me, buckets are meant to hold water, not your life’s desires. J

NO SHADI KE 6 PHERE

It was like any other night. I was at a friend’s place for dinner and the conversations were following their usual course: Shah Rukh’s affair with Priyanka, Salman’s stronghold in Bollywood, Dhoni and Team India. Nothing spectacularly different, nothing out of the ordinary. And just when we thought we’d exhausted all the usual topics, the conversation turned to everyone’s all-time favourite: matrimony and me. Who was getting married to who, who was getting a divorce, who was living in sin. Nobody’s private life is safe at a dinner table with old friends. As usual, I was called upon to give my left-of-centre view on the subject of holy matrimony. I rose to the occasion and the evening ended with some people hotly defending the institution of marriage, trying to convince the other half who believe that marriage isn’t a dying institution, it’s a dead institution.

On the drive back home, I thought about the reasons why I think marriage as we know it, is a thing of the past. Everywhere I look, I find that the reality of marriages today are almost diametrically opposite to the rules that make a supposedly successful marriage. And that’s when this blog was born. The 6 reasons why I think that if the concept of marriage is to live to see another day, year or decade, the rules need to change. Here’s why:  

LOVE WAS NEVER THE DETERMINING FACTOR IN A MARRIAGE

Love may have single-handedly sponsored Kenny G’s world tours, but in the times of our parents and their parents, it had little to do with marriage. Stripped of its romanticism, marriage was simply meant to be a social contract--a functional piece of paper that gave two unconnected individuals a right over each other’s wealth and assets, and a legal license to procreate .Very often these people were strangers right up to the day of their marriage. There was little or no physical or emotional proximity until their license to sex was signed and sealed. Most of our parents or maybe grandparents hadn’t known what a sexual touch was until the night of their wedding. The romance started only after the marriage, when the boy and girl finally got the chance to explore and discover the person they were married to.

Cut to our times.  All of us started playing the dating game well before we decided to get married. Couples date for months, years and sometimes even decades before they finally take the plunge. But someone tell me, what plunge is actually left to take when you’ve been with a person for years before you sign a document proclaiming marriage? We know everything there is to know about a person--physically as well as emotionally--before we get married. Very few of us have firsts to look forward to after a marriage. We’ve gone on vacations, lived together, had screaming matches, wild sex and shared pets much before the act of marriage. What’s left to look forward to? Is the signing of a legal piece of paper really worth making such an event out of? I don’t think so. How is the first day of marriage any different from the last day of dating ???

OUR WORLD WAS MUCH SMALLER

For the people who walked, life extended upto their neighbouhoods. When there were horses the world was as big as the next village. Then came the wheel and people travelled across cities and kilometers. Then came the train and the plane and our world grew and grew till it almost exploded. 100 years ago, a dude from Colaba would think he’s found a bride from a faraway  land if she came from Virar. He’d probably live and die within a radius of 100 square kilometers and he could only know women from within that radius. There was lesser temptation, lesser chances of slipping up. Today we live in a world where we can literally have breakfast, lunch and dinner in three different cities within the same day. Imagine meeting a beautiful Spanish woman in Delhi for breakfast, a Swedish lady  in Mumbai for lunch and an Italian bombshell  in Goa for dinner. The law of temptation very clearly states ….the more the choices …the more chances are that what you possess will look and feel stale and outdated…Which marriage can survive the onslaught of the constant threat of temptation?

WOMEN ARE MORE EQUAL TO MEN

When marriage as a social contract came about, men and women had very clearly defined roles and responsibilities in structured society. Men were the providers and women were the nurturers. Today, there are no rules. Women are far more financially independent than ever before and with that independence comes the confidence to say no--to bullshit from men and to relationships that are toxic. There’s a reason why divorce rates are peaking with every passing decade.  The bra burning of the women’s liberation movement might have given women more rights ,but they have increased the strain on marriages …Women are no longer that tolerant to the vagaries of men

THE JOINT FAMILY

Most of us have been brought up in or at least start our married lives in a nuclear setup. There’s the husband, the wife and the domestic help. Presently, a child is added to the numbers in most cases.  Since our private lives are shielded from the extended family, when we fight, there’s no one to knock on the door, forcing us to lower our volumes while screaming. There’s no one to calm turbulent waters or act as a sandpaper to smoothen the friction. Since there are no buffers, problems can simmer until one day they implode and the marriage falls apart. The joint family acted both as a diversion and as a sponge for a married couple and their issues …with no diversion or sponge the chances of friction increase multifold ..which ultimately show on a marriage

WORK PLACE ROMANCE

Most of us spend longer hours at work than at home. If we were to clock the hours, the time spent with our colleagues beats the time spent with our significant others hands down. With more and more women joining the workforce, it’s impossible to go through life without being attracted to the people you work with. There is a very strong chance that a woman working in the work place will understand you better than maybe your wife waiting at home for you … So there’s opportunity, proximity and time--the three most important ingredients in an affair….

SOCIAL MEDIA

The Internet is the final nail in the marriage coffin… Nothing gives and everything is allowed in the virtual world. It’s a world where we can no longer define clearly the boundaries that separate harmless flirting and infidelity.  There used to be a time when giving a girl a hug or a kiss used to be a milestone in a relationship, a momentous occasion in the two participants’ life. These days, we hug and kiss half a dozen people simultaneously--on BBM, Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter. The voyeur hidden inside each of us dances in glee at the increasing number of platforms that gives it the opportunity to play out its fantasy of polygamy. There are few rules and fewer boundaries in this world. 

So these are my reasons… This blog isn’t a comment on the change in the social landscape. It’s just me wondering that since the seasons of our lives have changed and the landscape has changed, why  do we insist on dressing up for climates that no longer exist? I think that marriage is outdated not because people don’t want to be with each other, but because the way we practice it has become outdated… We need to approach it from the point of view of the lives we live and the changes in our social life, not based on the needs it was supposed to fulfill decades and centuries ago. All I’m saying is, we need a new form of social contract… That the rules of marriage need to be rewritten… Because otherwise, it’s just like a dinosaur stuck in a traffic jam on a busy street in New York--helpless and confused. 

EK RISHTA ANJAANA SA

I’ve always been in a relationship with her… She’s been a constant presence in my life, I was just too busy to pay her any attention. But as the years have progressed, our relationship and its dynamics have changed. At first, I didn’t give her a second thought. When I started thinking of her, I still wasn’t ready to acknowledge her. When I could work up the courage to acknowledge her presence in my life, I still held back; I still wouldn’t accept her. And finally today, I’ve accepted her and come to terms with the fact that she’s always going to be a part of my life… We’ve come a long way and it’s been a tumultuous relationship… My relationship with death.

When I was a kid, it was simply a word, one that I didn’t even hear too often. I heard a faint whisper of it when my grandfather passed away when I was five. But I was too young to know what it meant or to give it any real thought. The innocence of childhood worked its magic and I escaped into adulthood without understanding the permanence of death. My next encounter with it wasn’t until I was well into my 20s. Whether it was fate or good luck, I don’t know, but I didn’t have to go through the ordeal of losing someone close to me until I was 26. The first time I came face to face with what had only been a vague idea to me until then was when I lost a very close childhood friend in a flying accident. He’d been flying a Mirage 2000 that had crashed. That was the first time ever that I broke down and wept because I realised he was gone for good… That there would be no more phone calls, no more conversations. It was the first time I’d felt the pain of losing someone and the void that their going away left in your life. I remember seeing him lie motionless and wondering where he’d gone and what lay ahead of him. Was this it? Was this the end of his story or was this just the end of this book, but somewhere, in another universe, he’d become a part of another story? These thoughts stayed with me.

But nature and the invincibility of youth took over and gradually, my life and all that it had to offer won over thoughts of death. That’s the beauty of youth. When you’re young, wild and free, death seems like such an alien concept, something that happens to others, not to us. At that age, life is unfolding so rapidly that it sweeps us away. It is so beautiful and we’re trying so hard to cram more life into each second that it’s difficult to think about death.

My 20s passed pretty much the same way. By the time the 30s took over, life started to change. Friends started losing their parents and for the first time I thought about my own parents’ mortality. I realised that they were getting older and one day, death might take them away from me. That’s the first lesson death teaches you—to fear it. My relationship with death intensified as my physical world changed because of it. People I had worked with, people who I had grown up watching were claimed by death and all I could do was watch. That’s when death breaks the second big myth of youth—that you’re not as invincible as you’d like to believe. I saw the icons of my generation slowly go away and new icons take their place. Before I knew it, I had moved up the generation ladder. By the time my 30s drew to an end, I began to feel like I had reached a fork in my life’s road. Much like the interval of a movie… And everything that had happened in the first half would decide what the climax would be and how the movie would finally end.

Today, as I stand on the brink of my 40^th birthday, I look back on my life and I can only smile. I’ve been very lucky. I had a great childhood, great growing up experiences, travelled wherever the wind blew me, made movies, made great friends, had great relationships, fell in love… There was never a dull moment. I’ve enjoyed every bit of the ride, the roller-coasters as well as the speed-breakers. A few days ago someone asked me if there was ever a moment when I felt that life wasn’t worth living. The answer is an unquestionable ‘no’. There’s never been a moment when life hasn’t excited me. Nothing has ever made me want to give up on it. Which makes me wonder if I will ever reach a point where I am tired of living it… I don’t think I will.

I’ve been thinking about death a lot for the past few months… And I’ve been pondering over the lessons that death has taught me. The time has gone when the invincibility of youth cloaks all my weakness. When I see that my ‘young’ people are now getting older, it makes me realise I’m getting older too. The pace of life is as fast as it ever was… things are still happening in a flash… Years are flying by like they’re wearing wings. But the difference is that now life isn’t stretching endlessly before me. As the years blur into one another, I’m beginning to count them… And beginning to wonder how many more I have. I don’t think I fear death per se, I think it’s more the idea of not living that I have a problem with. It’s the fear of the unknown. Is death simply a transition from one state of being to another or is it really the end? Will everything stop to exist or will I just be transported to a new place with new experiences? Is there something more waiting for me on the other side of the finish line? It’s like moving to another country, leaving behind everything you love, everything that’s familiar and comforting. I think of life like a country I love being in. I love every part of it… The air that I breathe, the food that I eat, the sights that I see and the things that I do… So the thought of leaving this country is a difficult one to digest. Will I ever want to move out of it? That’s my real fear… That my life is so beautiful that giving it up is going to be painful.

I don’t think anyone has the answers to these questions... And I know that it’s inevitable. One day I will have to meet death. But I don’t think for me it’ll be a happy meeting. Because I will always carry a candle in my heart for my very first love—LIFE. 

Dair Lagi Par Maine Jeena Seekh Liya

On the outside, she’s just like any other girl. 30, Sindhi, fighting the pressure to marry, settle down, raise a couple of kids… If family could have their way, by now she’d have been parceled off to her husband’s house. But on the inside, Arty is not any other girl. She’s doing what most of us think about, but never get down to actually doing—she’s chasing happiness.

To the world, it might seem like a stupid move. Why would you chuck it all—the comfort of a family home, a steady income and the familiarity of the known? Why would someone voluntarily walk into a future where they have no idea what comes next? And yet, Arty’s doing exactly that. A few days ago, I saw her off with a one-way ticket to Manali. She’ll stay there till the money runs out or until she finds what makes her happy. Why? Because Arty’s decided it’s never too late to be what you might have been. She doesn’t know what’s missing from her life, but she’s figured now is as good a time as any to find out.

Even as little kids, we’ve always worked with a plan. First you work towards getting acceptable marks, “beta, arts ya commerce?”, then towards the university you want to go to “IIT ya IIM?”, then the company you want to work for, at the designation you want to work at. Every step of the way is planned meticulously, with very little left to chance. Love, relationships, family, everything becomes a calculated decision, a cog in the giant wheel called a well-planned life. Somewhere, amid this tearing, pressing need to plan and execute, we lose the will to make a choice. We stop listening to our hearts and give in to our brains. The voice of passion, of excitement and adventure becomes dimmer and dimmer as the voices of reason scream in our ears. So many times, we don’t make life choices, we simply eliminate risk from it. What’s left becomes our life’s path. We don’t give ourselves the option to try 20 things and figure which one we love best, because we’re all too afraid we’ll miss the bus to moneyville.

I often wonder why I chose to go to NDA… Was it because I wanted to join the army or was it because I didn’t want to study for engineering exams? Or was it simply the safest and cheapest education option available to me at the time... Did I choose or did I make answer. I remember thinking at least I’d have a secure career and a guaranteed income. I wonder what life would be like if I hadn’t been thrown out for indiscipline. Today, I love what I do, but if I hadn’t been thrown out and forced to face the darkness of uncertainty, would I have had the courage to chuck it all and start afresh? Look for a life and a passion outside my comfort zone? Who amongst us has the courage to go reverse the car while it is cruising in the fourth gear? Again, I don’t know.

I wish we had more courage. I wish we hadn’t made our peace with going from jungle tigers to zoo tigers. Sure, it’s comfortable to have food delivered to the cage like clockwork. But are tigers meant to be caged? Tigers are meant to hunt, not be fed. Why do we forget that? Why do we become so enslaved by paycheque that we refuse to consider any option that might threaten that security? Taking a u-turn isn’t a bad thing. What if we were to find our dream house on a lane we entered on a whim? What if we found ourselves while wandering in a jungle we thought we’d gotten lost in? That’s what life is about—second chances. For people and for ourselves.

Sometimes taking a u-turn feels like a mammoth task. We lose the confidence in ourselves to revive old skills or learn new ones. But I don’t think that’s true. If you’re a tiger, hunting is in your blood and you’ll always retain it. It’s like cycling or swimming or simply having sex guys... You might get rusty but if you just practise a few times, it all comes back. It’s just about taking that leap of faith and taking the first few tentative steps.

It’s not just in careers that we can take U-turns… the same rules apply in our personal lives too... We don’t have to continue being with someone or carrying the weight of a dead relationship if the original reasons for what made that relationship work are no longer valid. Sometimes mistakes happen. And sometimes people just change and are no longer right for each other. I got married… And to someone who most men would give their right arm to marry... Most people must have wondered why we got divorced. But I knew it wasn’t right for me anymore. The relationship wasn’t a mistake, but continuing to be in it would have been one. Sure, there will be opposition. The fear of what we stand to lose can be crippling. But if in your heart you know that it isn’t right for you, then that’s all the reason you need. If you don’t feel like waking up in the morning and going to work, it’s time to shift gears…

Yes, it’s not always easy. Sometimes you can’t think about just yourself. Sometimes our lives are so inter-connected with people’s that taking a U-turn would mean not just changing the course of our own lives, but those of all the people around us. Spouses, children, parents, they’re all part of the circus that keep the shackles of logic and doing the right thing firmly in place. I don’t say we lead our lives independent of the people who depend on us. All I say is, sometimes, it’s okay to put ourselves ahead. Maybe it has to start with a laughably small gesture—liking giving up on that extra assignment to make time for guitar classes twice a week. Maybe it would mean an iPad 2 instead of an iPad 3 for junior. Or travelling economy instead of business class… But would that be so bad? All I’m saying is, while it’s okay to wait till the mortgage is paid off and the children have left the nest before you switch lanes on the highway of life, but it’s important to keep the dream alive. And keep feeding it little nuggets of hope. It’s important to keep giving yourself a reason to believe that the dream will be realised. And that you and no one else is its architect. The good thing about dreams is that they don’t come with an expiry date... You can take the U-turn at any time. You just have to find a way to do it. Just like you found a way to sneak in ice cream even when it wasn’t allowed... Or the way you jumped across the wall to the girl’s hostel. If we want it badly enough, we make it happen. I hope all my friends want to be happy as badly as I do, in life. Because then they’ll find a way too.

I hope Arty finds the path to happiness in the mountains of Manali… Kyunki dair lagi par usne jeena seekh liya...