The Carpet Needs Cleaning

I have a confession. I’ve been thinking about it all of last week and I believe I’m finally ready to dust the cobwebs in my head. I have a habit of not communicating the truth. I call it “omission”. I don’t volunteer information about myself and I’ll keep mum until someone pushes me into a corner and demands that they be told. I guess the world calls it lying… But in my head, they’re just tools I use to protect me and sometimes the people I care for from uncomfortable truths. I believe in the what-you-don’t-know-doesn’t-hurt-you principle. But last week things happened that made me realise that this might not be true. I took a long, hard look at my life today, I’m questioning these lifelong habits of mine. Why do I hide the truth?? Why do I have a problem with intimacy?? Have I been sweeping things under the carpet for so long that I don’t even realise how much it is harming my relationships until it is too late? Maybe now is the time to clean the carpet… Because from where I stand today, it seems just too damn dirty.

It started when I was 12. I was playing cricket and I had a fight with a boy. I hit him. He got injured and starting bleeding. When I went home and told my mother about it, I was expecting admonishment, but I was also hoping that she’d be happy I didn’t lie and stand by me despite my mistake. But all I got was a sound thrashing. Maybe she’d just had a bad day and was in a foul mood, but that became my first impression of truth—it doesn’t serve any real purpose.

When I grew up, I went to the NDA. It was a place where rules were meant to be broken. The only rule you needed to survive was, “Whatever you do, don’t get caught.” For three years, that became the mantra of my life. I stepped into the real world with this diktat firmly planted in my head. Don’t ask, don’t tell… Don’t ask, don’t… It became the principle of my life. And every time an uncomfortable situation arose, I chose to simply sweep it under the carpet. Every time there were difficult moments in my relationships, it became my habit to just sweep the questions under the carpet.

We, as creatures of convenience, hate confrontation. In our fast-paced lives, we’re all already battling so many stressful situations that we tend to shy away from adding any more to the number. We don’t want to have to think of one more unresolved issue in our life. And so we keep shoving them under the carpet. Out of sight is out of mind. But then one day, the pile of dirt becomes so big that when you walk into your house, all you can see anywhere is the dust. And then you fall sick.

You realise how ugly a once-beautiful thing has become. And you wonder how it ever reached that point… When did things become so nasty… You also feel angry. But expressing that anger becomes difficult. You either explode, or you implode. The years of shoving things under the carpet catch up on you and suddenly you’re angry beyond words. All this anger finds expression in that one incident that acted as a trigger. For a while, it seems like your world has come crashing down. 

But the truth is, we’re not angry over what has happened now, we’re angry about all the years of pent-up frustration. And the day that frustration finds a voice, it feels like the end of the world. We fight with those closest to us, say nasty things and sometimes cause irreparable damage to some relationships.

It’s hard for me to admit, but I think in life, we need to be able to talk to the people we love… We need to express what we feel, and above all, we need to stop pretending that it doesn’t matter… It does matter. In ways unknown to us, these little, little things keep playing on our minds. They’re like little parasites, slowly eating away at us, waiting for that one day when something big happens. I’ve learnt that to be able to survive those big days, we need to have relationships that are rock solid. Because otherwise, the moment we lean on what we thought was a rock, it crumbles into dust.

We need to finish our unfinished businesses. Go back and complete the fights, the discussions and the arguments. A woman I once dated told me that the one thing she loved about me was my habit of not sleeping over a fight and my efforts to resolve it before we went to bed. I do that with most of my fights. But I also need to start doing that for my issues. I need to resolve my intimacy issues, my feelings of inadequacy when someone loves me beyond explanation or reason. I don’t know why I question whether I deserve her love or not… My tendency to play Jesus in the lives of the people around me… I’ve been sweeping these issues under the carpet for far too long now.

I don’t want last week to ever happen in my life again. I don’t want to feel that kind of anger ever again. I know that the anger was not over the incident, but over the feelings I had bottled up for so very long… I’m cleaning my carpet these days. Dusting it and putting it out in the sun. Each day, it looks better. But it’s going to take a while, there’s many years’ worth of dust on this one. 

WANDERING TRAVELLER

Bhavnagar and Lucknow, two cities that weren't on my travel map... But for personal and professional reasons, I found myself in these two cities within the first month of the year itself. It was like stepping into a different world altogether. A world different from the one I live in Mumbai... The roads were cleaner, the infrastructure was better, and the cities just generally seemed a happier place to live in. I'd heard stories of small-town India... Of narrow-mindedness, poverty and uneducated literacy. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that so many of those stories were just that--stories. They're as archaic as the stereotypes of big-city living. If I hadn’t actually been to these places, I wouldn't have known...

Finding myself in these cities made me think about all the places I've been to and how they've enriched my life. If I hadn't travelled the way I had, would I be a different person today? Undoubtedly so. Travelling has made me a better person, a more evolved mind than I would have been otherwise.  

Travelling has been a passion and a part of my life for a very long time. There is an innate need to see the world… The many similarities and the stunning differences. One of the things I learned was that while our geographies and cultures might be diametrically opposite, human beings are the same everywhere. The core of mankind if universal. We all want the same things… Our desires, goals, fears, victories are pretty much the same the world over. Our expression and way of handling situations may differ, but emotions don't. A child in India is the same as a child in America... The same things give them joy and make them cry… The only thing that separates the two are boundaries on a map. But when you're in a plane in the skies, thousands of metres above the ground, you forget about maps and boundaries. You see earth like god meant it to be... Vast, unending and unbroken. Being in that plane has taught me that differences are made in our heads, not hearts… Every country that I've been to has been as welcoming or unwelcoming as I feel in my own country and city. Some people are friendly, some are rude. Some welcome you with open arms, some try to cheat you. It's the people that are good or bad, not countries and certainly not cultures. A person is a product of his or her conditioning and childhood influences. Travelling has made me realise how heartless and ill-informed most generalisations are.

Another thing I've learnt because of travelling is the ability to survive, and be happy, with very few worldly possessions to call my own. It gave me the courage to beat odds and survive. If I could live out of a suitcase in a small hotel room hitchhike my way around an unknown country, I could start from scratch in my own city if the need ever arose. Travelling taught me fearlessness. It levelled the playing field.

Travelling also changed my relationship with wealth. Very often, as we move up and ahead in life, we tend to restrict our experiences. Everything must be just so. We won't board the plane unless it's business class, won't check in the hotel unless it's a five star, won't drink single malt unless it's of 25-year-old bottling... The list is endless. My love for travelling has taught me to discard these rules. Should money be allowed to dictate your life? If walking in Hyde Park gave me happiness when I was a poor NDA dropout, why should the parameters change now that I'm something more? Traveling taught me that happiness is not a function of money… While travelling, I've met people who've shown me how to live it up whether I have 10 dollars or 1000.

I've met some truly amazing women while travelling. Some I dated, some I've forgotten and some of them I'm still in touch with. Somehow when you travel, you leave the world you inhabit behind and enter a new world... It's like wiping the slate clean, if only for a shirt period of time. When you travel, you leave behind your existence and the baggage that goes with it. There are no expectations and no history. There's no past, no future, just the present. Because there's no agenda, nothing to gain from these brief interludes in time, somehow, I feel we're more ourselves on these journeys than we can ever be while living our everyday lives. I've had some wonderfully honest and meaningful conversations with the women I've met while travelling… And some of them have remained friends beyond the few days that we spent together. In their own unique ways, they've enriched my life. And even the ones I'm not in touch with, I've cherished them long after they've gone.

We live in a large world, but we live in small world too. Sometimes, even big cities with their big parking lots and looming buildings can start to suffocate you. I find that when I feel that way, travelling is the only antidote. It makes me feel at peace with the world. Sometimes our jobs, responsibilities and simply the act of living starts to feel too difficult. Everything seems graver, more magnified and larger than life. When I travel, it puts things into perspective. It makes me see my problems in a new light. It makes me realise that every day, people across the world grapple with problems as big as and far bigger than mine. Travelling has taught me to never take myself too seriously. When I meet people from far corners of the world, I realise that life and everything around it doesn’t revolve around me and me alone. Sometimes you need a little distance to see the bigger picture... To see that you're just a tiny speck in a spectacularly vast universe.

Whenever I come back from a trip and give all my bills to my accountant, he always reminds me that if I’d saved up the money instead, I could have bought myself a one-bedroom apartment in Kandivili, or maybe a much fatter bank balance. His advice always makes me smile. When I die, do I want to go looking at the walls of that one-bedroom in Kandivili, or do I want to go thinking about the continents, the countries, the people and all the experiences? No number of zeroes in my bank balance can compare to my bank of memories… So see you soon in another city… Which one? I don’t know yet! :)

THE HANDBOOK

Statutory Warning :To be read with a sense of humor and dollops of attitude especially by the fairer sex J

He had been going through a lean phase… Sexually as well as emotionally. The man needed a woman and needed her fast. To bring a little colour back into his life, to add a little spice, to shake him out of his intellectual slumber. He’s a close friend, and so it fell on me to rescue him. I introduced him to a wonderful girl and now he can’t stop smiling.

Why did I do it? Because I felt he had practiced enough in the nets, it was time to get on to the field and actually play the sport. That’s how I explained it to him . I believe that flirting with women is exactly like playing cricket. To be a good player, you need to master the nuances of the game. If you understand cricket ..you follow the same rules at flirting too …

Much like cricket, flirting can be classified into three categories. There is the 20:20 format, the 50-over game and the test match. Flirting approaches are somewhat similar. Sometimes you do it the way you’d play a 20:20 game. It’s quick, fun and over in a flash. You need to enter the field armed with your best moves and power play. You need your best lines and sharpest reflexes. One false or ill-timed move and you could be heading back to the pavilion. It’s feel-good and fun.

Then there is the 50-over approach. With some women, flirting is a slower, more drawn-out affair. The tempo rises and falls, depending on the pitch. It’s not about going in all-guns blazing, it’s about waiting for the right moment in the match to make a certain kind of move. It’s a combination of endurance and timing. Not for the flash in the pan variety of men.

And finally there are the Test Matches. The format that made cricket the gentlemen’s game. The Test Match approach needs time, commitment and a lot of technique. A player is worthy only if he can last for a large part of the duration of the match. This approach requires the player to keep at it, not give up and grind it out till he gets the desired results. Flashiness is not going to get the player anywhere in this format.  

Once the player has identified the format he wants to play, he has to gauge the pitch. Like cricket pitches, women differ from each other. So a 20:20 game in India will be played differently than in England, which will be different from when you’re playing Down Under. You have to change your game plan not only to suit the format, but also to suit that particular pitch. It must also be remembered that pitch conditions change with the weather. So depending on whether she’s had a good or bad day, a woman will have two very different reactions to the same master stroke. As a batsman, it’s important to perceive a dangerous ball while it’s hurtling at you and not after it has clean-bowled you. The earlier you read the pitch condictions,the better you are prepared with your shot !!

Like you progress in cricket—from gully cricket to the Ranji level and eventually to the national team, you progress in the levels of flirting too. As a novice, you have to test home waters before you venture out into the ocean. You start domestic, and then move to international. You can’t be pitted against Brett lee at the start of your career. He will squash your confidence and finish off your career even before it starts. It works pretty much the same way with women. You pace yourself and start flirting with women you have a good chance of winning over. You play out of your league before you’re ready and the results could be disastrous. So don’t overextend yourselves at the beginning of your career ..pace yourselves

Like in cricket, experience matters in flirting as well. If you have played for long enough, your memory bank serves as a ready reckoner for any situation you may find yourself in. Sachin Tendulkar is believed to have 4 strokes for every ball that’s thrown at him. Depending on the other variables, he chooses the best stroke to face that ball. That’s experience, my friend! Flirting works in a similar fashion. Depending on who the girl is, you change your response to the same question. And if you are naturally gifted as a Brian Lara was in cricket ,experience can only enhance your natural skills ..

A true enthusiast and player is a person who’s mastered all three versions of the game. You can’t restrict yourself to just one format. That would just limit your growth. To be known as a true ‘player’, you have to learn to play on every pitch in all formats under any conditions!

And lastly, there’s just one more thing a player must never forget: there’s just one good ball or one bad shot standing between you and the next player. So never stop practicing. Even if you’re resting due to an injury, indulge in at least a little net practice. Because when you do decide to come back on the field, you don’t want to get out on duck, do you?

So the rules of cricket and flirting are the same, everyone is just trying to master the game! J