We live in strange times where the young don’t want to live and the old don’t want to die!

One of the disadvantages of being an extroveted introvert (is there a thing like that?) is that while I want social interaction, I make very little effort to actually seek it out. Being employed at a large organization used to help with this. Without an effort my social needs were met. However now being solopreneur it feels lonely at times. I don’t want ‘friends’, just like minded people who I can catch up with in real life every now and then.

Wow, it’s been 10 years since my last post. Dusting off the cobwebs here to try to begin again.

Blogging isn’t dead, it’s just taken other forms on social media. Even Twitter has the long form text now. So why come back to this place? I guess I feel  this is my space, for me, where I don’t need to pretend. Kinda like my CBT.

We all want to be happy. But what is happiness? Can happiness be different things to different people? And why do we try to post notions of happiness on others. Perhaps some people can genuinely be happy with materialistic things. Some can be happy by only about thinking for themselves and yet some are happy when they think of others’ good. Can the pursuit of happiness lead people up the path of self-destruction?

Real depression isn’t being sad when something in your life goes wrong. Real depression is being sad when everything in your life is going right.

• What do I know? What I am knowledgeable about?
• What skill do I have? What am I good at? What marketable skill do I really have?
• What do I like to do? What interests me?

…and that elusive combination of the visual Venn diagram of the above questions wherein lies my career sweet spot.

And in my moments of vulnerability and depression, the answers I get are

• I don’t really know anything, well enough. I know many things but I have no specialization.
• I don’t really have any specific skills. Nothing really marketable. I have grown to my level of incompetence.
• I don’t want to do anything. Nothing really interests me, nothing that can earn me money.

Where do I turn to to find answers, to find inspiration, to find motivation, to go beyond going though the motions in my career? Good sense tells me I will find all answers within me. But what if I don’t like those answers? What if I want to change those answers? Where do I get the strength to do that? Yeah yeah, that’s also all inside me. Oh fuck it !!!!! This whole ‘it’s all inside me’ thinking isn’t helping, even though it is most logical. The signs of burnout keep returning more frequently now.

Come to think of it, in life, death itself is certain. No one is immortal, at least not yet, and each one of us is destined to die one day for sure. And yet death is completely unpredictable. One could die any moment due accident or heart failure, or live a long life of more than a hundred years. No one can predict when one will die. Now think of this from the viewpoint of a person on death penalty. The person knows exactly when he/she will die, the date and time of his/her death is predictable (well almost). Imagine living like that. Three days from now, at 7:00am you will die. Just living through that is a creepy harsh punishment.

The rot of depression, of total lack of interest, the rot of emptiness inside, the rot of helplessness, the rot of feeling of not being in control, the rot of not wanting to take control of my life, the rot of not achieving anything, the rot of complete lack of creativity, the rot of just letting it all go, the rot of being unsocial, the rot that eats you from within and leaves you hollow and empty.

The remedies are not unknown if only I would use them. But no, I am not using them. I know all the pep talk, all the tips and tricks, all the right things that one needs to do in a state like this. I could meditate, pray, take up a hobby, exercise, read, do something creative, go on a holiday, or some shit like that. But I don’t.

I do have a convenient reason to put the blame on someone else, but I also know that’s just fooling myself. At the end of the day, it’s my life and I gotta take control of it.

Perhaps the rot hasn’t completed eroded me. Perhaps it should before I completely come out of it. I am dangerously heading in that direction. Something inside me tells me to just let it all go, give everything up. But by internal alarm systems are holding me back. It’s the same risk averse system that holds me back from doing many other things, and it’s just letting me continue in my rot. My system won’t let me live and it won’t let me die (figuratively).

I didn’t do any of those things.  The negativity was contained once more. But it leaves me depressed, it leaves me scarred. And the roots of negativity still remain. I know it will appear again and again. And I will lose my cool again one day. Coz I just don’t want to deal with negativity again.

So from what I understand, this Devyani Khobragade – Sangeeta Richard case is about a maid who was getting Rs. 30K per month but claiming she should be getting about three times that.

The US – India diplomatic ties being strained because of this, and rightly so. Whatever said and done, Devyani is in the US on a official passport and the “crime” doesn’t warrant the treatment meted out.

And then there’s the issue of mistreatment of the maid. Sure we should treat this in the context of the country where these two were at that time, but should we also not treat this in the context of salary levels in the country these two people belonged. At the end of the day it’s all about money. I am not aware of the full facts, but hey the whole world is speculating and so I might as well too. Have you ever heard of a maid getting Rupees Thirty Thousand even when it is full time live in maid? To me this does seem like a case of money and trying to get into a foreign country on the promise to make a better life. Doesn’t seem like the “caste” and “class” case made out to be.

There are the usual arguments that we in India don’t value life, one segment constantly exploiting the other segment. In my view, in today’s urban Indian situation, it really is a case of demand and supply in the labour market. There are just more people available and that are ready to take up jobs for long hours. While we lament the middle class for exploiting the “poor”, at least in urban India, I haven’t seen anyone putting a gun on anyone’s head to take up jobs. The “poor” are completely free to walk away, and many do. I am not saying there are absolutely no cases of exploitation. Sure there might be, but then those are specific criminal cases. One cannot use those to generalize the alleged exploitation. India fundamentally is still socialist at heart. The media roots for the “poor” all the time so much so that it’s almost scary to make money the honest way.