If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Someone must have told this to me when I was quite young, for I have adhered to it for a large part of my life – I planned, so that I could succeed at whatever I set out to do. Avoiding failure seemed the logical and desirable byproduct.

Lately, people have been telling me that I need to fail. In my previous job, my boss told me. My boss’ boss told me. Then my best friend told me. I ignored the first, the second and even the third – I am generally good at taking advice only when I agree with it. However, the pattern of three – same message from three different people under difference contexts (though there is probably a correlation between first and second. My boss’s boss wanted me to fail, or try failing, and when I didn’t seem to be heeding it, she asked my boss to tell me). But still two data points seems like I need to at least consider the concept of failing in a different light.

Check out this article, I liked it. It is written by Brandon Stosuy, who has a book called “How to fail successfully.” I haven’t read the book, but the article has made me ponder the title, and perhaps I will at some point get hold of a copy too.

I am a stickler for using precise terms, and tracing the line of thought and reason. I respond badly to people who just share conclusions and end actions without their path to it, and since none of the three characters above (boss, boss’ boss and BFF) really shared their full thinking (or perhaps I was too chuffed to listen when they did), let me attempt to understand it further.

First of all, let me assume good intent. It’s all for my eventual benefit, even failure (even though in corporate world, who knows.) But why? Why should I fail? It could be that I take too little risk, and they want me to push boundaries. I like to understand and manage risk, sure, I was a risk manager in one of my earlier careers after all. But I also think if you take my timeline of life, I have made some bold audacious moves that most people would consider insane. Risk and I have a complicated relationship, and I have thrown caution to the wind plenty of times. But I am also not an idiot, if I am going to jump off from an airplane, I will check my parachute. Twice. But I will get on that plane, and jump without too much of a fuss. And I do that sort of thing over and over again. So pushing me to take more risks seems a little unnecessary.

Going to the old adage. – plan and you won’t fail. So by reverse logic, if you don’t plan, you will fail. So don’t plan. Essentially what they are trying to say is – don’t plan. Which is rather weird. I hate planning, and I am chaotic and unstructured by my inherent nature. A lifetime of learning structure and order has got me to where I am. To slip to chaos is easy, sure it makes me uneasy too, but that flowy chaos is home turf. Perhaps I should just learn to accept that flowy chaos. Or perhaps by now, both are equally home. So I just need to learn to oscillate better between the two.

Over the years, the reason I try so hard to put structure in my life is consideration for others around me. Living with chaos is not easy for anyone (myself included), so then how do I manage this.

I need to do two things – externalise structure, so I am allowed to flow in my chaotic creative abandon internally (in the mind). And then, get comfortable with it, it might be mental home, but it’s been a long time since I have been here, so it does take some getting used to. Last thought on this, it has to be aesthetic chaos. There is a difference between chaos and clutter. Clutter doesn’t work for me, and I need to understand how the chaos does not disintegrate into clutter or confusion.

So next steps: 1) figure out how exactly to externalize structure 2) get comfortable with it, and as a bonus stretch goal – learn to enjoy it 3) understand/articulate the spectrum of (i) creativity under structured constraint (ii) diffused creative confusion (where it diverges so much there is no hope of convergence) (iii) creative chaos (the aesthetically and emotionally pleasing kind).

Will that lead me to failure? Oh well, whatever. It leads where it leads to. I hope to enjoy the ride, however which way it goes.

I am grateful to Brandon Stosuy, that his writing provided me the impetus and inspiration to think this through. I really should get that book. While I am at it, a book about creativity that I have enjoyed and a podcast I subscribe to (but rarely listen, I am just not a podcast person) is Todd Henry’s Louder than Words (book) and The Daily Creative (podcast).

The post In a quest to fail, if you fail, is it considered a failure or a success? first appeared on Silent Eloquence.

I am not sentimental about home, you probably know that if you have read my posts. I have lost count (literally) of the number of houses I have lived in, and I move countries and cities with an ease that sometimes puts me in the side of abnormal. It is what it is, and what has always been. Lately, though, I have started having a sort of nostalgia, I find myself in old contexts, revisiting familiar circumstances, catching up with old friends, checking in with alumni groups, that sort of thing. The impulse to just keep moving forward, the past blown away in the dust of forward movement – that is sort of diminishing. It must be to do with middle age. I do feel mature, and I am getting to a stage (or perhaps I already am, who knows), where there is likely to be more life (in years at least) in my past than in the future. It is actually a wonderful feeling.

My daughter recently called me a boomer. A boomer I certainly am not. That was the generation of my parents. I corrected her, and told her I am either a Millenial or a Gen X, depending on which generational definition you use. “Oh, whatever,” was the reply. A member of the Generation Alpha, anyone born in the last millenium, millenial or not, could be a boomer for all she cares. I smiled, I had not heard about the Generation Alpha until she had enlightened me about it. I guess when you are the Alpha, starting out a new cycle, everyone else is just part of a large “old” cycle. “The narcissim of small differences,” perhaps.

In any case, I had expected midlife to be rather droll. But I am so much more looking forward to it than any other phase of my life. It is a strange feeling, in a way it is a time where I feel grounded. Calmer. Ready to experience, rather than to rush forward. Perhaps I do not still use “Whatever,” as freely as daughters use the term, but that is how I feel towards so many things. “Whatever.” That strange calm of letting things flow just as they flow, without feeling the need to intervene and change and shape. It does not mean that I am a passive observer. Far from it. I find myself immersing in life with joy and abandon, and if life brings emotions that are less about joy and more about sadness, then I embrace that with the same abandon, for it is that color and breadth that adds to the tapestry of life, isn’t it.

In a way, at this stage in life, I am curious to see what life will paint for me if I go with the flow, rather than the obsessive urge I had in my younger days to design and draw the painting myself. Perhaps I was lucky in life, or perhaps I was just like everybody else, probably more the latter – but what I feel is lucky. And it has given me a faith in the universe. I no longer try to shape and reshape everything through sheer force and will (teens and thirties, I think). I no longer observe and judge, as I did during the cynical phase of my life (twenties, it was, for me). This phase is to immerse. To live. To experience.

So, yes, it seems I retired the blog.
I am supposed to write elsewhere.
But then, I say, “Whatever.”

This is home, and here I am. I intend to fully use my hard-earned, age-given freedom to say, “Whatever.”

Here’s to the next 200 posts and more!

The post 200…and the joy of one simple word “Whatever” first appeared on Silent Eloquence.

189 words on day1. Slow start, but feels awesome.
Here is the opening –

The post Call me crazy – Camp Nanowrimo first appeared on Silent Eloquence.

The knife feels heavy. The blade is lighter, it would have been easier to hold onto. But I like “blade-days” better, when Baba takes the red hot blade and makes slits all over the body of the child. When he is at the task, he looks like a monster – he is a big burly man, and the effort makes his muscles bulge out of his yellowing singlet, torn and smeared with the blood of children – not one, but probably three or four children before it gets its weekly wash. You would think that the leader of the biggest beggar ring in Mumbai could afford better clothes, or at least a more frequent rinse.

“AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHH…….,” I jump at the sound. The scream of the first slice. That is always the loudest.

“Stand still, you idiot!” Baba glares at me. “Every day the same thing, and he still can’t stand still. I have great hopes for you, and this is how you act. Come closer and learn!” His eyes are blood-shot, round, large and bulging; his nostrils open and shut so heavily that you could almost feel the short gusts of wind. Red sticky paan dribbles down the corners of his mouth – when I was new here, I thought it was the blood he drank from the children he cut.

Every time I hear the screams, even though I have lost count of them by now, it is as if a shot pierces through my heart. I start even when I try very hard not to and my hair stands on end. They scream so long and so loud, even on the blade-days. I wish I could tell them that they are the lucky ones, because they didn’t come in on the days when Baba chooses the knife instead. When he takes the knife first, it is usually to gouge out the eyes.

I cower further back into the darkness. Baba won’t notice, he is already onto the second cut. The second scream is a little less loud, but more frantic and they start to try and flail their arms and legs. Once I forgot to tighten the ropes well, the boy was strong and he punched Baba on his face. I still remember the force of Baba’s kick when he turned around and kicked me. I lay crumbled on the floor for hours after. But today the ropes are tight.

I move forward and stuff the dirty linen into her mouth. Baba says it is good for them to scream a little bit. I suppose it helps to deal with the pain and shock. But two is enough for the cuts, that’s what he says, and he allows three for the eyes. I don’t know whether I was grateful he let me scream thrice. Or maybe he allowed me just two and a half screams; after all he only took out one of my eyes, as he never tires of reminding me. I don’t remember, it was nearly two summers ago.

I try not to look at her eyes, but she is shaking her head so hard. I hesitate to touch her golden curls, but I have to hold her head down and it takes all my strength to stuff down the dirty linen. I catch a glimpse of the eyes. I had never seen blue eyes before. They are the blue of the ocean, and look just as deep.

When I met her this morning, Amy was playing on the beach with her little brother. I could see her mother and father, drinking beer and sitting at a table slightly away. I figured she must be around eight or so, about the same age I was when I got here. I put on my Mickey Mouse sun glasses, my ticket to the happy world. The darkness of the shade and the whimsy of the design hides the maimed eye behind them, and I could almost pass off as normal. I walked up to Amy, opened my palms and showed her a sea shell – it was white, flawless and beautiful.

“Is it for me?” She asked me politely.
“Yes.” I moved carefully towards her, and held the sea shell gently up to her ear. Her head grazed my shoulders. “Listen…do you hear?”
“The sea…” her eyes lit up. I smiled.
[to be continued]

This was my submission for last week’s assignment at the Writer’s Studio workshop. The assignment was to write a first person persona narrator, who introduces a bizarre world to us in a matter-of-fact tone. For inspiration, we read George Saunder’s “The 400-Pound CEO”

About 2 million children are exploited every year in the global commercial sex trade. 300,000 children across India are drugged, beaten and forced to beg every day, in what has become a multi million rupee industry. For true stories, visit EqualityNow or CNN’s Freedom Project.

The post Working title: “Invisible Worlds” first appeared on Silent Eloquence.

Our destination is a mirage to which we float,
Not a mountain to climb with disasters fraught.

We don’t lay claim to the things we own;
Pride is for the experiences we have borne.

Let’s not just smell the roses, let’s plant a few;
Organic and fair-traded, even the coffee we brew.

A playful child – we laugh and we cry,
Often it seems to you that we don’t try.

We want to feel the pain and the pleasure,
No shields for us, it’s the feelings we treasure.

On a screen to zoom, we are a billion pixels,
Each a new life; look to see but not to rush.

If you were to paint us, it’s at your own peril;
If you decide to choose just one broad brush.

We are all different, not peas in a pod;
Not grains of sand, with one boot to trod.

We want to love, to share and to see,
To be the playful child that meanders free.

The post We, the millennials first appeared on Silent Eloquence.

The post 10 years first appeared on Silent Eloquence.

The post Fall first appeared on Silent Eloquence.

This morning, in my random browsing, I chanced upon this half-written draft from 2012. I rarely write about motherhood- I suppose I am so engrossed being one that the moment to stop, reflect and write never comes. This is a rare one, about motherhood:

2012 was a wonderful wonderful year. It will always be, for me, the year in which my second daughter was born. The year in which, I feel, I finally grew up!

When does one become a grown up, really? Is it when you turn eighteen? If the right to vote is your yardstick, perhaps it is. I am way past eighteen, but I have never voted in my life. Could it be when you move out of your parents’ house? Could it be when you fall in love? When you earn your own living? When someone calls you mom (or dad)?

I don’t quite know. Perhaps it is different for everyone.

I had five months of a break – a break is the wrong word – no one should call a maternity break a “break”. A break from work, sure, but unless you have oodles of support, it feels like anything but a break. But nevertheless, I have reflected a lot.

I think I am grown up because I feel centered. I feel finally as if I am beginning to know who I am, who I will be and to be happy with it (to some extent). I accept finally that you really cannot control things, you just have to let go sometimes, and hope for the best.

My daughter is sleeping in my arms as I type this post. Every once in a while, I glance at her eyes; her eyelashes, already very long, remind me of how she is so mine. I see my husband in her slightly curved nose. I gently close her half-open lips, she stirs a bit, but is back to sleep and within a span of a sentence, opens her lips again ever so slightly – in that stubbornness, I see my eldest daughter. She stretches and she smiles – I live and die for that smile.

When my first daughter was born, I was a nervous over-excited first time mother. I must have scoured every book and every website on motherhood and infant development. Every move was meticulously recorded, every smile was photographed and filed. I had moments of intense highs and intense lows, lows where I was convinced that I must be the most clueless mother on earth. I look at her now – a spirited three year old, and I beam with pride. That silly old me, who knew not much, somehow stumbled through the first years of motherhood, and my daughter still loves me.

With my second, I am more quietly confident. Of course, I display every nervousness at the slightest cough, and even at a change of routine, but I realise motherhood is just that – a constant avalanche of emotions. Often I sit by the play-mat, dangling a bright toy and singing utter nonsense to my daughter. I am startled by a force of nature jumping on my back. As I wrestle playfully with my first-born on the carpet, I want my baby to grow up ever so quickly and join us in our games. Yet when I go back to watching her sweet innocent smile, I can’t shake off the feeling that this is the last time my baby would be this small. I will never again be the mother of a one-day old baby. Each passing moment is intensely felt, I want to hold on to each one of them.

From the milestone chasing mother of one, I have become the clutching-on-to-each-moment, mother of two.

When my baby is at my breast, I think of how this is the last child I would ever breast feed. She bites me once in a while to tell me that she is done, I let out a short cry of pain, yet I cherish it. After five months of feeding her, I am nowhere near ready to stop it. It is our small moment, a shared experience that no one else has access to. When she has had a full feed, she purrs so happily, almost like a happy kitten. She smiles at me as if I am the only one in this world that matters. Never again will I be so indispensable to anybody again, not even to her.

If I had to describe myself in a word, I have often chosen the word Nomad. Now I choose the word, Mother.

The post Mother first appeared on Silent Eloquence.

Six months ago, I promised myself that I won’t write. If left to my own devices, I scribble a lot, in random places usually – the most frequently used is the draft folder of my email client, which is an absolutely nightmare to search. I also use way too many notes programs on my iPad, and just text files on my desktop. In the end, they never add up. The random notes come to nothing – I often have the urge to re-read a piece I wrote, to add something to it, but I can never find it back. The random scribblings can’t be shared with anyone because they are truly the regurgitations of an incoherent mind. The blog used to help me sort my thoughts in one place, and instilled the discipline to edit my incoherent spit ups into semi-coherent pieces. But then I got too serious about it – I forgot why I started writing. I started writing what I thought would be useful, what I thought was important enough, what I thought others may enjoy – I published pieces which I had to struggle to keep myself awake while writing, while the outpourings of my heart that made me jump out of the bed got relegated to random draft folders again. I don’t know why, but it happened. The promise was supposed to help me remember why I write.

Six months ago, I promised myself that I won’t write. Because I just had too much to do. You might say everyone has too much to do these days. Probably yes. But I don’t usually. Usually I live a full life, but a well-managed life with room to spare, well, a little room to spare. But at the time I made my promise to myself, I felt I was just about to step into a roller coaster that would throw me upside down and downside up, make me twist and turn and scream my lungs out, and trying to hold on to a pen seemed to be stupid while you could be using that hand to hold onto the seat bars, and thus to dear life. Life goes through phases, you can never predict when the next curve ball will hit you, but I am not about to enter into a roller coaster ride, I am on it and loving it. I did not know that six months ago. The promise was an attempt to force myself to pare down my life, spare some time to do the things that had to be done.

Six months ago, I promised myself that I won’t write. It was because I live by the motto, “do it well or not at all”. And that is difficult when you have a public forum that needs constant attention. I can’t write well all the time, hell, I don’t write well most of the time. But then I have those moments when no matter what I am doing I have to let go and hit the keyboard, hard and fast. In the exhilaration that follows after the act, I have the urge to share, the urge to put it on my homepage – what an appropriate name, this does feel like home – and push “publish”. But the blog doesn’t work that way, it needs constant nurture – regular posts, comments on other blogs, and replies to the comments on yours, and in general, just being available. I thought I should follow the rules – write and engage regularly, and well. The promise was meant to keep me from breaking the rules of this game.

Six months later, I want to write.

Six months later, I miss my blog. I miss my home in this wide wide web. I want to write. I want to write even if it amounts to nothing. I want to write even if it is frivolous and has no value or meaning to anyone except me. I want to write even if that means I have to sleep an hour or two less. I want to write even if it means holding onto a laptop when whooping down a roller coaster. I want to write even if I don’t follow any rules – even if I write sporadically and not well at all. I want to write because it is time to let go, to be free from a promise from six months ago. I want to write because I want a place in this space, however abstract it may be, that I feel at home. I want to write, just because I want to.

The post A promise from six months ago first appeared on Silent Eloquence.

Here is an interesting list of 100 books from the Travel site WorldHum (via Nathan Bransford)
1) A Dragon Apparent, by Norman Lewis
2) A House in Bali, by Colin McPhee
3) A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway
4) A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby
5) A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermo

Read the rest here

The post Travel Book list first appeared on Silent Eloquence.