Old age, and the bouquet of interests.

 I spent much of this past week in Mumbai, starting a project to help a frugal but mighty nonprofit measure and articulate its impact. Between the multitude of meetings and some time on the field, I spent my evenings meeting friends - some old, some new, and some in-between. All of them started with the usual but much needed catching up: jobs, moving across cities, relationships, how we're feeling and what's top of mind for us. With those out of the way, however, we got talking about thoughts that we often don't find time for in the busy-ness of our daily lives (or the shallowness of the social media era). Our aspirations, fears, sense of self, heartaches, etc. Needless to say, my soul felt nourished afterwards!

A common theme that was part of all these conversations was about our parents and how their post-retirement lives were playing out. Some saw their parents struggle with the sudden lack of purpose and motivation once they quit the workforce. Others found that their parents had cultivated a community and interests that were helping them power through testing situations like cancer diagnosis in the immediate family. Some spoke about how one parent (typically the mother) had made the other parent (typically the father) the center of their universe for decades and suddenly found themselves excessively dependent on the spouse. Across these stories, the common thread was one of coping with a transformational life event, especially at a stage in life when so many things that defined the previous few decades - children, job, work friends, etc. - wither away. 

What differentiates those who cope well? Despite this terribly small sample size (which the economist of me would castigate me for), it seems to me that those who cultivated other interests beyond just work and the immediate family. These interests, be it sports, culture, community, learning, etc. did not need to end with the job and therefore became a sense of continuity and purpose for people post-retirement. The retirees who spend hours playing sports or talking to a community they'd always been in touch with, or going for art performances, usually found themselves happier. Those who didn't have these interests often found themselves leaning more into the lives of their family members in ways that are often unhealthy. It is no surprise that being busy after retirement helps, but the fact that this sense of purpose can come from many different avenues was new to me.

However, it seems that one needs to cultivate these interests several years before retirement. It's challenging (if not outright impossible) to develop them after retirement. Getting into sports later in your life will always be an uphill climb. If you haven't developed the patience and focus to appreciate art, that will take a long time to build. Making friends and finding a community gets difficult with age any way. It reminds me of the rule-of-thumb that to be good at something, you need about 10,000 hours of practice. As one ages, those thousands of hours just seem more daunting. These conversations made me realise the importance of keeping these interests alive, even when work and family alone seem to occupy all the hours of our day. Perhaps it's the one day a month at a play. Or a day a week playing sport. Those who coped well after retirement seemed to have kept their attention and interests diversified, even if the space each of them occupied varied over time.

These past few months have felt busy, and the fact that I find my work meaningful means that I could spend many extra hours on it without blinking an eyelid. Occasionally, it's felt like a struggle to go watch a performance or spend lots of unstructured hours with friends or to even go for my cherished morning walk. The conversations this week made me realise that the struggle may well be worth it. Much like the investments that we need to make in mental and physical well-being, these are perhaps investments we make in our social and emotional wellbeing. That, eventually, lead to a richer life!

The unending, pervasive anxiety

If, like me, you're prone to anxiety, you might've realised that it doesn't go away with changed circumstances. Instead, it morphs in innovative ways to perpetuate its presence. I'm on a journey to get better at managing it everyday, much like I would a lifestyle disease.

Thankfully, I do not exhibit the physical symptoms of anxiety - breathlessness, sweaty hands, etc. Instead, I experience a pervasive and crushing feeling of doom. In response, I wish the day ends sooner. I binge-eat. I look for other distractions; often unhealthy ones.

It feels incredibly lonely and hopeless. Lonely because it is difficult to explain this anxiety to myself, let alone to a friend or well-wisher. Hopeless because at some point, I start fearing how anxiety makes me feel rather than anxiety itself, opening an infinite loop.

I often look forward to changed circumstances - a vacation, completion of a project, a job switch, etc. - in the hope that it would lower the anxiety. I've repeatedly been surprised by my mind's ability to find new ways to worry. This made me realise it won't fully go away.

These days, I try to actively manage anxiety every day. There are lots of useful resources online on how to go about it. One way is intentional breathing; just observing the rhythm of breath helps me feel calm. Reading, especially right before sleeping, also helps.

Better eating is another - even if not immediately helpful, it comforts me to know that I am building towards long-term resilience. Ditto for exercise, whose immediate impact is more obvious. Even on days I can't get a full workout, I try to do at least a few stretches.

Most importantly, I've found it useful to treat my anxiety not with trepidation but with curiosity. Understanding my mental patterns helps manage them more effectively. For e.g., I worry a lot about money; asking myself 'why' has made me deal with it in healthier ways.

I can't control being anxious and over-thinking the smallest triggers. What I can try to do is to compartmentalise them, so that I do not miss on the many joys of everyday life. After years of worrying through good days and bad, I'm keen to find that healthier balance.  

Sadness - an old friend

This has been a difficult week. Exactly one week ago, I got refractive eye surgery (colloquially known as lasik) done to my eyes. While the results have been remarkable, I still experience a lot of blurriness in my vision. Nights, in particular, are quite extreme. I have both light sensitivity (which means headlights really hurt my eye) as well as difficulty in seeing in poor lighting. On top of that, this week at work was somewhat rough and there has been some breakages at home. It has really sapped my energy and made me feel despondent yet again. Sadness - of that pervasive yet ambiguous kind - is back in my life.

Yesterday, I was sitting among some well-wishers, who were discussing how I've reached a stage in life where few things excite me. I do not know if they are right or wrong. Of course, I feel that I still get excited by the prospect of self-improvement, by grand projects like my book, and by the little joys of life, such as reading. But perhaps they are correct in the sense that I fail to experience (or at least emote) the way that most other humans do. Perhaps there is something amiss in my emotional compass. Perhaps there are notes that have been permanently erased.

Just like with my eye, I worry - despite all the rational things that my brain says to me - that I might never recover. Perhaps there are eyes that are just too weak and damaged to recover from whatever the surgery inflects on them. Perhaps there are souls that are just to damaged by visible or invisible traumas to ever feel as happy again. And then they seek happiness in familiarly and in comfort. Like cleaning of the houses. Getting done of the tasks. Pursuit of other world pleasures and successes. But these things fade out over time, and the joys that they lead to - as temporary as fleeting sand - just disappear.

But I have no choice but to keep fighting. Because there are people whose happiness is forever linked to mine - my parents, for example. I still remember how my first bout of depression back in college - an incident almost a decade old at this point - left them as concerned as they were confused. I guess one fights and continues because one doesn't want to let people like them down. 

And there's the other part of me, which says that we continue because we believe we can work hard and find out way. We work hard on our health, so that we can be in physically better bodies. We work hard on our careers, so that we can have more wealth and personal satisfaction. And we work hard on our relationships, so that we can have good times with loved ones in future. I don't know if the pursuit of happiness is ever truly successful, or whether it is one of those mirages that human society has created to enslave its people in the rat race.

But God - or whatever cosmic power/fate/chance there is - has been kind, and I owe it to that power/fate/luck to keep going. I often think about my own mortality, and the pointlessness of all of this. But if this is all meant to be pointless anyway, then perhaps the only good use of this life - and the time here on Earth - can be the pursuit of others' happiness.

P.s. a random thought just passed my mind. Tomorrow is my birthday. And I have a tradition of becoming reflective/sad on the day preceding my birthday. It's funny to see how some things never change.

Still Just A Boy

 This weekend, I binged on the show Ghar Waapsi, which tells the story of a 28-year old Product Manager in Bangalore who loses his job and therefore returns home to Indore for a few months. This forced return home made him reflect on how much he was leaving behind in pursuit of his so-called dreams. The joys and sorrows of being with family. The leisurely pace of life. The friends and social networks who show up for you no matter what. It was a simple and straightforward story of coming back home.

The show unearthed some emotions that I had hidden deep within me. I left home slightly earlier than most of my peers, when I decided to stay back in Delhi for my twelfth grade while my parents moved to Kolkata after my father's retirement. Since then, I have only twice spent an extended period of time with my parents - once between college and my first job, and the second after that job and before going to England for my post graduation.

More importantly, I chose a path that saw me hit the heights of academic success, but involved me changing my emotional DNA. I became obsessed with success, and I embraced the cycles of emotional turbulence it brought with it. This emotional turbulence, in turn, saw me raise emotional barriers that neither my parents nor anyone else could scale. With a single-minded devotion to my career advancement, I did not invest similar energy in my familiar relationships. I let my introversion run amok, and let many of these relationships wither away.

When I watched the show, however, I realised that somewhere under the hard exterior I always maintain, there's deep emotional vulnerability.There's still just a boy - one who feels that he moved forward way too fast, who would rather spend a leisurely weekend with family than live his corporate life from weekend to weekend. I am not sure who I am. At times, I feel I really enjoy my work because I find meaning in it. That is how I breezed through the pandemic-related lockdowns, in fact.

But another part of me worries that this is not enjoyment, it is obsession. The same obsession with success that caused the earlier emotional issues I just spoke about. Somewhere along the way, I fear that I've lost sight of who I truly am. I yearn for the innocence of my childhood. I crave the little joys that used to fill my otherwise mundane life. I think of the late 1990s as some glorious, idyllic time. An occasional samosa takes me back to when I used to walk to the shop and get samosas for the entire family. Fish curry takes me back to visits to my relatives' homes.

Recently, I met many relatives and family friends after a long time at my brother's wedding. It was like a little time capsule - uncles and aunties who I hadn't met in years. My heart filled up with warmth at their sight. Mishra uncle and aunty, at whose home I had spent many weeks after I returned to Delhi from Vizag in 2003. Or Yeolekar uncle and aunty, with whom I have early memories of travelling to Rajasthan. Arun Kumar uncle and his wife, who still tell me stories of how I used to ring the phone of their house.

While I'm sure I'm far from the only one to experience such nostalgia, I worry that I am hurtling away at rapid pace from all vestiges of that life. I am continuing with the single-minded obsession with success, and not making any effort to retain the bonds that defined my growing up years. I form deep but nonetheless transitional friendships at work, and keep moving from one to another. In summary, I feel very worries that all those aspects of my life that made me happiest will not be part of my future.

I remind myself that there is still time. I can still go visit my elderly uncle and aunt who live in the same city. I can still pick up the phone to call my old friends and family. I can still put myself in places where I make friends outside of work. But I don't. I keep continuing down this path of chasing something at work; in life. And while I'm tired of chasing, I'm addicted to it to. Only when the pursuit of happiness becomes as important to me as the pursuit of success - only then, perhaps, will I find what I am looking for.

The Mask of Leadership

 It's now been over seven months that I have been working at a start-up. What began, in retrospect, as a gentle initiation into the operational side of things has evolved into a foray into fierce and turbulent waters. To say that it's been difficult would be an understatement. Every day, every week, I experience a whole gamut of emotions - exhilaration, disappointment, frustration, joy, and so many other colours of life. 

The one experience that I least expected to be as dominant in my life as it has turned out to be is managing my team. When I joined, the team reporting into me - directly or indirectly - consisted of seven people. I identified hiring as a major challenge and immersed myself in it. Today, there are 24 people in my team. That's twenty four times the maximum number of people I had managed before this.

Before this stint, the one person I used to manage at any point in time received my undivided attention. I could spend hours every week getting to know this person, both personally and professionally. We were more friends and confidants than manager and reportee. It helped that they came from an academic and social background that was fairly close to my own. It also helped that I had enough time to compensate for their occasional inadequacies, as I'm sure they did for me too. 

With my current team, none of that is true. They come from backgrounds and parts of the country that I am completely unfamiliar with. With some of them, their career and personal aspirations are completely alien to me. And, most importantly, the law of numbers wears me down. I can no longer spend as much time with them individually as I used to with my earlier reportees. My strength - of forming deep, meaningful bonds with people around me - seems no longer relevant.

Moreover, the day-to-day pressures (and, oh, the month-end bhasad) of start-ups further impacts these relationships. When I experience pressure to meet targets, I often lose my patience with those around me, and come across as a hard taskmaster. And in fast-growing Indian start-ups, that abrasiveness is not atypical at all - in fact, it is seem to be an important way to get work done. Softness and nuance - once my key strengths - are seen as distractions at best and counter-productive at most.

So, I haven't yet found myself in this new setting. Do I play the sherpa or the disciplinarian? Do I use carrots or sticks? Should I be friendly or firm? Will vulnerability at work - a trait I strongly believe in - be perceived as weakness by my reportees? If I'm being stern at work, how do I avoid carrying that heavy emotion back home every day? These dilemma come up at my workplace every day, and I haven't yet found a good response.

In life, however, the only thing that has always worked well for me is service. When I've found myself most lost, I have immersed myself in service for others. In college, this manifested in trying to help my friends do well in extra-curricular activities. At work, it was to help my one reportee be his best self in front of the management. Service gives me a sense of direction, a sense of purpose, and a feeling of lightness/weightlessness. Service is when you are so immaterial in your own head that almost nothing as the potential to affect you.

What service means in a team of twenty-four is something I will try to find out in the weeks and months to come. But I can already imagine what it would feel like. I imagine that it means having difficult conversations without once doubting the bona fides of the other person. It probably means feeling nourished and well taken care of, even in the most trying of circumstances. It means an unflinching commitment to your reportees' professional development, as an end in itself (and not just as a means to getting better productivity at work).

 I also have a fairly good sense of the kind of leader I don't want to be. I don't want to yell at people or belittle them in public. I don't want to have to censor myself while providing feedback - in fact, I want to lead a team of winners and create a meritocracy, but one that has character, ethics and care at the center of it. I don't want to tell people things about my reportees that I don't tell them directly. I've seen these traits in some leaders around me, and are things I vehemently disagree with.

When thinking of myself as a leader, I am often troubled by what my maths teacher told me about Emmy Noether back in undergrad. That she was a brilliant mathematician, but could never be a good teacher because she was not comfortable in front of large groups. In 1:1 settings, she excelled. Could I - as a strong introvert - suffer from the same challenges as her? Only time will tell.

But while I let life play out, I am certain of one thing, and that is how I want to be remembered by those I work with. A person driven by values, ethics, and a sense of service to those around him.

Staying Healthy and Positive During the Lockdown

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

It's now been nearly three months that Indians have been in some kind of lockdown. Social distancing and work from home have become the new normal for many of us. Worse still, cases of Covid-19 in the country are only increasing, and it is not clear when this nightmare will end. All of this creates a deadline cocktail of anxiety.

Like most others, I too have struggled to cope with the challenges that these unprecedented times have thrown up. My financial and other privileges have, of course, kept my situation much better than that of many less fortunate compatriots. But all of us are unique, and both rejoice and suffer uniquely. Therefore, while reminded ourselves of our good fortunes, we should also be acutely aware of how we're feeling, and ensure that we're keeping healthy.

Needless to say, over the past three months, I have tried many different ways to keep myself mentally healthy and energised. In this blog, I am sharing a few things that have worked for me. Your situation might not allow you to do these things, or they might not even work for you. My purpose in writing them down is that some things might resonate with you, and could be the beginning of a conversation you have with yourself.

• Exercise - I cannot stress this enough: regular exercise helps keep your mind in good spirits. I was lucky enough to have ordered some equipment right before the lockdown, and that has allowed me to work out nearly everyday. There are, of course, days when I really don't want to go through the motions. But a gentle nudge, and encouraging myself to work out just a bit, helps. I would also recommend keeping your phone away during exercise. I find this helps create a space where one can detach from work completely. I also find it useful to walk back-and-forth both within and right outside my house, and to find a way to soak in fresh air.

• Eat Healthy and Regularly - Another old favourite. Since I live alone, I need to manage my own eating habits. In the initial days of the lockdown, like most others, I also had to cook my own food, clean my own dishes, and do my own grocery shopping. Even with the cook now back, I'm often tempted to either postpone meals, or order something unhealthy but delicious. However, I realise that we may be in this for the long haul, and eating healthy helps keep both mind and body in good shape. Therefore, I eat lots of fruits, and try to eat my meals regularly. At first, I used to order a lot from restaurants because the great food cheered me up. But it became repetitive over time, and now I try to cook myself often to keep things diverse. It's been especially challenging because I'm trying to be vegetarian since the beginning of the year, but I've thankfully held up well thus far. 

• Stay Connected with Friends - Social distancing can lull us into a state of social indifference, where we feel that reaching out to people is a chore. This is a risk especially for introverts like me, who don't need as much social interaction. In many cases, we may simply not be accustomed to only hearing or seeing our close friends digitally. Moreover, many of us in the corporate world might find that we need to schedule things with friends before we can call them. But we need to realise that we're social animals, and interacting with other humans is a simple human function. I have re-discovered the joys of video calling, and frequently speak to many friends. I take the liberty to call them without 'scheduling' things, to encourage the culture of lowering barriers.  

• Follow a Schedule - Work from home is challenging for many people because of the blurring lines between work and home. If I don't feel like doing something now, I can do it late at night or over the weekend anyway - it's all the same! I've struggled with this too, especially because I live in a studio and the physical boundaries just don't exist. I must also confess that in the first two months, I gave into a very toxic cycle of no separation between work and personal life. I'm getting better now - for example, keeping emails and work away on weekends. It feels great, and I feel refreshed on Monday mornings. Even during weekdays, I've started avoiding India-based calls after 5 PM. Trust me, it helps. It's not always easy and not always possible - especially if, like me, you really enjoy work. But it's important. Our minds aren't designed for months-long treadmills. You may not feel it now, but your mind will eventually give you the signs.

• Enjoy Life - This could be the new normal for a few months or years of our lives. We can't stop living life, in the hope that it will all be back to normal soon. We live in a very uncertain world. Between geopolitical tension, economic contraction, civil unrest, and another pandemic - who really knows when our lives will next get disrupted? The key is to treat ambiguity and disruptions as 'normal', and not (completely) pausing life while waiting for things to go back to how they were. I've found solace in three things. First, I've been reading a lot and try to keep most of my weekends just for reading. Second, I watch a lot of shows and movies online - something I wasn't into earlier, but find very enjoyable now. Thirdly, I eat ice cream more often than I otherwise permit myself to. Every person has to find what works for them. I don't think the idea should be to push oneself and learn a new skill 'for the future', but to do things one enjoys.

Small Man, Big World

  The futility of life is difficult to accept. Many of us are troubled by the fact that our actions and our very existence is meaningless in the bigger scheme of things. We turn to creative ways to mollify our bruised egos and battered souls. Some of us turn to religion, an archaic institution that should find no place in a rational scientific society. Religion helps us feel that each life has a direct connection with a supreme being, and is therefore part of a cosmic plan. Others turn to little acts of kindness, and try to make a difference in the lives of those immediately around us - friends, family, the downtrodden etc.

The latter path is certainly appealing, but it runs into a dead-end when one realises that the primary determinants of their lives are systemic issues like the economic models countries follow, or the level of freedom and liberties it guarantees to its citizens. Of course, little act of kindness can make a material difference to the lives of the beneficiary, but can individual action ever fully compensate for systemic failures or oppression?

My profession takes me to the core of the problem. For years now, I have been working on social protection and digital rights. The very foundation of these issue is the nature of the citizen-state covenant. Both are determined by the nature of government we created, how this government views its citizens, whether it trusts and empowers them, and how it deals with perceived threats to its existence.

When working on these issues, I cannot but feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the forces I'm encountered with. Let's take the example of India. The nature of the Indian state was determined by the cataclysmic events during partition, and the need felt by our founding fathers to create a strong government to hold the country together. Therefore, they created a constitutional architecture that borrowed heavily from colonial-era laws, and which provided the government significant freedom to impinge on human rights. This led some like Constituent Assembly member Somnath Lahiri to remark that the fundamental rights have been 'framed from the point of view of a police constable.'

Over the years, there has been a steady and gradual accretion in the power of the state. This process has been further accelerated by the advent of technology and the ability to place digital leashes on an individual's behaviour and even thoughts.

Therefore, every time I think of where my work is really headed, I experience feelings of despondency and anxiety. Despondency because I feel that my work cannot really make a difference, and that forces that are exponentially larger than me are at play. Anxiety because of the fear that those who feel threatened or offended by my thoughts might retaliate.

Quite ironically, then, I think I might find refuge in what the Bhagwat Gita says - "कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन, or that you have the rights over your actions, but never over its results. Therefore, perhaps my limited role in all of this is to keep doing what I think is the right thing, without worrying about whether it leads to anything at all.

Perhaps the collective strength of thousands like me, each chipping away at that elusive goal, might mean something substantial in the larger scheme of things. And even if it doesn't, perhaps I will end this lifetime with the satisfaction that I tried my best.