My Volunteering Journey

My association with Blogchatter started with the team reaching out to me saying that many of my blogrolls submitted qualify for the #CauseAChatter challenge that had just begun in the first quarter for this year. This was in Feb. this year as soon as I joined the platform creating my profile. While this marks my journey as a #CauseAChatter champion, my journey as a volunteer began when I was in 6th Grade at school. The earliest I remember was enrolling myself as a part of Scouts & Guides team. I remember wanting to be part of the National Service Scheme (NSS) during my secondary years, but my new school did not have NSS. 

My blogs are a means for me to share my lived experiences in my life, filled with changes and learning from adapting and dealing with the constant changes that I have gone through as a student (K12 completed in 7 different schools) as well as an adult glomad (resident in 4 countries on 3 continents in a span of 13 years).

This year’s UN theme for International Volunteer Day is Volunteer now for our common future. On this day, this makes a lot of sense for me in my mid-life, I can’t claim that I knew about this as a child or even as a young adult. Yet the warmth I felt, when I volunteered and saw that my time and effort created a positive impact wherever I was able to contribute, was something that I wanted to keep. This is what made me to continue volunteering my time, effort, and skills in every place I resided. Once I settled into the new place, I would seek out the local community centre or NGO through the network of friends that I made in the initial phase and start my volunteering journey working for the cause that I felt at home with, in the local community. 

Over the years, I have faced one question that I have always struggled to answer with conviction, not because I did not believe in volunteering, but because I never really paused to think what was it that always brought me to volunteer my time and effort and not my money that I earn from my profession. There have also been times when I have felt low when peers and juniors (sometimes even seniors) have made statements to the effect that excellent skills were probably not used enough to support myself towards mending/uplifting my career path. 

Thanks to Blogchatter’s question for this International Volunteer Day on what #Unstoppable means to me as a #CauseAChatter Champion, my mind raced down the memory lane to come up with the answer to why I always kept being pulled towards volunteering.

Working for a cause is always measured by the impact that it has created and for me this measure was always important. The purpose of my work, I preferred to measure with the impact that it had/has in the overall schema of things. Most people associate success to a number (either the figure of salary that reached our bank accounts, the ordinal number in the race of life, or the hierarchical position in the career ladder), for me it meant the feeling of contentment for me and if someone else also benefited from my work, then that is the cherry on the cake. Volunteering never failed me in this. 

There are different kinds of volunteering based on what you are willing to volunteer: Financial Aid, Time, Expertise & Effort. All of them are essential components to be able to bring the required impact.

While I know what benefit I gained, the measure of impact that my contribution is some instances are unknown so far, maybe because they were seeds of thought planted to initiate/enable change and I had to relocate from there before I could see the progress of my planted seed.

Blogging (close to 2 decades) here & on Momspresso (for the last 3 years), and answering on Quora (at least the last 3 years) is another voluntary activity that I have had the pleasure of doing. This is my way to leaving behind responsible digital footprints of my lived experience and knowledge gained from these experiences, for the future generations to come, because what you put online, remains there forever.

What is in it for me?

This is one question I have faced time and again from many, despite the higher personal benefit gained from volunteering experience. So here I am listing it out again, hoping that this article will serve as my answer in future the next time I encounter the question.

• Personal Satisfaction of Serving by impacting: While financial independence may not be there, I get the experience of deciding how the funds, shared by those volunteering funds for causes close their heart, get utilised to positively impact the recipients of the cause.
• Knowing that my skills are directly being used to impact changes at the grass root level issues and hence will bring a better changed perspective and maybe by extension a better world for our future generations, because I am on the ground working at the grass root level and hence see this impact sooner than most.
• It also helps me identify the causes at the grass root level to give me a front row seat view of how concepts of social and parental conditions, community groupism drive the group think. So, while solutioning, inclusion comes naturally due to having experienced these things on the field rather than just reading a passive version of it in books in the form of theories.
• Helps me become a better person because mindfulness becomes a way of life in every role I don as part of a larger group/community. I am aware that the world of opportunities and privileges aren’t the same for everyone, even within the same community and hence the solutions or community level programmes need to be open and flexible enough to accommodate for this kind of variations, is a deeply ingrained lesson from practically experiencing it.
• The personal detachment also becomes a way of life, while receiving feedback and criticism. Both success and failure are transient, is something that I have learned over the years, and hence the criticisms have started becoming less personal and less trigging. Equally, appreciations bring momentary pleasure, they never get to the additive phase, and I can move on to the next goal or cause that I identify for myself to work for the community wellbeing (that will eventually also cater to my wellbeing).
• Success and failure are impact based rather than number based, which is a huge change in perspective but very calming for my personal self. I am out of the rat race because I know why I am working and not doing it because everyone aspires success. I also do (aspire for success), but just that my success definition has changed.
• It allows me to experiment and learn skills outside my expertise and comfort area through online certification courses that contribute to the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and growth.
• The freedom to work outside the comfort zone also gives me scope relook at my educational qualification based on the country's acts and regulatory norms before I can narrow down on the right degree to top my current qualifications to continue my personal journey of skilling and qualifying, that would enable me to contribute towards the cause and the community with more relevancy and expertise.
• Builds my personal and professional network and helps in personal self-care (with a sense of contentment and accomplishment) for the multitude of reasons mentioned above.

While #sustainability and #EnvironmentalTalks invoke the thought of green initiatives and reduce, reuse & recycle, I think the sustainability and environmental talks are incomplete without the impact of the role of volunteering and volunteers in these. On this International Volunteering Day, sharing my continuous tryst with volunteering till now and one that will continue in future also, is my dedication to this year’s theme in urging those of you who happen upon this blog to start volunteering to experience and enjoy what I have, and if you already are a volunteer, then to continue your journey.

This blog is part of Blogchatter’s #CauseAChatter challenge (#EnvironmentalTalks & #MentalHealthTalks) and #CauseAChatter Projects.

You can find all my blogs written for the #CauseAChatter challenge here.

You might also like to read:

• Playing a small part in my Social Responsibility
• My First FB Live on 'Coping with Social Change', Learnings & Recommendations

How can women be the champion of change in MSME business?

We all know and have heard how educating women can change the dynamics of an entire family and even a nation. Here are some powerful ones:

“When women are educated, their countries become stronger and more prosperous.” - Michelle Obama

“When you invest in a girl’s education, she feeds herself, her children, her community, and her nation.” - Erna Solberg

“A girl child who is even a little bit educated is more conscious of family planning, health care and, in turn, her children's own education.” - Azim Premji

Beacons of Change 

While we now have a lot of schemes in India for Girl child education, what happens to most of them after they are educated? The socio-cultural conditioning still finds space for the unconscious bias of family care and nurture being solely dependent on women. This becomes even more detrimental when the career progress of women is concerned. Yet, we see on a regular basis that, many women are undeterred by the hurdles that these unconscious biases (their own and that of the society’s) poses for them and can figure out their individual path, that brings them back on the track to career and contribute towards conscious community care and development as well. This lived experience is different for every woman and these variations are what bring novelty to their individual experiences. 

When these women stabilise their journey back into a career and sustain their growth despite the changes in their personal life, and challenges in their professional life that might be conflicting with their personal needs, become beacons of light and leaders, who inspire by walking the path. They inspire the possibility of change for many women wanting change in their lives due to decisions taken out of generational conditioning. Women in Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) are a smaller subset of this larger group of women who choose self-run business as their career option. While there are many successful women to highlight understanding those women who are probably much closer to us by the proximity of distance or relationship would help us relate to how each of us can become one such woman inspiring change by living it.

To understand this better, before we get into real-life inspirations that each of us might have in our own circle of family, friends, and acquaintances, let us take a couple of relatable modern-day movie characters, that bring out this aspect very well.

Sashi (from English Vinglish)

Shashi Godbole is an Indian homemaker who makes and sells laddoos as a home-run business. Her husband and daughter take her for granted, mock her because she doesn't speak much English, and generally treat her with disrespect, making Shashi feel vulnerable and insecure. Sashi’s character is representative of most homemakers in India. The rest of the movies unfolds with lived experiences of how a non-English speaking Indian woman finds her way around New York City, manages to enroll in a Spoken English class that has people from different countries of the world, giving her an international multi-cultural exposure as a bonus. The money that she uses for payment towards the spoken English course is from the income of her laddoo business. Finally, with her command over the language (upskilling), her event management skills to manage a wedding in foreign soil, building and nurturing relationships accommodating for the changing times, with healthy boundaries that mirror her personal values, she ends up being an inspiration to many. 

Vasanthi (from 36 Vayadhinile)

Vasanthi is a working woman, doing the run-of-the-mill job as a clerk in Revenue Department and managing her home - again a typical characterisation of a middle-class working woman in India. When her husband aspires to emigrate to Ireland, she is unable to join him due to her age acting as a hindrance for job applications. When her husband and her daughter travel to Ireland, she is left behind in India and finds a lot of time on her hand with lesser responsibilities at home after work. 

A happenstance meeting with her college friend (who is now a CXO), reminds Vasanthi of herself when she was a college student. This inspires Vasanthi to rediscover herself, whom she lost in the mundane everyday life, with no personal time or space till now. This quest of hers takes her down the path of creating a sustainable business model of sourcing and using organically grown and sourced vegetables for a wedding catering, by using the unused terrace spaces of a modern city dwelling into organic greenhouses and the manual effort of homemakers and retired citizens who love gardening. Eventually, the movie goes on to show her winning regional and national accolades for her idea and achievement and the successful meeting with the President of India, with complete confidence.

Shashi & Vasanthi inspirations in my Life

I have met such women in real life as well. A trailing spouse from India, living in the USA with a young child, graduate in her local medium (but did not know English), loved cooking, made a source of income, by making homemade Indian community around us, used that income to find a private English tutor for herself, to come home to teach her (as her child was too young for her to leave home for a class). Now, she is quite well-versed in English and financially also independent and contributing to her family. 

When I lived in the UK, I had the opportunity to know another such strong woman who was from the same state from where I come, in her late 30s, but never had the experience of having a formal school education, before she relocated. She could not read or write in any language and could only speak in her mother tongue. She had three children and loved cooking. She started with making home-cooked meals for elderly and known people, for a nominal price, to support her spouse’s paltry income, to care for the needs of the family. I saw her transform into someone who now knows to make simple sentences in English, found herself a job through a UK job centre, in one of the retail stores. Now she has a day job and a micro business.

While both these women are my real-life examples (but outside India), I am sure we all will have such stories of women who transformed to inspire others in our own lives in our own neighbourhood in India. Sometimes we miss noticing them, as we are too close to the conditioning thoughts/culture that blind us from seeing such women for their achievements. 

Champions of Change

The above examples show how traditional skills and passion areas can be turned into possible opportunities for a woman’s livelihood when supported by necessary skilling and networking. 

Many of women's contributions to the economy continue to go unrecognized because their work is not easily counted within the conventional structures. Women do most of the work within this unorganized sector (and mostly from their homes) and as a result, much of their work is not counted (or is underrepresented) in official statistics. Yet these experiences naturally equip women with some basic skills that benefit those who wish to enter the MSME segment:

• Thriving in adversity makes women resilient in the face of failure. Setting up a business has its own journey of ups & downs, filled with challenges and changes before it can start making a profit. Having experienced such adversities on the personal front, helps them to stay the course till the business starts making money.
  
• Maximising impact with limited resources: Something women are used to, on a regular basis, while running a family within budget. Bootstrapping, working with limited funds and resources in an MSME business is just a natural extension. 
  
• Agile Learner: Learning to adapt to change in environment (during marriage and as trailing spouses), transitioning through stages of growth daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, grandmother. In all these phases, the constant being shouldering the responsibility of home management as default. In some cases, women also play the role of a tutor, counsellor, and first aider. This ability enables women to dig into the business nitty-gritty, understand its depth and width, look for help and ask for it as well when needed, and keep marching ahead. 
  
• Home Management Skills: Planning, Bookkeeping, Procurement, Budgeting, Personal care, Teaching. These are transferable skills that are useful assets in setting up a business and becoming a trainer for self and others thereby minimising training costs and personal costs. Childcare, a major responsibility heavily dependent on the woman is a viable business option today for creche or pre-school/playschools with the necessary skilling and certifications along with safety requirements.
  
• Hobbies into Business Ideas: More traditional housekeeping and self-care skills that are taught as hobbies to women such as sewing, embroidery, lace making, crochet, tatting, candle making, art, craft, dance, music, yoga, fitness, are all possible sustainable business idea for MSME with minimal or no investment or advertising costs. 
  
• Research shows that Women are more Emotionally Intelligent than men. Handling relationships, childcare, care of ailing family members, are natural means to learning emotional intelligence on the job and this comes in as a strength in the business world while learning to manage professional relationships and work with different people their cultural conditioning.
• The Right to Education & Educating a Girl Child campaign has been liberating and empowering women to establish a presence in every field. MSME is no exception. Read more about the women who have achieved by being trailblazers in the MSME segment in this article by The CEO Story.

Encouraging more Women into the MSME Segment

Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME), on the eve of International Women’s day 2018, launched Udayam Sakhi, a network for nurturing social entrepreneurship creating business models revolving around low-cost products and services to resolve social inequities [2]. The ministry’s website is also content-rich with multiple resources and reading material on MSME for those who wish to venture out in this direction.

The ministry also has a programme called MSME Champions to promote sustainable growth to promising MSME through mentoring and make them national and international champions.

For more in-depth reading and information here are a few recent reports:

• MSME insider 2021 focusing on women’s role in MSME
• Financial Inclusion for Woman-Owned Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in India

Growth Matters Forum is a community for business owners to explore ideas, streamline growth and create an impact. Join the community here.

Pictures: Stills from the movies English Vinglish & 36 Vayadhinile.

Work-Life Balance or Balancing your Life?

This phrase work-life balance is used to explain the way an individual can and needs to bring a balance between their official work (employed or an entrepreneur) and personal life and thereby regulate the impact on one another. For me, the phrase seemed quite incomprehensible, yet I just could never explain exactly why it was so. When someone asked me that question, my response to it had the answer to the why. I always started my response with the phrase, “My work life and personal life…”. The blog that wrote about this in 2006 is also titled Balancing Work Life and Social Life as opposed to the phrase ‘Work-Life balance’.

Despite this stance, the aha moment for clarity dawned on me when recently I was having a conversation with my Spouse, and he spelled out pretty well what I was probably struggling to clearly state. 

Work is just one part of your life. 

Work is, but one component of our lives, among various other things that constitute our whole life. So how can you have a part of life in a balance with life itself? It logically/realistically can’t. Life is much larger, more like a superset (sometimes I think of it as a universal set) of work. 

With this explanation, for me, “work-life balance” loses its traditional value that work and life itself need to be given equal focus/weightage.

Once this is the perspective, priority, process, and the rest just follow, helping in the long run to practice the calm that's the first step for self-care. While the perception shift sounds easy when explained, really arriving at this mindset takes a lot of effort against generational conditioning and groupthink. 

Here are a few things that can help in reframing our thoughts to develop this healthy outlook. Once we do this, we have a hold on our well-being – mental and physical. 

Define your components of life

Explicitly defining what life means for you and maybe evening writing it down on a piece of paper or drawing a mind map of it. For some, it could just mean predominantly their work, ending up being workaholics and facing the consequences on health that workaholism can lead to. For some others, it could only mean being a part of a socially acceptable marriage institution, ending up losing their self-identity, and seeing them sacrificing their needs as a primary carer of their family.

Let go of Perfectionism

The thought that helps within assisting in this reframing our mindset to remove the focus from work and shift it to the larger image of life is the acceptance that, I am not perfect, nowhere close to being an expert. There's always a scope for us to learn from anyone and anywhere. This provides the grounding needed to accept and work with our failures (even to meet our own expectations from ourselves), in life and work. 

Guilt-free Mindset

Whichever part of the world we are from, human conditioning has a stronghold on self-driven guilt on a lot of things. Understanding the difference between necessary guilt, to ensure not repeating a mistake or a blunder and toxic guilt that cripples us from even functioning normally is a journey each of us needs to travel through self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Honing your Abilities

While the popular belief is that people are born with their abilities, I personally believe that these can be developed by anyone, at any age. An article by Pradeep Sahay on LinkedIn that highlights that the old nature vs nurture absolutist argument is probably ready to be shelved and in its place, a new approach of using context to understand the nature and nurture aspect of talent is a good place to start reading to expand our outlook. There is additional reading within the article that is helpful in adding to our knowledge and learning.

Accepting the Fluidness of Life

My favourite phrase ‘Life throws a curveball when you least expect it’ – repeating this every time in my head during the tough phases of life, helps me tackle them because there is hope that eventually when you practice tacking enough curveballs, the rude shock of the getting sucker-punched by a curveball can one day change to a pleasurable challenge of reeling in a tough situation and growing with the learning from the tackle. This also brings with it the skill of adapting/adopting to change, learning the skills to stay relevant, and growing & changing with the change that is a constant always.

Healthy Routines

When we are on the topic of change, the one thing that can keep us grounded is having healthy routines. Routines help in giving us a soft comfort that helps us deal with the rest of the chaos that is outside our power of control, as it comes. 

Setting boundaries 

Change and routine also bring us to the most important part of healthy regulation – setting healthy boundaries. Working on our conditioning, unconscious biases, understanding ourselves and working on accepting ourselves the way we are before we can start working on what changes we wish to see in ourselves would be a great place to start for setting healthy personal boundaries.

Believing in Relationships

Building relationships (in the workspace and in our personal lives) involves actively engaging in nurturing the relationship and ensuring that the basis of every relationship, trust, remains undeterred. Working on relationships also helps in creating a safety net for us to rely on when we are low on our personal strengths. While the phrase building and believing in a relationship seems simple enough, it is an emotional roller coaster ride and hence requires a lot of work on our personal emotional intelligence.

Social Life

While family and work colleagues are great, they are a given. Having a social life outside these two, building a social circle that includes, friends, causes that are close to our heart, like-minded groups sharing similar thoughts, passion, and interests, needs to be part of our social life for us to gain an enriching life experience.

We are all dispensable (replaceable) in the grand scheme of life, especially with the ‘Change being a constant’ tag line creeping up unannounced. A life well-lived (for me) means, when I am replaced (or dispensed), I have no regrets at all and am content with how I lived my life. 

While these are some of the mindful ways to have a fulfilling life as I see it, most would call these tips to have a great work-life balance. Whatever you would like to call it, these are some of the life hacks that I would stand by to make living life easier and enjoyable, considering that life always has a way to surprise us, when we least expect it. 

This blog is part of Blogchatter’s #CauseAChatter challenge, #MentalHealthTalks.

Lockdown Chaos: Coping Mechanisms for the Primary Caregivers (Part 2 of 2)

If you would like to read the part 1 the Lockdown Chaos: Coping Mechanisms for the Primary Caregivers (Part 1 of 2), follow the link. 

“No health without mental health” – Surgeon General David Satcher

Here are a few coping mechanisms I practice for my personal mental wellbeing (most involve a mindset shift from what we have been conditioned, a reframing of sorts)

1. Learn to Pause: We are conditioned to believe that we must always be engaged and contributing something. Doing nothing, is not equivalent to wasting precious time. Sometimes we need that pause of doing nothing to rejuvenate ourselves and our overworked mental and physical system. Even a supercomputer needs to be shutdown to keep it working well for long.
   
   
2. Read Different Genres: I enjoy reading (anything). I love to explore different genres and different authors. I may not read to the extent of quoting the author with the phrase or passage, but now we have the luxury or searching for the same before we share it on the digital platforms. I love to read to explore unexplored territories to widen my thoughts and diversify my thinking pattern.
   
   
3. Create Something From Scratch: I love counted cross stitch and writing. My go-to comforter is one of these two and I am always pulled into it so deeply that the needed distance from whatever is bothering my mental wellbeing is automatically created. This enables me to clearly look into it from afar and then find a way to tackle it to bring back my mental peace. The last year+ saw the conceptualisation of a memoire book on my father-in-law. What started as a digitisation effort of his written work from more than 3-4 decades ago, as it progressed the book had snippets from significant people about him and his positive influence in their lives. The process of conceptualising and shaping such a creation kept me grounded during the pandemic times stuck indoors. The coordination of getting input from people living in different parts of the state and compiling it to a complete book was cathartic. Seeing the book published and released on 31st August 2021 (on his 75th Birth anniversary) in his memory gave a sense of accomplishment.
   
   
   
   
   The whole effort also seemed like a cathartic closure for the family dealing with the grief of his passing (a decade ago). In 2019, I did a similar effort of compiling the devotional songs of my paternal grandmother in a book format to be given as memorabilia for the family on her first death anniversary.

   
   
4. A Good Sleep: Earlier I used to think that sleeping without solving a fight or a problem is not good for the relationship or self. Now I have come to realise that ‘sleep over a problem’ was told by someone who knew what they meant. When you sleep your body and mind are well rested. Sometimes your dreams could be a way of finding innovative, interesting, and simple solutions to the problem that you had before you slept. There have been extensive studies on this. Here are a couple of articles that has scientific data to support this need.
• Do Women Need More Sleep Than Men?
• FACT or FICTION: Do women need more sleep than men?
  
  
5. Pick your Partner-in-crime’s brain: This could be anyone from your sibling, spouse, cousin, friend, work colleague, parent, teacher, or a counsellor who is a good listener and ideator, who understands inclusivity and knows to compassionately look at things from your point of view and then come up with perspectives that would make us think differently from what we had assumed. I read somewhere a quote on assumption – When you ‘assume’ you make an Ass of U and Me. This stuck with me forever. Now, every single time I move into the zone of assuming that I know what goes in someone else’s mind or what they might be feeling, this quote pops into my head and there ends my assumptions. I find that it is easier to clarify what we are thinking to be true or not by openly paraphrasing it without being judgmental when we articulate our thoughts. Doing so also helps in enriching the said relationship and increases our personal score on the integrity index!
   
   
6. Free yourselves from expectations: Everyone has expectations – we from others and others from us. Yet many of us want and wish to be free of it. This takes conscious effort, but it is worth the effort. When you free yourself from expectations, there are no disappointments. Here is something that can help you see how expectations are formed. When you are able to see that, you will figure out your own way to break free of it.
   
   

   

   My 100 word story first published on Momspresso

   
   
7. Solocation: Try going on a solocation, when possible. It really does wonders to self-care. Sometime in March I decided to go on a solocation, just to get away from the daily churn of things and came back after a relaxed couple of days and much more happier than how I left. My family also seemed to have benefited from my 2 days of absence.
   
   
8. Seek Professional Support: While the above do help, there might be instances where they may not be enough. In such situations, there is always an option to seek professional help through personal/relationship/parenting counselling as the need is and ensure that your (above) efforts also have a backing of the scientific process that would fit your lifestyle, temperament, family & individual needs, and abilities. Make sure that you are seeking the right kind of professional support and not just getting some random advice from friendly neighbour, family member, or well-wisher who might not completely understand all the variables that need to be addressed in a specific manner for you and your loved ones to benefit from the same. 

Were(Are) you a primary caregiver & have similar or other coping mechanisms? Would love to hear about it from you.

This blog is part of Blogchatter’s #CauseAChatter challenge - #GenderTalks and #MentalHealthTalks.

Eco-mindfulness through Home Gardening

Being an ardent plant enthusiast & advocate of responsible living, in my perspective, the word Sustainability always brings up the twin word Mindfulness. Home Gardening (now taking shape as ‘Terrace Gardening’ or ‘Urban Farming’) has emerged as one such mindful hobby, that also contributes to sustainability in more than one way. As the pandemic added to the woes, my home garden was a blessing to help balance my health (mental, physical, and emotional), while keeping my sustainability goals. Happy to share the benefits I and my family reaped and pictures of my Green Hobby over the years!

Natural Stressbuster 

When you are stressed in your daily chores, I have heard many say that taking a quick walk bare foot on Earth and feeling the soil/grass, gives us a much-needed grounding to bounce back. Based on my personal experience, this statement is certainly true. When I am in my home garden, working on the preparation of the soil bed, and caring for the plants (with trimming, weeding and such activities), I lose myself among the calmness of Mother Nature and revel in its beauty and wonder. The green of the garden (among the rest of the colours) is also pleasing to the eyes & mind and has the capacity to calm every other raging emotions. The cool touch of wet earth/grass on my bare foot makes me want to take a deep breath that sends me a message of affirmation that everything is okay, and my Earth will keep me company all my life and embrace me beyond, eliminating the feeling of loneliness.

Also, when we have blooming flowers in our garden (specifically Tulips while in the US, Dahlia, Roses and others), the beauty of the different colours of bloom was like the garden was smiling at us. Never failed to bring a smile to our faces whatever we were feeling till that instant. 

Exhilaration of Creating

The same activities of making the garden bed and caring for the seeds/saplings sown that ground me also give me a high with a sense of exhilaration when I see the shrub/herb/tree flower, laden with fruits of labour and care. Makes me feel that I have done my job as a carer right for the ground and plant flourish. It is the same feeling of seeing your child grow and achieve. This plant/tree is in a sense my child as well. 

Good Health

When your home garden also bears vegetables and fruits, you enjoy the garden to fork experience that enables you to know that the food that you eat has been organically grown. There is also a sense of pride that this food was my effort from start (sowing it to start with) till the end (arriving as the edible dish that adorns the dining table). This also weighs much lesser on the expense pattern of the family as the monetary cost incurred in much less in comparison to a store-bought yield. 

Gardening is the best combination of physical, mental, and emotional workout that you can ever have in one single activity. 

By staying outdoors, you are absorbing natural source of Vitamin D (directly from the Sun) that helps in strengthening of bones & immune system. This also benefits weight loss as per some and helps in reducing depression. Depending on the geographical location, make sure that you step out in the right kind of sun to benefit from it.  

The physical activities that you would involve in while gardening in activities like, prepping the garden bed, sowing, weeding, watering, trimming, cleaning debris & getting rid of pests, and finally reaping the fruits of this labour also helps in physical fitness and weight reduction as different parts of your body (and hence different muscles) are used. 

It can also be a family bonding activity that enhances the emotional connectedness of the family members, especially with the younger ones. While doing so, it also serves as a tool of destressing thereby bringing a holistic wellbeing for the entire family and understanding the science behind it. The same can be the case for an entire community, when you have an option for a Community Garden.

A Sense of Agency & Empowerment

With all the above health benefits, it translates to a hidden reduction in the cost of maintaining the personal wellbeing through not just procurement costs but also through health care and hospitalisation cost being nullified in many cases, including the most seen one of Vit D deficiency that is to be repaired with the help of medicinal/serum supplements.

If you are maintaining a Community Farm (or your friends doing some organic farming ventures in their part-time), it can cater to the needs of the local community and more, by bringing in an additional source of income when you can find the buyers for your produce through your community network. When we can showcase these benefits, we inspire more people in our sustainability journey.

Sustainability begins at home

In school I remember reading about the topsoil erosion and its impact on climate and environment. The easiest way to stop this is by growing grass native to our locality was the solution given in the textbook. Home garden is also a way by which every individual can contribute towards ending the topsoil erosion, maintain balance in water cycle (again a middle school concept), thereby positively impacting the climate change and leading to a more sustainable way of live for our next generations to survive on our planet earth.

There are a lot more benefits than what I have listed above in having a home garden. Do share your take on the same in the comments.

This blog is part of Blogchatter’s #CauseAChatter challenge - #EnvironmentalTalks and #MentalHealthTalks. 

Lockdown Chaos: Disparities for the Primary Caregivers (Part 1 of 2)

One year after the first announcement of lockdown in India, I wrote a post on Momspresso on the topic I am not okay as a weekly challenge prompt. While writing that blog was cathartic, the constant changes due to the COVID restrictions, the new variants of the virus, the uncertainty of this pandemic lifestyle comes back to haunt us a lot. In these uncertain times, when schools went online, and work came into my home, I lost my personal space & “Me-time” routines. 

As an EdTech & Life Skills Consultant, I worked from home for the most part of my work engagements, yet there was a routine to it. I would finish my work, when my family was away from home in school and office respectively. In fact, I would also squeeze in some self-care routines daily to keep my cool when the family returned home in the evening. In the last year+ my routines have gone for a toss including the family chores.

The lack of routines, private space, and time for the primary caregiver (home maker) has also brought with it the focus on imbalanced division of labour within the home. While the home is everyone’s responsibility, most of the daily chores such as the upkeep of the house, inventory management & maintenance, bringing edible food to the table, catering to the never-ending snack requests of bored family members who do not understand or realise what goes into getting a quick bite-snack ready-to-consume leaves very little time for the primary caregiver for self-care and personal time. If this primary caregiver is also a part-time or full-time working person, then there is absolutely no time for anything else other than crossing out the to-do list from morning when they are awake till the time their body shuts down in exhaustion in the night. Add to this the fiasco of online school and the emotional toll that it has taken on the child’s psych and development. Not all schools and teachers are even partially trained to handle the nuances of online school along with the socio-emotional parameters that need to be given special care in this modality. 

Even in the so-called progressive homes where we celebrated equal participation, the pandemic showed that it really wasn’t the case. There was still quite a lot of imbalances where the primary care giver is implicitly expected to be the one to do the following:

• Plan & Provide for Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner and the odd snacks: Includes working with available resources inside home when there was strict lockdown, plan for refilling the dwindling supplies in the kitchen stock and be prepared for those uninformed requests of odd hour snacks because you couldn’t order in during the strict lockdown periods. This has a secondary problem of additional work of pots and pans being used, cleaned, and stored appropriately. There were days when domestic support was unavailable, and the family wasn’t even aware that they had to pitch in till either they were told or in some cases the caregiver had an emotional breakdown to bring to the attention of the family that (s)he needed help.
• Teaching Assistant (TA): The unwritten expectation of being the TA even outside the lockdown was there, but the lockdown saw the primary caregiver huff and puff and juggle with the available time at hand to ensure that the child(ren) sat through the online class, did their homework and class works (that were usually done in school and hence was never on the caregiver responsibility plate), projects – specifically group projects follow up on WhatsApp and hangouts, revision before the continuous year-long assessments, and fill in for the lack of understanding that they have due to not being able follow the class due to internet connectivity and clarity on a regular basis. If an educated stay-at-home-parent finds this difficult, then we can only imagine the plight an un(der)educated parent or an educated-working-parent would have been through.
• Routines: They are always there for a very good reason. You know what to expect and hence you can plan for contingencies. This way even the rare case where something that wasn’t anticipated happens, we are able to cope. Pandemic saw to it that all routines went out the door when the entire family started staying indoors. Everyday was a new day, new pattern, and hence new adaptation. Change management usually has a peak (when emotions are at a high), lull (when we start questioning the purpose of the change), and a plateau (when we enjoy the new norm while we prepare ourselves) before the next change that is around the corner comes upon us. Unfortunately, pandemic did not give us this luxury. There were only peak after peak that leads to exhaustion due to emotional overdose. Even those who were emotional intelligence or mindfulness practitioners, the pandemic induced anxiety & uncertainty caught up with them, pushing almost everyone into a collective burn out.
• Emotional Numbness: The loss of job, finances, lifestyle, routines, lives of loved ones and otherwise, was too much that there has been a collective numbing of emotions in dealing with the grief that these loses usually trigger. Added to this was the inability to follow through with the mourning rituals due to the COVID restrictions. In the process of following the SMS protocols, despite the availability of technology to stay connected, the personal touch that is paramount in dealing with grief was missing. The losses also were quite sudden which rendered those affected by it in a state of shock. Without the support system and the rituals of handling grief most moved from shock to numbing of emotions as they did not know what else to do. The grief was either suppressed or repressed and we know what happens when either of the routes are taken without handling grief as it should be.
• Domestic Violence, Child Marriage & Child Labour: In some cases, with the entire family stuck indoors and no reprieve to reach for support there has been an increase in the cases of domestic violence. Loss of income and rise of expenses ended up in many getting their underage children to go to work or to get them married off (mostly girls). 

These are just some of them among many such deviations from what we knew life as usual. 

While I enumerate the problems that contribute to the disruption of mental wellbeing of self and the family, what can we as individuals do to ensure our mental safety and that of our families in that order. You can never pour from an empty cup, which means the first need is to ensure our own mental and physical wellbeing. Will elaborate them in the coping mechanisms I benefitted from, in the second part. 

Were you a primary caregiver & have similar or other experiences? Would love to hear about it from you.

This blog is part of Blogchatter’s #CauseAChatter challenge - #GenderTalks and #MentalHealthTalks. Incidentally, this is also my 100^th blog.

You might also enjoy reading

• The Conundrum of the Gendered Glasses
• To Work or not to Work? A Stay-At-Home-Mom's Perspective

My strides with a Great Humanitarian

I fondly remember my Grandfather telling me ‘There is no war that love can’t win!’ during my early childhood. He always said “love trumps all” and I grew up seeing him walk his talk. Anytime I hear the word Humanity or Humanitarianism, he is the first person who flashes in front of my eyes. Humanity is non-existent without the feeling & expressing the all-encompassing emotion of love. In 1995, his death showed me the true power of leading life as a humanitarian. His death ceremony saw countless people from every corner of Tamil Nadu, travel in-person to Chennai, to pay their last respects to the family. Every memory they shared had one common thread about his humanitarian touch, that benefited the person or their family in their time of dire needs. In his life (and his death), he showed me the importance of being humane and placing love, humanity, dignity, and respect above all else. 

His words and actions had a huge impact on my childhood development and still have a huge role to play as an adult. As I have said in my earlier article about him, he is one of my role models, who I aspire to be like and strive to be so every day.

These early childhood lessons have stayed with me and fuelled my passion for behavioural science and the curiosity of ‘why people do what they do’ started taking shape. I realised that what he said about humanity, dignity and mutual respect was the basis for removing all the suffering that we go through in our life. Underneath all our yearnings, these are the core needs that drive us to do everything to belong somewhere and have an identity that will be looked upon with respect and be celebrated. Unfortunately, we fail to realise that we are looking for it in the wrong places. 

These principles as the foundation, my actions always centre towards understanding perspectives of people (including my own – I am my own critique as I look inwards a lot), the underlying belief systems that drive their action, and the toxic patterns that contribute to the suffering. My four decades of learning from various experiences and people resulted in my sharing it with everyone around me in any form I could. Technology helped me do it in multiple ways. 

I now run my own life skills colloquium – ChangeMakers – for teens and young adults focussing on these topics and a few more including self-awareness, mindfulness, inclusion, conditioning, mental health, and sustainability. My blogging under the #CauseAChatter quarterly challenge for Blogchatter under the headings - #GenderTalks, #MentalHealthTalks, & #EnvironmentalTalks is yet another way. I personally think that all these three are important and essential causes for sustainable change management to be a reality. The #GenderTalks is a place where you find people writing on anything to do with Gender, Gender Identity, Gender (In)Equality and Unconscious Gender Bias. We all know that there is no wellbeing without #mental wellbeing and hence the importance of it can’t be stressed enough. For sustainability to be a reality, these two, working hand in hand with the #environmental impact of our actions also need to be dealt with in detail for us to leave behind something that our next generation can work with. I did write with a purpose (of sharing my learning for the larger group, with the hope of impacting a positive mindset shift that celebrates a learning and growth mindset, rather than the outcome itself) even before I became part of the Blogchatter challenge, but this gave me more discipline to be regular and group it under a specific cause. 

Over the years, and from my multiple international relocations across the US & Europe, I have come to understand that I would be content (in fact, excited) when my identity is associated with my humanitarian aspects rather than the other attributes that generally people use to define an individual’s identity. This is what has always found me contributing to local causes in all the places that I have resided. When in the USA, I was part of the Parents-as-Teacher programme, run by the local community centre being trained about child & development psychology that is essential for any young parents. When we lived in France, I facilitated many immigrant parents with the help of the structure of this programme, as part of the PTA of an International school. During our recent stay in the UK, I volunteered at a local community centre, that positively impacted immigrant and asylum seekers from war-torn countries. I developed training programmes that would help them in their acclimatising process and help them with basic skills to enhance their job readiness. This help

ed them find suitable work that would keep them financially stable to support their family. 

I also work with many NGOs that focus on child education, as a tutor and courseware developer. I believe that education is the way to break the shackles of poverty and ignorance and the gateway to developing an informed and equal society for all. 

On this World Humanitarian Day, I could not think of a better person to write about than my Grandfather, who shaped me and the way I think & work today. The beauty about the journey of life is that it is filled with learnings & enriching experiences and Humanity is the means of making it more fulfilling. As I found my calling with my Grandfather, I would love to hear from each of you on your stories from your journey. 

This post is part of Blogchatter's #CauseAChatter #MentalHealthTalks. 

Can Success be a Stressor?

There are many definitions of success. In this mad rush to achieve success (any extrinsic definition that we choose) we forget that true success is only intrinsic. The feeling of being content is what enables you to enjoy the pleasure of success and revel in it. Else, the celebration of success is truly short-lived, temporary. Does this definition of success make you curious? Then read on. 

Consider yourself in these scenarios:

• A 6 yr old comes home carrying a trophy for winning in their school running competition, and the whole house goes berserk about the victory. Everyone says he/she is a born-champion and shows a promising attitude for a bright as an Athlete!
• A 14 yr old brings home a bigger trophy for football (or co-curricular activity for that matter), while he/she is an Average scorer in academics. Now, what would you think the reaction would be at home?
• A 17yr old boy wants to choose Fine arts, Fashion Designing, Literature, or any such ‘soft subject’ as his career path starting with UG, while a 17 yr old girl says she wishes to join the Armed forces, Political science, Mechanical/Automobile Engineering or any such ‘hard subject’ as her career path. Now how would we define success for them?

In all the above scenarios, how do you think the reaction of the family around that child, impact their self-image and their definition of success among other things? What do you think happens to the curiosity quotient (that is found in abundance in their early development years) as the child grows up?

So, do we say the 6yr was successful while the 14yr and 17yr are struggling? 

The dictionary defines success as a measure of succeeding. And to succeed means to turn out well or to attain a desired object or end. Narrowing the scope of this definition to students, we have reduced the measure of success for a student in relation to their rank/order.

For a long time, this is how success has been measured. Yet time and again we have questioned this mode of measuring. Though being on the top gives a momentary feeling of elation and achievement, after a short while, many of them feel a void. Their search for something else begins. Many end up with mental agony, stress because they are unable to understand the reason behind this void and mindless search. The story does not end here. When the world sees the person who has succeeded, they are usually subject to harsh criticism. Success brings with it a level of fame as well and this also adds to the stress for the individual, especially due to the breach in their privacy.

Many successful adults are lost after they reach their set goal (as defined by this world, which they also assumed as theirs). To quote a few examples district / state first rank holders in higher secondary. Toppers of JEEE, University toppers… What happened to them after this achievement? Can we name at least a few of them from past few years? I am sure like me you are shrugging your shoulder! 

I grew up with friends who would parrot their parents’ dream as though it was theirs. 

‘I want to become a Doctor’ or an Engineer… 

The moment I ask the question. ‘Why?’ there would either be a never-ending pause or a spontaneous response ‘That is what is in demand. Once I finish my studies, I will be job-ready, and start earning a five-figure salary and lead a peaceful life.’ (parroted response).

I am sure you are now wondering what I did when my friends were doing this. My goal as a school-going kid was to get into BITS, Pilani. The reason was, of course, partially parroting the elders in my life ‘You will learn to live independently.’ Hostel life was romanticised in my family and I am glad that this was what was romanticised and not the placement figures. When I did get into BITS, I was sent with the advice ‘Learn about self, time, and financial management.’ 

How else can success look like? 

For me, rewards & trophies (extrinsic) were/are never the definition of success. I am not against anyone participating in competitions nor winning certificates of merit/honour. Even today at 40, I participate in competitions, but now it is more to experiment rather than to prove my abilities (to myself/the world). 

Success and failure for me are similar with each giving their own lessons for us to take away. Anu Hasan’s note to self was something I agree to

‘Do not let your success go to your head and your failure to your heart’

Success needs to be responded to with genuine gratitude from the heart, while failure needs to be analysed and lessons learned, using the head. And this is what has been driving my actions. As a child, I was not able to put in words this phenomenon. Now, I am able to, thanks to all the continuous learning that I have done in so many years! I believe that failure is one of the main ingredients for success.

So, this opens the scope of defining success and lets each one of us make a personalised definition of what success means to us. 

I define success for me, as having a purpose, working towards it while continuously evaluating progress learning along the way, being content that I am headed in the right direction towards my goal. Once I reach my goal, I define another purpose and hence another goal to achieve. How do I do this? The key driver is, to be and do better than what I have been and have done so far. 

As my family likes to fondly say, my bar is never a stagnant one. It keeps changing. And I agree, but it changes as per my norms and needs. I also urge my family to do the same and I am happy and content that in my first circle of influence (family) I have been able to bring this mindset shift within each member of my family. It gives me hope that this disturbance that I have created in a still pond as far as mindset is concerned, will have its ripple effect, and hope that someday maybe even create a Tsumani – a major mindset shift, among the future generations. 

This mindset shift will bring an intrinsic view on the success required motivation. It will also eliminate the stress that is currently a package deal with the measure of extrinsically driven success definition. As we say, the comparison now becomes apple with apple (yesterday’s self with today’s self) rather than an apple with orange/tomato/beet! 

This thought as a seed and a few more ideas from other members of my alumni group, resulted in the creation of an amazing panel discussion titled 'The Imperfect Me!', that attempts to discuss these things and more, focusing on developing an individualistic outlook towards life’s challenges and come up with our own mantras for leading a life, that includes positive mental health as well. 

Now that you have read my take/perspective on success/failure, their definitions, and roles, I would love to hear your point of view on success, failure, and associated stress and anxiety to perform and prove!

This post is part of Blogchatter's #CauseAChatter #MentalHealthTalks. 

Four Shopping Habits to Avoid for Sustainable Living

My first blog on the series of #CauseAChatter by Blogchatter under the #EnvironmentalTalks was Baby steps towards Sustainable Living. While it is easy to read and write about such topics, to really incorporate it as a lifestyle, takes a huge level of commitment from self and the ability to lead by example. This will help to positively impact our circle of influence to follow our lead, especially when we have members from two or three generations (older or younger). 

While it took us a few years to instill these concepts in all our family members, we did start our journey with the #NeedvsWant discussions at home. Any buying decision being considered, big or small, including the weekly grocery list and vegetables, always went through this filter. This has become so much a part of our lives that even our children use this for validating their wish list! When you do not buy in excess or something that may not be used at all, then the waste generated automatically reduces at source, thereby doing our part in contributing towards maintaining a healthy environment for our future generations. 

Here are four habits on how to achieve sustainable living and helping to potentially reduce waste generation at source:

Unplanned Shopping

Planning, and sticking to the plan as much as possible under any circumstances helps to keep our expense pattern and our purchase pattern under our control, which in turn results in lesser waste generation as we are anyway buying only what we need and will use.

• Always have a shopping list and try not to deviate from this list. 
• Make the shopping list after taking stock of what you have at home. Only include the necessities on the list. 
• When you have an urge to shop any additional items, evaluate the #NeedvsWant e.g. you can add an additional snack that your children may enjoy, but not overstock them.

Stress Shopping

I have had some of my friends call me for a day out shopping as a stress relief activity. This, I think, is an extremely costly and ineffective way to relieve stress. There are more efficient and effective methods of stress relief that include, exercise, practicing mindfulness (processing emotions, meditation), Yoga, gardening, and many more. 

Shopping is never a stress-buster activity. When it is for just the necessities, it contributes towards reduced waste generation at source and is light on our finances as well. 

A good alternative to stress shopping could be window shopping (no actual purchases) or moving items to an online Wishlist (instead of the shopping cart) to be reconsidered later. These are only temporary fixes. The best would be to work on addressing the root cause of the stress and completely remove it.

Extravagant Shopping

Buying items to keep the projected image of a social stature is another fallacy that would weigh heavily on our finances as well as the waste of resources and probably contribute to higher waste creation. The status definers, like trends, keep changing quite frequently, and keeping up with it might eventually even add to the stress in your life. 

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) should never be a driver for shopping. If you shop to stay in trend, understand that in the current times, trends change every day, sometimes twice in a single day. When we base our purchase decisions to stay in line with trends, we will always be part of a game of catch-up, wasting our time, money, and resources and still not be in trend more often. All the ‘out of trend’ items pile onto the waste / useless stuff. 

Indulgent Shopping 

I fail to see the difference between this and stress shopping, but I have had advice coming my way that I should sometimes indulge myself in shopping to treat myself. I have never seen a point to this, especially when this indulgent behaviour is only a temporary fix to any problem or a mere few minutes/hours of happiness. In the long run, you will probably regret the decision of purchase, especially when it gets added to the growing pile of unused items. 

My way of indulging is different, I guess. For me, anything to do with mindfulness and sustainability is to indulge. I enjoy finding new ways to positively contribute to my family’s cost-saving and waste reduction effort, and try and do my bit towards positively impacting the society at large as well.

We aren’t Minimalistic

I wouldn’t categorise ourselves at minimalistic standards. Our conscious choices on purchase decisions indulging in Need vs Want debates have made our buying pattern moderate. This helped especially during the pandemic lockdown times as we were always aware of what was needed for our family, what was available in our stock, and when we needed to replenish them by how much. 

This enables us, as a family, to stay away from panic buying and judiciously work with the available stock till we could add more to it when we were allowed to. Lockdown restrictions only meant adjusting to the store timings rather than feeling constricted or afraid that we would not have enough.

I hope that these not-so-healthy shopping practices that we learned to tackle over the years would serve as a starting point of your self-explorative journey towards sustainable shopping habits that can also contribute to a better and healthy environment (by saving on resources and reducing waste generation at source) & better use of our personal finances. 

This post is part of Blogchatter's #CauseAChatter - #EnvironmentalTalks

The Radiance of a Thousand Suns - Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

A one-liner before I delve deep into this book – I agree with what Gulzar sir has given as a caption for the book ‘Has the radiance of Blood and the Sun’. 

I won this book for posting a comment on an Author live session on Blogchatter – #BlogchatterWritFest – in March 2021. 

While I have read many storylines with a woman as the protagonist (starting with Nancy Drew & Alice in Wonderland, during my school days), this book was completely different to read and connect emotionally as well. In fact, the narrative of the entire masterpiece was so well interwoven from the point of view of different women who had different lived experiences and strong in their own sense of being, to bring about change in the societal narratives, in their own ways. 

I was floored by the author’s take on Violence and Silence in that order while bringing out women-centric narratives on the 1947 partition of India and the 1984 Anti-Sikh riots. Violence always leaves a deep gash not just physically, but also emotionally, that takes probably generations to even become a scar. Healing would take forever, as the grief that violence leaves behind is just too heavy to process and handle any faster. 

In a conversation between a grandmother and a granddaughter (who lost her mother at birth – a story of gross negligence due to misplaced priorities – read the book to know more on this), the grandmother, Biji, talks about a metaphor of all women invisibly pregnant, carrying inside them millions of stories to tell, yet silent and hence yet to deliver. This metaphor was just mind-blowing and so well relatable, especially as chapters unfolded and story after story showed why women chose to remain invisibly pregnant. Even today many of us choose this path for the exact same reasons. Wish it were not so. Reading this book strengthened my resolve to use my voice and writing to break that vicious cycle of pregnant silence and bring out narratives from the point of view of a woman if not for the world, at least to my circle of influence and create a shift in the way things have been traditionally valued and acted upon, some of which are so outdated and devoid of logic. 

The entire book speaks volumes on various coping mechanisms that women have traditionally practiced dealing with violence, trauma, idiocy, and more, of this patriarchally structured society, including memory holes that are so relevant even during the #metoo movement where the trauma of rape, sexual abuse (especially Child Sexual Abuse – CSA) and harassment follows this pattern of a non-event because the society wants to erase the unpleasantness of such occurrences. By making them non-events and not recording them in the narrative of history/news, we, as a society, tend to forget the event completely, a few days (probably months) after its occurrence. This gives rise to invisible people – the unperson – those who were silent sufferers of the traumatic actions meted out by perpetrators (whether it is war or abuse) - one such story is that of Jyot a survivor of both these traumatic incidents. 

I could never relate to the heroic narratives of 1947 and 1984 as part of recorded history, without feeling the pain, suffering, and the feeling of emptiness when the question invariably popped ‘What was the point of all these?’. This book brings to light why I kept feeling that emptiness and why that question kept popping. Despite not being close to the places where these two historic traumatic events happened, it still has a wrenching effect in my gut. I can only imagine how much it must have hurt those who were strongly associated with these events in any form. 

The first few chapters that dealt with the 1947 partition narratives/perspectives, from the point of view of women and girl children were overwhelmingly traumatic to read without breaks. Yet they were descriptive enough for anyone who reads it to see what a woman/girl saw from her point of view. 

This book needs to be read by everyone to understand a woman’s point of view of how it is to be considered as an invisible being or as an object of possession every time a man wanted to prove his superiority! It also would serve well to be reminded that in doing so there is no manliness that is depicted, but only the childish aggression of patriarchy is exhibited, showing how immature the entire concept itself is. Women always bounce back to move on with life irrespective of the bad cards they might be dealt, not by life itself, but by the idiocrasy exhibited in name of patriarchy, religion, caste, gender, race, and more! This proves their high emotional intelligence – either developed by force of situational demands or by design and their ability to heal themselves and the world around them every single time, till it becomes too much for them to bear (the inter-generational trauma - which also is beautifully depicted through the book).

The radiance of the narrative by author Manreet Sodhi Someshwar is blindingly bright to go through all filtered glasses worn. 

This post is part of Blogchatter's #CauseAChatter - #GenderTalks

My happenstance with a Postgraduate Autowala

In my home, I and my 10-year-old son needed to calm our nerves for the benefit of the entire family. Both of us were stressed and showing signs of anxiety and attention-seeking behaviour for various reasons though. He craved social interaction in the structured school environment that helped in channelising his high energy into constructive tasks as part of the school day. With online classes, the individual connection with the teacher was lost and hence his attention too (from both directions). 

I decided to bring in a few changes in lifestyle by going back to the roots – bringing yoga as our daily routine was something, I was willing to try for both of us. I was glad that my son gladly agreed as he wanted to eventually get to, doing a headstand.

It was a Sunday afternoon in the last week of March 2021, almost a year after the first lockdown was announced in India for tackling the spread of COVID 19 pandemic. I had booked my in-person appointment with my college junior, who was a KYM certified Yoga professional who is practicing for at least a decade now, explaining both our requirements. She wanted the first session to be in person where she could evaluate us to understand our body types before coming up with a yoga routine. I booked an OLA auto and was waiting for it to arrive. 

My phone rang. It was the OLA auto driver, Annamalai. I answered the call. He asked me, ‘Is the pickup location the right one?’ in grammatically perfect English. I almost started answering back in Tamil, but then held back the urge and responded in English, to the surprise of my husband. He then asked me where I was headed, and I gave him that location as well. In five minutes, he came to pick us up. 

As soon as we started moving, my curiosity overtook my usual silence during rides, and I started my conversation with him asking my first question! Of course, this conversation was in Tamil after asking him if he knew the language but let me elaborate in English to share the flow of the conversation for the benefit of those who do not speak the language.

‘Is this role as an OLA auto driver, part-time?’

‘Yes Ma’am. How did you guess right?’ he responded.

‘You do not usually find auto drivers who speak English with the perfect grammar of the language. So, I assumed you were one among the many who enjoyed being Ola drivers part-time maybe because they loved to drive. What is your primary profession?’

‘I am a driver for the DCP of Chennai Police. I started that job just when the pandemic started in India. I studied Microbiology. I was a research professional working on the COVID 19 virus analysis and discovery to hasten the process to tackle its spread.’

I was floored by this information bomb he dropped. I just wanted to confirm what I already knew. So, I asked him, ‘PG or UG in Microbiology?’ and I got PG as a response. He continued, ‘I resigned from my job because everyone at home was very tensed that I was working under high-risk conditions and were worried for my safety and life. I decided that my family’s peace was important and only if I am alive can I give that to them. That instantaneous shift was enough for me to take that call, but life had to go on, and being the sole breadwinner of the family, I had to bring money to run my household. I decided to do any job that I could and that is how I joined as the personal driver for DC of Police for weekdays. With his financial support and my own savings, I bought this auto for my weekend and weekday evening income that will supplement my income from the day job.’

I was could not stop myself asking such an enterprising person sporting a positive outlook, ‘Couldn’t you take up teaching profession in Microbiology itself in colleges or move into a schoolteacher role? With the school moving to the online model, there is a need for teachers who can work with ease in adopting technology in their teaching style and engage the students through the tech platform and still make the class interesting and interactive.’

Without skipping a beat, in a matter-of-fact manner, he answered, ‘Yes. That is the next plan once things settle down. Currently, with so much uncertainty, it is difficult to land such a job immediately. Also, schools and colleges are running short of funds due to the sudden closure and economic slump. When all this starts changing, I will surely go down that road. Till then, I need a source of income and I took up a job that I knew how to do. It isn’t right to keep waiting for the right opportunity and not do anything to support my family which also needs to be cared for. Being an OLA driver pays me well too to support as my main income. Once I find myself a job of my wish, I plan to give this auto to my friend who can continue to ride and pay me a commission for renting my auto. This will supplement my income as well in the long run.’

I ended the conversation with a request to take a picture of him when I got off at my drop point, for which he readily agreed. My son had started to doze off by then. My yoga instructor’s place was a 45-minute ride from my place. I could sense that there was a smile plastered on my face. I was in awe of his attitude and his simplistic approach to life. 

We reached just in time for my appointment. I took his picture as requested and agreed (during the ride) when I got off. The entire ride he wore his mask and did not remove it at all. I thanked him and we went our separate ways. My son asked me why I took his picture, and I was glad that he asked. I narrated the whole thing to him. I also highlighted the small gestures that he exhibited right from

• The first conversation over the call in English showed that he was open for a customer who was not a local and may not understand the local language.
• Strictly adhering to the COVID 19 protocols (including covering his nose and mouth for the entire ride) during the entire ride despite the scorching heat during the middle of the day.
• His change-embracing mindset during adversity, picking up a job that pays him on a regular basis, till he finds the ideal job for his qualifications or a job that his heart seeks out. 
• His far-thinking ability to plan for the distant future too without being clouded by the current challenges.
• Most important of all, finding dignity of labour in anything that he is doing as a profession, an abundance mindset, and extending an empathetic approach to anyone and everyone in his life.

That day, I learned my lesson of gratitude, thankful for such chance encounters that life gives me through everyday happenings, where I have ample opportunities to find role models in everyday people. I learn about the right mindset, practical applications of theories that I studied as part of my degree, and skilling courses, perspectives, and a positive attitude. All this eventually ends in healthy mental wellbeing as we have life lessons in the form of narratives and incidents stored for future references.

Do you have any such everyday inspiration story from your life? I would love to hear them, expand my perspectives, and hopefully enable others who read me to benefit from the varied stories that I can share!

This blog is part of the Blogchatter #CauseAChatter challenge under the #MentalHealthTalks section.