April 02, 2022. 00:00 Hrs IST — Today I am 37.
Do I feel old?
Consider the average human lifespan is about 72.6 years.
Well, half of my oxygen quota on planet earth is consumed. Hmmm.
Hey, wait a minute. I am Indian. Indians have a life expectancy of about 68 years.
Then I am a male. So, reduce that by another 2 years. Only 29 years remain for me. ‘Scary?’ probably should be the question. ‘Old’ seems immaterial.
The hopeless mess that I am, I’ll humour myself with the fact that I am a resident of Maharashtra state. The average lifespan of a male in urban Maharashtra is 72 years. So, yay, another 35 years to go. Well, now ‘scary’ and ‘old’ both are immaterial. I feel celebration. Happy birthday to me!
Well, as illogical or daft the above may have read, I needed something that could get me started to write my listicle of 37 entires. It has my learnings, inspirations, people, realisations, thoughts, feelings or simply, observations or memories. There’s no order or rhyme to it.
Each point merits longer pondering. Some I have wanted to forever write longer pieces about. Some I have kept a secret. Some make me smile. Many torment me. Many I’d like them to be cryptic.
Each has deeper significance to me. I won’t say ‘hope you enjoy reading’; it’s likely, you may just not connect. Nonetheless, I write them as a gift to unburden myself a bit. And yes, TL:DR.
[BTW, 37 years equal to 444 months. So yes, I feel happier to have lived a long 444 months. But aren’t you glad I stuck to 37 for this listicle and 444 did not sway me? Haha!]
1) Dad keeps saying that communication is complete when the person on the other side comprehends what you mean to say. The conversation between us still hangs.
2) All life is about ‘Bridges of Clay’
3) There are consequences when you call a squint-eyed person, squint-eyed. A black-eye could be one.
4) Keep sugar on your tip of your tongue. Sugar-free isn’t healthy.
5) I care but it doesn’t matter anymore. Doing distance is a skill.
6) A successful soul has a sense of urgency. The world calls it impatience.
7) Rome was not built in a day. But dare you tell them that Rome can become dust in a day. They’ll crush you instead. The messenger is always the culprit.
8) It’s just a job.
9) According to a research, kids who’ve played Mary in nativity plays in schools turn out to be millionaires. I am waiting for my first million to flow in.
10) A silent hug stays forever. An unfallen tear holds it tight.
11) It will always be too late until you do not wish it to be.
12) The world salutes the rising sun. On this day in 2011, India won the Cricket World Cup.
13) Silence takes you places, higher up places to be specific.
14) Sit on the fence. Get shot first.
15) Don’t play to save the day. Play to win the day with panache.
16) Can’t see beyond the nation. Can’t see anything below it. Yet I am branded guilty.
17) The spoons and forks are most horrible. Just like anything that’s tiny, they are most painful to clean.
18) Somewhere between ‘dive and plan’ to ‘plan and dive’, I got lost. I still can’t figure it out.
19) Poetry is for losers. I write poetry.
20) I look back at the memory of a fun activity of mutually sharing useless facts with someone. The gupshup was useless.
21) When they say, ‘here’s to the crazy one’, they are not celebrating you. They mean it.
22) Empathy is about stepping into another’s shoes, but they don’t want you in their shoes.
23) Life hands you a claw machine and you feel you are going to win a toy.
24) The fault with our stars? They were never there in the first place. What we saw was an illusion due to the time it took light to reach our eyes.
25) Anhyeong Haseyo — the Korean greeting literally means ‘are you at peace?’ I look back when folks laughed at me when I asked, ‘are you happy?’ At least, another language validated that I wasn’t being nosy.
26) Vindication means humility, and not a noisy victory celebration.
27) The meek shall inherit the world.
28) Everybody wants to feel wanted.
29) They applaud me for my ‘buland awaaz’ or powerful voice. I wish they’d hear the words in the voice too sometime.
30) Picture abhi baaki hai — a lie.
31) Why simplify? Complexity pays.
32) Why fight the elephant in the room when there are tigers and vultures on the outside? So, what if there is no space to fight and we’re falling over ourselves and the elephant keeps eating our resources?
33) Anger can’t be undone — even if it meant well. Kindness can be undone, however, well it meant.
34) Those whom you stop, won’t stop you.
35) All men have balls. They only display them for a benefit.
36) My grandma used tell the boy me, “Don’t swing your legs. It’s bad luck. It causes death of one’s mother.” I’d find that innocent and chuckle at my sweet old lady. I often wonder what my mom would be like had she graduated into a sweet old lady herself.
37) Mom always said, “You will remember me and what I keep telling you when I am gone.” I do.
Happy 37 to me!
