Together, we can

‘Thirty-three Chilean miners rescued after two months’

‘Commonwealth Games a huge success’

These are recent headlines seemingly unrelated. Then what is the common thread running through these two stories? The exemplary teamwork that was at play.

It was the combined effort of engineers, labourers, policemen, doctors, and even psychiatrists that kept the miners alive for two whole months and helped rescue them.

Closer home, the government, Organising Committee and other organisations involved worked together to put up the grand spectacle that were the Commonwealth Games.

Thus it has been proved time and again that effective unity can make even the most arduous of tasks possible. But what is it in a team that works?

For one, the work gets distributed amongst people as per their skill and potential, which not only dissipates the pressure but also ensures that the most skilled hands are at work. And while these are the facts, there are softer aspects at play as well. Collective effort creates more confidence and keeps the morale high due to constant support from peers.

This reasoning is, however, lost in today’s individualistic approach to life where each one is busy trying to remain one step ahead of everyone else. It is time to realise the power of unity, it is time to work together. Because together, we can.

Blog? What bl...ooh is that a squirrel? I'm hungry!

“Arre don’t worry! You’ll come up with something eventually…stop trying to write under the pressure of a deadline!”

That, by the way, is one of my friend’s many attempts at convincing me that the writer’s block of sorts I’m experiencing right now is nothing to worry about, and that I’ll be back at my literal best as soon as I clear my mind and stop consciously searching for a topic. Easier said than done, though.

Twenty minutes, by the watch. THAT’S how long I’ve been staring at this blank word document waiting for the rusted cogs of my mind to start turning once again…for a brilliant topic to suddenly pop into my head…for a finished, and preferably well written, article to appear in front of me. On second thoughts, if at all I was to get anything, Aladdin’s magic lamp would be good. *Mental note to God: hint hint!*

On my left, my 5-year-old neighbour is tracing my hand onto a paper. On the right, her sister and my sister are having a screaming match. My phone keeps beeping every 5 minutes with a new text for me to read, while notifications on Facebook come with an even higher frequency. I think I’m beginning to see the problem…it isn’t exactly the ideal situation for inspiration to strike, is it?

Come to think of it, isn’t this exactly the reason for lot of other things never happening as well? Distraction?

Sitting in class, we may be physically present but absorb only 25% of what’s being taught. Distracted by that friend who just passed us a note, or the one jumping up and down right outside the door trying to catch our eye, or even the one doing a sort of mad jig because a spider just dropped into her lap. Why, it doesn’t even have to be a person! Even a simple colony of ants marching up the wall or squirrel searching for food is enough to whisk us away from that boring lesson on stoichiometry.

Ever tried cleaning your room? For me it’s always remained just that: a try. Open the cupboard, and I’d invariably find that favourite shirt of mine that I haven’t worn for ages. The study table, also in on the conspiracy to keep my room dirty, would somehow manage to make me find those class 10 worksheets and throw me into another one of those i-wanna-go-back-to-10th-NOW phases. In which case, of course, I would just HAVE to call up Ishir and revisit those amazing memories of that amazing class. If, by chance, after that hour of laughing at the stupid things we had once done, I somehow remember the room I still had to clean, the next area in line would probably be the shelf below the window. That’s when my hands would fall on that blue stuffed dog that I used to play with as a kid; and how could I waste this perfect opportunity to take a trip down memory lane with my mom? The room? Completely forgotten.

It’s evil really, this distraction business. Gets you into trouble ALL. THE TIME. Sit down to do your homework…but wait! Isn’t it time for How I Met Your Mother to start? Or go till the market to get mom’s medicine…ohmygod is that a butterfly?! Let’s follow it around instead! Though you can’t blame me for that one…it was this really pretty royal blue one with green and red patterns woven into it. Reminded me of peacocks in fact. Speaking of which, I better go and stop my sister before she rips off that peacock feather off my wall hanging! It’s really special to me, that wall hanging. My best friend made it for me on my birthday.

Oh wait, didn’t I have a blog to write?

But why?

“Because I said so!”

A simple sentence with extraordinary power. It’s what all of us have had to listen to, and accept as a sufficient reason, whenever we asked our parents why we were being made to do something. I, for one, have heard this dialogue from my mother so many times that I could correctly predict exactly when it’s going to be directed at me next.

When we were small this statement was ultimate. You could fight and argue and cry and question all you liked, but the minute this phrase was uttered, the discussion was over…you had to do what you were told to. And that reason was enough for us.

But as we grew into thinking individuals looking for greater independence, this answer was simply not enough. Until and unless we were given a satisfactory reason for what we were being told to do, it was not done. We began to question not just the reason behind our parents’ commands but their authority over us itself. Instead of ‘why do we have to do this’ the question became ‘why are you telling us what to do’.

“Switch off the TV.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

An eight-year-old’s response to this would be to quietly switch off the TV without further discussion. But if a parent was to try the same thing with a 15-year-old, the conversation, rather the argument, would probably go like this:

“Switch off the TV.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“But why? I want to finish watching this movie.”

“You can watch it later; you need to go study. You have a test coming up.”

“I know how much time I need to finish the syllabus…I’ll manage. I’m going to finish the movie first though.”

This would probably go on till either the kid gave in and switched off the TV, which is unlikely, or the mother gave up and let him finish the movie. Though the mother wanted the child to go study, he didn’t think that the reason was good enough to make him miss the movie. The result? He didn’t miss the movie.

As we grew, our need to control our own lives grew. The rebel in us grew. Our first reaction to everything is now to question, counter and argue. Our theory is that if with age comes responsibility, so should complete freedom. This transition from dependent to independent is inevitable. As we get older, it is only natural that we want to make our own decisions, form our own opinions, follow our own path. But what is important, is for us to understand that it was our parents who made us able enough to do so in the first place. It was them who trained us to know necessary from avoidable, need from want, right from wrong.

After all, we did spend the first ten years of our lives quietly obeying our parents, and nothing went wrong. 

Would it really hurt to listen to them once in a while even if we disagree?

To show that we do still respect their authority over us?

For their sake?

For the sake of the good they have in their hearts for us?

Because they probably still know what’s best?

Because they say so?

Accu(te)Pressure

“Beta, you better sleep now. You are stressing yourself for these insignificant marks? I always tell you its how much you learn that’s more important, not how much you score.”

This is a dialogue often heard on days prior to exams – worried parents trying to get their stressed out kids to relax.

In an ideal situation, we would be only too relieved to get away from those monstrous books.

But consider another exchange:

“Nahi yaar, I can’t come tomorrow. I have too much syllabus to cover.”

“Dude! You have the whole holidays ahead of you!”

“I know, but I’ve got to finish chemistry within the next 2 days…”

This is a conversation I recently had with a friend of mine having to give the re-exams after these holidays due to an unfortunate attack of dengue.

Had he asked his parents, he would have surely gotten permission to spend the day with us; he did have another two weeks of vacation left after all. It was his own discretion by which he decided that he couldn’t afford to take even a day off. You can say that he had a pretty stressful schedule chalked out for himself.

However, he is not the only one. Most of us remain cooped up in our rooms during the days leading up to our exams, cramming as many facts as we can into our already saturated minds. What drives us to do so?

Pressure - pressure to get good results, respectable marks. And who puts that pressure on us?

Not the teachers, they spend the last few days of school reassuring us that all will go well and we shouldn’t worry too much.

Not our parents either, they are busy convincing us that our teachers were right, that marks are not everything, that we must not overwork ourselves and follow a more rational study plan.

It is in fact of our doing that we skip meals, pull all nighters…almost quarantine ourselves.

Why?

Demoralisation. Repeatedly getting bad barks demoralises us and we gradually lose interest in the subject. We no longer feel compelled to study it sincerely and our belief that we have the potential to do better next time gradually fades away until we stop even trying to improve.

Peer pressure. Scoring the least amongst our friends makes us feel dumb. We study because our friends are studying, not wanting to take the chance of not doing as well as them. Also, despite what the teachers might say, we get the distinct feeling that our performance strongly influences our impression on them. The highest scorers automatically get classified as the smartest ones and earn the teachers’ favour, something important to all of us despite our vehement claims that we are too cool to care.

Disappointment. We subconsciously levy certain expectations on ourselves based on previous performances as well as our own judgement of our capabilities. If these expectations are not met, we feel disappointed in ourselves and choose to blame the amount of effort we put in. To make it worse, though probably without realising it, we assume that our parents judge us by those standards as well and feel that we would be letting them down. Performing well is perceived by us as a way to show gratitude to our parents for all the opportunities they provide us with. So we are impelled by a sense of duty of sorts towards them to study more even though the last thing they would want is us getting stressed out because of them.

Yet as I sit here writing this, talking about the unnecessary tension that we can easily avoid, I know that as soon as the next exams come, I will be showing similar signs. These things seem inevitable, no matter how much we may be ridiculing them…an inescapable part of student life.

Enough said though…I better rush now. I have a tuition test to go study for!

Mind your language!

“…and she was like I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to and blah blah blah. But I don’t care anymore…I’m done being friends with her!”

As I revisited a recent conversation I’d had with my cousin while she vented her frustration over a fight with her best friend, a certain phrase caught my interest…more specifically, three certain words: blah blah blah.

Now this may seem strange, for in today’s lingo they appear just as frequently as the word ‘goddam’ does in Catcher in The Rye (an astounding 245 times at that), not seldom used by me either.

However it wasn’t so much the usage of the words, but what they implied about our generation that interested me.

Very often these days, our generation is labelled as fast paced and always in a hurry, lacking the patience to finish the task at hand, our mind constantly wandering to what’s coming next. This substitution of the seemingly unimportant information that merely gives finish to a thought or narration seems to validate this theory.

During our conversation, my cousin began to tell me what her best friend had said, but as soon as the basic drift of the apology was clear she was only too eager to move on to her own reaction. She was in such a hurry to jump to the next aspect of the story and finish it sooner, that she didn’t bother completing her chain of thoughts.

Thus, it’s not the lack of articulation that’s getting showcased, but in fact the restlessness of our minds that causes us to leave our thoughts incomplete. We have so many things on our mind at any given point of time, all fighting to gain priority, that it becomes almost impossible for us to stick to one thought long enough to follow through on it.

Is it a malaise? Not necessarily. For a casual conversation…sure, go ahead and use it, but formality and such expressions don’t really go together. What’s important is to watch where we use it, not let it compromise the clarity of communication, make sure the key message is complete, and blah blah blah…