Because, idiots!

Everywhere on Facebook!

I have a problem. Fine – I have about a gazillion problems. But right now I am going to talk about just one and that is the image I have put up here.

I fall in the classic twenties age-group where life is moving ahead at the rate of ten “wheeeeeees” per second. That can roughly translate into getting married, moving overseas for a jazzy job and going on exotic holidays. Oh and clicking 19345967 photographs of the said holidays! (I am up for mine next month – more on that later). So there are a lot of “whees” going around or at least that’s what Facebook likes to tell me. They are paired with those Buzzfeed/HuffPost/Blah blah articles of “579380 things to do before you settle down” and “843823 rare places to see before you turn 30”.

The line was crossed when this image started trending. It is one thing to show-off your lovely travel and trotting lifestyle with edited photographs and unrelated captions, but it turns insulting when you put this up. You just made having babies and giving birth to new life into a trivial activity! You just made a couple who are learning the ropes of parenthood into a pair of lifeless bodies! You just made those magical nine months into a boring everyday task! I don’t know how many people really focused on the first part before mindlessly uploading and sharing this picture. Maybe the travelling part of it appealed so much, they just overlooked the secondary message. It made me feel really sick – why use comparison to highlight your travel bug? How are these two even related!

Is “settling down” really so bad to our generation that we have started pulling it down like this? Is it so “old-fashioned” and “boring” that getting married before 24 is suddenly a social crime? Is “living and learning” equal to “single and bohemian”? Last time I checked, it is possible to get married and have babies (not necessarily in that order) and yet lead a great life. We want to break free and fly but now it seems that freedom has grown some chains of its own! Because if I don’t abide by certain definitions of freedom and liberty, I have not really made it.

Let us take a reality check. First, not all of us have the means and time to do so much country hopping when even commuting within city is  cumbersome. Second, not all of us like travelling so much that we will be off every month to some odd place – adventure lurks in our backyard in the form of pesky monkeys. Third, not all of us care about where in seven hells you have traveled unless you are getting something for us. The irony is that a majority of those who put this up are so lazy that they can barely cross the street let alone cross the border.

Wanderlust is pervasive. It does not matter if you do it solo or you do it with a caravan of seventeen noisy children. Travelling is fun but then so is raising a family. You can have both – at the same time too. Just think before you post.

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Thoughts? I know I did some massive generalization and there are still many of us with substantial gray matter – Yay for us!

Temptation

Temptation by Javier G Pacheco

It is an unconscious struggle for me everyday. Not eating like a starved maniac and lap up every chocolate, pastry, cheese and cream around me. In my head, I actually become a version of Augustus Gloop but with nicer hair. Grabbing a fist of chocolate pudding with one hand and the decadent cheesy puff pastry with the other hand.

Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

The funny thing is, it is not even a conscious decision of limiting myself. I am not over-weight. I am very healthy. I exercise. I eat the right things most of the time. And it comes naturally and not forcefully. Yet, at the back of my mind there is a little me (probably even fictive) that wants to indulge in those creamy frothy concoctions. With a dash of espresso on top.

It is a temptation even without me making it so!

This is just me and food. I have met people who really have serious issues about stopping once they start. And not just food. Alcohol, smoking, sex, shopping and something as simple as peaking into the last page of this very very intriguing book. When it is time to sheepishly look back and admit how you went a little crazy for a while, the standard reply is “I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t help myself.” Apparently, you are not yourself anymore and this different version of you takes over. All you can do is helplessly look as you give in to your guilty pleasures (or perhaps not-so-guilty as well. Some people are too hard on themselves!) and later on drown in misery about being so weak and not having enough self-control.

Maybe we start off with high expectations. We don’t realize that we need to gradually wean off so that the withdrawal symptoms don’t hit so hard that we relapse even deeper into it. Or maybe we have the right kind of motivation that is guiding us into something. For example, I went off ice-cream for a year in 2014 in the memory of my grandpa. He loved ice-creams and till our last meet he kept up, “We need an ice-cream party”. And my regret was I could never hold that last party. Wrong or right, I stopped having ice-cream for that year (On hindsight, maybe I should have done the opposite? An ice-cream daily?). And I admit, the first few months were BAD!! But afterwards, I got used to it. I had tubs of chocolate brownie sundaes in front of me and I could cheerfully dole them out without even a twinge of temptation.

But it was just one year. Imagine your guiltiest pleasure reclining on the love seat and beckoning seductively. There is champagne and candle lights to finish off the decadent strawberries. And you have resist this every single day for the rest of your life? Reading stories about people fighting addictions and succeeding (or succumbing) makes me question my determination. I am not sure if I am strong enough to resist. That said, I am not sure if I will ever get addicted so strongly to something. I think.

Something by Mark Twain that makes me think twice and more (I looked it up as I couldn’t remember the exact words) –

“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.”

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Where do you find your discipline and self-control? What is your guilty pleasure that lures you in its silken traps? A secret temptation perhaps? It can be funny, weird or downright believable!

We are talking “temp” at Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday 🙂 Jump right in!!

Look! A Human… Yummm

This post isn’t just restricted to cannibals. Everyone is welcome!

So I am a vegetarian by choice and I get this a lot – “WHY?!?!”  It is somehow unfathomable to most non-vegetarians that I do not have meat, poultry, fish out of choice and not religious or medical compulsions.

I am not sure if I have ever consumed non-veg as a kid; but in my memory I know I consciously avoided non-veg food around the age of six. It wasn’t because I did not like it I think (I remember the mouth-watering smell of butter chicken that my family devours) but when I had my “Oh! This came from something that trotted and chirped with their family” moment. After that, the doors were firmly shut to the sumptuous delights of non-vegetarian food.

People have risen to the challenge of converting me and poof! They have failed miserably. I accidentally bit into a chicken piece about three years back and believe me, I started crying in the cafeteria with tens of other students looking accusingly at my oh-so-terrible friends for making me cry (Thankfully, only a few realized the real reason behind my outburst). I don’t mind people around me wolfing down their chicken and pork and crab or whatever strikes their fancy. I am cool as long as the same oil was not used for my food. I have also adjusted well to having to share MY food while I cannot even sample the tiniest of bite from my friends’ plates *fixing my angelic halo awkwardly*

However, there was this one time when I was put into a spot – in the Ethics & Governance classroom! We were discussing a case where a group of miners stuck in the cave for three weeks killed and ate a fellow to survive while patiently waiting to be rescued – perhaps not quite patiently. It is based on the true story of a shipwreck where these guys on the lifeboat kill one man and eat him to survive. Then they were all convicted of murder.

The professor questioned that if we were faced in such a situation, would we give in to the primal human instinct of survival and eat human meat or would we refrain? He then specifically directed it towards the vegetarians and asked us. Some said that they might while some of us stated that we honestly could not say. We felt that we wouldn’t eat but hey! If it came to survival… there really is no saying of what one would do. Then the professor twisted the question and asked pointing at me, “Would you eat her if it came to your survival? Someone you know and are close to.” Although this turned into a joke as someone said, “No use. She is too tiny to satisfy our hunger.” Till date, I do not know whether I should have been happy that they won’t eat me or annoyed because they believe I won’t satisfy their appetites 😐

Hunger. Survival. Life and Death. No right answers. No wrong answers. The law says it is wrong. Our hearts and minds says it is wrong. But what would happen when our starving stomach and depleting senses started taking over?

As for me, I mainly decide my eating through my nose. So who knows… If you smell great? *arches eyebrows wickedly*

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What makes you a vegetarian/eggetarian/non-vegetarian? Bare it all. Even if you are okay with eating a fellow human. This is all just contemplation!

P.S. I hope you enjoyed the chocolate 🙂