De-stressing

There. A nice optimistic title.

Hopefully it will work to nudge me into a better frame of mind.

Sometimes, I wonder if psychologists and psychiatrists around the world are seeing an increased number of patients with anxiety in their practices, because seriously, who cannot be anxious in a world like this?

My anxiety levels have definitely reached higher levels than they used to be earlier (wait, is that true? Or is it that I never understood that the churning feelings inside could be termed anxiety?) and I get even more anxious if I read the newspapers. So I try not to read the papers... or FB or any of the social media outlets that show anything about the state of the world. I get filtered news from other sources and I can retain a modicum of control. Or I watch the late night comedies on YouTube where I get (mostly American) news but it is presented in a fun way. Why can't Indian TV make high quality comedy on daily news, where we get information but it doesn't stress one out like crazy? Don't we have enough smart, funny people in our country too? But no, Indian news only makes one feel horrible about one's country and one's life. And I think this is a form of addiction: watch the news to feel glum and full of despair so that you can't find the energy to take responsibility for any action.

Another thing that makes me anxious is the pollution  where we live (though it is significantly lower than where we used to live- if there were a prize for tolerance to living in pollution, the people living on the street where my parents used to will definitely win it hands down). I was driving down from Mysore last weekend to Bangalore... and I kid you not, as we entered Bangalore outskirts, we could see a thick, grey-green cloudy haze hanging suspended over the city. This is the miasma under which we go about our daily lives- we add to it, and we breathe it every single minute.

The biggest source of stress and anxiety, although it is also usually accompanied by a sense of excitement and dread in equal parts, is my company. How to make enough revenue, how to break free from the shackles of loans, how to thrive ... these are questions that equally frighten and thrill me. It's like a roller-coaster ride at Six Flags. What also scares me is the scenario where you build all the momentum and the suspense, but the ride isn't what you anticipated it would be- it falls flat and you have to tell yourself that it was ok and that it was a good experience anyway.

Ram told me about an exercise for fear management written way back by one of the Buddhist monks in Sanskrit (truly, I am beginning to understand why so many entrepreneurs read philosophical texts... everything that one goes through now has been gone through by thousands before and there are musings, gleanings and reflections that help put things in perspective). He might have changed it a bit to suit my preferred method of reflection (which is to write), but the basic principles of working through stress remain the same:

Before the start of every venture or every learning, there is a mixture of feelings.

a) Acknowledge the feelings
b) Identify them by their name. If you can't name a feeling, describe it in detail so others may help you identify it. ("This feeling makes me ....")
c) Show gratitude for the positive feelings, like happiness, excitement, optimism etc. Clarify why you might be happy, excited etc. Write down your expectations and reasons why.
d) Focus on the "negative" feelings, like fear and stress. Write down exactly what your fears and sources of stress are. If you worry about losing your money, or other resources, or if you worry that you will fail at meeting expectations, or if you are afraid that you will lose out on other opportunities, write these down ("What if I....?"). Clarify what those failed expectations or missed opportunities might be.
e) Rank each of these in order and then tackle each one in turn from the highest ranked to the lowest ranked.
f) Imagine each fear as a person. This person is someone who is honorable, well-respected and a person of integrity from whom you can learn a lot.
g) Imagine going to each person (who is actually a fear that you have acknowledged, identified, listed and ranked). What is the one thing that you would request each of them to teach you? Frame these questions beginning with "Help me.... " (help me... accomplish ... )

Let me show you what I mean by copying down what I'd written a few days ago:

My initial set of questions were framed like this:
a) What tools and skills do I need to scale the wall of getting no deals or not knowing how deliver on these deals/ promises?
b) How do I ensure that my team and I can handle the new work without dropping the old ones?
c) How do I build a team around me that is excited, motivated and sees their success as our success?
d) How do I get 2.5 crore rupees this year in revenue?
e) How do I build a team of mentors and interact with them often enough that I am prepared to think fast and pivot appropriately?

But Ram told me that this list above makes no request, and only asks for advice. The key to progressing is to make these fears into team members and allies.

So I changed my list to this:
a) Help me get orders and make deals
b) Help me keep track of orders and deliver on promises
c) Help me create a team of mentors, partners and collaborators excited about the prospect of working with me.
d) Help me get 2.5 crore rupees in revenue in 2020.


And oh, guess what? I started this blog in a state of utter stress and anxiety. I'm glad to report that I've truly done what the title assured me I would- I have destressed and am feeling excited and motivated again.










 

The flowers above

Do you know why I like those flowers above, those yellow ones standing in the mulch on the top of the page?

Sometime in 2010- I think it might have been Feb- there was a gigantic blizzard in Pittsburgh. It was supposedly among the worst. Snow many feet high, roads closed, no food in the stores- that kind of blizzard. I was pregnant with Ani at that time, maybe 7/8 months along, and desperate to finish up some work for the doctorate before maternity leave.
So the first day of the storm (snow storms are very quiet and mostly peaceful, none of the sound and light effects of a regular Indian thunderstorm), RK took skis and walked 3 miles from our apartment to his residency (he might have been on call). And the second day onwards, so did I. I trudged to lab, bundled up in a few dozen layers, grabbed on to roadside shrubs and hedges on the downhill parts where the road might be slippery, but made it up and down okay. One of the best things about snow is that when it is snowing, the temperature is actually not very cold. It's much better than once the snow has stopped and everything freezes over.

I have no clue what work I did in lab, but I recall amazingly clearly how beautiful it all was: there was snow of so many types on the road and on the trees and leaves: Soft, crunchy, icy, flaky- they were all there! It was completely white, the trees were bending down from the weight of the snow,  there were kids sledding on the sideroads, no traffic whatsoever, and bright red cardinal birds on trees. It was like straight out of a postcard from the 1800s.

Even almost a decade later, I love remembering that pregnancy and those walks in the snow. I might have been waddling like a penguin, perhaps there was some danger of me slipping and falling and breaking something in the snow, but for the most part, what I remember is the calm white peace and the general happiness all around.

So anyway, those flowers up there were the first flowers of spring that I saw that year. They had popped out on the driveway of my favorite Indian restaurant and I took that pic sometime in May, after Ani was born.
 
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Post script:
So, I had a vague recollection of writing a blog around this time and went hunting through the archives for it and found it. Clearly, my recollection now is rather drastically different from what I'd written then. I'm a bit startled by it, to be honest. How odd that what was seemingly so frustrating at that time should be so beautiful now!

Pleased with myself and the world

The kids and I braved Spar Hypermarket on a Sunday evening (the very definition of hell on earth) and bought a white board, chess board and scrabble board.
Today, when playing scrabble with Ani, I won because of "YOD"(a Hebrew alphabet)... not just YOD by itself, but YOD on the Triple Word square.

*Feeling very smug*

Remembrance and Relief

Last time I was at NCBS, a few months ago, I felt so anxious about some things that I had to get myself under control by staring into the koi pond and imagining I was a fish whose only concern in life was to flit gracefully through the water, munching on whatever koi munch on.

Once I'd finished with koi, I also wished with all my heart that I had a job like one of those M &B heroines: have you noticed that a majority of romance novel heroines have jobs like secretaries, hair dressers, cupcake bakers and food photographers? Very few M&B novels have:

- businesswomen (ok, some do, but they usually run family-owned businesses)

- physicians (always, ALWAYS, doctors are male; brilliant (naturally); wealthy (because all heroes in romance novels have to be... when I was younger, they had to be millionaires. Nowadays, who cares about a million here or there? We only care about billionaires); grumpy, because they are oh so tired and impatient with the antics of the vast brainless populace they have to tolerate (invariably they mistakenly categorize the heroine as brainless initially, but when their equally brilliant/ good looking/ wealthy colleague hits on the heroine, suddenly realize that hey, she's The One!); stupendously compassionate (there always HAS to be a sick kid/ baby/ old lady in these books- it is a rule); and exceedingly good-looking... show me one doctor who has acne spots, bad teeth and hair on his back....(oh, if he has hair on his back, you're in the wrong genre... you need to be in the fantasy section where the hero is actually a werewolf. You're welcome). Women are ALWAYS nurses in M &B.

- scientists (unless you count one book where there was a scientist who had the brains to invent a magical solution that could do something powerful... either suppress high emotions in mobs, or infertilize people for population control or some such thing, but didn't somehow realize that it could be abused in the wrong hands until gently pointed out by the hero- because, get this, she only saw the best in people. *Sigh*)

- policy analysts... well, to be honest, I don't know too many women in real life who are policy analysts, so... plus, imagine the poor author trying to figure out what kind of policy her creation should be analyzing. 

- any field where she has to take decisions or disagree with a man's decision... maybe I'm being pessimistic here, but I have to be honest... can't recall a single M&B where a woman takes a decision that would affect anyone other than herself... unless you count the books where she has a baby (usually illegitimate and belonging to the hero, who somehow doesn't know that he has fathered a child), or a kid (if she's a widow).

Not all romances are M&Bs, of course. and there are thankfully many many romance novels that shatter these norms: G. A Aiken's books (usually have very bloodthirsty female warriors), most books by Susan Elizabeth Philips, all of Penny Reid's books, my forever go-to-authors Ilona Andrews (yes, it is authorS, not author, since it's a husband-wife duo), Sherry Thomas (who has many books with fantastic female protagonists: physician in the 1880s! Chinese warrior! Detective!) One of my current favorite series is the Wrexford-Sloane series by Andrea Penrose, although her series with chocolates is kind of awful.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah,  so today when I was at NCBS and I happened to find myself back at the koi pond, I couldn't resist taking a picture to remind me that hey, I ought to celebrate the feeling of non-anxiousness!

Staring down the koi pond from the 1st floor. Today, I'm glad I'm not a fish.

Thank you, my beautiful Wednesday! I enjoyed you immensely!

My epiphany and thoughts about wealth

When I think about how wealthy people become wealthy, until recently, I used to think that presumably, their salaries were large enough or their businesses were successful enough that they were able to take back large sums of money as remuneration.

Today, in the course of some other conversation, I was struck with a brilliant thought: wealthy people become wealthy because they want to be wealthy.

This may seem obvious, but the critical point to note here is the agency: in the first paragraph, the idea is of some external force making it possible for one to bring back home large amounts of money. In the second, money comes because the person wills it. If the person wills it strongly enough, they will do whatever is needed to get that money.


So my next questions for myself are: how much money do I really want? And just as importantly, Why?

When I ponder this question, my first instinct is to say, I need enough money for day to day expenses, a little bit put aside for the kids, some for a rainy day.

I have been watching Greenleaf on Netflix, and as the good folks on that show might say, Why limit the Lord's largesse with your small thoughts?

So, why limit myself? And why is my first instinct to shy away from wanting a huge ultra-large load of money that will make me hyper-rich?

Do I want to be hyper-rich? Again, why?

This is a deeper question than anything I've asked myself. Money without a purpose, or gathering money for its own sake, is a bit like eating without a purpose: ultimately, you will fall sick. You need to make money towards something, and at the same time, ensure that it doesn't just keep collecting in one place.

These questions are so difficult that the urge to quickly open a romance novel and lose myself in its pages is very strong...

Soya Chunk

You are ugly
You taste of moist cardboard
Your feel like wet wadded tissue paper
Yet millions faithfully masticate you
In the eternal quest for your 
Fabled protein-ness. 

Yuksom

Yuksom Yuksom! 

Others may blacken,

Call you small and boring

But you showed me colors I cannot even imagine

You showed me beauty I could only dream of

Where else in the world could I have so easily seen

A sibia, a leiothrix and a red-billed chough?

I am not sure if I can enumerate all the things we saw in Yuksom. There was just too much beauty- the place, the people, the birds, the trees.

Yuksom has one main road, called the Yuksom Bazaar Road, which is where all the shared cabs/ private vehicles etc stop. Most home stays, hotels are also right there. It's not easy getting to Yuksom from Gangtok- you either need time or money. Since we were short on the former, we had to ditch our low-budget travel so far and invest some money into getting us a car that could drive down to Yuksom. It cost us about Rs. 6000 (including a tip for the driver), but looking back, it was worth it because a) the main roads were all crowded and this driver took us through the back roads of his village so we could circumvent the traffic b) Most roads closer to Yuksom were actually dirt paths, since the rains had caused landslides and there was some significant damage. It still didn't stop various vehicles from plying to and from Yuksom- one just needed money and many many prayers.

The great Buddha at Rabongla on the way to Yuksom

Phamrong Falls. There's a nice trekking trail from here to Yuksom. We need to do it next time!

Because Sikkim is so mountainous, every time it rains, it gets a waterfall. 

Tea at Yuksom. Yum yum!

The trail to the birds

Millet alcohol. Mild and warmth-giving.  

Organic rhododendron wine... amazing stuff, but more like juice!

A lot of our activities in Yuksom consisted of experiencing the culture, the food and the place. I don't have too many pictures, but really rich memories.

We stayed at a place called the Yak Hotel and ate all our meals at The Traditional Inn (which is where we got all the alcohol shown above). My favorite food item has to be the Tibetan bread with yak cheese. So good!

We trekked a lot while successfully avoiding the large parties of trekkers going up to Dzongri or Geocha Pass. We meant to go a couple of kilometers up the Dzongri way, but Ani was our line leader (as he likes to call himself) and he missed a turn and we ended up going to Dubdi monastry- the oldest monastry in Sikkim, built in the 1700s.

The entrance to Kanchenjunga National Park perimeter.

Glades like this are great for birdwatching

Yaks!

Durga makes notes of leeches and insects she's seen

 More wildflowers!

Dubdi Monastry, Yuksom. Built 1701

At this point of time, does it really surprise anyone that the stray kittens in the temple were temporarily adopted by the kids?




One of the best successes of this trip was how Durga changed her attitude to leeches. The first day in Fambonglho, she had thrown a major fit when she saw them. She, in fact, refused to come trekking the next day because she was so scared. But with sufficient counseling and love, and most importantly, a plan, she overcame her utter petrification really well.

This was the plan:
a) Have salt at hand at all times to control leeches- A baseline way of getting control over the situation. Ani was our solver of this problem.

b) If one understands the enemy, one is less afraid of what might happen. Towards this, she drew up a series of questions for herself. This was her survey instrument:

Where are leeches found? On the pavement, on trees, on leaves, on stones, in water, on her shoes, on fruits or on her ear muffs. She would put a tick mark wherever she found them

RK was so impressed with this initial instrument that he bought her a book at the bazaar for her to note down all her questions and answers after her research.

Durga's research notebook :)

c) Finally, to empower herself, she appointed herself the remover of leeches. So anytime any leech would try to get into our shoes and socks, she would get the salt, sprinkle it liberally everywhere and carefully remove the leech with a stick.

So, I must say, we are all really impressed with her.

A few days later, once we came back to civilization, I learned that apparently salt isn't to be used for leeches and it's better to flick them away with the pad of one's nails. But the sheer negative psycological effect of leeches and the definitively empowering effect of salt is significant and I, for one, will not stop using salt.


Ok, so now for some of the most beautiful birds we saw in and around Yuksom:

Rufous sibia
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Rufous_Sibia_from_Sikkim,_India.jpg

The red-tailed minla
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:RED-tailed_Minla.jpg

Red billed leiothrix

The minla, sibia and leiothrix are all supposed to be closely related. They don't look it, do they?

Yellow-throated fulvetta
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Yellow-throated_Fulvetta_-_Eaglenest_-_Arunachal_Pradesh_-_India_FJ0A0417_(34232515961).jpg

Blue winged minla
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue-winged_Minla_(34365059820).jpg

We managed to spot some warblers! For those of you who are interested in warblers, I've blogged about the difficulties in spotting or identifying these birds here and here.

Of the possibly dozen different warblers we must have glimpsed in Yuksom, we identified 3:

Ashy throated warbler
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Ashy-throated_Warbler_-_Bhutan_S4E8811_(19079890158).jpg

Grey cheeked warbler
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grey-cheeked_Warbler_Khangchendzonga_National_Park_West_Sikkim_India_18.02.2016.jpg

Grey hooded warbler
https://nv.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%CA%BCelyaa%C3%ADg%C3%AD%C3%AD:The_grey-hooded_warbler_at_Deoriatal.jpg

See the minute differences between them? They are all grey and yellow or a yellowish-green. To identify them requires standing still for long periods of time, tracking them without losing them, and making careful notes on exactly what's on the head and near the eyes, and what the tail might be like and what the beak might be like and so on. Most times, what results is a bad crick in the neck and nothing much to show for it.

Three black eagles followed us during our trek to Dubdi- magnificent birds.

And Ani tracked and spotted a green magpie (an endangered bird in the NE)

Hello, you striking creature!
https://pixabay.com/photos/green-magpie-magpie-3160688/

We trekked back to Yuksom just in time for a thunderous storm began just as we reached our favorite inn. Amidst the darkening sky, surrounded by clouds, we had masala chai and hot lemon-ginger-honey water. Right next to us were numerous trekkers who had just managed to get back from a week-long trek to Goechla Pass and who informed us that it had been raining on the path almost every single day at the higher altitudes and it had been a huge disappointment to them that they had spent so much money only get literally rained upon.

For us, though, it was a fantastic trip.

One thing to remember for next time: carry plenty of cash, for most of W.Sikkim does not have functional ATMs and any other source of payment is not accepted.