Being Shown Your Place

Being put in your place is never a pleasant feeling, especially when you didn't have it coming because of your behaviour. It wasn't a major slight by any stretch, and someone less sensitive would possibly have taken it simply as the other person expressing their preferences (it wasn't a platonic or romantic rejection, which is also a matter of someone expressing their preferences). But, INFJs are sensitive people, or so I have been told. I, for one, don't like being wrong about how I stand with someone. If I had imagined that I was closer to someone than it later turned out, I feel red with shame. So does anyone, I suppose, but I take it particularly badly. Slights, real or perceived, hurt and the instinct to change our behaviour to such an extent that the person in question never ever gets the opportunity to accuse you of taking liberties (I realize that this term is often used in the context of sexual harasssment, but I don't mean it in that way at all). On a related note, over the years, as I have become less needy, I have become more sensitive to both bad behaviour as well as words and actions that indicate the opposite person is trying to put some distance between me and them. Maybe it is a reflection  of my increased self-worth, but I do believe one has to reinforce self-worth with once's actions. I don't pursue romantic or  platonic situations that I would have a couple of years ago, especially where there is a power differential (read white people) involved. Giving attention to someone who doesn't reciprocate is not good for your self-worth if you keep doing it. Maybe there is a risk of becoming too cold and guarded out of fear of rejection. That is a real risk, and I wish I was someone who could shrug off rejection. But, I am not, so this is a form of self-preservation. But, I also believe with a higher sense of self worth comes more confidence which makes you more  open and empathetic. 

Dud Day

Today was the day I was supposed to embark on the monumental project of writing my thesis. I ended up writing little more than the title of my first chapter, which I can hardly claim credit for either--the title was suggested by my supervisor. To say that I had an unproductive day would be putting it mildly, but I don't feel frustrated. Research is messy and haphazard, and the dud days are also valuable. Who knows what wheels turn at the back of our minds without us even realizing? It is only after an idea spills out and we get to work that we feel productive. But the thought processes that went behind that idea or breakthrough remain a mystery. I don't want to glorify research too much and pretend that it is high art, but I actually don't think they are that different. Art flows from the spiritual, research aims to illuminate the real, but the real and the spiritual are connected by the emotional. I don't want to make this post a rumination on the real and the spiritual, so I am going to leave it at that. All I want to say is that research is haphazard, progress is non-linear and one is better off trying to embrace the messiness.
I am also pleased that I am getting better at limiting my screen time, especially the time I spend on Twitter and news websites. I often log on to them without thinking, whenever my concentration flags from the work task at hand. But being bombarded by news about what's wrong with the world is not great for one's  disposition. 

Pomposity and Appreciative Audiences

Last Friday, I had a long discussion with two new PhD colleagues, and let's just say, I got carried away. It has been ages since I had a discussion on economics/political economy with peers, especially those who fall in the heterodox category. They were broadly sympathetic to my points of view but there was vigorous debate on some topics. I found myself enjoying the jousting and threw in some flourishes. In some instances, I said things which I wasn't completely sure off with oodles of conviction. In one instance early in the conversation, I was caught out, but made a graceful recovery. In short, what started out as an earnest intellectual discussion turned into me basking in the glow of an appreciative audience and enjoying the sound of my own voice. It just shows few of us are immune from the desire to impress, especially when you see your audience getting impressed, which encourages you even more. I had thought myself content with my hermetic existence in a small PhD programme with no other heterodox economists. Toiling away at creating knowledge for the sake of knowledge and professional advancement, immune from the need for validation from my peers. It turns out that I am not. I am a reasonably skilled rhetorician and enjoy verbal jousting as well as feeling smart. I am not ashamed of this, simply amused to see it. I also realize that vanity makes one less receptive to alternative points of view, and stands in the way of principled knowledge creation. Of course, its not clear where healthy self-respect turns into vanity, and I suppose most balanced folks oscillate between healthy self respect and pride in one's achievements to mild vanity. At least, I am glad I realized when I was being pompous and made a mental note about it as fodder for a blog. 

Extinction Rebellion

I went for an Extinction Rebellion protest in Bristol today, because I have realized the environment is an issue I deeply care about. The protest was as white and middle class as I had anticipated and I felt as out of place as I had expected. Yes, the left and the environmental movement have done a terrible job of building links with minority communities, possibly due to their unwillingness to look at social justice issues beyond class. But, what is a person of colour who is concerned about the environment to do in that case? Sit out of the protests until there are enough people of colour involved?
When people feel threatened or insecure, they take refuge in those privileges that they feel are inalienable, such as gender or race. And, the labour movement has unconsciously fallen prey to these tendencies as well. Their insistence  on seeing the white working class as a sociological  category distinct  from the wider working class, is one such example.
There were also  some aspects of the protest I was uncomfortable with, such as exhorting people lower down the social food chain to stop consuming in the shopping quarter. But every protest movement has problematic aspects 

Shit Hits The Fan

My meeting with my supervisor was going well until I told her how much time I had left. When I told her, her jaw hit the floor. For some unexplained reason, she thought I had much more time left. She not-so-calmly told me that I would have to buck up if I wanted to finish on time. She asked me whether my participation in a two-week summer school in June was really necessary. She also told me that I should also not think about teaching at the university next semester, unless I really needed the money. I don't, and with that comes another reminder of  my privileges. In the past few days, and in the past few months and in the past few years, I have come across three really bright, smart and kind people who are not so privileged as I.  

But feeling guilty about my privilege is so pre-2017 me. There is no better way to atone for one's privilege--yes, it must be atoned for--than with kindness and hardwork. First, to be kind to myself, then to those around me, then to the wider world. And working hard throughout, and never for a moment forgetting that neither my successes, nor my failures, are my doing alone. 

Tolerating People We Dislike

I have a PhD colleague who is an inexorable braggart. He manages to swing most conversations into odes to his greatness and lies about his achievements. After talking to him, you come away with the impression that there is nothing he doesn't think he is great at. Given that he is also horizontally challenged, he is quite the Billy Bunter figure. Most of us in the PhD room find him quite tiresome, but I think I have taken a special dislike to him.
For weeks, I tried to avoid him and keep our conversations quite short. My new DJ headphones have  also been coming in handy. But since last week, I have been taking the piss out of him at every opportunity. To anyone less full of himself it would have been evident long back, but I think he is only now coming around to that realization. Most of my colleagues have begun to see him as a harmless poseur, but my dislike for him remains. My antipathy towards him is also eclipsing his good points. He is extremely focused, and I have never seen him idling or chit-chatting. When I was at that stage of my PhD, I spent a lot of time idling and chitchatting. And, while I don't understand his research or see the point of it, all of us in the PhD room are working in such different areas that we rarely discuss the technicalities of our work. I am still trying to put my finger on what about him gets my goat. We will never be fast friends, but surely I don't need to be filled with rage at the sight of him. One of my  colleagues says his bragging  must come from a place of deep insecurity and I replied that I really didn't care about his insecurities. We all have mental baggage, but the people around us don't deserve to be splashed by it. But, surely I can find a position of indifference, even if I will never feel affection for him?
I suppose one of my problems is I am indifferent to point of coldness towards people I don't consider my friends. But, I am civil towards them. Hopefully, I will be able to find an attitude of civil  indifference towards this guy. 

Doing Nothing to Do Something

Till yesterday, I was all set to visit an osteopath for the pain in my neck that has lasted for almost a month and a half now. In fact, I planned to do an upper-body workout which would have aggravated the pain because I was going to anyway have the pain fixed, right? Wrong. 

Since the beginning of the year, I haven't been in the best of  health. No major illness or injury, just ailments severe to put a spanner in my normal activities. Most of the ailments--colds, upset stomachs, shoulder stiffness and neck pain--can, in my opinion, be attributed to me pushing my body beyond the limit even while being aware that I was doing so. 

Yesterday, I read an article about how a woman took up running to combat her depression and anxiety, and became so obsessed with it that she became an exercise evangelist. Running was her way of distracting herself from her anxiety, and all was good until she suffered a back injury that took her almost a year to recover from. Two sentences resonated with me. "If you tell an anxious person to exercise, they might well do it in an anxious way" and "I am coming to see how punitive we can be with ourselves without realising."

While my level of obsession is nowhere near that of the author of the piece, I have always seen myself as a fitness freak. I had never connected my fitness fanaticism with my anxiety but now I am beginning to think there might be a link. I frequently push myself hard and take a paracetemol pill afterwards to stave off colds and infections. Not very healthy behaviour. I have also  begun to see yoga as a quick-fix solution. 'Have neck pain, do a neck pain yoga session". 

Missing an exercise session puts me in a bad mood, and I almost see it as a moral failure. 

So, I am going to give my neck a chance to heal on its own. I might well need to see an osteopath, but I am not going to see one as a quick fix. Maybe this is my body's way of telling me to slow down.  

Doing Nothing

Getting older means progressively releasing oneself from social norms. Like time off work must be filled with "fun" activities. I have a few hobbies, such as exercising, yoga and blogging, but they are part of my daily routine and don't take up the whole weekend. Since I don't have an active social life either, I spend a lot of weekends not doing anything "fun". In the beginning, I was pushing myself to find more hobbies, not least so I could have a satisfying answer to the question "What do you do on weekends?". Now, I am content with mumbling that I don't have much of a life outside my PhD, which is true. Hobbies require time and commitment, and while I am definitely not the busiest person in Bristol, my PhD takes a lot out of me. I don't think I have the intellectual stamina to commit to anything else. I do enjoy meeting friends and going on a day-trip occasionally, but I don't miss my super-social Master's degree days. In the past few years since I started my PhD I have both changed as a person and come into my own as a person. Which is to say, the PhD has exacerbated my reclusive tendencies which I fought for so long, and which I am becoming more accepting of. I cherish the solitude that my current lifestyle afford me more than I rue the occasional spells of loneliness. And, most importantly, I don't feel guilty for whiling away my off days. The only thing I am trying to keep in mind is not to spend all my off time in front of an electronic screen.

The Ethics of Asking Strangers for Money for Yourself

The other day, I came across a gofundme page soliciting donations for a sex conversion operation. The person who was asking is a writer and a PhD researcher, and is, by all accounts, gifted and brilliant. She was soliciting donations from followers of her work. That got me thinking about the ethics about asking strangers for money to be spent on yourself and, crucially, on things that are clearly not a matter of death.
About nine years ago, when I was working as a business journalist, a colleague told me about a friend who had started a gofundme campaign to raise funds for a master's degree in London. That stuck me as a really bizarre thing to do. Studying abroad is a luxury, and asking strangers to donate money to help you pay for that luxury seemed like a pretty shameless thing to do. Then again, who am I, who comes from a well-to-do family and has never had to worry about money, to judge. While I paid for my own master's degree in Holland, I was able to sink all my savings into it secure in the knowledge that my family would never need financial support from me. And since my  PhD scholarship doesn't cover all my expenses, my parents are also helping out.
Another bizarre request for money was when a close friend asked for money to buy a dress for her graduation. Like the previous example, this struck me as remarkably self-important. Why should acquaintances care about what you look like on your graduation day? Wasn't this squeezing their goodwill to hard and shouldn't she have saved it for when she may actually need it?
Of course, discomfiture with asking for money is a luxury only those who have never been short of money can afford. Then again, there is a difference between needing money for something essential, and wanting money for a luxury. I realize wants and needs sit on a continuum, but to put it crudely, shouldn't you always ration your exploitation of people's goodwill towards you? Save it for when you really need it? Imagine being struck by cancer after raising money to fund your studies overseas, and not having enough money for treatment?

Cancer, Heart Disease, Depression

This morning, I learned that a friend's sister had had cancer a few years ago, although she made a full recovery apparently. Cancer is on the rise, heart disease is on the march, and depression and anxiety seem omni-present, even for people among my cohort with no history of obesity or chronic illness. We can no longer take refuge in our moral superiority over those we see as following unhealthy lifestyles. That bubble burst a while back. It is good to take care of oneself and be responsible, but some things are beyond our control. Chances are most of us have lost or will lose a close family member or friend to one of these three modern scourges, even if we manage to avoid them ourselves. 

There is no question that the world is a more hostile and scary place than it was 10 years ago, and the evidence is there for all to see. Which is why I believe we are first responsible for our own well-being and then that of those close to us. Taking care of ourselves need not be seen as selfish--it could very  well involve throwing oneself in political or social activism or charity work. But we serve no one by continuing with seemingly altruistic actions that damage or  minds and bodies. In such cases, the people around us have to bear the brunt of our ideals.

Easter Holiday

A five-day holiday looms before me. To most people, that would be welcome but for me it isn't. I don't really have a life outside my PhD and a five-holiday means no access to the PhD office, having to cook lunch as the cafeteria will be closed and a general disruption to my routine. Ordinarily, I prefer not to be in Bristol during such times. I spent the last two Christmases in England with my aunt in Brighton. This time I staying put in Bristol, partly because I just got back from India last week and partly as an experiment. Can I enjoy staying in Bristol even when I don't have access to the university? Can I be by myself without the crutch of university life?

Yoga Return

Today I went back to yoga class after three months away. It was, as my English colleague says, "absolutely rammed" with no floor space visible between the yoga mats. I was a little nervous about going since my tummy is still not up to scratch. The prospect of loud burps or farts escaping from me was not exciting. But, everything went off swimmingly well. I have written before about how I don't leave every yoga class brimming with energy and contentment, but this was one of those classes when I did. There have been so many times over the past year when I have arrived at the yoga class not feeling physically and mentally 100% and left feeling much better. Of course, it is an intense yoga class, so I wouldn't go if I was sick. But I think I have a fairly good idea of when my ailments are mostly mental or physical.
I am quite proud of myself for continuing to show up for the yoga class. As the only brown man in a sea of white people, mostly women who are quite cliquey, its not the most welcoming place. Today, after more than a year of attending classes, someone introduced themselves to me. I would be the first to admit that I am not the most social person, and when it comes to white people, who frequently look through you, I rarely bother to make the first effort to greet someone. Even then, surely it shouldn't have taken this long. But, this isn't a post about racial and class dynamics in a social setting. I have accepted that I am mostly going to run into middle-class white people in the activities I enjoy participating in. I participate in the activities because I enjoy them, and not necessarily to make friends, so when white people are not the most cordial towards me, I don't really care. As far as the yoga class is concerned, I realized the hard way that I am addicted to it. I missed one class due to work last year, and that spoiled the next few days for me. So I must have my weekly yoga fix. 

Podcasts

I am trying to get into the habit of listening more to podcasts, especially in the evenings. The primary reason is to reduce my screen time. If everyone has one body part or faculty that they know will trouble them in old age, mine is my eyes. I haven't been genetically blessed in that area, and laser surgery wasn't the elixir I thought it would be. Which is why I have decided to reduce the time I spend before electronic screens, by cutting the time I spend surfing the web. 

The other reason is spending  a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook is not great for one's mental health. One is usually outraged and sometimes thrilled by what one reads, and spending so much time in an armchair rage is not conducive to peace of the mind. I am a news buff who doesn't have many hobbies, so its the most natural thing in the world for me to go on Twitter or news websites when I have downtime. I have set an one hour limit for Twitter and I am happy to report that I have never bent the rules, except on one occasion when India and Pakistan were on the brink of war. 

A third reason is that the medium is not neutral. Reading someone and listening to them speak are not interchangeable experiences. My first thought was an annoying voice could be more of an (unjustified) put-off than an annoying writing style, but on the other hand, some people express themselves better through speech than writing. I want to explore this sensory experience. 

Dis-order

I have been feeling unsettled the past few weeks. It started with a minor neck injury that was the result of overtraining, coupled with an (again) minor knee ache. We all focus on protecting major load-bearing joints like the knee or the back while exercising, but it is amazing how nearly every upper-body or core exercise puts pressure on the neck. The last time I had injured my neck was when I had strained it while doing pull-ups about four years. It had taken me a week to recover, and I had had to change my sleeping position to avoid putting pressure on my neck. I have, since, adopted that sleeping position as my main sleeping position.

Coming back on point to the dis-order, the  exercise injuries were supplemented by a stomach upset which fell into that broad twilight zone of maladies which are not serious  enough to warrant medical attention, but intense enough to cause discomfort. These, coupled with the start of the formidable Indian summer, threw me off course. I wasn't able to fall back upon my two principal tools of self-care--yoga and blogging. In fact, I have been blogging and doing yoga sporadically these past couple of weeks. Blogging hasn't provided that familiar feeling of fulfillment and being centered that it usually does and neither has yoga. I feel unsettled and off balance. Yesterday, as I did upper-body exercises, my wrist--the only bodypart to have escaped attention these past weeks--started to ache. It really felt as though my body was silently rebelling against me. Mind you, none of these niggling injuries and upset stomach, were serious enough to see a doctor. 

The only thing to do is to resume blogging and yoga. This evening, in keeping with my practice of finding yoga sessions whose central message is likely to resonate with my current state of mind, I did a Listen practice, which focuses on listening to the body and the mind. I enjoyed it and also remembered why I enjoy Yoga with Adrienne so much.  So the only thing to do is to keep listening and keep showing  up for myself. 

Chickening Out

Today's health scare of the day is salmonella poisoning. I had just finished eating the chicken curry I had cooked when my landlord asked if it was undercooked as there was some blood on the bones. That triggered a chain of thoughts which ended with me felled by salmonella poisioning from undercooked chicken. My stomach hasn't been in fine fettle for the past few weeks, although the symptoms are too mild to act on. And following the meal, my stomach was unsettled for the rest of the day, because of which I decided to skip dinner.

Health wobbles that trigger thoughts of impending doom has been the theme of this year. It started with my minor illness when I reached India, and has continued ever since. Maybe it is  just a phase, maybe its a particular manifestation of my anxiety. Whatever it is,  the only thing to do is to carry on. Even when my anxiety was its worst in 2017, I never changed plans because of it. I stuck in there, and I suppose my doggedness hastened my recovery. I have the tools to cope with my anxiety as well as the common sense and a strong sense of self-preservation to deal with anything else. We don't have a say in what life throws at us, but we have some control over how we respond. And, with practice, we can learn to respond in a more useful way. 

Confidence and Courage

 Obviously there are many forms of courage, and today I am going to talk  about  the courage to accept how you feel about something or someone and the courage to act in accordance with those feelings. The dating scene is a pond full of courage traps--by which I mean temptations to act in opposition to your true feelings. We might feel flattered by someone's attention and encourage them even though we don't feel attracted towards them. Or we may pursue someone we don't really fancy because the world has adjudged them as worthy of fancy. On the other hand, we might spurn someone we fancy simply because they are not what society considers desirable. And, of course, there is the matter of lust masquerading as love. This might lead to deception even though that may not have been the original purpose.
Of course, easier said than done. Many people don't fall into the black and white zones of people we clearly fancy and whom we obviously don't but in the vast grey area in between. And, even if we are clear about how we feel about someone or something we might choose to  act against our feelings. Seems like such a minefield!

Teething Troubles

After the fiasco with the shampoo yesterday, it was the turn of my cycle to act up. I had left my cycle in a bike shed at the university because my landlord's garage is prone to break-ins. When I checked my cycle today, the front tire was flat. I took my cycle to a pumping station but wasn't able to inflate the front tire. I bought a  new pump and a headlight to replace the one damaged by the shampoo. To no avail. And to make a swimming day swell, our cracker-ass neighbour's shed started burning. Whether the fire was intentional or not I don't know, but the air was noxious and the fire brigade had to be called. Then, late in the evening, when it was freezing I braved the journey to my landlord's car in shorts to use the car pump. To make matters worse, his car was parked on the wrong side of the house (for me) which doubled the length of my journey. And, just when I  thought I had finally ended my bad-luck streak, the moment I pulled the nozzle off, the tire began to  let out air with a faint hissing sound.
The longer one is away the tougher it is to settle down and get back into one's routine. And three months is a long time. Getting used to a place, for the first time or again, takes time and this can be a frustrating period. I am a creature of routine. Not for me the life of a nomad. Teething troubles are not all bad though. While they distract from one's primary job, sometimes they take the mind off existential angst. 

Back to Bristol

After almost 24 hours since I left home, I arrived in my adopted home. I thought I would eat dinner and crash for the night, but I found myself brimming with energy, and started unpacking. It seems obvious that unpacking takes less time than packing, but how much less I realized today. It was going so well that I thought I could finish unpacking tonight itself, when accident struck, or rather I discovered the accident that had happened maybe hours ago. A push-pump shampoo bottle that I had assumed was sealed from the inside turned not to be. I find it amazing that it was standing in the store, ready to dispense shampoo to every passerby without much effort. The shampoo had leaked into a number of my clothes. What is worse is that it had leaked into my cycle headlights and caused the battery fluid to leach out. Immediately, my anxious mind went into overdrive, imagining every worst scenario of battery fluid poisoning. It was only later realized that I should have handled it using rubber gloves, a packet of which was mysteriously left in my room by my landlord. What followed were several anxious minutes of furious scrubbing, and googling. Turns out battery fluid is unlikely to poison a person but one can never be sure. My mind conjured up every remote possibility of how the battery fluid could be ingested by me or the people around me and I did the best to circumvent said possibilities. An anxious mind can be a scary place but who knows how many disasters it has averted by being extra-cautious?

Farewell to Mumbai

I am scheduled to fly back to England early  tomorrow morning after 12 weeks in India. My decision to be here for so long was based on gut instinct more than anything else. All in all, it was a good trip both on the personal and the professional front.

But, I can't help look back at the two previous times I traveled from Mumbai to England. the first time was at the start of my PhD, when I was barely recovered from the my post-dengue malaise. The top concern on my mind at that time was finding a place to stay in Bristol and the top fear was that the physical symptoms which had made my life miserable few months would come roaring back. Roaring back they did, but in circumstances that I could never have anticipated.

The second time was early last year, when I was returning after putting to rest the demons in my head. That time, my fear was that I would have to interrupt my studies again and come rushing back to India in a hurry. To make matters worse, I was returning at the height of winter. There were so many fears swimming in my head that no single one could rule me, so I  just got on with it and everything turned out fine. I jumped back into my life in England and landed on my feet. What followed was one of the most fulfilling years of my life (despite sharp jolt) when I was able to put to use the lessons that I had learned in the previous year.

This time around, I am in a completely different frame of mind. I am looking forward to going back and there are people looking forward to having me back. I have my work cut out for me, and will get cracking on it as soon as I reach. And, I look forward to visiting again. Mumbai will never be my favourite city, but it will always be home. And as long as my parents and close friends are here I will keep coming back.

Uber

Earlier tonight I booked an Uber to bring me home from the airport and waited patiently for about  20 mins before realizing that the driver had no intention of picking me up or cancelling the trip. Cancelling trips lead to penalties for drivers, I suppose. But, this man ignored my phone calls and I could see that he was hanging around the airport, which lead me to believe that he was waiting for me to cancel out of frustration so that he could pick up someone else. Incensed, I decided to get even so I decided to take a regular taxi without cancelling the ride and setting him free to pick up someone else. 

I was try not to make this another post about class/caste antagonism but it is difficult to skirt the issue. The Uber fare was half of the regular fare for a non-airconditioned taxi. It is difficult to imagine anyone making money from that fare, and even if there was I'm guessing it wasn't the driver. Yes, it was rotten behaviour to ignore my calls and leave me hanging but he probably wanted to avoid a earful of abuse. I realize focusing on structures and absolving human agency is a cop-out. We are more than automatons dancing to the tunes of our structures. But, in such a situation, it  is difficult not to. Exploitative relationships (Uber-Uber drivers, Uber users-Uber drivers) have multiple ramifications. 

Indian Summer

The summer truly arrived today. For the past week or so, it has been quite hot, but today a humid wave swept in. Mumbai is known more for its humidity than its heat and nothing says Mumbai summer more than the feeling of puddles of sweat forming under your clothes. The thing about Indian summers is just when you think it couldn't possibly get hotter, it does. However, the good thing is you won't be subject to any more posts claiming that summer has arrived, withdrawing previous announcements of the arrival of summer, simply because I won't be in India this time next week. 

End of Season

Today, I did the last interview of the India leg of my research. As I am terrible at switching off from my PhD, mainly due to a lack of hobbies, I might still potter around over the next few days. But no more scrounging for interviews, no waiting for call backs and no guilt about not trying hard enough for interviews. I have exhausted all my options--everyone on my list has either given me an itnerview or swatted me away (politely). There is too little time left to try and fix new interviews. Now, is the time to let go, sit back and enjoy the rest of my time in India.
This is not a farewell to home email. That will come a week from now. It will touch upon the triumps as well as the tribulations of the past 12 weeks. Today, I am merely celebrating the end of the research leg of my trip. I knew it had ended after I got two texts from separate potential interviewees telling me that they won't be able to meet me before I leave. I was relieved, to be honest. At the same time, I was comforted by the knowledge that I had tried my best. It is amazing how as one gets older, one learns to tricks one's own mind.