Creature of Habit

Today I decided to skip my yoga class because the deadline to submit a conference paper is tomorrow and it still needs a good amount of work. As fate would have it, I didn't manage to do any work after that and returned from uni in a funk. And I felt lousy for having missed my yoga class. Its not like I leave every yoga class feeling elated, although that has happened on occasion. I think what it is is I am a creature of habit as well as a fitness junkie, so any unanticipated change in my exercise routine which results in me missing an intensive workout makes me feel like crap. If it had been an anticipated change I would have swapped things around to make sure that I got in an intensive workout on another day. As it happens, I still did a reasonably intensive workout but that did little to lift my mood.
In what other ways am I a creature of habit? I have two fried eggs and two toasts for breakfast everyday. I cook chicken every weekend, and during the week I alternate between rajma and cauli flower and chole and brinjal. Who says you cannot routinize variety? Spontaneity requires time and effort, and I can't be bothered. My food schedule is varied enough without being a pain in the butt. Why am i this way? I would like to believe that a PhD is so consuming that you crave ease and simplicity in the other areas of your life, especially the day-to-day survival stuff. But, maybe I am just a stick in the mud. 

Creepy Until Proven Otherwise

Today, one of my friends in Holland told me that she was considering sharing an apartment with an Indian guy. I told her to be careful and to assume he was a creep until he proved otherwise. And, I didn't feel bad saying that. Maybe it is the effect of #MeToo. I know I am perpetuating a stereotype  of South Asian men as creepy and/or geeky, a stereotype that I have personally faced the consequences of. But the recent flood of #metoo stories has showed that there are a lot of creepy Indian men even, or especially, in the privileged circles that I inhabit in India. This is not to say that creepiness is a uniquely Indian male phenomenon. Not by a long shot.  But, it seems like many of us urban upper-middle-class Indian men who have been exposed to the West have managed to internalize a toxic combination of Indian and Western misogyny. Both are awful in themselves but truly horrible when put together. Men who think that they have broken away from Indian patriarchy and consider themselves "woke" or progressive, even feminist. But, the sense  of entitlement runs deep. To see oneself as immune from centuries of patriarchal conditioning, to see oneself as special, is the pinnacle of entitlement. It absolves us from introspecting and examining our behaviour towards women. As a consequence, wokeness is seen as deserving of rewards. It becomes a credit card without a spending limit that can be encashed for sexual favours. 

Shorter Days

Today was the first working day after daylight savings ended, and it felt weird. It was dark well before I finished teaching my tutorial at 5:45 pm and I had to cycle through two parks while keeping my eyes peeled for dogs and pedestrians.When I reached home and sat down with a cup of tea while chatting to my housemate, a lethargy came swiftly over me. I thought I would enjoy the darkness and slower pace of winter evenings, but the transition is still discombobulating. I thought a yoga session would perk me up, but today was one of those rare days when yoga did nothing for me. With the shorter days, I realize I will have to be more productive during the day unless I want to cycle back in the pitch dark every night. While I love the dark, it is too unsafe to ride my cycle without a light, and that beats the purpose.
I am still not used to being in a place with changing seasons. The days go from being too short in winter to being too long in the summer very quickly and the intervening period when days and nights are well balanced is woefully short. But at least I sleep better in the winters. Last summer was particularly bad, not least because of the tumultous event in my personal life.

Daylight Dissavings and Two Years in England

The clocks went back last night and it was dark by 5 pm. I commemorated the official start of winter by doing a "Cosy Yoga" session this evening. I can't remember the last time I did this session, but it was possibly in April. There was no incentive to be cozy during the unseasonably warm summer and the mild autumn that followed, but temperatures have dropped quite sharply in the past few days.
During the session, I suddenly remembered that it was also exactly two years since I first arrived in England, which unleashed a flood of emotions. What a two years it has been! When I arrived here, I hadn't fully recovered from my first "wobble". Little did I know the second bigger wobble, which would send me scurrying home and force me to confront my demons, was just a few months away. I remember I spent the first few days with my aunt in Brighton. My mind was mostly occupied with finding a place to stay within the first week while I stayed at an AirBnb. And here I am, two years later, still in the same AirBnB with  no intention of moving out. British Summer Time ended two days after I arrived in England, and on my last evening in Brighton it was dark by 5pm. I remember feeling a pit in my stomach. The next day would be the start of my new life in England.
Life since then has gone nothing according to plan and I am so glad that it hasn't. I am a different person than I was two years ago, or maybe I am the same person, but minus a lot of existential angst and guilt. I wonder what the next two years will bring.

Glastonbury

My housemate and I visited Glastonbury today. The main attraction of this Somerset town is the Tor of Glastonbury, which is a tower on  a hill with panoramic vistas. But, Glastonbury is more famous as an  abode for paganism and witchcraft. We visited a few shops which sold pagan merchandise, which mostly consists of books, incense, clothes and household decorative items. It was like stepping into another world, and I was struck by how elaborate it was. It is one thing to create what the world would call an alternate reality, but it is another to build it up with such attention to detail. These people were not garden-variety hippies, who are a dime-a-dozen in Bristol. They have their own traditions, practices and myths--their own world, which co-exists with the "real" world. Of course, that they can immerse themselves in this alternate world while continuing to exist in the "real" world is puzzling. These are not monks in a remote monastery nor are they members of a persecuted sect. They are mostly white, and judging by the prices of the merchandise, quite well-to-do. Sects or cults which are populated by the well-to-do are seldom persecuted.
But, who am I to judge it or dismiss it as consumerism masquerading as mysticism and otherworldliness. There are far worse ways of spending money and if this lifestyle helps some people sleep better at night, more power to them. 

Weekend

Its Friday evening and the end of a grinding week in which I was more productive than I have been for months. But my pile of work seems as large as before. At the start of this week, I got some clarity about the next course of action from my PhD supervisor and it involves copious amounts of reading. In hindsight, the course of action should have been obvious, but that is the thing about good ideas. Their glows extends into the past as well as into the future.
The good thing about being swamped with work is being swamped. Existential angst goes out the window. I am might die poor and lonely but I still have a million things to do over the next few months. My poor lonely death can wait.

Schadenfreude

Last week, I read an article on schadenfreude, which is taking pleasure in the failures or misfortunes of others. More than scahdenfreude, I often fail to feel sorry enough for the misfortune of dear ones and find myself not sharing in their joys. I used to feel guilty about it too, before I embarked upon changing my relationship to guilt.
It is easy to dismiss scahdenfreude by saying misery loves company. But, one need not be miserable to feel schadenfreude. To fail is human and one need not feel guilty for being reminded of the humanity of others, especially those we admire, or even envy. I would rather feel a momentary dash of scahdenfreude than judge people and see them fall in my estimation following a failure. And schadenfreude is also a humbling reminder of our own humanity.
Also, as the article points out, it is perfectly possible to feel both schadenfreude mixed with sympathy. In fact, as humans we seldom experience emotions as pure unadulterated forces of the heart. We experience emotions as a tantalizing mix of different and simultaneous feelings which are in flux. For instance, love is often laced with envy, lust, resentment, mirth. Expecting to feel unadulterated emotions and berating oneself for not feeling the appropriate pure emotion is a recipe for internal turmoil. The labels that we give emotions are abstractions that help us make sense of our complex reality. But expecting reality to fit into these boxes and into just one box at a time is not a great idea.
Of course, this is not a free pass for bad behaviour under the influence of strong emotions. We have control over our actions--there is a world of difference between feeling jealous and acting jealous. We also have control over the language we use to process our emotions. Changing the language we use to describe our emotions can sometimes blunt their raw force.