One of the interesting phases of my life started in June 2021. I'm hoping it will have a happy and peaceful ending in April 2025. While events of diverse natures happened during this period, I think my near and dear ones will identify this as "The Presidentship" period of my life, if ever they happen to give me some happy space in their minds. I became the President of my apartment's Resident Welfare Association (RWA) in June 2021.
Many non-routine developments happened during my presidentship. These can be typed as both personal and societal in nature, some key ones are as follows:
- Covid 2nd wave. Gravity of this situation, for a person presiding over 100 households of which around 40 were directly impacted, cannot be expressed in few words.
- A major infrastructural, financial, and cultural transformation of my apartment. I've written a lil bit about this in the "Giving Back to the Society" section of my last post I am rich... I intend to write about some interesting episodes from this journey, but in a later post.
- A stressful phase in relationships. Looking back at it in retrospective, I feel that it was no different than what almost all of my social peers have experienced. But my otherwise "modern" peers still consider talking about it as a kind of a taboo. Like they still feel awkward about mentioning the word "periods" (menstruation) in front of friends, family, or people of the opposite sex.
- My family's full exit from our natives. My now senior citizens parents shifted and settled in another flat in my apartment.
- My sister's parenthood. We could not welcome this in the blissful manner that maybe 99% of our known ones do. My nephew was born 3-months premature and he spent first four months of his life in a hospital, fighting a very long battle of survival. My parents didn't have a valid tourist visa to USA and, post Covid, there was a 10-12 months waiting for the visa interviews. Alongside this my mother had some major age-related health issues that aggravated with the mental stress because of my sister's situation.
- At work, a long battle for my own survival (Hiring an elephant to do a monkey's job).
- And finally, the fulfilment of some long pending wishes of my wife. I gifted her a big SUV on her 35th birthday and arranged for a sea side picture perfect celebration on her 37th birthday. The SUV was partly a penance to the financial losses that I'd incurred in 2018-20, when I realized that I could have spent an equivalent amount to make my family happy.
I want to re-emphasize that the above events happened in parallel to the mundane aspects of life - like my "modern" parenting, support for my wife's dental practice, parents' care, family travels, financial management, house repairs, and routine misunderstandings with loved ones. And of course, my ageing. It's been around an year now since I started coloring my greying as well as reducing hair.
Being one of those overthinking idiots, I have a tendency of looking back at all this and catching the "hero syndrome". But thanks to some of the books and my introspections, I'm able to realize soon whenever I start walking down this false lane of imagination and self elation.
I feel there is an interesting catch here -
- Do good for family, society, and people around you.
- Enjoy the core, inner happiness that comes with being able to do good for others. I heard in one of the podcasts of a happy person - "Good Karma is a benediction..".
- Don't think of yourself as the hero who has risen above the rest.
- Few of these others to whom you've done the unpopular good will lift you above the rest.
- The lil acknowledgement by the "few" is the wealth that not many others have. This wealth enables you to expand your circle of influence and do more good.
- As you keep going around in this circle, it keeps growing bigger. You can now affect the existence around you in a more beautiful manner.
But, as always, there is a cost associated with such endeavors. You, as an individual, may be lucky to find the way out of the hole. But your close ones, especially your family and friends might still be stuck inside that hole. Their subconscious egos drive them to join the idiots who burn out of envy, and who want to somehow burn you down to fall back inside. This is why your family, for whom you do more than 90% of your "good for others", starts picking on the remaining 10%. They blame the 10% for all the unwanted things that happen in their combined lives with you. If you prove to them their 90% share, then there is an infighting to claim the bigger portion of that 90%.
Eventually, few members of your family start competing with you. They do this subconsciously and in a very inorganic manner. Their egos feel further deprived when they realize that there's a long ladder to climb. Then they start feeling that your love for them is vanishing, and your gaze is shifting outward. Your love and affection are perceived to have started becoming a property of others. That 10% and the others' share of the 90% becomes the cause of the overload that wears your body and mind out. Your sickness and stress are attributed to all others.
You fight the ego with your love and care. You win most of the battles, coz your reason has more substance and more meaning than the idiotic ego. But eventually, the battered ego brings out the Brahmastra, the ultimate weapon, in the form of an extremely disrespectful behavior that attacks your belief that you'll be able to free your loved ones from the captivity of their egos. They deprive you of the hope that some day you'll be able to get the same love and understanding that you shower upon them. You face a complete apathy towards your own needs of love and understanding from your family.
I am not a popular writer. Only a few, countable folks have the patience to read through my unleashed expressions. Majority of those who read this post, and who know me personally, may start guessing who are those idiot(s) in my life. They may even have that never-expressed but bluntly visible joy of seeing another inmate dealing with issues of love, acceptance and mutual disrespect :). If they cared to probe, they'd know that I am in the process of a reform. I am holding on to the hope that I'll be able to rise from the ashes, and take my dear ones along, on the flight to the free world.
I watched a recent interview of Sadhguru in which he says something like - "Never in the history of human existence, mankind has had as many comforts and as many resources as we have today. And yet, we crib like never before..".
So how did I meet a maid who pays an income tax of 10 lacs per annum?
For many years, I have been struggling with what various Ayurvedic massage therapists diagnosed as knots in my neck and shoulder muscles. Causes are obvious - IT profession, sedentary lifestyle, and incorrect postures while doing various routine activities. The symptoms of this condition include frequent neck sprains, heaviness of the head, and burning eyes by as soon as 5pm on an otherwise normal day.
By early 2023, my symptoms became more frequent and intense, and they started causing more discomfort than ever before. I consulted a well-known Orthopaedic surgeon who I'd consulted recently for my mother's health issues. I clicked photographs of my various routine postures before going for the consultation. I wanted to show those photos to the doc to reconfirm if bad posture was the only cause that we needed to target to fix my condition. The doc reprimanded me for my bad posture, told me the required corrections, and advised physiotherapy. I started therapy at a very popular physiotherapist in my locality. I knew few people who'd benefited from this therapist. My first impression of her was not great. She exhibited the usual signs of the "hole-mates". But, to my surprise, the treatment beds in her clinic were almost 100% occupied for almost throughout the working hours of the clinic. She talked as if she were extended family of all the patients and attendants. So I flushed my first impression and told myself to trust my treating doc.
Transcutaneous Electrical Neuromuscular Stimulation (TENS) is a non-invasive therapy given to most patients at most physiotherapy clinics. After my first three sessions of TENS, my head started feeling weightless. I started feeling very relaxed physically, and happily sleepy mentally. I told myself that my ignorance and denial of a medical intervention caused me an avoidable discomfort for so long. While I was in this happy state, the physio talked me into subscribing to a 15-day prepaid therapy treatment, and so I joined her extended family.
After a week I realized that irrespective of the patient condition, she applied same set of treatments and therapies to all her patients, with similar small talks. For me, the therapy time, which was around 4pm in the afternoon, was a lil break from my "heroics". I enjoyed a lil power nap during the therapy. The initial feeling of relief from the therapy fizzled away after five sessions. When I told this to the physio, she told that my muscle tensions are extreme and that she'll need to go next level of treatment. She prescribed a slightly invasive, acupuncture-type needle therapy to release the tensions. I told her that my skin is sensitive and it catches allergies or reactions quicker than normal. But she was oozing with confidence of having done it for hundreds of patients, and reassured me of her experience of handling any post therapy conditions. So I agreed.
In parallel to my therapy, we'd planned a family trip to our favorite travel destination, Goa. This would be our first long drive and vacation in our new big SUV. All of us were excited about the drive. This time we wanted to tick off "Casino" from our bucket list. My head was feeling lighter than ever, son's school term was almost over, and wife's clinic had a leaner business during this time. So the family mood was all set for the trip.
However, just a week before the trip, my back popped open with pus-filled eczema at multiple places. This was after I was talked-into agreeing for a second session of the needle therapy. After my first session, a little inflammation had developed at one of the spots where needles were pricked. Next day, a sticky and irritating liquid had started flowing from that spot. When I showed that to the physio, she told it's just that my body has lot of toxins and they were getting released. "Toxin filled bodies..." is a very easily accepted idea in my current world. She reassured "Nothing to worry about.." and continued with the second session. Soon that spot caught a kind of an infection. Now I could not touch my back against anything.
Our planned trip was coming closer. I didn't want to cancel it because of my condition. So I consulted a skin doc at a nearby and credible clinic. The doc's reaction after looking at my back was a depressing one. She immediately prescribed some meds and ointments to help me. The condition improved slightly and a few days later, I was driving my family to Goa. While driving, I just kept my shirt on the front of my torso, like we wear a bed sheet while sleeping, pressing it against my chest with the car seat belt. My back was bare, open to air, with an ointment applied all over it. I didn't touch my back to the seat backrest. Thanks to the big SUV, the drive was still quite comfortable. We just got a few stares at tolls and police check-posts. In Goa, I didn't do my usual fun activities this time, but my wife and son had their share of fun and new experiences. They adjusted and adapted well to my condition, applying ointments at my back regularly and not asking too much out of me.
I recovered completely after a few weeks of returning from Goa. I resolved that I'll never go to that physio again. I decided to avoid the unpleasant argument of demanding the refund of the remaining amount from my prepaid subscription. I had realized that my first impression of the physio was not a completely wrong one. My richness allowed me to bear this loss of money rather than troubling myself further, by arguing with an idiot.
I practiced the posture corrections and added a few neck exercises to the stretches that I did after my daily morning walks. This helped to some extent and made my condition bearable again. I could continue doing my routine "heroics" :).
About an year later, in April 2024, my symptoms became severe. During one of my mother's medical consultation with an ENT doc, I became aware of a condition called "tinnitus". A person having "tinnitus" perceives a buzzing noise in the ear or head even when there is no external source of sound. Once, while I was sitting alone in a conference room at my workplace, I realized that I had tinnitus. I heard a loud buzzing sound in a room which otherwise had pin drop silence. I tested myself by moving out of the building, onto the road, drinking some water, and then talking to someone over the phone. I didn't feel the sound while engaging with people or in non-silent surroundings, but I heard it when I sat still in silence. I started noticing it during my morning peace time. Soon I got paranoid about it. This, added to my persistent neck sprains and headaches, made me scared about my mental health.
Whenever I'd talk about my this condition with my wife, she'd tell me to give up one or the other of the many parallel stresses that she thought I had. Of course, according to her, she was not the source for any of my stresses. To the grown up great thinkers of my family - my parents, sister, and wife - I have always been considered to be blessed to be free of long-term practical stresses of life. I see no merit in trying to challenge this status quo, as there are multiple conflicts of interests between the defendant and the jury. As my worries about my health condition grew, I requested my wife to find a suitable neurologist and fix me an appointment with the same.
It was in May 2024, worried I went for the appointment. This time, the first impression was more reassuring. The doc was a middle-aged Kannadiga man and he exhibited both experience as well as calm. He heard me patiently, I told him about my symptoms and the latest tinnitus. He did my basic neurological examination and then suddenly asked me if I had any relationship stress. I was taken by surprise by the question. I paused for a split second, and then said No. He processed my response and then told something like - "..it looks like some chemical imbalance in your brain. Still we need to rule out any physiological conditions like tumor or nerve damage, before we can pursue a line of treatment...". I freaked out hearing the word "tumor". It was 8pm in the night when he recommended an MRI brain to me. I could have got it done the next day, but my paranoia and anxiety were such that I called a diagnostic lab, fixed the last available slot and rushed for the scan.
I have been through many severe medical conditions and many medical procedures have been done on me since my childhood. As I aged, I became equanimous with most of the medical procedures. But this scan was scary. I had to remain still and boxed inside a cold enclosure for 45 mins, with ceiling just a few inches above my nose and the crazy sounds of the imaging machine. Claustrophobia was just a word to me until then. My heart rate increased, I was very anxious. For the first time in my life, I felt like pressing the panic button and scream for help to get out of it. Somehow I survived. I closed my eyes tight and started chanting Hanuman Chalisa repeatedly. I chanted for the entire 45 minutes. I experienced a never-felt-before relief when I came out of the equipment. I dressed up and rushed to my home, still shaking on remembering the last 45 minutes. I picked some beer on the way and drank to sleep.
Next morning, the anxious wait for the reports started. It was a Sunday and I, as the "The President" was invited to the inauguration of the new hospital that'd opened just next to my apartment. I got the report just around the time when the inauguration ceremony was about to start. I skipped the ceremony and rushed to meet my neurologist. I was eagerly seeking for a reassurance that there was nothing serious.
On seeing the reports, the neurologist reassured that all was well and I just needed to be treated to restore the chemical balance of my brain. At this time, out of nowhere, I remembered "the chemical locha.." from the popular Sanjay Dutt movie "Lage Raho Munna Bhai" :). I wanted to call a "Circuit" friend and tell - "bhidu, yeh doctor log bol rehle ki apun k dimaad mein kuch locha hogela hai...". I quickly flushed my filmy thoughts aside and asked the doc about the line of treatment. He looked at my blood reports and suggested that, along with targeting the chemical locha, we also needed to replenish my Vitamin B12 levels which seemed to be very low. He prescribed some brain chemicals tablets which were to be taken daily, and B12 injections which were to be taken weekly, for 12 weeks.
Within three to four days of starting the tablets, my symptoms started easing out. Once again my head became light in weight, this time in a more sustainable manner. I started sleeping the moment I hit the bed, even if it was for a 5 min break from my morning slog in my "heroics". Never before in my professional career, I had slept during the day. My ever running brain felt like being in a slow-motion always. Thoughts, especially the sad and stressful ones, stopped persisting in my brain. I could not chant my daily prayers at my usual pace, even if I consciously put an effort to speak faster.
I enjoyed the slowdown for a month, until I realized that my masculinity had also gone on vacation. I discussed this my wife. She was ok and supportive, primarily because she liked my slowdown, in general. But I felt embarrassed. I immediately booked a follow-up with the doc and told him about my "overall slowdown". He again surprised me by asking - "How's your sex life?". I was shocked as well as relieved. He told further that this was a general side-effect of the meds, it kicks in in two-three weeks of starting the treatment, and fizzles away by the end of sixth or seventh week. I was again reassured. So both the doc and I were confident that the treatment was working as expected, and we can pursue it further.
By the end of eighth week, my masculinity was happily back home. But while coming back it brought along with it my adolescence. I started having a lot of pimples and whiteheads all over my face. I thought it could be because of climate, water quality variations, exposure to heat and dust etc. I consulted a skin doctor at the newly operational Hospital next door. I received, and enjoyed, a preferential treatment from the Hospital staff, as "The President".
I told my recent medical history to the dermatologist and she attributed my skin condition to the brain chemicals meds. Now I was in a fix. Whether to have better skin or better brain. I preferred brain for another one month. But then my skin condition worsened and I got painful pimples all over my face and my back (again).
I took the situation back to the neurologist and told him to end the treatment in a medically appropriate manner. I told neck sprain is better than this ugly and more uncomfortable skin condition. He started the withdrawal treatment by tapering the dose of the brain chemicals to a closure. The closure took about another month. Post that I consulted the skin doc again and asked her if we could expedite the recovery from the skin condition. The skin doc told that she could not give the recovery accelerator treatment coz that'd cause more headaches :). So I settled to pursue the slow recovery. But the recovery did not happen as expected.
Overthinking of myself as a fool hopping from modern medicine specialists to another, my ego told me to try out the "holistic" Naturopathy at an Ayurveda center. I googled a nearby Ayurvedic clinic and consulted there. The ayurvedic doc exuberated an exceptional confidence. He told me that my problem was chicken-shit and he will make my skin clean and smooth like a marble, within a few weeks. I subscribed since I thought it was safe, non-invasive, and no meds were to be consumed. As I started with the treatment, the doc made one of his assistants rub my whole body with oil and god-knows-what dust and powders. This was done for seven days at a stretch. After the massage, the doc punctured my neck, back, and skull with needles (again), labeling this as a "holistic" acupuncture treatment. After all the procedures, he administered Vitamin D and B12 injections, echoing my neurologist's advice that B12 deficiency could be the reason behind weird behavior of our nervous system which could lead to my otherwise unexplainable symptoms.
If you get massaged everyday, naturally your body will feel relieved. I also felt the general relief, but my skin condition did not improve much. I started losing faith in this therapy as well. However, an important thing struck me during this therapy. During his small talks which were mainly aimed at retaining customers, the Ayurvedic doc mentioned to me that maybe my body was not getting enough exercise and movement which it must have been used to in my younger days. This gradual, over the years but steep drop in activity could be the cause of slower detoxification of the body. And hence these physiological problems and symptoms. This rung a bell in my mind, this time the actual one, not the one attributed to "tinnitus".
While I was undergoing allopathic treatments in neurology and dermatology, my family had planned another trip to Sikkim, in early October of 2024. But because of certain uncontrollable circumstances, like delays in completion of a major carpentry work at home, my chemical locha and skin issues, my health related and general stresses, and other practical difficulties, we could not travel as planned. We replanned our trip to mid-Nov, assuming that my skin condition would improve and we'd get some rest post completion of the big carpentry work and subsequent minor home renovations.
The Sikkim trip gave me a pretext to ditch Naturopathy. By then I'd realized that it was my yet another foolish endeavor to (mis)treat my physical condition. A few days before the start of our trip, I reflected on the small talk from the Naturopathy doc and proposed to my wife that I wanted to stop using our maid's services for sweeping and mopping the house. I wanted to try doing this task myself, as maybe a one or two months pilot project. I proposed that we continued to avail other services from our domestic helps, like washing the utensils, cooking, bathrooms cleaning etc. I took a lil hint and learning from the Covid lockdown days when we could not avail services from any of our maids and did all household chores ourselves.
Prior to Covid, my wife and I were both members of Cultfit for about two years. Cultfit is a very popular, modern and socially marketable fitness subscription. It offers professionals-led mixed workout formats like Strength & Conditioning (S&C), Boxing, Dance Fitness, Hatha Yoga, Gym etc. to its subscribers. While I preferred and did Yoga for a considerable part of my membership, my wife mostly did S&C and dance fitness. An important exercise in S&C is duck-walk which works on your core, specifically the glutes. While doing sweeping and mopping during Covid, I'd realized that sweeping while sitting was a very effective variation of duck-walk. My wife and I had both lost around 5kgs each during the two months of the Covid lockdown. This was a feat that we could not achieve in more that two years of our fitness sessions at Cultfit centers. There's nothing wrong with the Cultfit offerings, I believe majority of its members have benefitted greatly from their subscriptions. I feel that it just did not work for my and my wife's core nature and lifestyle.
To my proposal of trimming down our maid's services, my wife reacted as if I had asked for both of her kidneys. I can't blame her for her initial reaction. This was a very unusual and unexpected proposal that brutally challenged the conventional modern idiotism of the class of "riches" to which we both belong. However, I did hope that I'd be able to talk her into a better understanding. But what followed was a three day battle that reached the degrees of the very stressful phase of our relationship that we'd left behind us maybe a couple of years back. The unavoidable practicality of our Sikkim trip came to the rescue. We achieved a ceasefire agreement and travelled to the much needed change of environment.
The Sikkim trip was amazing, it was very satisfying for everyone in my family. Looking at it in retrospect, personally, I realized that I didn't experience any symptoms of my "chemical locha" while I was in Sikkim. I was walking more than 10K steps almost every day, on a touph mountain terrain. In fact, I ran around 100 meters uphill on a road that was 14000 ft above the sea level. This was while I was trying to catch up to my son who was riding a Yak that had taken off with him onboard before my wife and I could realize.
After returning from Sikkim, I reassessed and concluded that my proposal was worth giving another try for acceptance. It is convenient to pursue anytime of the day, at personal will and mood. It gets rid of time and efforts in logistics like booking a workout a day in advance, canceling bookings before a deadline if late or no show, dressing up, reaching the center on time to avoid denial of entry, maintaining dedicated workout shoes etc. It is practically more sustainable. Also, it helps set some example of DIY (Do It Yourself) culture for our son. The culture is rare and often eluded by our rich and entitled next generation.
So I once again tried to push through my application for appointment as one of the maids of the house. I reassured her that I'd give better quality service and lesser trouble than our regular maid. There won't be uninformed leaves and subsequent unplanned self-services.
Thankfully, my wife conceded and allowed me to try out my pilot project. It has been around four months now since I have settled into my new part-time job. My "chemical locha" seems to have sorted now. There's no "tinnitus", there's a lil sound at times but it's bearable, as the docs tell such patients that eventually they have to learn to live with it. Every morning, after completing my job, my body feels good, aptly worked out, and aptly warmed up to perform the rest of my "heroics" :). On a few off days, which range from 2-4 in a month, my wife pitches in and covers up for me. If she can't pitch in, coz of her tight schedules, I complete the job at a later than usual time. I feel good about getting her support and understanding. Only once in these four months, there was an instance where I deferred mopping by a lil more than usual. This was because of an ad-hoc morning meeting at my IT job. This led to a flare up between us when my wife proposed that we employed back our usual maid, if the additional work was becoming too much for me to manage. I think I can concede this instance as a one-off. But this instance helped me learn, a bit by assumption, about how our maids might feel when we reprimand them for such one-off situations.
For my skin, I recently consulted a super specialist. The consultation made me realize the relevance of super specialties in modern medicine. She looked at my back in awe and her first question was if I took any B12 injections prior to the development of this condition. I was startled and happily surprised that maybe she took a perfect shot at identifying the root cause. So I've started on another three months long treatment. I am hoping that this is finally the correct one.
Looking back at my medical ordeal over the last two years, I am realizing how my fast thinking, overly resourceful, full of knowledge, and socially pumped ego made me run in all directions, like a headless chicken. Our human species has evolved from animals who act more and think less. In our initial phase of evolution, we had physically strenuous daily routines and we fought hard to survive while living in and with the wild. Our ancestors and forefathers worked hard, ploughed fields, fought battles, lived without basic amenities and still built forts, temples, empires, and our great culture. Our freedom fighters bore unimaginable physical atrocities. And all we want to do to look (and not actually be) good is 30 mins of walk or a couple of hours of gym or a tailored diet full of exotic ingredients or weekend sports. This while working for our foreign or foreign-influenced masters and sitting, eating, sipping tea or coffee, and gossiping for the most part of our days. The never seen before fat pays make us feel entitled to have servants to do daily chores of our lil empire.
Most of my "rich" countrymen believe that our country has come out of slavery after a long struggle, now's the time to live and feel like kings and queens. The tired kings and queens ease themselves out by indulging in drinking, dining, shopping, travelling and spending money on adopted foreign habits. We've adopted our indulgences mostly from the flamboyant Americans. We've adopted diplomacy, cunningness, elites' dominance over the non-elites, apathy, and Victorian mannerism from our British rulers. Selectively, and very smartly, we've excluded active lifestyles and DIY culture from our influencers. We flaunt our filtered and diligently selected better-looking pics and experiences on social media, to massage our egos with the virtual likes and praises. And then we feel further compelled to walk/gym/diet in desperation of converting our social projections into reality - a circle of our great conventional idiotism.
My "Presidentship" has made me a lil more popular and better heard, relatively, within my clan of idiots. People take note of the expanse of my influence in diverse social and societal aspects. During my American-social indulgences, I often share and discuss bytes from my "leashed" expressions. I often surprise my fellow indulgers with the accounts of how an avoidable and unpopular social good resulted in an unexpected reward, a better perspective, and a greater sense of happiness and social security. The surprise is often accompanied with a suppressed "conventional" envy which I must admit that I've experienced myself when someone else is the storyteller. At times, I challenge the status quo a lil too much, ending up offending some of the folks.
Of late, in my recent hangouts with friends, whenever we discuss mundane topics like healthy habits, gluten-free and other "abra-ka-dabra" diets, home coaching by fitness pros, workout studios in the vicinity etc. I pitch in with statements like - "I get paid for working out..". In one of the hangouts, the topic of maids and their tantrums came to the table. I pitched - "..we don't have any trouble with our maid.. she's hard working, particular, and tantrum free..". I added - "... she's so rich that she pays approx. 10 lac as her annual income tax.." and "..she's me myself..". I give them the bytes of my reasons and benefits that I've derived so far from my pilot project. Amused they ask - ".. do you want to pick up more houses to earn more...", happily I reply - "... sorry madam! time nahi hai.." :)
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