Failure isn't an option....Trying is!!

A little over a year ago, I set a personal goal for myself. I had visited 31 countries as on June 2019 and I pledged to complete 40 countries before i turned 40 in September 2020. With the uphill task of 9 countries to be done in 15 months, it took so much from my family, friends and everyone who supported me. My husband supported me financially in my endeavour and my family and my kids-everyone revolved around the plan so I could make it happen for myself.

By February 2020, I had added 6 pretty nations including Montenegro, Croatia, Hungary, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina & Slovakia to the list. I was 3 shy of my target of 40 countries. I wanted to wrap up my target by March itself with a couple retreat planned to Jordan, Israel and Egypt. Then I wanted to celebrate my triumph with the kids during their Summer vacations by heading to 41 and beyond. And then Covid struck. But this blog post isn't only about the fact about how the pandemic has affected my plans and how disheartened I am, but also what about why I went on this path and what I have achieved.

During the last 12 months, I have been asked several times in varying tones- 'Whats the big deal about 40?', 'Why only travel goals?' 'Why do you want to do 40 countries?' 'What difference will it make if you complete 40?' BLAH BLAH....My answer to everyone would always be- "Because this is the current purpose of my life. " And my opening discourse would go on to say- "We live entire lifetimes tending to the everyday things. The getting up in the morning, the cleaning up, cooking meals, bathing, sending kids to school, going to work, eating our meals, exercising, going out with friends, sleeping.....Everything goes on, everyday. Everyone is doing the same/similar things day after day. We live...Ultimately we start existing... I wanted to start living again and not exist. I wanted excitement and enthusiasm to return. I wanted my life to have a Personal Goal."

I found myself guilty for leaving my family and kids unattended to achieve this. I found myself guilty of leaving my work for days altogether. I found myself guilty of leaving the husband incharge of not only work but also the home front. I found myself guilty of asking the elder one to look out for her younger sibling and grow up before her time. I found myself guilty of putting my pleasure first!

But what did I gain? I gained my kids respect. My kids realised the importance of goals. They understood how we need to set a goal and go all out for it. I gained so much of self esteem. A new found confidence in myself, from going to new places, doing things on my own, being alone gave me a whole new perspective to life. I gained my friends back. I had made my life so busy that I didn't have time to reconnect with my friends on a regular basis. Suddenly I had all my friends having my back. People rallied around me to push me on and help me achieve this personal goal. I gained my family's support. Little did i think that the elders in my family would understand my passion. But they did. My parents and my mother in law were my biggest cheerleaders, they sent me off each time with their blessings and looked after my nest too.

And now, exactly 2 months to my deadline, I was forced to question myself. Was it really worth it? I've spent 4 months being nowhere but home. With no travel happening for anyone, it seems I will end up with a zoom call on my 40th and with 37 countries on the passport. Some of you may still think- 'So, whats the big deal? ' Well, for me, it is. I haven't tried so hard to achieve something all my life. I haven't dreamt so much about anything else. I haven't spoken so much to everyone I know about anything but this. I have lived more in those 6 months than I did in the last 6 years. That's the kind of perspective a 'goal' gave me. It changed me on all fronts. It made me live and look forward to the next day. It made me happy. I hope I can keep the happiness intact and keep believing that it will happen.

I am happy I tried. I am happy I dreamt.

And Mr/Ms Covid- you can't take what I have achieved so far. I am down but not out.
I have 2 months and 3 countries to go.
The world will open up. The planes will start jet-setting.
The airports will bustle and I will be there when that happens!

COVID ne humhe sab kuch sikha diya

Life has changed in the last 2 months to such an extent that I couldn't help but notice the habits that have banished now. I've tried to turn poetic to express myself about the bad habits that no one could change in us Indians which the powerful Pandemic has.

From traffic jams on the street to silent crossroads in a beat,
From no helmets on the bike to face shields in a spike.
COVID ne humhe sab kuch sikha diya.

From bargaining on the road side to online grocery in our stride,
From urinating on the road to toilet papers we did horde.
COVID ne humhe saaf bana diya.

From spitting paan on the wall to scrubbing them clean till they fall,
From eating with dirty hands to sanitisers, soaps & disinfectants we understand.
COVID ne humhe hygeine sikha diya.

From never queuing up in a line to social distance we define,
From not acknowledging our fellow men to tears of joy on seeing an actual human.
COVID ne humhe etiquettes sikha diya.

From turning up late at work to several zoom meetings in a quirk,
From the endless sutta smokes to 12 hour shifts and late night jokes.
COVID ne humhe hard working bana diya.

From smog and air pollution to extreme cleanliness solution,
From grey in the skies to spotting rainbows so high.
COVID ne humhe clean saans dila diya.

From honking in a scorch to chanting music on our porch,
From scratching the crotch & picking the nose to wearing washed clothes & cleaning our toes.
COVID ne humhe mannerism sikha diya.

From roadside gol gappa and chaat to baking cakes and learning art,
From a couch potato to jhadu pocha and doing the dough.
COVID ne humhe multitasker bana diya.

HOPE- Hold on for Positive Energy

In the last 3 weeks, I have tried to keep my morale high. I have tried to be engaged with kids and house along with office work to keep myself calm. I have learnt a few new things in the last few days and have found peace in exercising, pranayam and doodling. But time and again, the mind tricks me and goes back to its pessimistic ways. The powerful mind wanders off to the land of negativity each moment that I free it.

But two things happened this morning that gave me rejuvenated energy to control the mind and my feelings so Lockdown 2.0 can be approached with positivity. Sharing it on my blog so that everyone who reads it can also find renewed energy and so I am also reminded daily to be positive. This morning my cleaner(part timer) came to ask for her March salary. While i gave her the money, we both sat down for a chit chat over chai. (with appropriate sanitisers, masks and social distancing). I wanted to understand how her family and those around her were faring in these times. It was surprising she hadn't asked for her salary all this while so I was curious on how they were managing.

She told me that where she and many daily workers like herself lived there was a lot of police doing the rounds. The police were not only stopping them from going out to work but also distributing food once daily. The police were even volunteering to get their rations on a weekly basis so they didn't have to step out. There was dry ration available to buy at very discounted prices, she said. Every 2-3 days, some government organisation or NGO was also coming to distribute cooked meals in their areas(house by house). She said they had enough of food and that's why she hadn't come to get her salary. She also told me that her son( in 9th class in a Kendriya Vidyala school) was having online classes. He, along with few more friends were sharing a device that someone owned and they studied during those classes together. When their classes were over, they were loaning that device to other set of students to study their online classes. She said, the only thing missing was that she was bored. She missed her daily activity of work. She in fact, requested me to allow her to resume work. I told her to hold on for two more weeks and then we shall decide. As she went back, my thoughts went out to those young slum kids who were sharing a laptop to study, to those organisations distributing food, to those policemen volunteering to get rations. This is HOPE.

As I was smiling at these thoughts, I sat back to listen to the PM's address. As he announced Lockdown 2.0 till May 3, my younger one (who is an ardent Modi fan) walked in. Oh, Modiji is talking, she screamed and started listening to his speech. As i grimaced on the fact that my work would suffer for another 3 weeks and whether we will survive this apocalypse or no, Myra jumped with joy. she had just read on the screen that the lockdown is extended till 3 May. Does that mean no lockdown on my birthday(8th may)? She asked. I think so, I replied. She started clapping and a small jig followed- Oh ye, Oh ye..she went..I had tears in my eyes. I realised how shortsighted i had been. It was just another reminder for me that Family and its happiness is everything. Money and other material things will come and go. My 7 year old had just given me HOPE in times when I was dreading another 3 weeks of being in quarantine. She had just showed me what a positive attitude can do to life. Her positivity rubbed out on all of us, we turned off the TV and high-fived her in a HOPE that we will be celebrating her birthday soon.

Hold On , Pain Ends Soon.
Lets choose HOPE!

R

Cost of Living or Cost of a Lifestyle

We started our self isolation on 20th March which was the last time we had a real contact with the outside world. Post that we have fixed a routine of deliveries or grocery shopping which includes going out once every 3 days to get everything the family needs. On 20th March itself, I took out a small cross body bag which became my designated money carrier for these trips during the quarantine period. I armed it with a sanitizer, small pack of wipes and Rs 5000. Today, after a fortnight, I had to refill that money and added another Rs 2000 to it. In 14 days, my household of 5 family members and 2 domestic help had consumed things worth Rs 5000.

And we hadn't drastically cut down on anything. Yes, we were rationing and not over eating or splurging on all sorts of things but we weren't exactly deprived. We still ate 3 square meals a day, one snack of tea and biscuits and one snack of fruits. We still had salad with lunch. We still had yoghurt on our plates. We still had milk to start our day and alcohol(weekends) to end it. The meals we've had during this period have included home made pizza, chinese, pasta, burgers, grilled veggies, cake, bhel puri, papri chat, dahi bhalla, noodle soup apart from the regular Dal, Sabzi that Indian households make. All of the ingredients sourced within the starting capital of Rs 5K. And our meals couldn't be more balanced. One could almost make a science experiment of Balanced Diet based on what we are consuming daily now.

It led me to re-think on how did i manage to spend so much money in days when my life was normal. It led me to re-examine what exactly is the cost of living for my house. On last count, as per an exercise that Mohit and I do every 3 months, we needed around 50 times that amount to sustain our lifestyle. But our living apparently costed very less. Then why are we spending so much money on things that are gathering dust currently? After all, the small cross body bag is the only one getting air these days, what about the other expensive bags that I have accumulated over the years? The only shoes I am using are my sports shoes(for exercise) and a pair of slippers(during the day), what about the several pair of heels, floaters, loafers etc etc that are lying in the closet? The only clothing I am wearing are now color coded. I am wearing Blue on Monday and Friday, Red on Tuesday, Green on Wednesday, Yellow on Thursday and black on Sat and Sunday. The bottom remains a choice of 3 track bottoms or a single loose jeans that I have. What about the other clothes amongst the moths in the wardrobe? The cars haven't been used in 14 days or the Harley that i gifted to Mohit last year with my life's savings. The only wheels getting air these days is the cycles that we have.

Did we over spend making a lifestyle out of things that we've forgotten how simple living can be? Is the money that we-the bestowed class spending the cost of our lifestyle or the cost of our living. Have we inter mingled our lives with so much that we needed a catastrophe to tell us the cost of living.
We spent an entire lifetime making our current lives into a lifestyle and it took a single virus to send us back to our living. If we understated our living then thats what life would become. We don't need a lifestyle to survive, we only need to live to survive.

The cost of our lifestyles has isolated us inside our houses!
Lets go back to our living so we never have to start afresh again. 

Making up for 4 Years in 4 Weeks!!

Last Friday I came back from office with a revelation. I might not be returning in this building for a month, I wondered! I figured the country was headed to a shutdown and a consequent slowdown once we restart. And suddenly, as I told the kids that I wasn't going to go to work on Monday, the younger one jumped with joy and that's when reality hit. Someone's sorrow was another one's joy. What I thought was doom seemed like boom to my child. She was overjoyed that I was going to be with her for a few weeks, day and night, 24X7...

After that moment, I have had my time to introspect and look inside. I realised that I had spent the last 4 years ignoring a lot of things to build a business that probably won't survive this apocalypse. I realised I had worked so hard tirelessly to tag myself a successful startup founder which will probably not be the case after a month. I figured I had prioritised work over life, myself and family and friends while the latter is all I have now.

While me and the husband worked to pursue our dreams, we forgot what my kids wanted. They barely wanted to share their daily joys with me. They barely wanted to tell me how they made that clay wheel, how their molar is shaking, how they were made the line monitor in school, how they shared their popcorn in the bus. But most of those I wasn't listening! I was more concerned on which payments had come in, how many orders were delivered for the day, who was doing the night shift and who was doing the early morning shift and what not.

We worked and worked thinking it was for the future of our families. We worked because we thought money is what we needed to last us a lifetime. We worked assuming our kids needed a career and only money could provide the same. We worked in the belief that it was the only way to survive in this competitive world. Little did I realise that what i thought were the tiny sacrifices were the biggest things.

But it seems opportunity does knock twice. And this time it came knocking and swept me away. I was pushed in a corner with no work to do. It literally took a complete shutdown to wake me up and realise that one can spend an entire day just lying in bed cuddling one child after another. Complete dose of the last 4 years Oxytocin rolled into 4 weeks.

So I am pressing the RESET button. I don't know where life will take me after a few weeks because who knows it might be a new world order. I don't know how materialistic the world be after this pandemic and whether my business services will be just as needed as they are currently. But I know this for sure that I am going to make up for the last 4 years in these coming weeks and live my life. I am going to grab every hug, every kiss and every moment that comes my way with happiness and make it matter. I am not going to worry whether I will be starting afresh at work once this is over or not, life is giving me a second chance to live and I will happily grab it.

I don't care if I am a failed businesswoman as long as I am a successful person.
I don't care if I don't do 40 before 40 as long as I have travelled inside my family's heart.
I don't care if I can't buy that expensive bag as long as my regular cross body has money for milk and bread.
I don't care if I don't have the current model of mobile as long as there is data on the current to stream zoom and netflix.
I don't care if i don't have the latest pair of jeans as long as my tracks and tee fit.
I don't care if i don't go to eat at the new restaurant as long as we have a family cookout.
I don't care for what I didn't do as long as I have the opportunity to make things right now.