Toxic Positivity

 

gratitude - the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness

 

27-32 years old is a weird age. You’re old, but you don’t feel old enough yet. You start handling a ton of responsibilities at home, and where you work. People around you expect more from you, and you expect more from life. Most people get married, the ones who get married are on to producing babies (sorry for nor using a more delicate verb), and all others are being asked about marriage timelines (give us a break for the love of God). At job, someone is worried about their profile and someone else is wondering how he/she gets an 8% increase every year while the newly joined colleague got a 40% hike on his last payout. Someone wants a bigger house, and someone wants to move to a house closer to town. Our wants are really limitless.

 

I was talking to a friend some time back, who was really having a hard time in life. He told me how tough his situation had been, not in a way that he sounded complaining, but more of expressing what he was going through. He told me – “I am trying to be happy, and you should try to be happy too”. Key word not note – TRY.

 

This conversation was very different from a lot of other people that we usually talk to. When you talk to people, more often than not you will know something new that sucks in their life - and the things that bother them usually overshadow everything great that exists. Our life is a package of family, friends, wealth, society, professional life and health. A deficiency in just one of these things is nowadays enough to put us down. If you are 30 and still not earning your wish list’s INR25 lac p.a. package, you are perhaps constantly bothered by this aspect. You would crib to your friends and family about it. Crib about it even with people who are making it happen in INR10 lac p.a.. This constant complaining doesn’t help you by letting it out, it makes you even bitter. To top it all, some replies with “You should be earning INR30 lacs”.

It’s great to have ambitions, to dream big and make it large in life. But it is also important to be grateful, to have gratitude and appreciate what you have in life. You’d be 32 and single, but it’s still a better place from your last toxic relationship. You feel you earn less, but it’s still more than your last job because I am sure you switched for that 40% hike. The life you live might actually be someone’s dream life. You don’t need what others have, you perhaps just need to do better than that what you used to.

 

I was watching a clip from a popular TV chat show where Manoj Bajpayee was the guest. He said that during his struggle phase of career, he had thought to himself that he will buy a lot of cold-drinks (soft drinks) when he earns well for himself. Once he was doing fine and had a steady flow of income, he actually started having a lot of cold-drinks and put on a lot of weight in year!! It’s an example of how simple dreams could be. I am sure this wasn’t his only dream, but however silly it was, it did make him happy.    

 

In our times, trying to cheer up people when they are struggling can be branded as insensitive. There’s a term for it.  

toxic positivity - toxic positivity is the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset

 

I am not sure if this blog post is toxic positivity, but even it is, I do not care. I am trying to be happy. Sometimes, happiness is a state, sometimes it is a choice.

 

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M.

Food Porn

porn - television programmes, magazines, books, etc. that are regarded as emphasizing the sensuous or sensational aspects of a non-sexual subject and stimulating a compulsive interest in their audience.

Some of you, must have got so excited once in a while eating a vada pav, samosa or a sandwich, that you must have uploaded a picture of it with tags like #foodporn , #foodgasm , etc.. Such kind of expressions are in vogue, but please stop sexualizing food. If you deep it, it could be borderline gross. Find actual people and stop making out with food for God’s sake. However, I am no Shakespeare talk about the usage of English words, and I haven’t been accused of plagiarism either. It is just my opinion and you can continue to ‘gasm’ or ‘porno-fy’ anything that you want.

Some time ago, by stroke of bad luck I happened to watch a couple of food vlogging videos on Facebook. As you know, Facebook takes more interest in your private lives than your close family and friends and it jumped to the conclusion that I have a passion for watching food vlogs. It kept suggesting more and more videos, and I kept watching them because television is worse. I was disgusted by them, yet I continued watching them. This is what a toxic relationship feels like.

Here are some of the examples of dialogues between a vlogger (“V”) and the chef (“C”) 

Scene 1:

C puts green chutney

V (who’s apparently color blind): Bhaiyya ye kya daal diya aapne

C (who’s apparently tired of this kind of stuff) – Ye daala green chutney (no effort whatsoever to explain ingredients, etc.)

V: Ye chutney aap ghar pe banate hai?

C: Haan, hum sab ingredients ghar pe hi banate hai. Bread banane k liye humari khud ki bakery hai, aaloo aur tamatar bhi humare khet see aata hai. Namak k liye hamara apna salt pan hai. Paani bhi humara hi hai (applicable for pani puri) 

You ask these C’s about any ingredient and they seem to be making everything at home.

 

Scene 2:

Every time there’s a V around, the C’s become quite generous in putting cheese and butter on their preparations. This is quite different from the time when you go to these places and the menu card says:

Extra Cheese – INR1 lac.

C puts cheese

V: Ooooooooo bhaiyaa oyee hoyee, ye dekhiye kitna cheese daal diya aapne, oye hoye oye hoye

C gets flattered and shreds even more cheese.

V: Maine apni life me itna cheese nahi dekha, agar aapne itna cheese kahin dekha hai, toh please comment karein.

Seriously? Itna cheese kahin nahi dekha? Aryan ke papa ki movies dekhi hai?

Meanwhile, two people get a heart-stroke on watching the excessive cheese and butter in the video and have to be hospitalized.

 

Our food culture is in danger from processed cheese. Look at the state of dosas, it is catastrophic. There’s something called as “Gini” dosa which doesn’t taste like dosa, but more like a tower of cheese. How have we managed to screw one of the healthiest breakfasts that’s around. I’m pretty sure us north Indians must have a hand, we were the ones who were having aloo sabzi and puri for breakfast. And what’s up with cheese missal pav? The only thing missal pav needs in abundance is tari/rassa. It’s literally a perfect thing, why mess it up with cheese?

I was watching a video which said “biggest vada pav in India”. It was just vada that was lost in subway-type sauces, mayonnaise and shredded cheese. What happened to enjoying vada pav with a fried green chili and dry powder garlicky chutney. Our beloved vada pav is in danger too. It seems that food innovation is all about finding ways to introduce cheese and butter to the preparation.  

This thing of ‘oyee hoyee ye dekho kitna cheese’ needs to stop and someone needs to say –

“Bhaiyya itna kyu daal rahe ho, zaarorat se zyaada? Isse acha zeher de do. Ye khaa k waise bhi dheere dheere mar raha hu.”

 

I doubt it will, so perhaps we will just YOLO and pay that INR1 lac to add extra cheese anyway.

 

Yours (extra) bitterly,

Ashish M.

 

Tip of the month – Stop posting pictures taken from airplane windows. Impresses no one these days.

 

History

Growing up, reading school textbooks, I always had a great respect for the man who was known as Christopher Columbus. You do not have to be a nerd to know his story – how he wanted to find a direct route to Asia, and how he landed up in the Caribbean and discovered the continent of America. We were all taught only half of the truth (and this means the time when I was in school). The complete truth is that this voyager was also a tyrant, murderer and a person who can be said to have globalized slave trade. He lead a conquest, which made the native Indians commit mass suicides (estimated to be around 100,000). His men tortured the natives, violated women, and chopped off hands or executed whomsoever did not give them gold. 56 years after Columbus's first voyage, only 500 out of 300,000 native Indians remained on Hispaniola (present day Dominican Republic). Here’s one of your childhood heroes dusted.

We are taught democracy is government of the people, for the people and by the people. It’s any day better than dictatorship, aristocracy or military regime. However, a certain German guy was a very popular democratic leader too (wasn’t the most popular) and was responsible for one of the worst genocides in the human history. Democracy is better than whatever available, but just blindly mugging up ‘of the people, for the people and by the people’ just because Abraham Lincoln said so, makes you so conditioned that we start believing that all our elected representatives work for us (and not for another term). Democracy is the best of what is available, but democratic governments should not be free from criticism.   

We’ve learnt about Hitler, and how he was responsible for killing thousands. What is seldom discussed is the British genocide in Kenya. Between 1952 and 1960, it is estimated that hundreds and thousands (some even estimate it to a million) Kenyans were killed by the British. No one knows what this number actually is, since the British burnt the documents just before leaving Kenya. We also had someone known as King Leopold II of Belgium – who ruled Belgium between 1865-1909 and his regime was responsible for the death of 10 million Africans (that’s one crore!).  Recently, when King Leopold’s statue was defaced in Belgium, his ancestor said that Leopold wasn’t responsible for the deaths in Congo because he himself did not go there (smh!). As early in the past as 1958, Belgium had a ‘human zoo’ which displayed Congolese people. Not quite long in the past, but still something not many of us know. Let’s put it this way, if Hitler is to be declared as the greatest villain in human history, he sure has some serious competition at his hands.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The Spanish conquests of South America and the French colonization of Africa were quite terrible too. It is baffling, that our history books do not teach us about some of the worst atrocities done to man. What’s even more baffling the regimes that were responsible for committing these crimes have seldom offered direct apologies to the countries where these acts were committed. It is the same reason why Shashi Tharoor delivered a famous speech at Oxford Union, where he discusses why Britain owes India reparations. It is a remarkable speech, and one needs to watch it if he/she hasn’t (link below). It won’t mean much of course, after all the damage that has been done, but it is the least that they can do. Some of these nations, are still suffering from the problems that were created out of these regimes, and these problems have only amplified with time.

Rather than trying to mug up what year a King died, how many wives he had or what was the name of his horse, I would have liked to study learn things which caused some of the problems that the world is facing today. Only after one is well aware of the brutalities of the past, will we have children growing up being sensitive to other communities of the world. Only then, history won’t repeat itself.

 

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M. 

References:

9 reasons Christopher Columbus was a murderer, tyrant, and scoundrel

Leopold II: Belgium 'wakes up' to its bloody colonial past

Uncovering the brutal truth about the British empire

Dr Shashi Tharoor MP - Britain Does Owe Reparations

A Bitter Movie Review: K2H2

The first shot of the movie is Rahul looking at the burning funeral pyre of his deceased wife, Tina. As he is looking at the burning pyre, he is reminiscing some of the important moments in his relationship with Tina – how they met, their marriage, him kissing on her neck, her pregnancy and eventual death. Tina had a complicated pregnancy. As popular in the movies from those ages, the doctors could only choose between saving the child or the mother. The movie fast forwards and we are introduced to Rahul and Tina’s daughter – Anjali (referred as “baby Anjali” hereinafter). Baby Anjali says her hobbies are eating chocolates, slapping boys and watching reality TV – I hope her future boyfriends saw these as red flags.

While on her death bed, Tina had written eight letters for baby Anjali, to be read every year on her birthday, until her 8^th birthday. Our adorable, semi-toxic and boy-slapping baby Anjali was reading/being read out letters in her ages 1 and 2 as well, apparently. The creators burnt logic as well on Tina’s funeral pyre. Anyway, baby Anjali gets this letter on her 8^th birthday, which introduces her to Rahul and Tina’s college days. The college scene starts with a basketball match between Rahul and another character – Anjali, who is Rahul’s best friend. Rahul is beaten by Anjali in almost all of his games, and after watching this movie, most desi parents forced their kids to give up basketball. Rahul is the biggest simp in his college, and wears a steel chain with “cool” written on it. He ties friendship bands to girls, hugs them and thinks they’re impressed. Anjali is a tomboy, but has cute bangs. Btw girls, how could you allow bangs to go out of style? Without me being too obvious about my preferences, let’s move on.

Tina enters the lives of Rahul and Anjali. Tina, apparently, used to study in Oxford University but decided to move to Mumbai university for final year of her college. This is the single biggest downgrade known to mankind, ever. Little does she know that she would be paying as much in exam revaluation fees, as Oxford charges for an entire course. Tina is so hot, that the entire college walks behind her creepily. Once during their English class, Miss. Braganza, who speaks in a weird seductive tone, asks “what is love”? Only Rahul could answer this very tough question, and his answer impresses both Tina and Anjali. I have been answering questions in classrooms all my life, I wonder where I went wrong. Anyway, keeping my personal issues aside, Rahul expresses his love to Tina and Anjali is heartbroken. Anjali cries and says, “My first love is incomplete”, and leaves town. Cheer up Anjali, most of the times, first love is not the last one. Worst part is Anjali skipped last semester of her college in this depression. Big career mistake.  

Anyway, Tina dies and Rahul is all alone. He doesn’t want to marry again and keeps saying “We live once, we die once, we fall in love once and we marry only once, too”. However, I just think that this was a façade because Rahul’s tricks had become old. Come on, he was trying to impress girls by tying a friendship band and saying “squeeze me” instead of “excuse me” which made him sound like a pervert. Also, Rahul is always going around everywhere in an oversized blazer which hardly helps. Moving on, baby Anjali is able to trace down Anjali (who did not graduate) to a summer camp (remember the career mistake?). Anjali is not a tom-boy anymore. She only wears sarees now, even when she has to play basketball. For some inexplicable reasons, the camera more often than not focuses around Anjali’s waists after she starts wearing sarees. There’s a plot twist – Anjali is already engaged to Aman. She doesn’t love Aman, but is making a “compromise” because it’s an Indian society and everyone SHOULD marry.

To make it worse for Anjali, who already had a miserable life, she bumps into Rahul at the summer camp. Sparks fly right away. Had to, our simp Rahul was lonely from eight years. This starts some intense cheesy flirting in a camp full of at least 50 kids. Rahul is in love with Anjali and Anjali’s love for Rahul never died. However, they both are unable to express. Enter Aman in the summer camp, who had become restless without Anjali around. Anjali, frustrated at Rahul not expressing his love, leaves the camp in a rush with Aman. Anjali’s heart is broken again, and she decides to prepone her wedding with Aman. Poor Aman, he is just being used as a rebound by Anjali in the entire movie.

Baby Anjali still does not give up easily. Rahul and family arrive at Anjali’s home and realize it’s her wedding day. Everyone cries, cries and cries, and there is a lot of yapping going on. I fast-forwarded the end part, because the pain was unbearable after watching this movie for three hours. Aman realizes that Anjali and Rahul love each other, and happily tells Anjali to choose Rahul. Anjali puts the palm of her hand on Aman’s face, and is delighted. There’s just too many scenes in this movie where someone is placing the palm of their hand on someone’s face. Weird!

Rahul and Anjali marry, and there’s the proverbial ‘happily ever after moment”. Aman is an actual good guy, and like all good guys, he ends up last too. He just tries to keep himself happy by repeating what baby Anjali tells him – ‘Tumhe toh koi bhi ladki mil jaaygi’ (you will get any girl). Trust me guys, this line is always a trap.

That’s it. I need to see a therapist.

 

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M.  

Trial by #Hashtags

Someone once said – “Data is the new oil”. Whoever said it made an understatement. No one carried petrol/diesel to their toilets every morning, but people find hard to leave aside their data munching smartphones even when visiting those places. Most of us, excluding the ones who are on the path of greatness, switch on the data of our phones first thing in the morning and scroll through social media. On an average, a person spends about four hours on their phone daily.

While the time we spend on phones/social media has increased, our attention span seems to have come down drastically. How would you otherwise explain that reels and tik toks are more popular than blogs and stand-up comedy. People aren’t too busy to watch or read time-consuming content. We are spending more time in front of screens than ever, right? It is just that we would like to consume something that does not require us to apply our mind too much, and get on with our lives. A stand-up comedian or blogger would build up a story in some minutes, a reel/tik tok on the other hand would complete its story in a few seconds! We’re becoming too good at engaging our intuitive thinking, rather than critical thinking. Also, I find it difficult to fathom that you will ever be able to engage in critical thinking while sitting on your toilet seats. It’s just not the right place.  

A few days ago, a self-declared “beauty and fashion influencer” posted a reel alleging harassment and violence by an employee of a food delivery company. This caught national attention (in spite of a million other things we could worry about), things went viral and even mainstream media covered this incident. The delivery guy (“DG”) lost his job (allegedly), with the company desperately trying to avoid a PR blunder. Within hours, DGs photos were all over the media, along with the influencers broken nose. Social media had passed its verdict, and the man was held guilty by millions, including people taking a dump who were like – “Yeah, definitely guilty”. What got lost, in the midst of all this conundrum, is perhaps that no one tried to know DGs story. He perhaps didn’t know much about making reels, I am sure most people with such intense jobs don’t. IF (and only IF) he is innocent, imagine the plight and trauma of not only him, but his entire family. I can understand if people are not getting any assistance from the authorities and they use social media to raise their voice. However, if you’ve taken the recourse of law, why would you decide to shame someone publicly and have them prosecuted by people, some of whom would take five hours to purchase an underwear, but pass their judgement here in two minutes. Anyway, now people are covering DGs story and the “influencer” is being made the villain. Ah shit, here we go again!

I fail to understand the concept of influencers. I mean, why in anyone’s rational mind would I want to get influenced by how someone is dressing up or doing their make up? Shouldn’t you be getting influenced by ideas, rather than the superficial, artificial and exaggerated imagery that people create of themselves? There could be some other word we could use for them, but I think calling them “influencers” is too much. Would you not call Mahatma Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln influencers or someone who was crying on social media rather than taking the due recourse of law? Curious what would be the Mahatma’s social media bio in these times.

Mahatma Gandhi – First cry on Oct 2, 1869 – Wanderlust (India, South Africa, England) – Lawyered – Dil se Indian - #Swadeshi #CivilDiobedience #QuitIndia – DM for inquiries ??

I hope not.

Same week, we also had a Meghan Markle and Prince (not anymore) Harry give an interview to Oprah about some affairs of the royal family. Everyone’s again heard one side of the story and passed their judgements. Most of them would gladly get adopted by the Queen if she ever put an advert. Not gonna lie, even I would.  

Our law follows a principle – “1000 culprits can escape, but one innocent should not be punished”. I am not sure the Honorable Judges on Social Media, who give their verdicts based on hashtags, would ever be able to follow this principle.

Until then, let us just hope and pray that this happens to the none of us. I hope that if you are ever prosecuted, it is by the due course of law and not by people taking a dump (this joke was too good to be not used multiple times).

 

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M.