Let it slide!

 Showing off our lipsticks and nose rings, moustaches and beards. Smiling at friends and strangers alike. Being able to recognize our neighbours by their faces and not their dogs or hats – as we had started doing during these past two years. These were a few things I was really excited about when the government announced that we all could go outdoors sans masks and feel the wind in our teeth.

 

So along comes March 29^th, D Day… I step out without a mask on my face or in my pocket. I was looking forward to greeting the first person I meet with a HUGE GRIN. And grin I did. I will never know if I got a grin back though, because the first person I saw had a mask on.

Ok, so maybe this person had not read the news. But it soon occurred on me that it was just not possible that the number of people in masks I encountered on the streets hadn’t seen the biggest memo impacting our daily lives. It slowly dawned on me that I was the only one on the road without a mask and yes, I did get a few sideway glances!

 

Hmm.. I whipped out my phone and double checked the announcement. I was not wrong… then why did I feel like I was?

 

Instinctively my defences went up and I started rolling my eyes at the nature of people – unable to break free from shackles. “Enjoying” the shackles even? Ah these horses in blinders, the brainwashed sheep! Why don’t they want to enjoy their freedom? Maybe they don’t know how, laughed my friends and I on our whatsapp groups.

 

As an automatic hater of any stereotype, I wanted to dig a little deeper into this phenomena. I spoke to friends and chatted with colleagues and cabbies and asked why? The responses were largely muted, trailing off versions of ‘I know we can, but…’. It has been ten days since ‘freedom’ and I finally see why – so here I am attempting to verbalize what I see and understand:

• It’s the first Asian country to abandon the zero covid policy and this is definitely a bold move. When we hear of other covid variants still coming up and the impact in countries like HK, of course people are going to be wary.
• We were drilled with the message that we need to wear masks – not just for ourselves, but for everyone around us. It tapped into the collective social and civic consciousness of the people. The very consciousness that makes Singapore such a safe country, such a clean place, such a secure nation, the very consciousness that makes the quality of life here higher than its neighbours. Now that the numbers are still so high, maybe milder, but it’s still there and recovered covid patients are still feeling the lasting effects of omicron; the sense of doing a disservice to society and themselves by not wearing a mask is obviously going to be present.
• Do anything for long enough and it becomes a habit, and for those people who don’t get hindered by it, it’s an easy habit to get used to. As anyone trying to follow a diet will know, breaking habits is hard and takes time!
• Lastly, I don’t know about everyone else, but I certainly have felt some benefits of wearing a mask – but that’s for another post!

 

I want to end this essay by saying that when it’s a ‘them and us’ situation (nowadays this is a very common situation to find ourselves in because of how partisan this world is on ALL issues), the best way forward is to slow down a second and try and understand “them” before we jump to conclusions.

Social Media Genius

If you haven’t heard of the “Pyaar Ek Dhoka Hai” movement, you’ve either kept yourself really busy or you are age 40 and above.

It’s no secret that the youth of this nation, and the global nation that exists now thanks to the expanding borders of the internet, are quite lukkha (having a lot of time on their hands that they use un-productively). This and the fact that they also love being a part of any sort of “movement” - this maybe due to a human need to ‘have a purpose’ or just due to the fact that people feel more and more validated by being a part of a larger cause, makes the youth a perfect demographic to experiment with.

This experiment has been perfectly executed by the “Pyaar Ek Dhoka Hai” doula, AIB’s PR people.

They first saw the 14th Feb, Valentine’s Day, eye-rolls that happen every year. They then saw the number of those eye-rolls and their hearts started racing - there has to be a way to capitalise this. Creating an event on Facebook on 1st Feb for the 14th, for the single people to not only embrace ‘self-love’ but to also diss love, they started a snowball. Come oh-single-and-lonely-people, who are never made the front liners on any day, especially on Valentines day, and shout PEDH with us on the 14th of Feb at so-and-so location at so-and-so time. We will combine our energies and have some fun - harmless.

Oh wait. The number of people confirming their attendance is beginning to shock the hosts! Single people, not single people, people who wish they were single, married, divorced, children, spurned, burned and asexual! They all wanted a piece of this pie. Holy s**tballs. 

“The pyaaar ek dhoka hai event is…a thing now. Have to plan this evening. Can’t believe thousands are going to actually gather and yell out pyaaar ek dhoka hai.” Is what Tanmay Bhat (AIB) tweeted on the 3rd of Feb. They were surprised at the response, we were surprised at the growing feeling that this was not just a crummy joke anymore.

Spoiler Alert :  The event was a resounding success. There were 5000 people who attended the event at 7pm on the 14th of Feb and they all had a blast. There was chanting and slogans being yelled out. There was stand up comedy performances by popular people in the circuit - maybe doing AIB a favour or maybe they were being paid for it, I'll never know. But the event was a free event!! Can you believe it?! So AIB made no money from the attending audience.

Ah! But in every ecology there is more than just what the end-users see, ain’t it? Before we knew how big this thing was becoming, we started seeing branding. The PEDH logo was the universal ‘friend-zone’ sign - half a heart and thumbs up. 

There were tee-shirts with various designs relating to the PEDH theme by multiple companies. Of course, social media hashtags and memes, shares, likes and comments were happening already so god knows how much money was made via that alone. Then we saw brand deals - Ola prime play jumped in, zomato had some fun with it as well. A few stories showed up on Terribly Tiny Tales about how singleton is amazeballs with the PEDH hashtag. There is even a freakin’ PEDH Anti Valentines game available to download for free on mobile devices!!!! WHAT!!! 

If all this wasn’t a showcasing of how successful this movement had become, AIB released a mash-up video called “AIB : Pyaar Ek Dhoka Hai - After Movie 2018” which had the various groups across the world who had gathered and organised rallies of this slogan being yelled out. Some slogans were really creative, I have to admit! 

There were two moments during this entire saga that really stood out for me in the realisation that this is pure social media mastery at work. One was when on the 13th of Feb, Tanmay Bhat wrote that there were over 100 million impressions in this campaign! That has to be some record. For those not in the know, a Google search says that an “‘impression’, sometimes called a view or an ad view, is a term that refers to the point in which an ad is viewed once by a visitor, or displayed once on a web page. The number of impressions of a particular advertisement is determined by the number of times the particular page is located and loaded.” 

The second moment was when another member of AIB, Rohan Joshi put up an insta story, which self destructs in 24 hours so there is no evidence of this and I could be totally making this up so deal with it, in which he credited the PR guys at AIB saying something to the effect of ‘please don’t quit AIB to start/ join a political party because the thought of that is scary’ - mainly because they really do understand the pulse of the youth and can you imagine what will happen if they use this superpower for evil?

Dear lukkha youth,

Please get jobs. I now truly understand why unemployment is SUCH an important factor in the growth of the economy.

Humbly,
Not a youth anymore, clearly, coz I didn’t get drawn into this. Plus I don’t fully understand it even after writing this. KTHXBAI. #PEDH

Adulting.

There's living. There's surviving. There's existing. And then there's adulting.

If the stress of having bills to pay and mortgages to end, debts to clear and savings to be made, were not enough, adulting involves a lot more emotional turmoil than you'd imagine.

Keeping up with social commitments becomes a chore, work is most often a chore, workouts an even bigger chore. Hobbies are non-existent and low on priority. Family time is really quartered between phone time, social media time, errands and then maybe eating. Is there really any time to be playful and cheerful?

Oh and amongst all this chaos is ambition, children, retirement planning, aged parents and old friends.

But I'm lucky to have broken free of the mountain on my shoulders that is the list above... not because I don't have them looming over my shoulder, but only because I don't give them the disproportionate attention they unduly get in most cases. Oh no siree!

My biggest fear is much more sinister... the fear of losing myself while I 'adult'. 

My spontaneity, my playfulness, my early morning cheerful personality, my ability to get super excited over the smallest of things and my sense of adventure. These were the things people said about me in my 20s. They're definitely not what people say about me in my 30s. Heck, does anyone even talk about my faceless, adult being in the sea of struggling, anonymous stragglers who all look alike?

Find yourself...or even better, don't loss yourself to begin with. Remember what makes you happy and pursue it with all your heart. Forever.

The final goodbye.

What scares me about death is more than just how final it is. It's scary that after death the persons thoughts, ideas, jokes, quirks and personality cease to exist almost like it was never there...except for those few loved ones they leave behind.

The person's smile which carries a loaded message, that look which conveys more than a thousand words, the advice which masks the worry they feel for you, the laughter that reveals more about them than anything else - all gone...except in the memories of the few people who care enough to remember.

I care. I want to remember.  I will never forget a single detail about you. Every word you said will remain etched in my memory. I promise to always carry you in my heart...till I die.

I will not take anyone I love for granted - you mean the world to me and I need you to know it while I can make it known to you.

Chasing the clock.

I must admit. I just must. I wouldn't feel right if I didn't.

There was a time when I would work through the night and love the rush and the angst and the fuzzy sense of achievement when I'd press that send button. I loved meshing my friends into my colleagues and my life into my office. I felt a sense of misplaced awe when I heard people talk about always being busy. I felt a sense of false pride in saying that I had bitten off more than I could chew. I would then over compensate for it by partying like my right to party had been brutally snatched away and recently been returned.

Then I became unemployed. And I fell in love. With someone who used to work like that too. 

I lived a life of owning my time, of being busy with the things that mattered to me and the people around me, my friends were just that, I didn't have my eyes fixated on my watch or my heart fixated on every new email that came into my inbox... my time was my own. I learnt French and I subtitled movies and I drove my car and I visited my parents and I celebrated every small moment with the people I love and I never had to wonder if I could make it to your wedding six months from now.

But a little part of me craved that life. That life that has a one way window... you can't even tell what the weather is like outside. When you're in, you're in. Everyone is like you. Everyone is racing. There's time only for a courtesy nod. You're lucky if you're a smoker because that's the only time you'll ever breathe real air.

And now I'm back in it. And I can't stop wondering what the answer is. I need money. I need time. If this is the only way to make money, I'm never going to have the time. If I'm not going to make money then I'm not going to enjoy my time. The more money I have, the better I can enjoy my time, which I don't have. If I have medium money, I can mediumly enjoy my adequate time. If I don't.... what, wait!!!.... that's it. Medium money. I'm fine with mediumly enjoying my adequate time!!!

How can I make medium money? I think the answer lies in defining what medium money and adequate time means to me.

Errr...wazzat now?

"Dude, what vegetable is this?" "No bloody idea, man. Must be something unpopular." "Is this even edible?" "Woah, this looks gross!"

 

I paraphrase from common grocery-shopping-talk by the younger generation, innit? How many times do we wonder what half those vegetables granny used to make were; or why a tomato is a fruit; or why the hell are olives good for health? Usually, no idea!

Somehow, with the generation getting more and more adept at technology and science, the science of well being is, ironically, in a vegetative state. I remember my grandmum telling me that whenever the kids at home had an ailment, could be anything – from stomach cramps to a bad personality – her grandmom used to take them to the basement and in classic wizard style mix and concoct portions of cloves and herbs and garlic sticks and everything mysterious into one suspicious looking black ball and shove it down their throats. Surprise of surprises, it works magic and the world is cleared of all its ills. Alas, this suspicious looking black ball recipe never made it as a Dear Diary entry and no one ever knew about it again. Hell, that's exactly what happened to Nalanda. When the Turks destroyed one of the leading universities of the world to massage a false ego, how come it was never rebuilt? All those books in the library that burnt non-stop for months together couldn't really have been the only storehouse of all that information, surely? The professors, students, other academicians, the king; they could have put it back together again. No? Well, clearly not. Same thing is happening to our generation. Just because everything is available so readily and freely on the all-knowing, genius internet, no one bothers to write things down anymore. Says me, as I type this post. Imagine if the internet were to crash to its fatal death tomorrow. No back-ups, no knowledge at the click of a mouse, no answers to Life, the Universe and Everything.

 

Sickening, stupid silence.

 

Knowledge is power. But knowledge without the ability to recall it when it is needed the most – is irrelevant.

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Keep dancing!

Seemingly unimportant things make the most important of differences. Why do Bollywood movies have songs – to make the rest of the movie easier to digest. Why do artists have eccentricities – to make an excuse for freedom of expression. Why are scientists mad – so that they continuously think outside the box. These additions are necessary to maintain equilibrium and propel growth, even if they aren't at the crux of their being. So there might be a higher purpose to the existence of cities, but at the helm is the all important additions of maintaining administrative matters like roads, drainage, transportation, optimal use of taxes, education, eradication of poverty, health care and the mammoth – infrastructure.

The way I look at it – civic amenities are like great morning sex. If it happens like it should, you'll dance your day through. If I wake up in the morning and electricity is not disconnected, water is available, food prices are in check – I'll be on my way in a jiffy. If the roads are pothole-free and not flooded with rain water because of good drainage systems, pedestrians have footpaths to walk on, drivers have lanes to follow – I'll make no bones about getting to wherever I have to go. If city planning is at its pinnacle and one-way roads are actually helping move traffic faster, the metro lines aren't collapsing on me and there are lesser poor people on the streets – I promise to honk less and smile more. If I don't need to be wary of service or quality when I step into a hospital, believe that higher education is not just a scheme and am insured of the fact that the authorities have done their job in due diligence on companies where I'm placing my life's savings –I'll be happy to help with my share of taxes.

And then when I get to work, I will be composed and relaxed and will not aggressively shove my work down my underlings throat…because I don't feel angry and cheated. I will be productive and powerful and responsible. This is the second most important thing for development – hey snob, do your job! If everybody buckles down and performs his assigned task to near perfection, can you imagine what levels of progress this well oiled machine of a country will achieve? Then the only real problems we will have are the foreign policies, home ministries, terrorism, slowing economies and probably judgment day. But hey, I'm cool with that as long as I'm dancing.