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Chipmunks and me

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Alvin and the chipmunks, the movie series, brought alive a different world! the world of chipmunks. Chipmunks are from the squirrel family and have impish energy to themselves that is an easy allure. The movie brought them more sheen. I like them for a different reason. There is something that is common between the chipmunks and me. 

Chipmunks hibernate. Or so I thought. They shut down and conserve energy. Then I learnt that they don’t actually hibernate. They get into ‘torpor’. There is a difference between hibernation and torpor. Let’s leave it at, torpor is ‘hibernation-lite’. Heres an excerpt from an interesting essay that I read. “torpor is a survival tactic used by animals to survive the winter months. It also involves a lower body temperature, breathing rate, heart rate, and metabolic rate.”

First, torpor is a survival tactic. It lasts for brief spells. Chipmunks and me share torpor. My version of torpor has been to go silent on social platforms. Twitter. Instagram. Facebook and such else. 

A nightmare as a trigger.

It started with a nightmare I had one night, a few months back.  My recollections of the nightmare are blurred and brief. All I know is that I woke up with a start. In that nightmare, friends appeared. They sported bright red straw hats marching to a tune from a horror movie. A horror movie that was badly made too.  There was venom in their tongue and they kept dipping into a bucket full of poison and smearing it on people. They told me it is a game and invited me to play while jiving to a wicked war dance number. 

I remember waking up with a start and don’t remember other parts of the nightmare. 

Over the next few weeks, there were other pressing demands placed on my calendar.  The intensity of my work and some waves of hospital visits due to family requirements made it apparent that I had to work things differently.  Logging out of most social media and reorganising my time was easy picking.

This isn’t the first time. For the past couple of years, I take 2-3 weeks that I shut down and maintain some level of silence online. It is far from something grand and sexy like a ‘detox’. Closer to being weary, accompanied by a sense of loss and nostalgia of the good old early days of social media and the internet. 

This year, my silence was more pronounced. I would barely surface to write The OWL Despatch,  the newsletter for Founding Fuel and a clutch of other commitments like this one. This so happens to be the times of the Coronavirus and the recommendation of social distancing. I am clear that social distancing in the real world does not merit a universal embracing of everything in the social media world. In fact, the social media world has to be handled with even more care now.

Noticing my noticing. 

Looking back, I have wrested peace from the jaws of ceaseless online noise. Vainglory with a veneer of humility. Shameless bigotry, bias and bile. Fake news. All worn with pride. Medal worthy epaulettes if you will. 

When the apps are off the phone and the phone is off my palms there are other things that I am more present to. The love of colour and fear of the that keeps my daughter company. The extra wrinkle in an elder’s face. Kids of neighbours who suddenly seemed taller when I see them in elevators. I have been noticing that I have been noticing far more!  Including the receding sounds of chatter in my mind. 

As I resurface this time, the terms I have set for myself are stiffer. There is an abundant realisation that what gets into my stream of attention should not be only stuff of use, but stuff that keeps me sane. Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. Linkedin. WhatsApp. All the same. So I have been on a hacking spree. Unfollow. Mute. Exit. Reorganise WhatsApp presence in groups. A few are fun. Some are useful. I have lost count of the useless. 

I resurface yet again from torpor. There is a feeling of greater peace and a sense of what it means to live.

The quiet time has also given me a sense of peace and added to layers of depth to writing and reading. I have plans to read more books than last year and indulge in better conversations face to face. So what if it they are mediated by technology. More writing too!  

For all the lovely folks who reached out and checked if everything was alright, well, thank you. Your mails, texts and calls meant a lot. These days, I am ever so lighter in the mind and wish I could transfer this lightness to the body as well. That is a different story! 

Image Credit : Steve Orlowski from Pixabay 

Four Lessons From My Hiatus

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When you are in it, you cant see it. A hiatus is a great way of examining yourself, your actions, intentions and results from a distance.  Distance brings clarity. I have been on a hiatus of sorts from several default dens. Large parts of social media, large conferences, get-togethers and the like. It has given me to rediscover many facets and dust up promises made. Here are four lessons from my hiatus.

A few months ago, a vague gnawing feeling kept me company.  I couldn’t quite place a steady finger on a particular problem. It presented an opportunity to relook at several things.  In a conversation with a friend, the need to slow down emerged. At the place where the road curved, I realised the need to ‘Play’ more. so much so, that it became my word of the year!  

A hiatus was well in place by then. Most of the social media was (and still continues to be) off my phone. I reconfigured my phone. I cleaned up my bookshelf and the wardrobe. My hard drive remains by far incomplete.  I took a break from many conferences and preferring smaller more intimate conversations.  And so on. I see more and hear more these days. It has been refreshing.

So, the other day, I sat down wondering what all has emerged for me. On a whim, I wrote four lessons from a hiatus. Written more for me and not as a prescription to the world. 

1. The Acceleration Problem:

I thought acceleration in life is tough. I realise that getting off the fast lane is tougher to start with! There are all kinds of fears that dominate. But to have the courage to continue staying off the grid exposes the hollowness of several fears. I cut out the argumentative froth on social media.   The inventive algorithmic persuasion of Facebook and such other apps was evident, as the gaps they left behind on the calendar, helped me read far more. And about staying updated, it was obvious that if it’s that earth-shattering a news, it will reach! Life is beautiful beyond these empty fears.

2. The Accumulation Problem:

As the years roll by we tend to accumulate. It’s easy. It’s a good feeling. We accumulate material possessions, friends, ideas, opinions etc! Of course, the accumulation of fat in the body, tartar in teeth and dogma in the mind, happen whilst we are busy.  If we are not careful, they come in the way of leading a full life.

A friend told me, “you have a problem only if you let things in. You need to filter at the source”. That is prescient advice, I realise.  In a world where information and opinion is cheap, we need to find ways to stay sane. One way is to have strong filters. Works for fat, tartar, dogma or the wardrobe!

3. Default Vs Design:

The hiatus has helped me examine the defaults that have eased their way in. Living life to a design and a plan requires calling out the defaults and elbowing them out! Doing the right thing is not the same as doing the easy, natural thing. To eat right, staying fit, having quality conversations, getting to do quality work, are all products of choices.  They are shaped by disciplined choices in the space of other inviting options that hold allure. 

4. The force of dead habit:

The hiatus brought me face to face with dead habits. I realise that habits that were good for a point in time and that are past their prime have kept me stiff company.  And then there are some plain bad ones that have stuck on too. Some bad ones masqueraded as good ones. Others didn’t find any need to.  Obviously, I am far from being free of these. But I am now better acquainted with them and the stories my mind tells me about them!

The deal with the hiatus is that it gives the time and space to examine. It gives opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t. The thing about insights from a hiatus is that you can’t force it to appear. Insights come with deep reflection, conversation and courageous examination. These require ample time, a free mind and some breeze to shoot. Those are aplenty in a hiatus.

One more thing.

One of the greatest realisations I have is that it is possible to have a hiatus whilst going about work and putting bread on the table. It means making parts of your calendar inaccessible to your regular ways. It requires a commitment to tune in to deeper desires and transcending immediate pulls and pressures.

So, am plodding on rearranging blocks of my life. To roll the log of ‘lived life’ over and see what crawls out from beneath it with curiosity, is interesting. To say the least.

In more than one sense, I am upgrading. It is work in progress and it still has jarred edges. Please adjust! 🙂

My experiments with Instagram

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Picture stories have been the nerve centre of this website. It is in the long hard look at images that the words and stories have emerged. Over several years. As my Instagram page begins to hog a dab more of my attention than it did earlier, my experiments with Instagram embolden me to weave more stories.

Ever since the shift in career trajectory, there have been many experiments in the recent times that I have been running. When the view of life in itself is viewed as a series of experiments there is only discovery and learning all the way around, experiments and learning on social are also default. Several of social ones are on my Instagram page.

To try and bring a story alive in what is essentially a siloed and image based medium has been a bucket of work with droplets of learning here and there. I have learnt the power of images and how much they can chew up everything else. The importance of filters, lenses, hashtags and what all they can stand in for, and gently gloss over is omnipresent. But to spot the story behind the dominant narrative, has been such fun.

This house, where many of the young are permanently stationed is often viewed as an abode of narcissism by the old. Ok, older. I am finding it to be a very interesting and different platform. I try and keep the play with filters to the minimum and add some shade, contrast and brightness with words. Especially about the places and people that I encounter. If at all it is about me, it is only through the micro accounts stories that I tell there. “Thats not how the medium works” many have told me, shaking their heads with a smug smile lurking in the corner of their lip. Perhaps, they are right. For the way I use Instagram is not what Instagram has bet its shirt on. Instagram’s soul lies in its filters and the words are clearly optional extras. In more ways than one, I am harbouring some old fashioned beliefs. Some of them go like this : Good stories draw people. Good stories are often a combination of pictures and words. etc. etc.

But who cares. Its never about a platform as much as its about the users, their imagination and what they do with it. So I believe. So my page there is become something of a mini blog. Needless to say, my difficulty in adapting to the ready-shoot-filter-publish model is evident in every post. At least in my head. Sometimes though, I receive appreciation. Like the one today from this gentleman whose work I admire hugely, which read  “Love the stories behind your posts. Amazing patience and ‘care’ “.  That chuffed my heart and set me thinking.

The missus added some sense into the dose of kaapi on an otherwise busy Sunday evening to suggest that I need to consider the fact that some of the ‘short posts’ and pictures merited a ‘fuller’ post on the website. “Not everybody is on Instagram you know”, she began. And then quickly went on to other things like “assuming too much” etc, which I thought was fresh brew from another world.

Promptly this blogpost was thought of and some quick-fire decisions were made. Some pictures and accounts from Instagram will get here as well. Some of it shared on other platforms. In any case, its all experiments. So, if you are still reading, do follow me on Instagram and let me know how the page is evolving. My page on Instagram is here : https://www.instagram.com/kavi.arasu/

For, am going to be at it. Chasing a bunch of hypotheses and relishing whatever emerges. When you don’t break into a  sweat on the numbers of likes or followers and are focused on being present with people, their pictures and their stories, there is joy.

Try.