What's on my Mind

Category: Experience

  • Respect : Terms Apply

    Respect : Terms Apply

    Respect has a surprisingly short memory.

    At work, someone can be competent for years. Then say something foolish in a meeting. Write one foolish email. Lose their usual composure once. Suddenly, a few people start looking at them differently. Years of good decisions become supporting documentation. One foolish email becomes the executive summary.

    Family has a different version. Try something they have never tried. Start a business. Leave something secure. Choose a life that makes little sense from where they are standing.

    The concern is often genuine. But people who have never taken a particular risk can become surprisingly certain about how that risk will turn out. Perhaps familiarity makes this harder too. It is difficult to reinvent yourself around people who still remember your original version.

    Then there are strangers. They know almost nothing about the work, the decisions, what happened before the visible moment, or what it took to get there. This does not appear to reduce their confidence.

    Celebrities get a premium subscription.

    Miss one penalty. Give one bad interview. Release one bad film. Millions of people immediately discover they could manage a football team, choose better scripts, handle fame more gracefully and possibly perform at Wembley.

    There is something strange about how easily a moment becomes a person.

    One foolish email becomes incompetence. One failed attempt becomes poor judgment. One public mistake somehow gets promoted above years of evidence to the contrary.

    Maybe that is why disrespect can sting so much. It isn’t always the criticism itself. It is watching someone reduce everything they know about you to the one thing they know you would rather forget.

    Respect may take years to earn.

    Its memory, unfortunately, can be considerably shorter.

    Maybe the lesson after all is not to expect permanent respect. It is to know yourself well enough that its withdrawal doesn’t rewrite you.

  • Pending Approval

    Pending Approval

    Everyone wants freedom. Preferably after everyone else approves it.

    At work, approval begins innocently. “Good job.” Lovely. Then one day there is no “good job.” Nothing has actually happened, but internally, an investigation has begun. Was the work bad? Was the meeting bad? Was the email too direct? Should there have been a smiley? Corporate confidence can sometimes be surprisingly dependent on punctuation.

    Then there is family. In many Indian families, adulthood does not necessarily end the approval process. It simply expands the range of topics under review: career, marriage, children, house, whether the child is wearing enough clothes. Sometimes the reviewer is a relative whose exact position on the family tree requires specialist software. Still, their feedback is available.

    Then comes parenting. You are working, managing a toddler and trying to convince yourself that quality matters more than quantity. Then the toddler starts asking for the sitter more than you. Suddenly this is no longer childcare. This is market share. There is a competitor in the house, and she is winning. Nothing tests the theory that “a good parent doesn’t need constant validation” quite like being rejected by someone who still needs help putting on socks.

    Then there is leadership. Managers are told not to seek popularity. Excellent advice. Until someone on the team looks slightly unhappy after a decision. Suddenly the brain would like to conduct an anonymous engagement survey. Immediately. Preferably with one question: “Do you still think I am a good boss?”

    Then there is social media. You post something. Five likes. No new followers. Fine. It was never about the numbers anyway. Two hours later, you are commenting thoughtfully on strangers’ posts, liking things you only partially read and calling it “building a community.” Apparently approval-seeking sounds much healthier when you give it a marketing strategy.

    The strange thing about approval is that every individual request seems reasonable. A little from the boss. A little from family. A little from the child. A little from the team. A little from the internet. Until life starts looking like a company with five supervisory boards, all asking for slightly different things.

    Perhaps approval was never the problem. Perhaps giving everyone voting rights was.

  • Symptoms of Being Alive

    Symptoms of Being Alive

    I have spent the better part of my adult life trying to figure out whether something is wrong with me.

    It turns out I may simply have an unusually comprehensive collection of symptoms of being alive.

    25: Cancer

    At 25, I became afraid of cancer.

    There was a breast lump.

    It wasn’t cancerous, which was excellent news.

    It was also the beginning of my annual relationship with the healthcare system.

    “Come back next year.”

    There is something oddly reassuring about being told you’re fine, followed immediately by an appointment to make sure you’re still fine.

    For the next few years, I discovered that waiting for a medical check-up is a special kind of hobby.

    You spend eleven months forgetting about your body and one month remembering every sensation it has ever produced.

    A headache becomes suspicious.

    A twitch becomes interesting.

    You start wondering whether that thing you felt three weeks ago was actually there.

    The human imagination is an impressive diagnostic machine.

    Unfortunately, it has no off switch.

    28: Marriage

    At 28, I got married.

    I married an ambitious person.

    He was an Aries.

    I was a Cancer.

    At the time, this seemed romantic.

    In retrospect, perhaps we should have consulted a specialist.

    Marriage introduced me to another fascinating branch of medicine: diagnosing people who have not asked to be diagnosed.

    You notice things.

    You observe patterns.

    You read an article at 11:47 p.m.

    Suddenly, everything makes sense.

    You send the article to the person in question.

    They don’t respond.

    So naturally, you send another.

    Eventually you realise you have completed an entire medical residency without leaving the house.

    The patient, unfortunately, remains unconvinced.

    31: Fitness

    At 31, I decided I needed to get fitter.

    I discovered HIIT.

    HIIT is a beautiful concept.

    Take a perfectly functioning human being and briefly convince them they are being hunted.

    I was less enthusiastic about the boring parts of fitness — nutrition, recovery and gradual progression.

    My hip eventually provided the feedback.

    There was a diagnosis.

    Then surgery.

    Then nine months with a walker.

    Nine months is enough time to develop strong opinions about accessibility.

    Before that, I had never noticed how many places assume everyone can walk.

    Stairs.

    Curbs.

    Public transport.

    Some chairs.

    The walker, meanwhile, was wonderfully uncomplicated.

    It had one job.

    It did it every day.

    I began to understand why people like reliable friends.

    The 30s: Burnout

    Then came burnout.

    Once is unfortunate.

    Twice is a pattern.

    Three times is when you start wondering whether your life is trying to communicate.

    I had plenty of theories.

    Work.

    Ambition.

    Stress.

    Expectations.

    Relationships.

    Life.

    Possibly the fact that I approached adulthood as though it were an achievement unlocked by doing more.

    There is something comforting about having an explanation. If you know what caused something, you can imagine that fixing the cause will fix everything else.

    Humans are very good at this.

    Give us a complicated situation and we will immediately look for a culprit.

    Preferably one with a name.

    35: Parenting

    At 35, I had a child.

    Apparently, I was approaching the age where people start discussing having a “healthy baby” with the seriousness of a financial forecast.

    The baby arrived healthy. And with an imagination that seems to have no budget.

    His memory is also alarmingly good.

    Watching him remember things I have completely forgotten has occasionally made me question whether I was ever as intelligent as I thought I was.

    Parenthood made me incredibly efficient.

    It also made me incredibly tired.

    Apparently, those two things can coexist quite comfortably.

    38: A New Theory

    Then, at 38, things got strange.

    Strange enough that someone close to me noticed. There were conversations, professional advice, and a theory about what might be going on.

    A serious one.

    I won’t name it. Not because I’m being mysterious, but because I’ve finally learned that some things are better kept between a person and their doctor.

    Besides, the internet has enough diagnoses already.

    Mention one, and someone will appear with a checklist.

    “You have six of the symptoms.”

    Excellent.

    I also have six symptoms of being alive.

    At some point, I began wondering whether we have become slightly too enthusiastic about labels.

    We are uncomfortable with “I don’t know.”

    We prefer a word. A word makes uncertainty look organised.

    And perhaps that is what this chapter is teaching me: not everything needs to be named immediately.

    Maybe there will be a diagnosis. Maybe there won’t.

    For now, I’m learning to sit with the uncertainty. It is uncomfortable.

    But perhaps that, too, is a symptom of being alive.

  • 0% Alcohol living

    0% Alcohol living

    In 2018, I was in Belgium. I remember going to the beer festival for the very first time. At the heart of the city center in Bruges was this small ground with hundreds of tents and locally brewed beers on sale. There were more than 200 variety to choose from. Sour beer, fresh hops, IPAs, Lager, Pilsner and what not. Me and my partner waited in a queue for more than an hour to purchase the tokens for the fest. I didn’t know how many tokens to buy until we were actually short of them. That’s how we knew – we had enough. We tasted a dozen that day.
    I was a social drinker back then and loved exploring. I wanted to even take up a brewing course.

    Following years were not the same.

    In 2020, I suffered an injury.
    My hip bone was damaged. I spent a month in extreme pain, thinking it was a sprain. Following up revealed that I might need a hip replacement. I was 31 back then and it scared the sh*t out of me.

    It didn’t come to that. (Fortunately!)

    An interim treatment worked. I spent six months on walker and it took a year of physiotherapy to resume my day to day activities. During that period, I was bound to stay away from alcohol. Alcohol free lifestyle happened to me.

    My first few months of zero alcohol living did not come easy. After a tiring work week, I felt the desire to have a drink. I craved social drinking on weekends. I couldn’t eat pizza without a beer. I missed wine while eating pasta or meat. All that was fun, was stripped away. My plight grew stronger when I met family and friends in social setting. Everyone drank. Everyone laughed. Everyone was light headed while I was wide awake and sharp, struggling to let go my consciousness.
    It was hard to remain comfortable in my own skin.

    So,I was pushed to find alternatives. To break free from the associations I created in my mind; dissociate socialising from alcohol. Cola became my companion soon. It was a great replacement for some time. (Of course after a while, you’ve got to leave it coz you get addicted to it.) I tried mocktails, juices, sparkling water, coffee, tea and everything that was categorised under non-alcoholic beverage section.

    After close to ten months of this new lifestyle, I discovered I was no longer craving for wine or beer with food. My craving to eat junk food also reduced. I could sit in a pub full of people drinking, and still enjoy a normal conversation. I lost more than eight kilos merely by cutting down alcohol. I felt this new energy inside me.

    Alcohol free living also did wonders to my emotional health. I realised when I didn’t drink after a stressful day, I was left open to introspect, to think what caused the stress in first place. Not numbing those thoughts was the best choice I made for myself.
    It pushed me to accept my reality, act on it and change my environment.
    I’ve found myself in a much happier place since then. So, I decided to sustain the lifestyle ever since.

    It has now been more than two years since I went on no alcohol regime. I’ve learned to be comfortable in my own skin while I consciously choose to stay alcohol free. It gives me a sense of control over my well being. I still love the smell of hop every time I sit in a pub. Guess that’s why they invented the 0% beer. (for people like me. 🙂 )

    © Copyright 2022. Megha Gupta. All rights reserved.

  • A different pace of life in the Netherlands

    It has been a week since I returned to the Netherlands, and honestly, I feel a bit weird getting back here. For starters, it’s a corona-free nation. (Or at least looks like it).As opposed to India, where paranoia from the deadly wave persists, Netherlands looks rash. When I came out of the airport with my mask on, I drew quite some attention from people around. None had their face covered. It was like they stopped manufacturing face masks in the Netherlands. I was disappointed, of course, because I brought like a thousand in my luggage, and now they’re just sitting in my cabinet, waiting for the next wave!

    Walking around in the evening felt strange too. Pubs, Bars, and Cafes were open late. Both indoors and outdoors were jam-packed with people enjoying beer, chit-chatting.

    I kept thinking about my time in India. People walked on the pavement in their apartments. (with masks on). Kids stayed at home, attending online classes. We spent days inside, watching television and ordering food. It was like living in a constant state of fear and getting so accustomed to it that any normal would make you feel guilty.

    After close to two months of being there, I’m back in this free country. And must I say –
    It is damn hard to switch. No one seems to care about rules or Covid, and I’m having difficulties tuning in. The pace of living is getting to me.
    I am anxious ‘coz I am missing out on living.

    © Copyright 2021. Megha Gupta. All rights reserved.

  • ..

    It’s been over a month since I travelled from the Netherlands. So yes, I’m back here again.
    In India. (I mean). I had to travel this time to cope with the aftermath of the corona crisis.

    I don’t reckon many acquaintances who haven’t suffered the second wave.
    While I feel sorry for losing my relatives, I feel favoured to have a family (Alive!).
    They weren’t spared from this wave either. They crawled through the mess. (this time)
    Fear drives our routine now.
    Nobody steps out of the house. No stranger gets in.
    I’m not sure how long this would continue and when we’d recover from the paranoia.

    I wonder if this is our new normal, or are we just being unreasonable?
    P.S – It’s hard to forget what you can’t forget.

  • Disruptions Feb and March

    I finally pushed myself enough today to write this short update. Writing has been on hold as I travelled to India (again) to help a health situation back home.
    My mum had a knee replacement surgery. (planned and delayed multiple times due covid)

    Travelling to India was a cumbersome project in these new restrictions. I got tested for PCR in the Netherlands 72 hours before my flight. On my arrival in India, I was asked to take a mandatory PCR test at airport again. (not kidding, there was a queue for that! You should be worried that you are gonna be infected coz you weren’t before).
    Somehow, I reached safely and things have been fine since then. (including mum).

    I haven’t been reading a lot particularly. Furiously Happy is my bed time read. Review to follow next month.
    I haven’t been writing. [sad].
    Bought a subscription for Masterclass. Loved it but overpriced.

    This weekend, I’ll fly back to the Netherlands. [in peace]

    I was notified that my WordPress domain is about to expire.
    It got me thinking how expensive my hobby has become!
    [now you know why I felt pushed today]

  • Remembering January

    Last month, I embarked on my journey to fitness. After my sports injury in 2020, in which I hurt my left hip, I was confined to bed rest for five months. It was hard.
    It was frustrating. I struggled to walk straight for almost eight months. I lost a lot of muscle in my injured leg and also gained some extra pounds. I wasn’t fit and I was recovering (in spite). I realized, how amazingly resilient our body is, how it endures our extravagant lifestyle but continues to heal naturally, each day. If only, we weren’t exploiting it with our daily habits, we would all be athletes.

    So, as January commenced , I had three resolutions in my mind, to aid my fitness journey. All I wanted, was to be fit again.

    1. Quit Coffee.     I have to admit that I was once, a Coffee addict. I drank four cups each day. (mostly black). I couldn’t open my eyes in the morning without coffee. I almost always carried a cup of coffee while I travelled to work. Lunch too, was followed by an espresso shot. It felt like I woke up each day to drink coffee.

    Fortunately, that changed ever since the offices were shut close. At home, I didn’t have a decent coffee machine so I switched to tea most times. That simple change put a break to my coffee routine. After few weeks, I realized I had consistent energy levels throughout the day. I did not crave for caffeine after lunch. I felt more awake and energetic than before.

    In January, I did not have a single cup of coffee.

    2. Go Alcohol free. This resolution came in easier to realize than I imagined.
    I was hooked onto medications for so long during my recovery that I’ve gotten used to zero alcohol intake. After getting back on my feet, I didn’t resume social drinking. I replaced beer with sparkling water instead. With no alcohol intake, I’ve been drifting to better eating habits too.

    For example, when I’m in a restaurant, I eat less coz there is no wine to accompany.
    I do not order pizza as often as I did before, coz there is no beer to accompany.
    It may be hard for some to imagine a social set up without alcohol.
    But I’ve come to reckon that this merely is a mental block (a deep rooted association).

    January was DRY (& social).

    3. Plan my meals ahead. This by far, has been my most important discovery. In January, I started using a meal planning app to plan my meals a day ahead. You must know that meal planning is not the same as dieting. It simply is, journaling your meal intake and nutrition. Using this has helped me largely rectify my eating patterns. I’ve noticed, I’ve been eating more home cooked food than before. Also, I do not have have to think what is in for dinner after a long tiring workday.
    In January alone. I’ve lost a few pounds just by sticking to a pre-planned meal.

    This is how it looks! (link here)


    Fitness apart, I’ve also been reading a lot. Last month I picked up the bestselling book by Mary L. Trump – Too much and never enough. Mary L. Trump is a niece of Donald Trump which is why this book was a surprise to me.


    The fact that she chose to write about her uncle in such debilitating details, ascertains trouble in Trump family. Mary uncovers in this book how her family & her grandfather (in particular) have shaped Donald’s personality. She reveals the past of her dysfunctional family & their business fortune, banishing any creditability that former US president may still have. It is an interesting read, that will take you closer to understanding the root of trump tweets (although he doesn’t tweet anymore 😉 ). I will write a full review of this book soon, in one of my upcoming posts.



    So, that is all I have for January. (& as it is probably evident, January was helluva satisfying.) Hopefully that is just the start and I will have more to share in coming months.

    Until then,
    Signing off from my monthly letter. 💙 Megha

    Remembering January – “The Only monthly letter that talks about my own living.”

    © Copyright 2020. Megha Gupta. All rights reserved.

  • Dreading the Dentist


    My first visit to dentist came in when I was eight year old. My fellas took me for a routine checkup that ended up revealing four cavities. I was disappointed & scared to an extent that I had nightmares for the next few weeks. Fortunately, my fellas had faith over my god sent teeth & serious doubts over that local dentist. They spared me the dental procedure and I was relieved.
    Two decades later, my teeth are still intact. (at least those four ).
    That first dental visit certainly didn’t make a good impression! 🙄

    Over the next few years, my biggest worry of visiting a dentist became the fear of uncovering new problems. This one time, I visited a dentist coz of pain in a wisdom tooth. I was worried about one wisdom tooth when I arrived at his office but by the time I left, I was worried about all four. Apparently, they were all doomed to fail. He suggested having them all removed. 😬
    Overwhelmed with his opinion, I couldn’t even deal with the problem at hand. I ended up postponing the procedure for a decade. Since then I’ve learned – worst are the dentists that amplify your problems.

    Postponing is not a solution. Last year, one of my wisdom tooth finally gave up. I couldn’t chew without pain, so I chewed from the other side. (For almost a month). The timing couldn’t have been more tragic. Fear of pandemic was lurking around. Most dental clinics were closed. As the pain worsened, my fellas dragged me to see a dentist next door. (Fortunately open!)

    So, Here I was, sitting in his clinic, leaned back on an operating chair, thinking about my past dental experiences. Dodging the ball away, was hardly a possibility this time. 😟

    And then, he removed my first wisdom tooth
    Sensing my fear, my dentist assured me of a painless procedure. That of course involved anesthesia and pain medications. It took him thirty minutes. I felt a prick in my mouth from the anesthesia shot. After that I felt NOTHING.
    Not even when he used his full body force against my jaw to remove my wisdom tooth. Not even when he cut my jawbone to loosen the grip of tooth.
    It was a painless procedure (as he claimed).

    Until next day..
    When I woke up, my face was like a pumpkin. My cheek was swollen to thrice its size. I was hooked onto painkillers, without which, the pain would have been unbearable. I spent the whole day inside my house, afraid to go outside with my swollen face. That lasted for a week. I didn’t go outdoors and ate baby soft food.
    I learned that then, most dentists are good salesmen. (And nothing ever is painless)

    It has been a while now since my last visit to dentist. The prophecy of my other three wisdom teeth still awaits. While the clock is ticking and I’m writing this piece, I wonder if I can ever stop dreading the dentists.

    If only, they were tooth fairy!

    #Dreadingthedentist #Toothfairy #Dentists

    © Copyright 2020. Megha Gupta. All rights reserved.

  • Better late than never- How was my December?

    Hola,
    This monthly letter comes out a bit later than usual.
    I’m happy though that it isn’t the end of January yet or I would have to skip December altogether! 😬 If I weren’t a potato glued to the couch ,watching television, I might have finished writing this piece a lot sooner. Holidays have made me lazy. (or is it winter?)
    Anyhow, New year ain’t about regrets. It is about new resolutions.
    So, I’ll conquer my drafts very soon.

    If you are wondering how was my December. Here’s a quick recap.

    Returning home

    December unfolded my plan to return to the Netherlands (after spending close to eight months in India). It really took me that long to recover from a sports injury! 😌
    After eight months, I was super excited to be back home.
    Netherlands felt like a new country all over again.

    However, within two days of my arrival to the Netherlands, a nation wide lock down was announced (owing to surging corona cases). All non essentials shops and restaurants were barred from operation. An advisory against foreign travel was issued. Borders were closed for tourism. My timing couldn’t have been more depressing.

    Celebrating Christmas

    I’ve not spent Christmas at home for last five years. It used to be a perfect time for vacation, explore new countries, celebrate, watch fireworks with herds of people on the street. Needless to say, that changed this year. We stayed back home for Christmas.

    That brought upon a new struggle.
    You see, we’ve never bought a “real” Christmas tree before.
    So, I was struggling with just the basics – Where do I find a tree? (in lock down). Should we buy a tree that is twice my size? Would we need a tree stand? How much is too much for decorations ? (pricewise) What do we do with that tree afterwards? Who is gonna carry it? Where are we gonna dispose it? On the streets?

    While I was spinning this bundle of worries, trees were running out of stock. Most Keerstwinkel( Christmas shops) were closed due lock down. A week before Christmas, the fear of missing out pushed me to order a large tree. It was home delivered, just on time (grateful, we didn’t have to carry it ourselves). We finally had our first real tree for Christmas. 🤩
    I was quick to order decorations too. To my surprise, they costed twice the price of tree. Christmas was a costly affair!

    Time to open Presents!

    On the day of Christmas, I became my own Santa.
    I gifted myself an iPhone 12. 😀 Quite an upgrade to my previous phone – Iphone 7, that was once washed with Laundry and had audio issues ever since. (Strangely, it survived a full wash cycle so I was stuck with it for two years.)
    I am delighted with my new iPhone now. It has perfect bright display. The camera makes you look better and I’m still marveling at its audio quality.

    I’ve finally finished this book

    Last month, I also finished the book that I’ve been reading for over a month – the biography of cancer – Emperor of all Maladies. I was always intrigued by Cancer, its silent and deadly nature. This book personifies cancer. It talks about history, the origin of cancer, how we came to understand its patterns, how we discovered chemotherapy and other remedies. Is that really a remedy? Can we cure Cancer? These were some interesting questions, the author tries to answer in this book. You don’t need to have an inclination towards biology to understand it. The author breaks down this information in layman style. chronologically, explaining the gravity of this disease. It was one voluminous read, but I’m glad I’ve finished it. Definitely recommend it. My Goodreads rating (4.5/5)

    Currently reading

    My current read is titled “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brene Brown. I found this on my kindle suggestions and really liked its gist. It basically draws on things that get in the way of wholehearted living. The author has been a researcher of shame, fear and vulnerability for decades. She uses her research to illustrate how our shame (of imperfection) holds us back in life. How this affects love and belongingness.

    What I liked about her writing style is that she does not drag on with examples from her research but rather uses her personal stories & struggles to explain the fundamentals of her research. I’ll rate this book in my next monthly letter, when I’d be finished with it. (definitely)

    Discovering Dutch movies

    In the holiday week of Christmas, I ran a movie marathon (this time also including some Dutch titles). I was pleasantly surprised to discover my language skills. (I understood most of them without English subtitles) 🙃
    I loved weg van jouw (comedy). It was a story of young, ambitious women who was relocated for work to a rural hamlet instead of an exotic country. The rural hamlet is Zeeland. (the southern province of the Netherlands). Not sure if that’s how they think of Zeeland really?
    Alles voor elkaar was another movie about four girl pals turning 30 realizing they missed out a lot in life. So they decide to pursue their wildest dreams. It was light and fun.
    Huisvrouwen bestaan niet was also on my list. It literally translates to no such thing as house wife. It was a story of two sisters and mother trying to find balance between private and professional life. I really enjoyed watching it.

    Apart from these, I watched dozen other trending series on Netflix. (& classics of 90’s). Explains the break in my blogging schedule.
    It’s either Netflix or blogging, I suppose.
    I wonder how we can do both?!🙄

    © Copyright 2020. Megha Gupta. All rights reserved.