Igniting a smile

She calls out to the man on the street,

Sir, can you help me?

It’s cold and I have nowhere to sleep

Is there somewhere you can tell me?

He walks on, doesn’t look back

He pretends he can’t hear her.

That’s what I do all the time, I think. Walk through life with blinkers on, without looking in any direction that doesn’t concern or benefit me or my loved ones, turning a blind eye to the suffering all around me. I read the paper, lament on the pain and misery in the world, then put it away, and get busy in that presentation that I have to do or in planning the next outing with my friends, or do one of those thousand small, insignificant things, that seems so ridiculously important to me, but are so randomly inconsequential when I put them against the hardships that some other lesser fortunate one faces throughout his/ her life.

But this time around, when I saw a video that moved me to tears, that made me wonder about the injustice that exists in the world, injustice that made me look up at the sky and ask, “Why them?”, instead of “why me”?, I decided to roll up my sleeves and take action.

What did these innocent souls do to deserve the life that they have got? Why are they selected out of the millions and zillions fortunate ones like you and me, and chosen to have lives of cruelty, indignity, and inhumanity? I was told a story once in my childhood years. A man who didn’t have enough money to buy shoes was weeping in the cold in a temple, asking God why God was making him suffer. Then another man enters the temple pushing his body along – he didn’t have legs. So whatever bad happens to us, we should always remember that something worse is happening to someone out there.

And these tortured souls of Maiti Nepal – they too are just examples, indications, of thousands others whom I don’t do anything for. And I have decided that my inactions have to stop. I have written to the organization promising my help as soon as I get a job (after I finish my present education). I plan to take the responsibility of a few children, for their whole lifetime, till they get a job of dignity. And every promotion, every increment I get, I will take up the responsibility of one more child.

I know it is not in me to take out time for social work, probably. To work in NGOs. Maybe I can’t do that. But I can NOT buy that one extra pair of shoes, that bag I have adored for long, or keep on hold for a little longer that holiday to that exotic destination that has been on my checklist of a 1001 places to visit. Yes, it is that simple. It doesn’t cost much to save a life, or to live a life of dignity. It is much more affordable than you or I could have ever imagined it to be.

Are you with me? Would you like to help? There are many ways you could lend a hand and help a child, a soul, and give them the basic gift of life – life itself.

http://www.maitinepal.org/

http://www.nanhikali.org/

http://www.azadindia.org/sponsor.html

http://sunvillage.com.cn/eng/

www.worldvision.org/

www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/sponsor-a-child

www.savethechildren.org/

www.compassion.com/sponsor_a_child/default.htm

A moment…and I was free…

Disappeared for a long time. Me, that is. Disappeared. Ran away. From myself. Went and hid somewhere. I wanted to keep me away from myself. Turned my back on life. On all things good. On hope. On positivity. Didn’t think the image in the mirror had any value. Filled myself with apprehension and fear, closing all doors and windows on life. And then I talked to a friend.

A friend who said that when she wakes up in the morning she hopes for a hundred good things in the day. They may not come true, and somewhere she even knows that they won’t, but that doesn’t stop her from hoping. Because that makes her feel good.

Hope? Me? For good things? What is that? When was the last time I felt that? How does it feel to feel like that? I wanted to remember, to rediscover. But try as hard as I did, I couldn’t. Situations and developments in my life had made me forget that. Or maybe not.  In my love for someone else, I had stopped loving myself so someone else made me forget where my happiness lay. Though I was strong and cheerful in front of everyone, deep within me there was fear and withering of all hopes. I had forgotten the courageous, vibrant person I was. Strength I had to survive and not crumble (though sometimes I didn’t even have that), but trust? Faith in people, life, love, had all left me. But my friend said no, it hadn’t. It is there, within me, I just had to let myself see it.

I disagreed. And I wanted to think. Or maybe for a change, stop thinking.

So I ran. I ran with all my heart, all my strength, all my self. Ran till I couldn’t run anymore. Till I couldn’t breathe anymore. Till the freezing wind in my face turned into sweat. Till the path in front of me was a blur and looking back for even a second could mean tripping and falling. Till the pace of my legs was faster than those of my thoughts. I didn’t stop when I stumbled on a rock, didn’t stop when I heard someone call my name, didn’t stop when the trees and ground seemed to fade away and I felt I was flying. I felt I could go anywhere I wanted, could do anything I wanted. There were no paths, no limitations, nothing tying me down.

And fly I did. Soared is the word.  Like the world would come crashing down if I stopped. I ran by the lake, by the waterfall which came out from nowhere, by the fields of green and of blue (bluebells), by the gigantic trees that towered above me. And as they all passed me by, smiling at me, nodding, encouraging, standing firm, standing proud, being what they were, I realized I was letting go. Of all the fear that consumed me, of the misery that was shrouding me for so long. I wanted to come out of hiding now. The taste of bitterness was leaving my mouth, and I wanted to drink in sweet life once again. Just like the blades of grass didn’t want to be trees and the trees didn’t want to be the lake, I just wanted to be myself once more. And learn to love myself again. 

I now want the sky. The air. All the life that surrounds me that I had not noticed for so long.  I want to seize with both hands all that life offers me. I am now……ready.

P.S. For all those reading this, no, the process of moving on wasn’t as simple as a day of running. But there is that one moment when you let go. And I found mine while running. We all need to find our own.  And we all do. In good time. That one moment takes an eternity to come. But it does come. One day.

Counting my blessings

It’s Diwali.
A time for celebrations, a time for happiness, a time to stop and say thank you to life, for all its simple pleasures.

Warm gooey chocolate cake

The smell of rain and earth

Family

The beauty of nature, which fills us happiness from within, whether we have the time to pause and notice it or not.

Anything that we’re passionate about

Warm, tight, big bear hugs

Slipping into comfy home slippers after a night of dancing in stilletoes

The smell of a new book

Best friend

Food!

Hot water bath

Sleeping late on the weekend

Midnight after parties and after-after parties in a friend’s room while on campus away from home

Movies and popcorn

Compliments

A smile from a stranger

Pleasant surprises

A walk and meaningful conversations with a friend

Birthdays

Diet coke

Mom-cooked food

Challenges

Every small achievement

Clothes and shoes (ok, this is a woman thing, or rather, a ME-thing)

Intelligence

Kindness

Connecting with a long-lost friend and getting nostalgic

Finding a cab when it’s pouring

Microwave

Children

Firecrackers

Each and every moment of life

 

 

P.S. Would love to hear about your simple pleasures…please feel free to comment and add yours…

Of innovations, opinions, and choices

Some very valuable lessons there. Brands are reaching out to millions and making billions of dollars by spending a fraction of what they would on regular advertising. Welcome to the new world. To the matrix. Where reality is more virtual than real. The world is not simply what you see around you as you step out of your house or office. The world, the real world, is on your computer, where you are sharing ‘Likes’ with millions of unknown people, where you read their views in their blogs, know about their lives, and even see their home videos. The way we use the internet has changed. And I’m not just talking about facebook and twitter. Social network usage have surpassed email usage. Brands are being defined on the web as they are taking in more feedback more simply and cheaply. A lot of information can be found on the internet about the effectiveness of new media, but for me, a recent visit to campus by companies like Cisco, Facebook, Evian, Philips, Dessault, and Cisco among others, shed light on the latest innovations of social media, and the power and reach that it commands.

“A brand is what people think it is”, feels Philips,which develops its ‘sense and simplicity’ motto by studying consumer needs and behaviors using new media. “If you talk to people the way advertising talks to people, they’d punch you in the face!”, says L’oréal. Facebook has 500 million members, of which 250 million log in EVERY single day. Products are being launched, brand campaigns are being carried out, sale invitations are being sent out, with hardly any print or television communcation.

The 4 pillars of social media is being defined by some of these companies as: a cross-functional-team, a gateway-stage system, establishment of core competencies, and a well-defined business framework. The only failures can happen by ‘Limited Presence’ and ‘Little Passion’, ‘Failing to Humanize’.

Amazon.com and Facebook are partners in a $250 million fund that’ll support entrepreneurs who want to create  new media applications and services. Companies like Dessault, CISCO, and Salesforce have taken new media to new heights of technological innovation. Dessault’s virtual reality application in marketing, the 3D cereal box, has set new expectations in the customer’s minds about the possible interaction with everyday objects like such a box (see video), and Salesforce makes employees feel relaxed by using the best of twitter and facebook in the work-based social media platform, Chatter. While the rest of the world has barely caught on to Cloud1, Salesforce is already moving to Cloud2 for enterprise collaboration,  characterized by the addition of social networking and real-time access to information in cloud applications.

What is it about social media that makes it so effective? It is after all nothing but electronic word of mouth, and about the basic tendency of people to share, to have an opinion, and about their inherent nature of curiosity. A very important revelation in the conference was that depending on how we get information, it will be understood in a different way: TV, radio, web. In other words, the medium is the message. It’s about user commitment and how people want to receive marketing messages.

The general buzz is that the old world was about making impressions, the web world is about creating connections, and the actual social world is about building relationships. People visit a brand page on Facebook more than they visit the company’s own website. A L’oreal Facebook page does not register as many hits as a page created by a shampoo consumer does. Is it because people all over the world have become suspicious of marketing and advertising, that they tend to trust more a fellow user than a brand? Customers defending a brand is far more effective than the brand itself defending it, feels L’oréal.

Is it because the freedom of choosing to watch an youtube video is more appealing than having a TV program interrupted by a commerical you don’t  want want to see?  Or is it because the web is a more interactive medium, and you’re not paying the price of byuing magazines which have more ads than content?” The customer now not only wants to have the choice of choosing a product, but the choice of watching an advertisement. A brand is no more what it tells the consumer it is but “what friends tell their friends about it”- Scott Cook, founder, Intuit.

Cisco uses new media intensively on a B2B platform, with an exclusive online community for service provider decision makers reaching 1200 key individuals in a nontraditional approach, as they have found traditional marketing to be unappealing to such customers.

Whatever be the reason, it’s true that social media is changing the way the world, at least the net-savvy ones , perceive things. And it’s here to stay, though as Evian feels, “The virtual world is extremely effective, and it’s growing at a rapid pace, but we cannot totally ignore the traditional mediums of advertising to reach out to customers…not yet”.

That said, now for some fun. If you haven’t seen it before, check out the video below, make a choice, and see what happens: after all, the new media is all about you, the customer!

P.S. Big thanks to Gustavo, for sharing some data with me.

The secret flavour

Most of us have had our fair share of relationships which haven’t worked out, and for some, it’s even failed marriages. Talking to  people on this topic while searching for some answers, I’ve realised that though most stories have different circumstances, they are very similar in concept. Yet some relationships work, some don’t. So what about the ones that work forever? Do you find the ‘right’ person for yourself, (who’s right for you anyway, and in the beginning of a relationship, how do you judge that?) or do you figure it out on a trial and error basis and hope that finally, with someone, you’ll have a permanent, loving, happy relationship? So when my mentor in HEC asked me today to face my fears about relationships, I asked him the key to his blissfully happy marriage of 34 years. And I report here the conversation.

Me: How do you find the right person? How do you have such a happy relationship? You found the right lady, is it?

Mr. B: Ah ha, interesting question. (Thinks). I have a secret ingredient for my very flavoured marriage. Basic, but effective.

Me: Ok, what is it?

Mr. B: I don’t need to tell you, you know it.

Me: No, I don’t. Please tell me.

Mr. B: What is the one thing that you must absolutely put in a dish to make it tasty?

Me: Umm…I don’t know…all dishes are different.

Mr. B: Think savoury dishes, not sweet.

Me: Umm…uh…salt?

Mr. B: Ah ha! See, I told you, you know it. You have to sprinkle some salt in your relationship, specially if it’s a marriage, everyday. You might have all the basic ingredients in place – same tastes, same values, but unless you sprinkle salt over the raw materials you’ll never make your dish tasty. It will always be a bland relationship, irrespective of who the people in it are and how much they love, and eventually the relationship dish will stop being appealing, even with the correct ingredients. And if you put salt in, it will bring all the other ingredients together. Salt is the basic, but it is also magic!

Me: What is this salt? Like romance?

Mr. B: Depends. Sometimes. But most of the time, it’s about making your partner happy. Understanding what brings joy to your other half, and doing things even if it may not be important for you. Relationships only work if 2 people are always focussing on each other’s happiness.

Me: Heard that before. We all do that. Still relationships don’t work.

Mr. B: Ok, when you start a relationship, do you think how much this relationship will make you happy, or do you think how much more happiness you can bring in your partner’s life?

Me: Both. I want to make the other person happy, but isn’t my happiness important too? After all, isn’t that why I’m having a relationship in the first place? That’s the whole point. Why would I have a relationship if it wouldn’t make me happy?

Mr. B: I don’t know about relationships, but the whole point love is to make the other person happy. Relationships don’t work because you don’t trust your partner to make you happy. People are sceptical of efforts, unappreciative about them when they happen, and in constant judgement of their partner’s actions. Simply focus on his happiness, and he will focus on yours.

Me: That’s easy to say. Sounds very fancy and fairy-tale like. Doesn’t happen in real life. What if I try to make him happy, but he doesn’t care about my happiness?

Mr. B: Ok, let’s talk about salt. You have your regular food, and you put regular salt in it. That’s what you expect in your food. One day someone else prepares the food for you, and the chef puts rock salt in it. The whole taste of the dish changes. How would you react?

Me: I don’t know. May like it, maybe not. Depends on how it tastes.

Mr. B: Exactly. Let’s say the chef is your partner and he makes this dish for you lovingly, but to be creative, puts rock salt in it. And you don’t like it, because that’s not what you expected, what you want, it doesn’t suit YOUR taste, and doesn’t make you enjoy the dish. You put forward an opinion, but how do you think your partner feels when you reject the dish? He puts in his salt lovingly, but not only do you not see that effort, you don’t accept that.

Me: Hmm…I think what you’re getting at, but give me an example.

Mr. B: Ok,this morning, I had to leave early, and my wife hates it when I have to do that. So before leaving, I wrote her a small poem and left it by her bedside.

Me: That’s so sweet! And after 34 years too! How does she add her salt?

Mr. B: Well, she is not too fond of cooking, but because it’s important to me, she cooks on a grand scale whenever we have guests and also a lot for our children.

Me: But this salt business is not possible everyday. People have work, lives, stress, you know.

Mr. B: Yes. But think about it. He or she is the most important person in your life, but you don’t have 5 min to do something for this person? Ok, I admit, it’s not that I sprinkle some salt everyday. I don’t. And I definitely do things that doesn’t make my wife happy. I have a lot of bad habits. But she accepts me when I do it, and she forgives me. That’s her way of putting salt. And I make up for making her unhappy later. And it works vice versa. And if I make her unhappy one time, she doesn’t lose faith in me to make her happy the next time. Life is a series of moments, actions. You can’t be perfect. But as long as you trust your partner to take care of you and make you happy and add salt to all your dishes, it’s going to be fine.

Me: Your story sounds like a fairy tale. Sigh…only if it actually happened for most people.

Mr. B: My life is not a fairy tale. But I choose to have a happily ever after with the person I love. And I don’t ask her or demand to love me and give me happiness. I trust her to do so, and sometimes if she can’t, I forgive her. When people can’t do this basic thing – accept and forgive, they are not putting salt. And one day they will both get fed up of having bland food and go to a better restaurant. But over there too, if there’s no salt in meals, you know what will happen again.

Me: This is a very interesting insight. I don’t know if it’s possible for the younger generation to accept it, cos we all think we have to get us our happiness ourselves, and we don’t have the time or energy to try putting salt over and over again irrespective of our partner’s actions, but maybe one day, sometime in my life, I might try what you’re saying, and see if it works for me.

Mr. B: People cannot live their lives without salt. Literally. And the sooner they accept it, the better their relationship flavour can become.

P.S. Mrs. B heard about this conversation, and all she told her husband was she would enjoy it if he tried putting in a little more salt

The new ‘Me’

How many times in a day, a week, do you feel deep inside and tell people ‘I don’t agree with you’? How many times do you feel or tell someone else that they are wrong? We all want to put across our opinions, point of views, and are usually going around so much with blinkers on, that we don’t open ourselves up from deep within, to the possibility that there can be someone who can feel the exact opposite of what we’re feeling, and be convinced that his/ her way of thinking is the right one.

Now for at least one day, listen to other people talking, and no matter what their opinion, accept it, respect it, without judging it and weighing it according to your own scale. The maximum you can say is that you have a different way of thinking, but you CANNOT disagree with them. It’s sooo much harder than it sounds. Maybe it doesn’t even sound easy? I have to do it sometimes in my MBA program, am forced to, and it drives me nuts, being the very confident person that I am with strong point of views.

What about when someone, according to you, is rude? He or she talks curtly, omits the Ps and Qs, even when asking for a favour, and doesn’t answer your question properly. As^h*%e!, you think? If you’re working with people from different backgrounds like yours, all it could be is a cultural difference! That person doesn’t even know that his or her action is being perceived rude in any manner! But oh, we are so quick to judge, aren’t we? Let’s say you have to work in a group, some of your group members don’t feel like working at a certain time, even before deadlines, or are not putting in their 100%. Natural reaction – get irritated. Sensible reaction – give him or her some time and space. Productivity is much higher when someone WANTS to do the work. Again, not easy, I tell you.

Forget judging, we even outline do’s and don’ts for people around us. What they should and should not be doing, saying, behaving. And if they don’t follow those norms, well, they are not worth your time! We forget that they are setting similar parameters for us, and we may not be worth their time either!

When I applied for my MBA, I just wanted to get a job at the end of it and be done with it. But the first step that we are faced with here is to identify ourselves, and deal with all the above. Who we are, why we think the way we think, what are our values, what ‘drives’ us? Do you know what drives you? I’ve had a month to think about this question, still no answers. What are your passions? My eyes lit up! Oh, I know this, I told my mentor. But before I could answer, he says, “The question I would like to have an answer to is, why are they your passions?” Stumped again.

The most important part of growing as an individual is firstly to know yourself, face your fears, and fight them, along with trying to, really trying to understand those around you. Their behaviour, their backgrounds, their lives, their stories, their opinions, their way of funtioning and just…being. We’ve had counselling sessions here, where people have been told as drastic things as ‘write a letter to your little self – to ur childhood self’!

This process of rediscovery and willingly accepting others’ point of views, though initially unwelcome, irritating and painful, (we just want a job!), is neverthless actually doing something drastically different from the decades of my life before. It’s adding a new ‘me’ to the existing ‘me’, and I must say, this is a most unexpectedly pleasant surprise!

Angel in disguise

My husband is not exactly a fan of roller-coasters. He likes the thrill, but when it comes to the gigantic ones which go full 360° up in the air, he prefers to wave from below. And I’ve always been boasting about how they don’t scare me at all, that I wish something like this COULD scare me. No fun otherwise.

Well, 8^th Sept, 2010, my wish was granted. New into the MBA program in France, a weekend in the Alps doing exotic adventure games like acrobranching and canoeing sounded like fun. Having never done it before, I inquired, what is acrobranching exactly? Oh nothing, said an expert . You are just tied to ropes, and you have to move from one tree to the other. Exciting!

So, all strapped up, I start my ascent into the trees. The smallest branch first, 1 foot above the ground, then a couple of feet, then more. Firmly secured with straps and pulleys, I move from branch to branch. Looking up, I see my classmates swinging crazily, laughing, from one tree to the other. Couldn’t wait to go up there. Finished the first 2 levels like a breeze. The third was tough, but I was confident. Having never been scared of heights, I was enjoying myself, even helping others, giving instructions. Felt like completing level 5 would be a piece of cake. Many people were giving up after level 4, and I go thinking in my head, “I am sooo not giving up”.

(Note: once you start a level, you HAVE to finish it. Can’t give up midway).

Enter the 4^th level. The first step was swinging between 2 tries 20 feet apart holding on to just a piece of rope dangling from above. Think Tarzan. And in front of the tree ahead, there is a net, which you hit, and have to haul youself up against it for 4 feet. It looked exciting till I was in queue and waiting for others to finish, unable to imagine why each took so long to make the move. Then it was my turn. There I was, 20 feet above the ground, no way to turn back, faced with emptiness in front, the only hope a piece of very fibrous rope. Very rarely do I have the feeling that I can’t do something, can’t achieve if I want, but there, that moment, I felt absolutely incapable of moving ahead . Meanwhile, people were yelling at me to move on, to jump (I know the impatience they felt, I was one of them a minute back). I knew I was attached to pulleys, and that I won’t fall on the ground, but I was immobilised. After 5 minutes of telling people I can’t do it, I finally did it. Held the rope, and swung. Hit myself against the net, but couldn’t haul myself up.

After what seemed like an eternity, bruised, determination and courage broken, I finally pulled myself up. There was no exit point. Rested for 5 minutes, and moved forward to walking 1 km on a single piece of rope. Tiring, but not so bad, and this continued, till I reached a point where I had to swing myself between 2 trees 40 feet apart, 40 feet above the ground, just holding on to a rickety log of wood held together by 2 thin ropes. I couldn’t do it. Had never known fear like this. This helplessnes and scare that grips you tightly and makes you realise how precious life is, irrespective of its problems. This level being high, there was noone behind me, the few people in front were moving on. Noone could see me, and I could see noone. I sat down, defeated, bruised, helpless, and admitted in my heart that this experience is teaching me a lesson, to be humble, to know that I’m human after all, and that I COULD be scared. I couldn’t go forward, and I had noone to help me. I just wished I had never tried it, and just wanted to get out there.

Then, I heard a faint voice saying, “You can do it”. I looked around, up, and down, saw noone. I thought it was my inner voice. Shook my head. And then I heard it again. “Come on, get up, I know you can do it”. I thought I was having hallucinations out of fear. And it went again. “Just jump. It’s going to be okay”. Then I saw him. At the other end of the swing, on the tree ahead, there was a guy I had never seen before. His lime T-shirt had been camouflaging him so far, and I couldn’t even make out his face. He was waving to me, and yelling. “Get up, jump, it’s fine, I’ll get you, I know you can do it.” Golden words of encouragement. I yelled back saying I couldn’t. He said “That’s bullshit. Of course you can. You look like a person who can”. Who WAS this guy? I didn’t even know if I knew him. But there he was, my saviour, constantly encouraging me, urging me, for 10 minutes, till I finally held the rope, closed my eyes, and jumped. Flying through the air, I kept on hearing him cheering, urging. As I reached the other side, he grabbed me, and pulled me up.

I was right. I didn’t know him. He had waited 20 mins for me, helped me, when he could have easily moved on with his fun and adventure. As he smiled at me, patted my shoulder and said, “Good going, I knew you could do it”, I knew someone, somewhere, loves me, and is watching over me. And that I would never forget this day

C’est la vie!

Ah, France. And Paris. The land of romance, charm, magic, beauty. And culinary pleasures.  Cheese, croissants and other wonderful bread, delightful desserts, crepes, and the blissful foie gras and esacrgots!  Simply paradise!   Reading the French menu with all these exotic words, trying to translate, and finally ordering   heaven, is one of the supreme experiences here…(note: there may be some amount of bias here, that I find ALL food in the Parisian restaurants wonderful, but that’s because I live in a campus in some part of France that the rest of it has forgotten, and my daily diet includes instant noodles in my room or mashed potatoes and fried chicken in the campus cafeteria.)

For the first week, I kept telling my family I’m settling in. What I meant was that I’m living in delight, in an enviroment, a country which is one of the prettiest I have ever seen.  Now I tell my family I’ve settled down nicely. What I mean is that the Eiffel Tower is just a monument, the long wait for trains makes me exhausted enough to sink into the train seat when it finally arrives and to ignore the beautiful countryside, and that when I have to reach an unfamiliar destination by a certain time and the people in the streets speak fluent French and not one word of English and have never heard of the street I’m asking for, the language doesn’t seem so exotic and the pretty surroundings almost don’t exist.

Any kind of official work takes ages to get done, taxis, if you can afford one, take forever to come, restaurants in my town are closed on sundays AND Mondays, offices are shut in the afternoon, including banks, people go on strikes first and have discussions later – leading to 2 strikes on average every month (right now it’s an indefinite one ongoing, and people were stuck for hours yesterday on the streets due to lack of available conveyance ), money takes forever to be credited to your account, the account, specially online, takes ages to open in the first place, bank statements are difficult to find in English….

But then, hey, as my French friends keep telling me, bienvenue en France! Welcome to France! You can love some things in this country, you can hate some, but you definitely can’t ignore any! A culture so unique, a lifestyle so leisurely, a thought process so un-contemporary (I know, that’s not even a word, but that’s what I mean)… it’s one of the few places left in the world where people actually walk more in the parks than in malls, go for more picnics than movies, walk more than drive, lunch is actually a meal and not fast food, people are polite to the extent of saying bonjour even to a pet animal maybe, and a day out would mean more a musuem visit than a mall one. And yes, it’s the only country where in an art gallery, a ‘display’ could include sexual pictures or a live show of intimacy between a couple.

So you just got to sip your wine, nibble on your cheese, appreciate the finer things in life, réflhéchez on the negative ones, and say “c’est la vie”. Which is EXACTLY what I’m doing now with my bottle of Bordeaux and a cube of Camembert. Santé!

How to lose weight and have a flat belly

Now, are you a woman, and did you click on this link with some expectations that it will give you more enlightment on the topic that you already didn’t have ? If so, I congratulate you. You have just joined the group of the ‘Women who read every article on losing weight irrespective of whom they are written by’. Our membership comprises of almost 80% of the women worldwide. The members of this group range from the anorexic to the ones heavier than what their doctor would recommend.

Ok, so those are MY stats, but I can’t be very wrong now, can I? Oh, by the way, I think I am the rightful founder of this group, though there might be some legal disputes on that.

Why do we do it? Why do we read every article that we chance upon based on losing weight? Why do we watch every interview related to it? Why do we let magazines rake in the moolah month after month after month by writing the same stuff every single time, just by different writers and printing different interviews? Because if you think about it, there’s nothing we don’t know.

7 ways to lose weight and have a flat belly

1. Eat whole grains.
2. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.
3. Eat fatty fish for Omega-3 fatty acids.
4. Exercise. Cardio plus weight to add muscle.
5. At least 2 litres of water a day.
6. Eat every 2-3 hours. Not big meals, small meals, more frequently.
7. Sleep well

I don’t think I need to explain any of the above. Why whole grains, what they mean, what they do…why vegetables…..why having more muscle helps…what water does…how metabolism is increased by small meals….I mean, if you don’t know the details of the above, you simply can’t belong to the above-mentioned group. If you want to join, first you have to read every article you come across on losing weight and then you will be able to recite them like me without thinking.

Oh, there are variations. Some include suggestions on having more dairy-based products, about drinking green tea, about having carbs and protein together in every meal, others tell you not to eat carbs 2-3 hours before going to bed, and others try to impress you by rattling off every technical term related to ‘fat’ that you have ever heard or will immediately pounce upon to read. Good fat, bad fat, trans fat, saturated fat, monosaturated fat, polysaturated fat…sounds fancy, huh? That’s why the magazines print them!

And then there are articles about getting over a plateau of losing weight. It’s simple. Change your exercise routine, do more interval training, change your diet slightly- it’s not rocket science, it’s common sense (that has been drilled into my head, considering I have read averything on losing weight in sight for the last 5 years).

It’s not that these facts are not true or necessary to know. I have read them, followed them, they have even helped me, but like the great focussed mythological archer Arjun, who when asked to shoot a bird’s eyes from a distance in the forest, said he could only see the eyes and not the surroundings, when I go to a book store, it’s like my eyes invariably get drawn to books and magazines which have the same headlines. It makes my husband sick. It makes me sick. I know the facts, let me stick to them. But no, I want to read and read in the hope that something else, something new, some miraculous way has come out which suggests more ways to burn fat. Ok, I’ll admit it, hopefully without point 4. If only there is some article tells me ways to burn fat without exercise…if only I could lose the weight lying on the couch and eating what I wanted…if only…sigh

I see headlines of such articles all the time…

Burn Fat and get the perfect body without any exercise!

Lose 3 inches in 7 days!

Eat all the chocolate you want AND get a celebrity body without any exercise!

…Yes, and horses can fly! Sigh!