Friends of Words

Author: Swati

  • “When 900 years old, you reach… Look as good, you will not.” – Yoda, Return of the Jedi

    “When 900 years old, you reach… Look as good, you will not.” – Yoda, Return of the Jedi

    I was (re)watching The Return of the Jedi the other day, and this exchange between Yoda and Skywalker made me gasp for breath. As usual, I exaggerate. 

    Surprisingly, it was not the image of my looks at 900 that disturbed me the most, and I think that had to do with the world average mortality rate of less than a tenth of that. 

    So, naturally, I got worried about how I would look at the more believable 90, assuming my junk-laden city lifestyle even allows me to survive that long. Considering my imagination is limited given my mediocre intelligence, I seek the intelligence of search engines out there – and surprisingly, the images brought by the algorithm do precisely the opposite of what I was hoping for.

    Even with all those age-defying state-of-the-art remedies out there, it does not look like we have advanced that much against age.

    Yes, you must be wearing sunscreen every time you step out in the sun (and sometimes without the sun for the habit), you may buy the last advanced age-defying serum from the shelf, you may spend three hours in the gym every day, you may have defeated bugs bunny and popeye in the carrot/salad/spinach-eating contest.

    But the truth remains: cells are born, they mature, and eventually die. 

    It’s ingrained in our DNA. We might be able to slow down the aging process, but not to the extent they showed in In Time – the Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried starrer. 

    The wrinkles have a way of catching up… eventually. I wonder though, if seeing myself growing old is more painful than people telling me that I am?

    Would I be less gloomy and more prepped if I somehow brought myself to accept this eventuality if not embrace it?

    Would I be less depressed and anxious about the things I can’t control?

    While secretly thinking, ‘would that reduce my stress levels enough to reduce the cortisol production in my body, thus reducing inflammation in my body and slowing, if not halting, the pace of aging? 

    Of course, I can’t claim to know the answers to these questions. I do not. There is only one Yoda, and he breathed his last quite a while ago.

    But one thing I do.

    My favorite Yoda quote this is.

  • The Vintage Man – How Well Do You Know Your Cars?

    The Vintage Man – How Well Do You Know Your Cars?

    Now and then, I would have an urge to figure out my IQ, driven mainly by ubiquitous android or iOS Logo quiz apps on every website I am on. They claim to tell you your IQ based on your performance on their quizzes. Guess the company names by looking at their logos- what better way to know how intelligent you are! 

    If you don’t understand the symbols around you, you can’t be smart, can you? 

    Neither my words nor my logic.

    Well, I digress. The point being, I love cars, beautiful looking cars. The thing is, I don’t know much about them, except for their brand logos. 

    Unfortunately, I think I can only categorize a car as a sedan, hatchback, or SUV, and that on a good day. Maybe just big or small is the best categorization you could get out of me on a bad day.

    I digress again. Last year, on a nice summer day, while I was walking down the street after a visit to my nearby café, I noticed a car, the car didn’t look very modern actually. It seemed like one of those vintage cars I sometimes see on “Comedians in cars getting coffee” (For those of you that don’t Netflix as much, it’s a very popular comedy/chat show). 

    Just a vintage car, you might say? 

    At least I know that I thought that. 

    But no! It was as if Darth Vader had appeared with his royal vehicle, living the law-abiding life, waiting at the intersection for the traffic light to go green. 

    It seemed as if in that minute, he had enamored everyone in the 300-meter radius; everyone’s eyes were on this alien road dweller. People were spellbound, ogling at them both – the vehicle and its driver, trying to unravel the mystery of how they came to be together. 

    Some people took leave of their reservations and started whistling; the driver, a sport, acknowledged the kind gesture and honked in return. 

    The Gods of traffic lights couldn’t let that idyllic anomaly go on for long, could they? 

    The light turned green soon enough, the driver sped past in his alien vehicle, and that cute little downtown corner was back to its chaotic existence, but those 30 seconds of red light seemed like a few hours in a utopian world. At least for me. 

    My only regret: I wasn’t facing the vehicle, so I didn’t get a look at the logo – and hence, Je suis desole, never got to know what brand or make of the car was. All my hopes of evoking that enamor from random strangers were flushed down the drain, assuming I were ever able to get that royal ride for myself one day.

    I learned some critical lessons that day, which I hope stay with me, for long.

    “Never trust what logo quiz say your IQ is” (the creators for these and ‘does trump have a higher IQ than Obama’ quiz are most probably the same) 

    AND

    “Know your cars.”

    In a world full of logo quizzes every step of the way, tread lightly.

  • What’s with your accent?

    What’s with your accent?

    It happens to be dinner time, and I am eating AND watching this TV series. In one of the scenes, this guy is going about telling people that he is a cop/a Fed/a spy, whichever is convenient in the situation. 

    At best, people throw a confused look, and at worst, they exclaim, “Oh yeah? What’s with the accent?” 

    Naturally, in a world these people can make sense of, a Fed/cop/spy can’t have an accent. It just doesn’t sit right.

    Of course, I take it personally. After all, where’s the fun in watching something if you don’t picture yourself in the protagonist’s shoes. It’s freakishly easy for me to create this world in my mind, where I am this guy, and people are mocking my accent. 

    If someone said that to me as they did to that guy, I could see myself reacting in either of these two ways:

    1. Start bawling like a kid right there, which is quite embarrassing considering the grown-ass woman that I am
    2. Smack the perpetrator in the face

    As you can see, both of these reactions aren’t ideal and rightfully sit on two ends of the situational response spectrum. Both of them reflect a lack of maturity and emotional resilience to differing degrees.

    I consider a middle route between the two, maybe just tears welling in the eyes and me slapping the perpetrator lightly on their face, but that response seems even more pitiable, so I drop it off my simulation.

    Thankfully, my attention returns to the show soon enough, and I catch the guy’s response to the perpetrator.

    Poker face followed by ‘Oh yeah, what’s with yours?”

    What the hell! Why didn’t I think of that!?

    Sense returns to me eventually, and I have this epiphany, “Who doesn’t?”

    Take that, perp!

  • Do You “Speak Easy”?

    Do You “Speak Easy”?

    I love the sitcom Seinfeld very much, at least the first few seasons. A lot of wisdom in my life comes straight from the TV show. 

    The Contest aside (the most famous episode of Seinfeld), there are lots of things worth remembering from that show, but one that hit home was the one from Seinfeld’s comic bit:

    “I saw a study that said speaking in front of a crowd is considered the number one fear of the average person. Number two was death. This means to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

    Just allow me to talk, and I promise you will regret it. God save you if you happen to be a close friend AND ask to have a chat! 

    I have been asked very politely to stop talking and (hyena) laughing. On one occasion at work, a colleague came from the other side of the floor, a couple of medium-size meeting rooms away, enquiring about the culprit making that sound. 

    The irony of it was that I was the first person she asked. 

    That lady didn’t know it was me (at least that’s what I told myself!). Having had my laughter compared to a hyena’s, it hurt because of how villainous they were to Simba and his dad in The Lion King. Growing up, they topped my “enemy animals” list.

    Anyway, long story short, I have now accepted that I laugh that way and have learned not to take offense when someone accidentally points that out to me. 

    As for talking, in all likelihood, I have probably convinced you about my potential of the pace with which I can pour out the mind-numbing stuff. 

    Having accomplished that, I will get to the point.

    The point is that there is some truth to the notion that people detest public speaking. 

    I am no personal trainer, so I can only speak from my own experience, either receiving presentations or delivering them. Curiously, I find myself reasonably comfortable in either of the situations below:

    1. You are my friend, and I know nothing about the topic at hand 
    2. You are not my friend, and I know everything about the topic at hand 

    In the former case, despite no knowledge or agenda of where the conversation is headed, I can talk endlessly mostly because my friends are darlings, and I know they will not judge me if I make mistakes. 

    I made sure not to befriend the grammar police. I don’t like them much, mostly because I can never get my sentences right (enough for them).

    I would be primarily comfortable in the latter case because I know the content pretty well, even if I don’t know the people I am doing the presentation for. 

    Please don’t try going by Shawn Mendes’ advice in his song “Nothing holding me back”; picturing your audience rather unclad isn’t going to help.

    And wouldn’t public speaking be a cakewalk if it was always either of the two scenarios above? 

    But who am I kidding? 

    These are extremes on a spectrum. Most of the presentations I have to do are to strangers and about the topics that I am not an expert on. I have no friendly faces to find solace in, and neither is my knowledge of the topic 100%. So double whammy! 

    So to conquer my fear of making a complete fool of myself in a conference room full of people that have authority to have me fired, I find myself turning to age-old Buddhist advice of finding the middle path, a way between the comfortable extremes – the one where I imagine a few friendly faces in the sea of strangers and convince myself that despite my less than 100% command of the content, no one is posing a question that I am going to be (fully) stumped by. 

    At the very minimum, the synapses are going to respond to my brain’s request of at least being able to manage ‘I don’t have the answer for you right now, but I will be sure to get back to you on this”. 

    It’s counterintuitive, but what also seems to help is me saying “Devil may care” right before I start my rant, a.k.a presentation. That appears to talk me off the ledge.

    I am still somewhere within the extremes, much closer to the hopeless novice than the silver-tongued charmer, but I know that I would rather be alive and talking than be dead and be talked about. 

    No offense to Seinfeld. 

    Hee. Hee. Hee.

  • Have You Ever Had Yourself a Bazinga! Moment?

    Have You Ever Had Yourself a Bazinga! Moment?

    There is a good chance that you would have heard about Big Bang Theory, and I don’t mean the scientific phenomenon that formed our universe, but the famous American TV series. You probably would have seen it too. 

    And if you have, you either loved it or hated it immensely. For some reason, there are only opposites for this one. 

    Either way, there is a good chance you might have come across Sheldon Cooper’s classic ‘Bazinga!’

    Sheldon Cooper, a genius but socially awkward theoretical physicist, revels in his ability to pull what he calls ‘practical jokes’ on his friends by saying ‘Bazinga!’ after a false statement.

    The Bazinga is supposed to be surprising the somewhat confused victim. 

    a screenshot of a scene of bazinga from big bang theory
    A Bazinga moment from The Big Bang Theory

    So why the sudden rant?

    On one of the days when my willpower defeated the electromagnetic force of attraction between me and my couch (and Netflix), I stepped out on a glorious summer day with a tote bag with a book in it. 

    Today’s the day I will have tea and croissant, sit in a corner, and slowly sip my tea while it turns juice cold while making sure that the superpowers vested in me by the God of Klutz, I don’t spill a single drop on my book. 

    I envy infants/ little kids sometimes; they can wear bibs in public without being embarrassed about it. There is glory in being able to spill things and still walk around without a care in the world. 

    So here I am, reading away, mainly concentrating on my book, when suddenly I hear a song being played. 

    Now, this little joint always plays songs, and for some reason, I end up going there when they are playing The Weeknd’s latest. 

    But this time, it’s different. This is not your traditional song. This is a song from a faraway country that my parents call their own. 

    I remember it because I have seen them playing it at home. I know all the lyrics. ‘Well, this is a pleasant surprise,’ I mumble and go back to my reading.

    Five sentences down, I am distracted again—this time by the server at the cafe singing at the top of his voice. 

    Lo and behold! 

    It’s the same song. 

    Typically, I won’t be surprised, but I am now. This guy speaks an entirely different language, not the one the song is in. He doesn’t know what the words mean, but he doesn’t care. Not a care in the world. 

    I feel a sharp pang of jealousy that quickly converts into shame and regret. 

    I know what the words are; I know what they mean, hell! I even have all the lyrics memorized, but I wouldn’t dare to sing that in public.

    And it’s not because I can’t sing, Mind you, I can; I pride myself in being a slightly better upgrade from your typical bathroom singer. 

    I don’t sing because, for some reason, I care about other people and what they would think about me if I did.

    They would judge me to be using a language that’s alien to most here. 

    They would brand me a freak and look at me with pity or disgust from the corner of their eyes. Speaking to each other in hushed tones about me. 

    I’m not too fond of the limelight, definitely not of this kind. So I take the easy way out. 

    But that easy way isn’t easy anymore. This random stranger has opened my eyes to a truth I don’t want to see, and it’s a sharp jab to the soul. I am patiently waiting for him to make a mistake with the lyrics, which could be a salve to the ache I am feeling. 

    But No! The damned guy knows the lyrics perfectly! I hate him. I am almost tempted to ask him where he learned everything, but I stop myself. 

    When I have 50 more pages to finish before this edge-of-the-seat thriller ends, do I really want to spend time on small talk? 

    There is no clear answer, but I consider the episode a one-off, myself Bazinga’ed, and move on.