Chained by Habit

AI Image generated on Nightcafe

Till 2016, I was part of the sandwich generation.

Our son was in school, and my parents were aging. After my mother passed away in 2011, my father had become increasingly withdrawn, and leaving him without company was always a tug on the clumsy balance I lurched to achieve, between family and friends, work and leisure, time in our mountain cottage and travel to sights unseen.

In the summer of 2016, I became like a spread without bread. While our son was appearing for his school board exams, my father slipped peacefully into the everafter. Three months later, our son went to college in the US.   

Gradually, we began to spend more time in the mountains, and travel more frequently. The juggling became easier, but it didn’t let up. A driving holiday in the Scottish Highlands got tagged on to a festival I needed to attend in London. I parachuted out of a conference in Corbett to be with my wife when her brother was hospitalised in Bangalore, then flew back to Delhi for a series of board meetings. A canoe trip down the Rhine began the day after my son’s summer break ended. I threaded my joy of the outdoors through the needle of lectures, seminars and investor meets, to accompany an expedition to the base camp of Matho Kangri, to trail-run in Bali for a friend’s 70th, and to take a course in open-water swimming in Greece. 

Along came COVID, which locked us into our homes, first by administrative fiat, then out of abundant precaution. The upside - there’s often an upside - was that board meetings, all meetings in fact, moved to Zoom. In the winter of 2019/20, we spent a few days in Goa, and at breakfast one morning, I saw a group of young people who had sublimated Work From Home to Work From Goa. What joy on their faces when I asked them to pose for a photo, ranged before their laptops and lattes.

We took our time driving back to Delhi, spending a couple of days in the azure bays and mango orchards of the Konkan Coast, among the frescoes of Ajanta and Ellora, then onto the banks of the Narmada, at Maheshwar. Walking along the ghats before breakfast, I met a young boatman who was an avid swimmer, and happily agreed to escort me across the river and back.

 “Four in the afternoon?” he asked,

“Four thirty…” 

I needed to be on a conference call with investors trying to rescue a start-up from a bitter war between the co-founders. I slipped into my neoprene vest and swim shorts before the call, grabbed an energy bar as it ended, and made the rendezvous on schedule. Shiv Khevat was waiting at the ghat, with a small knot of friends. Two of them surveyed me as if I were in a glass display.

“Kaafi buddhha hai”, one opined.

“Haan, lekin takdaa hai”

A consensus seemed to emerge - he’s an old geezer, but perhaps he’ll make it.

Another companion lit up a large chillum for Shiv, who motioned it towards me. When I declined -“I am an old geezer after all!” - he took a deep draught. Then, red-eyed, bellowed, “Bam-bam Bholey!” and urged me into the crisp waters of the Narmada.

In less than an hour, we returned to the shore, to enthusiastic applause. I dried myself off, and emerging from the buzz of self-congratulation, the realisation crystallised: one really can WFA, work from anywhere. Freedom, finally, to choose the couch in which to slouch, as I peruse the net, and squint into meetings. 

This morning, in the tentative light of dawn, I carried my coffee to the sagging sofa in the corner of our living room, while the ducks reminded the gardener that they needed to be fed.

I had sat up late last night, listening to the long voice note an Israeli friend had sent from Ashkelon, where rockets sped through the air, and five were brought down together, not 150  meters from his home. Smoke filled the air. “For the first time in my life, I don’t feel safe in my home.” 

I was emotionally sapped by the new cycle of violence that had been unleashed. By habit, I turned on my phone, and did the Wordle. I felt like closing my eyes and breathing deep. Instead, I turned to Squareword, as I had my next sip of coffee. Now check Whatsapp, see if anything merits answering. My coffee mug was drained. I put my feet up - now I really need to close my eyes. I did, and began a cycle of deep breathing. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I wrote a tweet about the situation in Israel. 

You can wait to post it, I told myself, even as I opened my eyes. 

“Are you going for a ride?”, my wife asked me.

Not yet. I needed to get stuff done. I punched in the tweet, then scrolled through my feed, my morning dive into the world outside. I peeked out the window, and the clouds in the valley gave me my excuse to return to my phone, to read BBC and the Financial Times. The sky was clearing now - time to wheel out my cycle. In a few minutes…after I check what kind of response my tweet is getting. The impressions were racking up into the thousands. A couple needed answering. Those answers begot answers, which needed answering.

Three hours gone, the marigolds were bright yellow in the sun, and I hadn’t stepped out the front door. In a few minutes, it would be time for breakfast. Of course I could delay it, but habit calls with the allure of a siren. I succumbed to my omelette, slouched deeper into my couch, and doom-scrolled some more.

I was angry with myself all morning. I had lost my window to swoop through the hills, past the pine trees, and down to the meadow where I loved to stop and admire the luxuriant toon tree. Now the carpenters had arrived to repair the roof, and I needed to drive to the nearest market to buy building materials. The drive was hot, the market grotty, and I continued my conversation with myself.

You always prided yourself in being able to walk away - from the corporate world, from the city, from vacuous social events, and from friendships gone stale. You made it to this home of beauty, were liberated by WFA, and now look where you got trapped - by social media, and by the force of habit.

You are your worst jailer. Breathe deep, look deep inside, and find the cobwebs that trap you. They are much more insidious than you ever imagined.