Time is running out/ no time to lose

Time is running out

This is exactly what I thought to myself this weekend while attending my alma matter’s alumni meet. I looked around. There weren’t many people attending the meet - the only two people I knew were the two friends I had gone with. But even in that limited pool, I felt insignificant. I had come back, without having done anything to distinguish me from the others, and worse, unhealthier than before.¹ If I had looks and a brain earlier, I felt I had neither now. For a second I froze. I thought to myself, time is running out to do something decent with my life.

Time is running out.

The installation at my college pays homage to the 15 women members of the Constituent Assembly.

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No time to lose

I told myself,

“Divyanshu! You have no time to lose! You cannot waste any more time living life like every other 25 year old. You also should have no time to lose i.e. make yourself so busy that you have no time to lose - or to do anything else”.

I patted myself on the back for that clever pun, which probably only seems clever to me, but I will give myself that. I was in my alma matter for less than 20 hours but it was enough to shake me and make me question my choices, behaviours and attitude. Thankfully I was attending the meet with my two very dear friends and the overthinking did not get the better of me. Now that I think about it, it did in some sense, get me - which is why I am sitting in this cafe writing this blog after a gap of almost four months.

It got me.

And then I asked myself, what happened?

How did you completely lose the plot on health? How did you lose most of your interests? Why did you stop playing sports? Why did you pick up bad habits and gradually shed the good ones? When did the line between having fun and harming your life blur? And most importantly, when did you become a clone of a clone of a clone of the quintessential corporate worker in India?

And then this chain of pernicious thought got broken by my friend who asked me, “Ice cream ek scoop khayega ya do?” and I instantly broke into a smile. Thank god for friends, I thought to myself and then proceeded to demolish two scoops of chocolate ice cream.

But coming back to the question - how did I lose the plot?

For starters I think it is very hard to draw the line between ‘you’ve earned this, go all out and enjoy’ and ‘you’ve enjoyed enough, it is time to lock in’. When I started working, I had told myself that I will give myself a couple of months to splurge on myself and not hold back. I had every right to enjoy the hard work I had put in in life until now to get to where I am now (which isn’t much but is honest work). And boy I did. But I did not stop at the imaginary couple of months mark. The months transformed to half a year, then to a year, and then to year and a half now.

When you decide to enjoy life you want to do all the things you wanted to do earlier but could not, and also try new things. And so began the era of ordering whenever, sleeping late watching new shows on subscriptions that you bought at a whim, attending concerts and overpaying for entry to clubs², dining out in expensive restaurants where the only item below 500 is chai. And it felt so good! Endorphins hijack your system. Not only do you enjoy the activity, you also enjoy the fact that you can afford to do it now. The very act of consumption becomes an act of accomplishment. The more money you spend, the more accomplished you feel - of course, subconsciously. And consumption is one sweet drug, a habit I am still trying to kick. Once you achieve a certain level of lifestyle - dining at certain places, consuming only certain kinds of products - it becomes almost impossible to go back to a frugal and minimalistic lifestyle. Reducing your consumption seems like you are loosing currency in this capitalist world. Khair, I went on a slightly different tangent here but the point is that it is very difficult to expose yourself to a new world of new types of joy and highs and then tell yourself to cut it and go back to a life without any of that.

I also realised of something I have ample examples around me i.e. once you become comfortable in the rhythms of corporate job, it becomes almost impossible to do anything you truly want. Years go by, and you wake up one day having achieved much of nothing other than a lot of money. And then you convince yourself that it is too late to start anything new. You also have to take care of your old parents, and in cases your partner and/or your child.

Everybody talks fondly of how they were when they were young, but you can feel their souls eroding away when they talk about themselves as they are now. Much to mine and others surprise, I saw it happen to me in a span of less than two years. It took a friend to jolt me into realising that all my happy stories and moments were in the past and I talk about my present as a punishment I am serving. Thankfully I have started working on it and things have gotten better. But the fact remains that it is probably the easiest thing in the world to become comfortable in a corporate job and then lose 30 years of your life in a blink. It is also malignant because the optimal solution to such a long term resource intensive problem is to find out a state where you (i) work the least, (ii) earn the most, (iii) develop the best relationships, (iv) ensure least entropy, and (v) maintain your influence over the workplace. You need not imagine what the combination of these incentives would do to the person and the workplace. Nothing good would ever come out of such incentives.

It may not be your fault but it is your responsibility

One of the most difficult things to do is to admit one’s fault. For a really long time I blamed my job for all the bad things in my life. It felt natural since that was the only major change that has happened. It also felt relieving since it meant I was not to blame. It took me a year and a half to realise that nobody but I am to blame for everything that happens to me. This is much like the practical application of the quote which goes something like “You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it”. And I only realised it when I closely observed that I was able to do all those things I had convinced myself my job made impossible.

1. I had stopped playing sports, until I found a bunch of folks and started to play in the morning. Now I am able to play at least 2-3 times every week and take out time for sports. The time was right there, I just never utilised it optimally.

2. I had stopped reading, until I realised that it was because I constantly chose to spend it on my phone and not reading and not because I don’t have the time. A colleague was also instrumental in making my realise this as she consistently reads before she goes to sleep. No matter at what time I sleep, I scroll my phone for 15-20 minutes before I go to sleep. I only have to replace it with a book. I still haven’t perfected this but I will.

3. I blamed my unhealthy eating habits on my erratic timings until I cooked for myself (briefly - it is quite difficult to cook for yourself but it is easier than it is made to seem - my sister did this for almost three years while working a corporate job) and realised that the main source of my bad health is the absolutely un-necessary junk food I order from Blinkit/ Instamart. A dear friend recently did exactly this - cut out all the bad food items from his diet and minimised sugar and processed food. The results were instantaneous. You could also see his face glow (but maybe it also had to do something with the fact that he had recently quit his job).

Disclaimer - I am probably the most self aware person I know. I am also the least disciplined person I know. It creates a uniquely frustrating situation where I exactly know what to do, but end up doing the opposite of it anyway, because it is comfortable. My Dad calls me a status-quoist for good reasons. So most of these insights are very clear to me, and I also know exactly what to do to fix my life, but I lack the discipline to commit to it (for now). But discipline is a muscle you build over time, and I am working on it. Petit-à-petit.

But back to the feelings going to my alma matter invoked. It was also interesting because I, yet again realised how much of my identity is built on my perception by others. I believe this is how insecurity works. When you are insecure about something, you base your whole identity on something you perceive as a flaw. You begin to construct an alternate reality where you assume that everybody is judging you. Most of the times it is not even a real flaw but none of that matters, because as long as you believe it, it exists as real as the sun, and the moon. It was interesting to feel that I had to be acknowledged and recognised by people (in this case my alma matter) in order for me to feel important and worthwhile. For a second, I almost promised to myself, in quite bollywood-esque fashion to come back only after I made something of myself. But I realised, thankfully sooner than later that it shouldn’t matter - what people think of me, and my work. Not only because my work is not my worth but also because the measure of someone’s worth is measured within the four boundaries of the normative values of society. You could be doing something really exciting and important but unless it is one of the four things society deems worth respecting - you would still be one of the many faceless people. And it lead me to the same conclusion that I believe in - the only measure of what you do, and spend your time on, is how you feel about it.

The trip also made me realise that I love academic spaces - the promise of teaching and learning is one that sits very close to my heart. While walking around the academic building I came across the class that I used to sit in as a teaching assistant. The course was titled Competition Law In Digital Markets, and it was taught by Professor Shilpi Bhattacharya - possibly one of the handful competition law professors in this country. I loved being a TA as I got to teach! It was so exciting to introduce students to new concepts and take them through the concepts that had fascinated me not long ago. Taking tutorials was my favourite part and I will forever be indebted to the students who showed up to those classes because they carried no attendance, or marks. If anyone of you is reading this, thank you! Some of my favourite moments on the campus were spent in that classroom.

The classroom where I used to teach!

I, along with Professor Shilpi and the class back in early 2023!

Coming back to present times, I caught this studious pigeon in the newly renovated library!

By the end of the trip, I realised I did not have much time to be nostalgic - other than the brief moments in which my friends and I reminisced the absolute gold of a life we had in that campus - unlimited food, the best sports infrastructure, the best faculty and the best residence. I consider myself extremely lucky to be privileged enough to have been able to attend an institution such as Jindal and continue to recommend Jindal to everyone to study law in India. But the point remains (this post is nothing but a collection of tangential thoughts) - it is never late to live the life you want to live! Regret should motivate to change your life and not fester as a disease to further push you down the spiral. It is easy to blame external factors for your lack of progress, but you grow up the day you realise that you have the power to change almost all the things about yourself.

It is time to build!

I will leave you with a snapshot of my college’s famous ‘Flagpole’.

1. The context of the world unhealthy here is that I weigh more than how much I weigh while on campus. And some of the weight, naturally shows on my face and body.

2. One of the things I have completely changed my mind about is clubbing. I never thought I would like it, but I like it now. I am glad I still have the capacity to trying new things and changing my views about them.