Seasonal Moods

Is it just me or are there others whose moods are somehow deeply rooted to the various seasons we experience? Absurd question, I know... But a valid one nonetheless... My granny, for one, was always in a sour mood as far as the weather was concerned. Summers were always too hot, winters too cold and monsoons too wet! I, on the other hand, am very opinionated in this regard, with strong favourites.

Although summers are functional and a favourite among beach goers, I never was too fond of the scorching heat, literally draining away all your energy with every drop of perspiration. And while winters can be managed by putting on layers of clothing, there is no practical way of dealing with the hot season when outdoors. You cannot strip away your skin after all! Hahaha...

On the other hand, I've always been a big fan of the chill. And that one famous dialogue from Game of Thrones, which never failed to give me a feel-good, even with the mercury hitting near 50 degC, undoubtedly needless to quote, was 'winter is coming'! With the frost calming your body and mind, it is also a boon for skiiers, ice-skaters, snow-boarders and a myriad of other folks, including those who want to try out heavy winter apparel.

But all said and done, the monsoon surely takes the cake for me. With the rains washing away all your heartburns and confusion, the sound of rainwater punching your roof and pouring on to the streets below, creating music to your ears, I seem to reach an all new philosophical level every time I'm in the midst of a heavy downpour! And what's better than an accompanying gust of droplets carried by the cool breeze, which brings out the essence of the deluge even more? It's funny that when most people would duck and run, my wife and I dash towards the closest balcony door to take on nature's fury at its best, head on. On that note, can you guess what time of day this is...?

It's 11AM... Yeah! You read right... And the 'AM' isn't a typo either. This snap, taken about a week back in our township, with no camera effects whatsoever, is by far the darkest 11AM I've witnessed till date. Isn't it strange to think that the cloud cover here is so thick, that the tropic sun overhead at this very instant, blaring down in all its glory, is nothing but invisible! Bet the only other place you can see a total daytime blackout is Antarctica, where its dark for six months at a time, thanks to the tilt of the Earth's axis.

Here, I don't mention spring or autumn as they really seem like the foster kids amongst seasons, or like the demoted dwarf planet Pluto in our solar system. They are simply a transition phase between the three major seasons. So, what weather guy or gal are you? Feel free to share in the comments below.

Emotional Equilibrium

While terms like emotional intelligence and emotional balance, are thrown around quite often in the professional space nowadays, the truth is that hardly any of us today has the time to mull over such stuff in our daily plow. So, finding some moments of leisure, I thought it would be a good idea to evaluate my own mental equilibrium, by tracking all those years which have had a much more profound emotional impact on me than others. And to my surprise, the plot I came up with, revealed quite a few fascinating details.

Now, in the above graph, remaining true to myself, I have assigned a happiness quotient to each year of my life till now as 1, 0 or -1, representing elation, neutrality and dejection respectively. As it turns out, my life was quite blissful until around the age of 14 when in 2005, rapid fluctuations in my cognitive frame began. And while some of you might simply attribute it to puberty, I find it to be much deeper than that.

2006 was academically one of my most successful school years, wherein I topped my section, winning multiple awards, and also participated in a multitude of extra-curricular activities, following which 2007 was surely one of my bleakest, where I realized for the first time that nothing in life comes free of cost. I was denied my well-deserved school prefecture simply as I did not find it necessary enough to lobby for the position. Although now, after having held countless positions of responsibility earlier in college and of course in my present professional life, it is laughable to think back to those school days, back then it caused me to lose a fraction of my focus on my academics right before my crucial 10th standard board exams. Still disturbed over my grandpa's passing a year back, with whom I was extremely close, it was much later that I realized that many of the most undeserving pupils who were selected, who were nowhere on the map either in acads or in sports or in any other avenue, had families who were in close cahoot with the school's top management. Wow! Politics even at such a young age...

Oh, well... Time passed and I went into my higher secondary all guns blazing! The years that followed witnessed an epic struggle as detailed in the very first article of this blog, and the rest, as they say, is history! But even after making it to my dream engineering college, social conflicts continued for quite some time, until gradually things fell into place as I graduated on a high, after a very successful final year in 2014-15. The roller coaster ride continued with 2017's huge excitement thanks to the start of a new promenade with my eternal love, starkly followed by probably my worst professional year in 2018, ruined by the worst boss anyone could possibly find, a control freak with negligible managerial skill and close to zero technical knowledge, who excelled in unnecessary derogatory remarks on anyone who crossed his path, and thought himself to be king of the world, getting along with neither superior nor subordinate, crossing new levels of hilarity by the obviousness of his backstabbing nature. While most of us are familiar with the story of Midas in Greek mythology, where anything he touched turned to gold, it is a fact that anything my former boss touched, turned to sh*t, with his juniors partially taking the blame for his failures. Naturally no one would like to do anything for this epitome of flaws, other than officially obliged to! And to add to the misery, I had lost my grandma too that year...

But all else apart, it is interesting to note that the times when we're down and out, actually tend to teach us more than the times when things are peachy, and we generally pull through and emerge even stronger than before, as signified by the 1s immediately succeeding the -1s. But while human life is full of systoles and diastoles, is it a healthy experience going through this many consecutive cycles of psychological instability? Doubtless not... As the 3rd extension of the COVID-19 lockdown continues in our country, the lean period of activity causing old memories to resurface, I have realized that while ecstasy is a very positive feeling, with depression at the other end of the spectrum, it is wise to dial down both a notch, rather than wildly swinging between extremes... Enjoy the good times fully but with subtlety, never forgetting the other could-have-beens, while taking on unavoidable hardships with grace rather than despair, until a relatively straight curve is established.