My Trysts With Life

One of the best characters ever in a sitcom (I dare the world to contradict me), is Chandler Bing, from FRIENDS.   FRIENDS was a very successful show in the 1990s and has managed to stay relevant even today, with fans like me who can lip sync dialogues from all episodes. Chandler M. Bing (all fans out there, comment with the middle name), like his name, stands out from the gang due to funny one-liners, quirky anecdotes, and above all, a razor-sharp tongue dipped in sarcasm which he lashes to all and sundry. Some of his lines have become embedded in our lives (“I am not good with advice, may I interest you in a sarcastic comment? or “Hi, I am Chandler, I make jokes when I am uncomfortable.”  Chandler’s conduct is a result of many emotional events in life (cross-dressing father, divorced parents, constant rejections), he thus developed sarcasm as a defense mechanism. Place him in an uncomfortable situation and his first response will be either a joke, a completely unexp...

Go back a few years and recall the famous Dr. J.Asthana’ s laughter therapy to control anger (for the uninitiated, Dr. Asthana was a character in the movie Munnabhai MBBS). A simple Google search returns top 25 ways of controlling anger- talking a walk, count down, stop talking being the top used ones.  Anger is a natural response to perceived threats. Life is not always rainbows and unicorns; there will always be instances where you feel angry. Numerous examples from day to day life can lead to anger- something trivial as the maid not coming, general disagreements on what to wear, what to watch, what to eat, etc, and serious topics like behavior, thought process, etc. Now we all know (or is) that person, who is a known “Hulk”- loses control very easily and starts shouting/vents out her/his anger vehemently. Why is it that a few people can still control their voice, cuss words, and volume when though they might be boiling inside, while some just lose it even on the slightest thin...

Lucknow: “She married into a hospital!” he summarized with an ironic voice. The conversation then moved to our usual discussion on dashboards, numbers, and other topics on the meeting agenda. It was one of our online office meetings, with colleagues now connecting from different locations- the new normal way of working. At the start of the meeting, a little small talk led to one of the colleagues describing his family- a story of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, a heart condition, and dialysis, affecting most the members of his family. While we were discussing how COVID was affecting the world in general, he was used to this style of living because that had been the story his entire life. He claimed that he can do this all daily and with a smile solely because of his wife- who was his strength, his pillar, his everything. Let’s take a minute and look at the lady being described above- married into a family of people who need constant care, continuous supervision, and accepting all ...