Getting Used To

Getting Used to It’s easy to say it, very easy. Only those who actually do have to ‘get used to it’, know what it could be. How you look at it, how you adopt in in your lives, is based on you completely. You could be ‘getting used to it’ smoothly, making it a smooth procedure and ‘just another act’ in your life. You could also be someone who tries and ‘gets used to it’ gradually, taking your time and adjusting your lifestyle, thinking and attitude. This could avoid all the chaos of the process and ensure an appropriate alteration and a proper fitting of the ‘new’ in your life. But then, you could also be someone who resists it completely but still have to ‘get used to it’. If you are a part of this last group, then you are definitely doomed and destined for a painful transition. How painful? Again that would depend completely on you. You could decide to don a calm exterior and appear to be someone extremely accepting and open to the change in your life, though you would be battling a storm in your heart at every unoccupied moment, every day. Or, you could be one completely open about it, making everyone aware that you detest this change, detest this ‘getting used to’ part of your life and clearly announce that it was forced upon you. Well it could be forced but it could also be a conscious decision that got your nod nevertheless. If it’s actually forced, then really there shouldn’t be a ‘getting used to it’ part in your lives, it should be avoided at all costs. However, that is the ideal situation, often not the actual one. Let us talk about this last group and the second last group now. Why? It’s my writing, my fingers doing the typing, then why not? Oh come on, I am writing about these two because they are relevant to my right now and hence all typing and the effort to bore anybody of you who tries to read this. How are they relevant? Well, let’s get personal, shall we? One of them is me. And another one is someone closest to me. And what is it that I am ‘getting used to’? It’s a new phase in my life and it’s a huge shift from the as yet prevalent stagnant form of my life. What is it? Oh please, I am not going to bare it all. Keep guessing you ‘already bored’ readers. But for those who still have the patience, here goes. It’s a stage which has marked a changed in my life forever. It changed me as a person, made me change where / what / who I belong to, my approach, my attitude, my liabilities, my ownerships, my answerability, my roots, almost everything in my life. You could wonder how everything could change in my life. Well, I still look the same (thankfully the weighing scale tilts bit lesser though), wear the same clothes (oh please, not the same smelly clothes always but same kinds), talk in the same language, eat the same food and do almost all the things the same way that I would do every day, before. Yet I have changed, in many ways. For one, now it’s a new hometown for me. Now, it’s new people in my life. New people, some who I meet every day, talk to every day. And yes, the old people? No, I do not meet them or talk to them every day. No, I do not see the same movie posters that I would see earlier on the roads; neither do I see the new movies in the same theatres (I hope Priya and Malancha miss me). I don’t eat rice now every day. Surprisingly, I don’t feel the urge to also. That’s a change, a subtle change which has crept in my life and my being, without me realising it till the time before writing the last line. I don’t get to ride the oldest metro service in India any more, but instead I get to ride the newest one nowadays. I don’t get to calculate the taxi fare anymore (fare X 2.4 +1), something I enjoyed doing a lot. Nowadays I do not calculate the transport fare and I again just realised that urge is gone. But yes, like before, I still continue marking how different is the charge for the same distance/route by the same vehicle with different number plates. Yes, I am happy I found something (at least some tendency) similar. There are loads of other things that are ‘changed’ now in my life. For instance, I have new people in my life, some who I care about and some who I am indifferent. The second set is treated not with much difference as before. But for the first group, I am more cautious. I do not want to hurt them, neither do I want to bother them. They are not people I have encountered till the 30 odd years of my life but they matter to me. I want to be close to them, I want them to ‘close me in’. But in the process I do not want to disturb their daily flow of life, I do not want them to change. I don’t want to fail them, but I don’t want to fail the theme of the last phase of my life too. I try to seek balance. Balance, that would balance me as well as everybody else associated with my life. A dear friend had once advised, ‘you will never be able to make everyone around happy, instead make yourself happy’. I try to abide by it often but only when I am conscious. Else, generally I try to strike that balance always, however futile my attempts might be. I am the second last type, how tries to manage with a calm exterior, though I feel I wish I could shout out loud like Konkona in ‘Life in a Metro’. Yes, I often feel that urge, or in substitute, the urge to tear a huge sheet of paper to the tiniest bits (Could I be hired for the post of one who tears the papers in paper dances? Is there any such job at all?). I make repeated daily resolutions to start on with ‘pranayama’ but fail every day. Another dear friend had said, we are too ‘bhodro’, i.e. too decent to people around us and I painfully realised the truth of her sayings. I am fighting that battle to change it and also wondering at the same time, should I? After all this blabbering, I still accept that I have to ‘get used to it’. I know I have to. It has always been difficult for me to accept change. Change is always for the better, yes I do know it. But still I have preferred the pre-change state always, even though change has come in my life, time and again and proved me wrong. I have internally rejected it at first, then accepted it unwillingly and then started living the change. Finally I have also managed to find happiness hidden in some cosy cranny of this ‘change’; boy! they were plenty. I am trying to learn to live this change now, because now I know I have to do it. I am trying to ‘get used to it’ and strike a balance. Help myself as well as all else associated with the process accept this change. (Yes, the other person falling in the last group is one of my closest human beings in this earth). That is turning out to be difficult, I have to agree that. I do not want to change myself or others in the process and loose our originalities, but still wrap this change like the eager comfort of the shawl (I prefer the ‘lep’ or quilt even more any day) around ourselves. I want to learn myself and help all else battle out the resistance and deal with it better (I still think I could have been a good psychologist, who knows someday I might be one). I want to find out those ‘happy hours’ in this change for everybody, yes I would like all of us to ‘get used to that’.