Behavioural Psychology

84.3

The other day I was at my cousin’s place. Since he just got that home, hes got tons of shiny objects that I love to play with. One of them was a weighing scale, the kinds you see at expensive hotels. And now when I have been running intermittently and controlling my food intake, I decided to measure the impact. I ought to have lost a lot of weight in last 6 months! All the hard work has to pay off. I had kept a serious tab on my fetish for junk food and cola. I was bound to have lost weight.

With butterflies in my stomach and a heart that was jumping so hard that it could pop out of my throat, I tapped on the scale to activate it and then I stepped on it. To measure myself.

They say when you face death, time flows slower and the entire life somehow flashes past your eyes. And that is what happened when I saw the number on the weighing scale. I was struck by a lightening. As ferocious as it would have been when the day of reckoning would have tormented mother Earth. When all Dinosaurs perished and when we were engulfed in a white storm. The time stood still.

And like all victims of calamities that us humans cant control, I went through the following five stages of emotions – anger, denial, question, acceptance and depression.

It started with my pent up anger coming to surface. I was angry at myself for letting the athletic me of the late nineties to have become the fatso of now. Like most things in life, I did not plan for my inflated belly but I know that I could have controlled it. And to be honest it does not take much to do so. And yet I let is grow like crazy. To a point where I cant breathe after even little exertion.

Next up was denial. When I tried to tell myself that its not me and may be the weighing scale has made some mistake. May be the scale was rigged and its a conspiracy against me and my weight loss mission. May be its an attempt to derail me from writing the Nidhi Kapoor story.

And then the question. I questioned Mother Nature. I asked about her decision to punish me. Me of all her 7 billion children. There are times when you want her to select you and shower you with goodies but at times like these when she singles you out and slaps you hard in the face, you wonder, why me.

I realized that like lot of other things this has been forced upon me. Yes, I am responsible for a large part of it. And I accepted the way I am. I told myself that I’d be happy and try to live with my chin held high. I would close my eyes everytime I see someone who is fitter and leaner. That in reality means that I walk like a blind man, for everyone else around me is fitter and leaner than I. But since I have accepted to live with this, I shall do so.

But the hard part is to actually do it everyday. Day after day. Hour after hour. Minute after minute and second after second. There is no way I can keep depression away from my head. Not about my poverty or about my thinning bank balance. But about my uncontrollable weight. Whatever I have tried, may not be much. But it definitely is not working. The only options left for me, as I see, are either to go into the sharan of Nirmal Baba, or renounce from this material life and goto the mountains. But I think going to mountains requires serious commitment and effort. But then, I wish I was the kinds to put in effort 🙁

Haasil – The Movie

Bollywood is known to release the maximum number of movies in a year. And most of them are forgettable. A lot of them go onto become big hits and send the cash registers ringing. And then there are times when a movie creates a whole new world. The way people think. The way people talk. They way people perceive cinema. One of them is obviously Sholay. The other one is Haasil. I cant really compare the two but Haasil deserves its place along side any other acclaimed movie in the history of Indian Cinema.

The plot is really simple. Its about a small town in India where people are happy go lucky and go about their own tasks. Its a typical story of a young guy. Its a typical story of a pesky father. Its a typical story of a guy in love with a girl and trying to express it. Its about a typical university in India where student politics is more important than the academics or anything else. Then its the typical story of hatred, envy, love, politics, corruption, anger, wars and other such things.

And this is where all the typicalality ends. The story is interesting and compelling enough to captivate the audience. The dialouges are impressive and more importantly their delivery makes every small scene a cult. To the extent that I will probably call each scene a conversation between two characters. Characters who are small yet giant. Who are incapable by themselves yet can do anything if situation demands. Performances by Irfan Khan and Ashutosh Rana that can put any other actor to shame.

Personally, for me, the best two conversations are “Pandit hum der na lagaenge maarne main” and “Hum to ShivJi kay bhakth hain, saara zeher humein hi peena hai“. Although I don’t support piracy, the entire movie is available here for watching online and free download.

Haasil fans, please share your stories. And please note that this is not a movie review.

Links
Orkut Community for Haasil Fans
IMDB on Haasil
Wikipedia on Haasil

Basic Human Needs – An Indian Perspective

I was reading this awesome text located here about Basic Human Needs. I am trying to draw parallels between that text and people in India as I know them.

The article says that there are 9 basic human needs. These are Security, Adventure, Freedom, Exchange, Power, Expansion, Acceptance, Community, Expression.

Following are my opinions and views on these 9.

Security – Most people I know tend to have this need. In fact if I can generalize things, most Indians would have a very high security needs.

For me, Security is not that big a deal.

Adventure – Again if I could generalize, most people would want to believe that they have high adventure needs, I dont think they really do have it.

And yes, I do have high adventure needs. And yes I have all positive aspects and a few negative aspects. Wow. This is accurate.

And I should not make friends with people with high needs of security.

Freedom – Again this is one of those things where people would want to believe that they have freedom but they dont really have it. They are cooking pre-cooked food.

As for me, I DO belong to the group of people who think they are free but they arent. We shall get into more details in subsequent posts.

Exchange – Yes, most people around me have high exchange needs. From things as mundane as recipes to things as involving as gossips, people do exchange things around me. But somehow we dont really make good employees. I think its because we are most bothered about “self” than the group.

Me, I think I have high exchange needs. I express them by participating in discussions etc. Actually, come to think of it, I have high recognition need rather than exchange need.

Power – People tend to think that they have high power needs but they lack initiative. Most of Indians around me tend to wait for orders. They love passing buck.

And I am also lazy. I dont think I have power needs but as I said, I have very high recognition need.

Expansion – I did not understand this one.

Acceptance – Very much. Most of the world around me has high acceptance needs. Probably can be attributed to the way we are raised in India. Every small achievement if praised and highlighted and as we grow up, we grow used to appreciation. We need acceptance for our efforts.

I also have high acceptance needs. I think acceptance and recognition go hand in hand.

Community – People say that Japanese have strong communities, I would say Indians have stronger communities. We might not be as loyal as Japanese but yes we tend to stick to our clans. We are still divided in Baniyas, Shudras, SCs, STs etc.

I personally want to break free of these communities but knowing myself it will be a difficult task.

Expression – I think I confused this one with exchange. I think people want to express themselves in India but because of way we are brought up (keep secrets within a family, women often dont have the opportunity to speak up etc), most of us dont express. Although when we start expressing, we can be very good at it.

I love the concept of expression. In fact one of the things that I want to do in life is to express myself. I have used images, text, videos in the past and I would love to experiment with other things.

Anyone wants to share their opinions?