Twenty- five Seven

Simple Ways to Beat Stress

June 29, 2014
Surface tension (Photo credit: jjn1)

stress
strɛs/

noun

1.

pressure or tension exerted on a material object.

“the distribution of stress is uniform across the bar”

synonyms: pressure, tension, strain, tightness, tautness; More

2.

a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances.
Stress is neither age, gender or culture specific. Nor is it something new.

We all experience it at sometime or the other and we all have our ways of dealing with it. I’d like to share some simple methods which work for me and should work for most women. Try them.
- Go for a walk- There’s nothing like
  a good long walk that helps you air your mind and see things in a different
  light. Walking in a city means you have to keep your wits about you as you
  navigate the traffic lights and keep an eye on the cars, pedestrians, stray
  cows, broken footpaths, pavement hawkers, street dwellers, doggy poop and any
  other objects that may impede your movements. While this may not seem very
  pleasurable, it does serve in distracting you and by the time you finish your
  walk you are sufficiently exhausted and appreciative of the fact that your
  stress indeed is nothing compared to the stress of negotiating a
  “simple” walk.
Of course not all walks are this
complicated – a simple walk along a hilly path or by the sea side is relaxing
and fun and genuinely takes all stress away. Being in nature and with nature
helps sort out many issues that seem to be bothering you.
- Bake a cake – While cooking can be a bit of a chore, baking is strangely relaxing. Somehow there is something therapeutic
  about creaming the butter and sugar together, beating the eggs stiff, sifting the flour and eventually
  smelling the vanilla wafting through the air as the cake or cookies slowly rise up. There
  is nothing more satisfying and relaxing than sinking your teeth into a soft, warm
  crumbly cake or biscuit that drives away your stress with the very first bite. And if this doesn’t do it, decorate the cake with cream topping and sprinkles or complicated designs that you pipe out of an icing cone or shape out of sugar.
- Go shopping – Retail therapy is
  great for your spirit if not your wallet. Even if you don’t come back the
  conquering shopper, a simple stroll through a mall or the shops is just great
  for the eyes. Be it antiques, fabric, food or whatever your heart desires,
  shopping is a great stress buster even if you don’t buy a thing.
- Call a friend – With everybody just
  a cell phone away, talking to a friend has never been easier. We all have our
  punching bags (parent, sibling, spouse, colleague, and friend) that are willing
  to listen while we unburden, whine and moan. The best listener is not only one
  who listens patiently but also tells you what you want to hear – yes, poor you,
  the whole world is against you. The moment you hear these words, you perk up
  and feel instantly better and stress free.
- Cut your hair – Cut hair cut care.
  There’s nothing like a new hair cut to lift up your spirits and change the way
  you look. But if you’ve done this once too often and have no more hair to cut; do not despair – you can still go to the
  parlour and have your legs waxed or your nails manicured. Shampoo away your
  stress, feel the tension leave your body as your feet are gently massaged and
  relax while somebody is pampering your fragile ego.
Flip through a fashion magazine – Aah ! What bliss it is to flip through the pages of glamour and fashion. The glossy paper, the good looking models, the clothes and accessories to die for, replaces your stress with a new level of aspiration and desires that somehow numb your senses and leave you in a limbo of nothingness.
Tying the knot

June 28, 2014

Mothers and daughters have always had difficult relationships and no more is this tested than at the wedding of a daughter.

Once upon a time weddings in India were held in the summer when the days were hot and the schools were closed and most people took leave to keep their children amused. This was the the pre-TV era when the only entertainment we had was home entertainment and the only holidays we had were family holidays in family homes.

So if we were still in that era, by now we should be in peak wedding season but thanks to the large scale migration of Indians overseas, the wedding season has slowly shifted to the latter half of the year, when the temperatures in India are more conducive to the Snow Birds coming back for a home visit , the vegetables fresher and you can actually think of wearing your heaviest silk brocades.

But apart from the seasonal shift, there has also been an attitudinal shift in the approach to the wedding. Ours was perhaps the last generation where we were just showed up with heads and eyes down either out of bashfulness or embarrassment and did exactly what we were told even if the instructions were in a language we didn’t understand the language of the ceremony was often the language of the prayers (a tongue not in everyday use!)This made matters very easy for all concerned. Invitations were often made out in the names of elders in the family with compliments of various relatives printed below. The ceremonies were standard with rituals followed by our ancestors for generations with a dress code and menus also pre-determined. This was a completely hassle free occasion was concerned with choices being determined largely by the budget kept aside for this important rite of passage.

Even in an inter-religious, inter-caste or inter-racial or inter-anything marriage there was some semblance of tradition : once the kind of ceremony was decided upon ( either the bride’s or groom’s tradition or a combination of both), everything else was decided as per custom. For instance, if the couple wanted to stick to a Christian wedding, a Christian wedding it was and if they wanted a mix of ceremonies, there would be a mix but in a compartmentalised way i.e. a Christian+Hindu union wouldn’t have a Hindu ceremony with a bride in a wedding dress!

All this changed somewhere down the line with brides and grooms of all cultures. Perhaps it was an overdose of seeing weddings of every culture on screens of every size ( from their tiny phones to big theatres) that they decided to take things into their own hands. Gone are the days when parents decided who the spouses should be. Gone too are the days when spouses were shown to the parents for their consent. Today the tables have truly turned when children expect their parents to show up for the wedding as pure guests and the focus on the ceremony changing from religious sanction to the pursuit of pleasure.

And in this pursuit of pleasure a lot of importance is given to what goes where and how leading to a lot of stress for the mothers/fathers/wedding planners involved with the wedding. I don’t know much about the grooms because I presume they are willing to go with the flow but it is often the brides who metamorphose into unrecognisable beings : everything becomes an issue – the day, the date, the invitation, the guest list, the ceremonies, the rituals, the clothes, the food , the honeymoon etc etc etc so that by the time the wedding draws near the mother/father/wedding organiser is only too ready to shed tears when the bride and groom say “I do”.

Why is it that wedding preparations bring out the worst in a potential bride? Is it because the age has increased and brides expect a say in their own weddings because they are used to taking decisions? Or is this a psychological breaking away from the umbilical cord?

What should be a happy time of planning a trousseau, planning a menus, sharing the last moments of a girlhood soon to be lost to responsibility and allegiance to a new family, often turn out to be weeks of torture for the bride and her mother with every decision becoming a war zone of ideas and expectations. Somehow, mothers and daughters unwittingly become adversaries and monsters turning a long awaited rite of passage into a prickly and unpleasant affair.
Chef – Pathetic attempt at comedy.

June 27, 2014

Yesterday was one of those days when all three of us were free. While Kay wanted to go shopping to the wholesale cloth market, Jo wanted to do something cooler and less tiring so we went to see a movie. And what a bad movie it was!!!! Luckily it was such a bad movie that the only thing going for it was it its sub Rs 200 priced ticket. Jon Favreau as the writer, producer and main actor of the movie “Chef” should not be doing any of these things……..least of all passing off a really crass movie as funny. The funniest thing in the movie was the notion that this fat, greasy looking cook actually thought he was god’s gift to man’s palate and not only did he have this luscious babe (Sofia Vergara as ex-wife) lusting after him, he had this cute kid who desperately wanted him to be his dad at all times and a few hundred followers on Twitter who wanted his grilled ham and cheese sandwiches which he sold from a truck!!!!!!!

Honestly, the film was bad from start to finish – the storyline far fetched, the acting pathetic and the humour grossly infantile at times to forced at others. I mean how can singing “Sexual Healing” and watching a ten year old squirm be considered even remotely funny. What’s funny about seeing two men putting Corn Flour into their pants? And talking of ten year olds, Carl Casper as a father is downright rude with no sensitivity and no sense : making his son work rather slave in the “kitchen” is downright child abuse, sharing a beer and traveling in a food truck is hardly a relationship building exercise. In fact even the mother is no better ( taking her son to see his grandpa perform in a sleazy Miami Bar) and frankly this couple should not have been allowed to have children in the first place – so centred are they on their own insecurities and needs.

Predictably the food blogger who trashes Carl Casper’s career with his caustic review is made to eat a grilled ham and cheese variety of humble pie when Carl re-invents himself as Jefe of the exotic Cuban sandwich fame and equally predictably, Carl gets back his wife and his life with a new restaurant financed by noneother than the food critic who it turns out, was actually his greatest fan.

What is amazing in this movie is the premise “Thou shalt not doubt the power of social media ” and if the tweeting is to be believed, all one needs to is have a Twitter account and voila your life is made. With every tweet your following gets bigger , your persona gets larger , your business increases and so does your bank balance! If I didn’t know any better I’d say the movie was financed by Twitter.

Bottom line : Avoid at all costs.

Redeeming factor : The sinful fresh out of the oven banana-date cake from IndigoDeli that we gobbled up on the way home!

Simple Ways to Beat Stress

Tying the knot

Chef – Pathetic attempt at comedy.