Poornima Manco

Author

behaviour

Half of a lifetime

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Today is a pretty significant day in my life. I haven’t tom-tommed about it everywhere, in fact not even my nearest and dearest know, but I have been thinking about it all day long. Today marks exactly half my life of being in Britain. This was the first day, all those years ago, that I entered the United Kingdom with a work visa in my hand, stars in my eyes and trepidation in my heart.

It was meant to be temporary, no more than three years and then I would’ve transferred to Hong Kong. Three years seemed like a very long time, but here I am, more than two decades later and it seems to have gone in the blink of an eye.

I am a naturalised British citizen now and very proud of the fact too. However, somewhere within me, an umbilical cord still binds me to my birthplace. I miss the seasons, the colours, the clothes, the food and most of all, my family and friends who still remain in India. However, Britain has given me so much as well. I have my own family here, I have many friends, my job, my hobbies, the freedom to be who I want to be, to reinvent myself, to be fearless and experimental, all of these are boons granted to me by this land.

I cannot lie though and say that everything has been smooth sailing. Adopting a new country as your own and adapting to its culture and norms can be quite terrifying. Even being fluent in English wasn’t enough at times, because my accent wasn’t right. The Indians here weren’t like the Indians in India, and I had to learn a new subset of behaviours and beliefs. Similarly, with the Britons, I had to understand that it could take years before acceptance and true assimilation could occur.

In all of this, I have learned to grow, to evolve, to change that which needed changing and hold on to that which I refused to change. My value system is Indian and will continue to be so, but my outlook has broadened enough to see the fault lines in what I left behind.

What would I consider myself today? An Anglicised Indian? I think not. The world is shrinking at a breathtaking pace. Not in terms of geography, but certainly in terms of connectivity. I am fortunate enough to have travelled to many parts of the globe, and if there’s one thing I can say confidently, it is this: I find myself falling in step with a country and a culture almost seamlessly, even if the language, currency, food and features are palpably alien.

Hence, even though I detest labels, the one I would most identify with at this point, is that of a global citizen. A hokey sentiment? Maybe. But one that feels most true to who I am today.

All those years ago, when I left home to pursue my career ambitions, I had no idea where I would end up and what I would end up doing. In twenty-odd years, I have lived a life I could only have dreamed of. A life filled with love, laughter, happiness, sorrow, career highs and career lows. I have been delighted to discover some wonderful facets to myself and been equally dismayed to find that I am also chock full of flaws. I have become a wife and a mother, I have become a teacher and a writer. I have travelled the world and I have retreated into superlative books.

If I am fortunate enough to have another few decades of life left on this planet, then all I could ask for, with humility and gratitude, is more of the same.

The extroverted introvert

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Does this sound like you?

I’ve just come back from the largest Indie book conference in the world, where I learned so much and made many new friends, but you know what my most surprising takeaway was? The fact that, at heart, most writers are introverts. As am I.

I’ve always pretended to be an extrovert, be happy in company and at parties, even enjoyed the spotlight to a large extent, but somewhere within me I’ve always known, that given half a chance, I would rather be curled up on my sofa reading a book.

A lot of it could be down to my background and upbringing. I am an only child, and in my childhood with both parents working, I had no choice but to embrace reading and escape into other worlds or do the same with my imagination. Which, I suppose, in turn, led me to become a writer.

The other aspect of my nature is the desire to melt into the background, to become an observer of people and life, to take mental notes and file them away for future reference. What are writers but people who carefully curate experiences to create experiences for their readers?

So, looking around a room of 1000 strangers, I had a mild panic attack. How would I possibly get by for the next three days? I knew no one, and although we were all there to learn something, to grow, to expand our minds and our readership, we were still unknown quantities to each other.

I really needn’t have worried. Just as a country has its own language, we had ours. ‘Reader magnets’, CPCs, Beta readers, Bookbub deals – words and terms that would be incomprehensible to a layperson, became the vocabulary we introduced ourselves with. ‘Reverse harem’, ‘LitRPG’, ‘Space Opera’ were genres I started to grasp. Most importantly though, I came to understand, that here was a humongous tribe of (mostly) introverts who had pushed themselves out of their comfort zones to mingle with and learn from other equally terrified introverts.

There was absolutely no pressure to socialise if you didn’t want to. If you did, however, you were welcomed into groups with a rare and genuine kinship. In an extremely intense and enjoyable few days, I found myself relaxing into being just me. This me could be an extrovert or an introvert, depending on my mood. And that was okay because these were people who understood because this was them too.

On any given day, we are a multitude of things. I know that I am, for the most part, an extroverted introvert. Which means that after I have spent a lot of time in the company of people, I need to retreat and recharge my batteries for quite a while before I venture into company again. Some people will read this and say, “You? Never!” Because the facade is a good one. But I am also the person who can get extremely shy, awkward and tongue-tied amongst people. Often I’ve had to give myself a very stern talking-to before meeting someone new, for fear of making a complete fool of myself. I am incredibly diffident about approaching people, and the tiniest rebuff can dent my confidence for days.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I want you to be aware that sometimes people aren’t who they appear to be.

For the world I may seem to be a confident go-getter, travelling around the world, ready to plunge into any new experience, up for a laugh or a party at the drop of a hat. In reality, I am shy, very critical of myself, lazy to a large extent and an over-thinker to a painful degree. I am no different from any other human being. We are all bundles of contradictions.

Maybe its time to discard all such labels and to embrace our faults and our foibles, to delight in the many positive qualities we have been endowed with, work hard to overcome our shortcomings, but also to never ever lose sight of the fact that regardless of who or what kind of people we are, there is a reason for and a value to our existence.

 

Up close and personal

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Loss is universal. It is something each one of us will encounter at some point in our lives. Yet, how we deal with it is an intensely personal experience. Some of us will rage against the unfairness of it, some will accept it as our due, others will go into a state of denial, others still will perhaps find unhealthy crutches to lean on. No matter how we process loss, one thing we can be utterly and completely sure of is that we will be touched by it.

My own biggest loss was that of my mother. I was 27, newly married, living over 4000 miles away, and still trying to come to terms with the separation that my career and now, marriage had created between us. My mother had been my fulcrum for most of my life. She was the strongest, bravest, most beautiful lady that I had looked up to for nearly two decades. However, she was not without her faults, and as I grew out of my teens and set foot into my twenties, suddenly, for some unknown reason, her inadequacies were all I could focus on. Perhaps, that was Nature’s way of making sure that I would be able to fly the nest. But how hurtful it must have been for her to see this daughter, her only child, the one who had previously idolised her, turn cold and indifferent. Thankfully, that state did not last long. Sadly though, much before I could tell her how much she meant to me and how much I loved her, she was gone.

Everything I write today, is in some way or the other, dedicated to her. I can only hope to be half of the woman she was.

The Intimacy of Loss, my first novella, deals with the loss of innocence, the splintering of a family and the loss of a society’s morality. Puja is a teenage girl grappling with her sense of self, the dynamics of friendships and family ties and a strange, inexplicable bond that springs up between her and an outcast of society. It is a tale laced with loss, but also with love and hope.

I hope it is one my mother would be proud of.

You can buy the book at:

The Intimacy of Loss: A Novella

Don’t forget to review it once read. All your feedback is immensely valuable to me. Many thanks and happy reading. 🌹

Success redefined

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Success means different things to different people. For some, it may be about fame and fortune, scaling professional heights, becoming a household name, amassing riches; for others, it may be about conquering fears, learning a new language, travelling the world, discovering a cure for cancer; for others still, it may be about finding joy in the ordinary and the mundane, about paring back and appreciating the little things, just waking up healthy and whole every morning and being able to put one foot in front of the other.

My idea of success has changed a lot over the years. As a young girl, success to me meant being the best in my chosen field of endeavour. I was competitive and found it hard to settle for being second, especially in the areas I felt I dominated in. English language, elocution competitions, story writing, dance and drama were all arenas I felt I needed to prove myself as being better than my peers.

In time, life softened the sharper edges of my ambition. I realised that I didn’t need to be better than anyone else to know that I was good. If there was any competition to be had, it was with my former self. The idea was to be better than the person I was yesterday, and by better, not just professionally or artistically, but also in my everyday life, as a human being, a colleague, a wife, a daughter and mother. 

As years went by and other priorities asserted themselves, ambition to prove myself took a back seat to my navigating life and all its ups and downs. I wasn’t spared loss or grief. I wasn’t spared guilt or regret either. I learnt that one could plan as much as one wanted, but life would laugh in the face of those plans and everything could and would collapse like a house of cards. At that time, success to me was just making it from one day to the next.

Well into my fourth decade of life, I consider myself fortunate in the many blessings that I have been bestowed with. I am healthy, first and foremost. I have a loving family, a career that I enjoy, a hobby that I can spend time and money on, a small but trustworthy group of friends I can call upon if needed, and a mind that takes none of it for granted.

What success means to me today is very different from what it meant all those years ago. To see my children happy and healthy, to see my husband enjoy his career and thrive in it, to be able to connect with friends all over the world, in some shape or form, and to be able to write this blog or my books, constitutes success. This may seem very mediocre to some, but to me, it is enough.

I’m sure if you were to ask me twenty years from now, my idea of success would have changed once again. It is a moving target after all. My point is never to get bogged down in the details of what success should look like. It is what it looks like to you, and that is and should be an evolving thing. After all, in the eternally wise words of Maya Angelou: “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

Unfinished business

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I hate leaving things incomplete, whether that is chores, books or relationships. Nearly everything I start, I like to finish (or at least finish in my mind). It is a personal quirk of mine, and can be quite an annoying one, especially if you have to suffer through an argument where I refuse to give up till I have the last word. Ask my husband.

I’ve always known that I have this trait, but I was reminded of this quite recently when it came to a television show I’d been watching. ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a show I’d invested in quite heavily. Aside of the excellent book it is based upon, and the terrifying parallels it displayed of the world we live in currently, I thought it had been translated brilliantly to the small screen. The first season at any rate. The second season went beyond the source material, and for a while, exhibited all the signs of soaring beyond the original text to something deeper, darker, with even more resonance. Then I saw the end, and without spoiling anything for anyone wishing to watch the show, the victim turned vigilante twist was a little too much to stomach.

Never mind, I thought. The third season is bound to be better. I struggled through the first six episodes, slowly and quietly getting desensitised to the horrific, brutal acts against the women in the show. Wasn’t I meant to be appalled, to be enraged? Why was it having this counter-intuitive effect on me? Still, I carried on watching, in the hope that this now depressing tale would offer me some glimmer of hope.

After episode six I went on holiday. When I came back, I completely forgot to watch the rest of the season being broadcast on catch-up television. Upon finally remembering that oh yes, I still have seven odd episodes to watch, I was mildly annoyed to discover that I could only pick it up from episode 10 onwards. This is where my conundrum lies.

Do I just forget about the entire thing, as I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore? The only thing that had me hooked was the stellar cast, but the storyline itself was so mired in confusion and sado-masochism that it had put me right off. Or, should I just pick up from episode 10 and see it through till the end, filling the gaps with guesswork?

Sadly, I’m unable to do either. I hate leaving things unfinished, even shows that aren’t grabbing me anymore, especially if I’ve invested a significant amount of time in them. Nor am I one of those people who skim watches stuff, quite content to ignore the minutiae that the story is built upon. So, what do I do?

I have abandoned just one book in recent history. A book that had me so depressed that I was physically unable to turn another page. Guess what? That bothers me still. Particularly as it’s hailed as a modern classic, and I wasn’t able to finish it!!

Which also highlights the irony of my own writing journey. My stories rarely have all loose ends tied up, I often leave the ending open to interpretation and they are largely quite dark in their subject matter. Do I have any right to complain then if someone leaves midway through my book? I guess not.

Life is messy and unpredictable. With the best will in the world, not everything one starts will be completed. And that’s okay. As long as you are enjoying the journey, little else matters.

As for my show, I’m just going to wait for the entire thing to drop on Amazon Prime, and then over a weekend, a bottle of wine and a bag of crisps, pick up where I left off. If the end doesn’t please me, I won’t bother with season 4. There’s way too much life to be lived, without worrying about unfinished business…

 

 

 

Decisions, decisions…

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Doesn’t life seem to be a series of decisions sometimes? Good ones, bad ones, little and large ones, accidental ones, subconscious ones and well thought out ones too. Yet, at the moment of decision making, we have no way of knowing what the consequences of that decision will be. Sure, you can probably predict that if you don’t take a shower for a week, you’ll stink. So taking a shower will be a kindness to yourself and others. But my point is more about those decisions that may end up having far reaching consequences.

This came home to me quite recently in the conundrum my daughter is facing. The prospect of beginning University has been a daunting one. For the past year or so, she has been banging on about taking a year out before submerging herself in academics again. A gap year is not a huge deal in Europe. Most students take this time out to go travel the world and figure out what they want out of their lives.

However, I won’t lie, it scared the bejesus out of us! What if she decided never to return to studying? What if, in the process of finding herself, she found herself a boyfriend in a different country and settled down there? What if she went completely off piste doing this gap year malarkey? Quelling these doubts and fears has taken the better part of the year with many persuasive tactics from her, and many many chats with colleagues and friends whose kids have done the same.

In the end we decided that it would be no bad thing, as long as the year was structured and productive. Friends came forward with offers of work, we researched ways she could travel and where to, and the prospect of having our daughter not resent us for forcing her to do something she didn’t want to do, suddenly seemed quite pleasant.

Autonomy can have an interesting side effect.

Once the ball was in her court, she started to truly ponder the consequences of taking that year out. The major one being that she would be that much older graduating, and therefore, her work life would also begin that much later. Whilst most of her peers are taking up the various University places being offered to them, she would fall behind by a year. How would that work out?

Even as I write this, no decisions have been made. A part of me feels really sorry that at such a young age, children have to decide the course of their lives, at least academically. But all of us did it. Some well, and others not so much.

Shortly after finishing my GCSE equivalent in India, while I was still prevaricating about which courses to pick for my A levels, I remember my head teacher telling my father that I should do ‘Arts’. I was a natural fit for the Humanities stream, but for some reason, the ‘Arts’ students in my school were considered the dumbest of the lot. (A terrible injustice, but an unconscious bias that was fostered quite strongly). Neither my grades, nor I, were suited for any of the Sciences, so, much to my dismay, my father insisted that I study Commerce and Accountancy, with a side dish of Higher Mathematics.

For all the people who knew me then, and who know me now, can you see a square peg fitting into a round hole? That was me everyday, for two years of my life. If it wasn’t for some good friends and some understanding teachers, I don’t think I would have managed the marks I did, scraping through with B’s and C’s.

When it came to University choices, once again my father deemed that doing a diploma in Travel and Tourism would open up many opportunities for me, career wise. Thank goodness for that kind soul we encountered, a former patient of my father’s, who showed him the light by saying, “Doctor sahib, why are you forcing your daughter to do a diploma when she is getting accepted into a prestigious BA English (Hons) course?” Sometimes it takes someone on the outside to point out the obvious.

Trust me, I am not resentful of my father’s decisions on my behalf. At least not now. I understand that he did what he did, out of love and concern for me. However, it made me doubly sure that I would never force my ideas on my children.

As parents, it is our duty to guide our children. If we’ve done our job right and instilled the right values in them from the start, then this is the time we need to loosen those reins and allow them to make their own decisions. Hopefully, they’ll make the right ones, and if, Heaven forbid, they do make the wrong ones, nothing is completely unsalvageable. Their safety and their happiness should be our paramount concern. How they get to their destination, what path they take, linear or circular, is completely up to them.

In the immortal words of Theodore Roosevelt:

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”