Poornima Manco

Author

Covid-19

50 Not Out!

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My father had once told me that life is as unpredictable as cricket. Taking the metaphor further, I can happily report that I have hit my half century with élan. During days of Covid that is not a blessing to be sneezed at! I fully expected to feel some sadness at leaving my youth behind so definitively. Instead, all I feel is a sharp sense of relief. At no point in my life have I ever felt so sure of myself, so comfortable in my skin, and so content with my lot.

Alongside, I’ve learnt quite a few lessons too. This is hard won wisdom, and in detailing it here, my intent isn’t to bore you, but to remind myself how far I’ve come from that gauche, awkward young girl setting foot into her twenties. Of course, there is no end to learning and in the years to come, I hope to amass many more life lessons. However, where I stand today, these are my little nuggets of sagacity. Do with them what you will.

  1. Forgive. My goodness me! If only I’d known how liberating this was. Conventional wisdom always dictated to forgive and forget. I’ve been terrible at both. But as I approached my 50th birthday, all those petty grudges and long-held resentments seemed to fall away. I really didn’t want to carry any of it into my fifth decade. So, my mantra has become forgive, but don’t forget. If someone has wronged me repeatedly, then I’d be a fool to let them do it again. But I will forgive because I do not want to carry the burden of my anger into the future. If I’ve wronged someone, I hope they can find it in their heart to forgive me too.
  2. Ask, don’t assume. Another one of my failings has been to jump to conclusions, often erroneous ones. With only half the information at hand, one can often make totally wrong assumptions. Isn’t it better to just ask, politely? Clarify rather than hypothesize? It’s already serving me well, as I just ask outright if I’m perplexed by someone’s behaviour. More often than not, it turns out to be the most innocuous thing.
  3. Say No and mean it. Aha! This takes many years to solidify into a behaviour choice, especially if you are a people pleaser like me. But, but, but… Time is not an infinite resource. It is up to you to decide where and what you want to spend it on. In my case, I’ve decided that I would rather say no at the very outset than not deliver on a promise.
  4. Be true to yourself, i.e. have some integrity. Recently I’d paid the bill at a restaurant, only to discover later that they had left the entire alcohol tab off the final tally. I could have let it go. After all, it was saving me a pretty packet. But after a sleepless night worrying that I could cost someone their job, I returned to the restaurant to settle the remainder of the bill. Yes, in the short term it hurt my wallet. But in the long term, my conscience and I could live together happily ever after.
  5. Enjoy every day. This is so oft-repeated it’s almost a cliché. It is so important, though, to really stop and smell the roses, to slow life’s treadmill enough to enjoy the view. Who knows which day may be your last?
  6. Have an attitude of gratitude. Really! Try it. Just say thanks to whoever/whatever you believe in. If you have no religious beliefs and think that the world is just chaos, then thank that chaos for everything it’s given you. Life, love, a home, a family, food to eat, clothes to wear, holidays to go on – everything is a gift that we must never take for granted. Just a simple ‘thank you’ will bring many more blessings into your life.
  7. Patience. This from one of the most impatient people you may ever have met. That’s moi! If I could have something day before yesterday, I would. However, life has taught me that all things come to those who wait. Waiting doesn’t mean sitting on your hands and hoping for a million pounds to fall into your lap. It means working quietly and diligently towards your goals without expecting to be rewarded immediately. There is an Indian proverb that goes – सब्र का फल मीठा होता है – which literally means that the fruit of patience is sweet. That it most definitely is.
  8. Confidence. I have two young girls, and I watch them as they navigate the world, unsure of themselves and their place in it. I always pretended I was more confident than I was when I was younger. “Fake it till you make it” was my internal instruction to myself. I don’t need to fake it anymore. Knowing who I am, what I’m not, and that I add value to the world allows me the luxury of being confident, not arrogant. I hope it doesn’t take my girls thirty years to discover their own unshakeable core of assurance.
  9. Growing old is a privilege. Yes, it is, and it’s one denied to many. In the last eighteen months when we’ve lost so many loved ones to Covid, it is even more important to acknowledge that living to a ripe old age is yet another blessing, a prerogative that only the lucky have.
  10. A legacy of kindness. What do we leave behind that is truly important? Wealth, name, fame? Or, the fact that we may have touched someone’s life with a little bit of kindness? To me, that is the only legacy that matters.

50 not out! It’s been a fantastic game so far, and I’ve hit a few sixers along the way. The day I’m bowled out, I hope everyone says, “She had a good innings.”

Because, you see, I really did.

A balancing act

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It started out as a challenge for me. Known for writing dark and disturbing tales, I was asked if I could do something different. Perhaps a light and frothy book? Something that would make the reader smile or chuckle?

Could I?

As a writer, particularly one who loves experimenting, this was too good an opportunity to pass up. I started by trying to write a love story. It proved harder than I could imagine. Struggling with characters and tropes that are ubiquitous in romcoms and romance novels, I found myself consulting my teenage daughter on whether this was reading ‘right’ or not. Used to dealing with the thought processes of deviants, I was suddenly adrift in a sea of normality. What was I to do with this?

Humour was another matter altogether. I could do gallows humour, I could do sarcastic and twisted, but would it translate to the reader I was trying to get a laugh out of? One man’s funny is another man’s lead balloon, after all!

Sweet and sappy is another area I struggle with. A cynical optimist, I took off the rose-tinted spectacles many decades ago. However, I do like to look at the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. Could I convey that in my stories about grit and determination, resilience and hope without turning the reader’s stomach by being saccharine-sweet?

Ultimately, it was about finding a balance between light and dark, happy and sad, frothy and deep. Playing to my strengths while exploring areas that seemed uncomfortable, to begin with.

Finally, Covid-19 came along at the same time as my book launch. Had not foreseen that, but perhaps, in some small and strange way, it proved fortuitous. In these unprecedented and uncertain times, who wants to wallow in misery? We all want a bit of hope and a bit of joy.

Did I pull it off? YOU tell me!

Holi Moly! & other stories

Shrinking

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In a hyper-connected world, suddenly we are being asked to practice self-isolation and social distancing. A pandemic has revealed to us all our vulnerabilities, our incapacity to deal with something as virulent, insidious and subversive as Covid-19.

It’s 2020, a new decade in a century that has seen all kinds of borders shrink into nothingness. Travel and communication have made our world into a global village. And yet. We are scrambling today to understand how to prevent, how to contain and how to defeat this virus. We, the supposedly most superior species on earth, the one that has wrecked this planet, are being laid low by an infective agent, too small to be seen by light microscopy. Quelle ironie!

Is it my imagination, or does it seem that Nature has her own way to culling this over-populated planet? We, as humans, are living longer, and for the most part, healthier lives. We take more than we give to the planet. We are a selfish, self-absorbed species, interested only in our own survival, detrimental to almost every other living being. So, is it any wonder that to restore the natural order of things, viruses such as these mutate to infect and kill? Is it a surprise when supposedly dormant volcanoes erupt or the oceans churn themselves up into a Tsunami? Natural disasters aside, epidemics and pandemics aside, maybe we need to reflect upon ourselves, our behaviour and our greed to try and understand what is preventable and what our actions have contributed towards.

I’m no scientist or politician. It is not my place to tell you how to behave at a time like this. I cannot tell you don’t panic or don’t panic-buy. I cannot tell you that a vaccine is just around the corner, or herd-immunity will occur with mass exposure. What I can say, however, is that if you are being told to self-isolate, then do it. Just because you may not display symptoms, does not give you carte blanche to infect other, perhaps more vulnerable people. If, at this moment in time, containment is the only way forward, then please follow the guidelines being given.

Also, this may be a good time to just hunker down. In our frenetic lives, how often do we get time to stop and smell the roses? That is just an expression for stopping to appreciate the very many blessings that we have been granted. Spend this time with your family and loved ones. Pare back your life to the basics. You will find a renewed joy in a life that is most likely riddled with anxiety and fear currently.

Finally, without trying to sound like some kind of new-age guru, reflect upon the fact that we all come into this world to leave it at some point. We don’t know when that will be or how that will be. Recognising the very simple fact of Death and acknowledging that no-one is immune to it, will lead to an acceptance of all scourges, calamities, hardships and disasters as par for the course. A sanguine outlook that will benefit us all.