Assorted Delicacies: Authenticity Over Perfection!

Why take on a challenge? It's not about completing it. It's about finding your limits. Taking on the challenge of eating the world's largest Parantha in every other city is not to get the grand cash prize, but to order such a bizarre ask. That thrill, that slap of reality! Even self-proclaimed geniuses hit walls, only their confessions are limited to showers and backyards.

It's generally wise to dabble in the basics of an unfamiliar art form—not something wholly alien, but akin to music. We all indulge in listening to it during our most comfortable moments, yet few of us are actual instrumentalists. If you pride yourself as a genius creative nonfiction writer and have never touched a piano, attempting to play might renew your faith in your pre-existing talents.

Feel how natural writing is when piano keys are a straight puzzle! Try cake decoration if you never touch clay.

Beat-boxers? Try juggling. Not so easy, is it? Gravity's not your friend. As they say in Delhi, "Abey yaar, it's like trying to make jalebi on day one at the job!"

Modern trends of super specialisation in careers and professions are like sharp knives—they cut so fast and clean, they lack the raw impact of a fistfight. The improvisation. The use of available props in a street brawl.

This leads to poets without philosophy. Surgeons without sculpting skills. Mechanics without soul. Theatre actors without a sense of geometric patterns. Analysts without culinary sophistication. Lawyers without the painterly skills to enrich and transcend their domains beyond the stone-cold boundaries of epistemological constructs.

The fear of dilution is the guardian angel not of an unattended baby but of an adult's fantasy to maintain control and authority. Professions were once set in stone; the clay hardened into a single form. The tragic part is that they are now in the furnace of high temperatures with unidimensional tendencies, producing batches of predictability rather than surprise. Yes, you don't choose a career, it chooses you. Not in a good way!

It took a pandemic for people to realise they'd been shelved too long to be appreciated. The charm was lost. Nothing new was discovered in their design for much of their careers. At least the cracks, the broken pieces, and the unexpected changes in the furnace's temperature provided hope for new horizons.

Old moulds shattered. New ones, with expiration dates.

Self-help books? Rust removers. Don't expect magic. Don't expect to find advice that makes you embrace the necessary fragility for a new beginning. They are safe makeovers of what a person used to be. These preserved rules and routines will become the shackles of future prisons.

Without ready remedies.

The pill of change isn't to alter oneself but to make change necessary. To avoid the un-authenticity of never changing. The most fundamental ingredients of genuineness are despair, temporality, finitude, and the fear of death. These are the magical grains of sand that separate us from other ultra-slow-evolving species sharing our world.

Sadly, this sand is in limited supply. Worse, it often bears a fake label.

How did Batman climb out of the pit, remember, without the ropes! Fear of death was 'the' driving factor. And it's not tribal or trivial. It is very much here, only a shape-shifting miracle.

As the lesser-known mystic, Al-Ghazali, once said, "The pain of the bite is the proof of being alive." And perhaps, as the social commentator, Rabindranath Tagore, suggested, "The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough."

So, take heed.

The charm lies not in the comfort of mastery but in the tumult of unknowing. In the irony of striving for something we may never fully grasp. Or, as a Delhi uncle might put it, upbeat, "Arre beta, it's like wanting to catch a peacock by its feathers and not get scratched." (Don't try, According to the Indian Forest Act of the year 1972 hunting or killing the National Bird Peacock is liable to the punishment of 5 years imprisonment and the penalty of Rs. 50,000/-).

Few bits to ponder:

1. Change must be organic. No plastic surgery.

2. One currency. Limited supply. Exchange or stay put.

3. A child’s view? Extraordinary. Old folks? Their pie's stale.

4. Don't try.

5. If it isn't coming, it has already arrived.

6. News makers? Not the only ones who made it.

7. Juices flowing? Let them flow!

8. Goodbyes? Genuine. Let them be.

These aren’t ideals. They’re truths. Embrace chaos. Imperfection. The uncharted.

In the end, it’s the journey through the labyrinth. Not the certainty of the destination. That gives life its true meaning.

Or, as our influencers say, "Keep it real, fam."