Simple life

Both my parents worked. So we all had to clean up after ourselves and help out with the chores. It was also frowned upon if we ever wasted food (Food is God), water, electricity or anything else (Do you realize how many people don’t get any, just because people like us keep wasting and using up all the resources!)
As a child, I lost one of my most treasured possessions, when we moved houses. It was a stunning empty sample sized bottle of some perfume. That was the last time I got attached to any ‘thing’.
Something about my childhood that I loved the most was the sheer simplicity. The lack of consumerism. The abundance of family time. The joy and excitement in everything in socializing with nice-kind and friendly people. There weren’t any restaurants or fast food joints within miles from home back in the day. We ate out only when we couldn’t avoid it. And even on those occasions I actually remember asking my mother for ‘food, when we would get back home, insisting that what we ate outside wasn’t real food and I didn’t enjoy it! ‘Shopping’ was only a ‘birthday’ or ‘Diwali’ time chore, when each member of the family would get an entire new outfit and the entire day would get spent walking the length and breadth of Karol Bagh, carrying all the numerous shopping bags. There weren’t even any readymade clothing stores back then. We had to get everything stitched at the local tailor’s. Until the likes of Gyans and Sahil started popping up in every shopping hub of the city, of course. Each person had a max four pairs of shoes; work/school, every day, formal and flip-flops. The idea of owning more than one purse, belt, car or anything else was actually looked down upon as vulgar show-off and wasteful.
As I started growing up and reading the news, one would read about all these terrible natural and manmade disasters, time and again and realize how because of those disasters, millions of people lost everything they had to their names. And I would keep wondering why people got attached to ‘things’ at all. We all need shelter, basic clothes, kitchen supplies, even some furniture, I agree. But what’s with all the possessions we just ‘wanted’ and thus acquired!
Ozone layer depletion was the first time ever, ‘pollution’ became a topic of every day conversations. But thankfully, the conversation started.
As a young professional, like everyone else, I indulged in ‘retail therapy’ and bought things for all of my near and dear ones on a weekly basis. Nothing that we needed. But all that we wanted. The over-excitement of going from a pocket-money of a few thousands to a five figure mark, was something really special. But did it ever bring me joy, I wonder. If I had just spent time with those near and dear ones instead, would they have loved me less? Food for thought.
In 2003, I moved to Mumbai with all my worldly possessions to try and make it my home. What with the amazing idea of women’s safety there and what not! But by the 6th months mark, I experienced the age old cliché first hand. Something about how you can find everything but a house in Mumbai. Painfully true! So, I packed up all my belongings once and again, booked the movers for all the larger luggage, packed up a couple of weeks’ worth of things for myself and decided to head back home soon. But was asked to stay on at work for another two months and then get a transfer to their Delhi office. So I stayed on in Mumbai. With a single backpack sized roll-on duffle. And managed just fine, even without the eight large trunks, suitcases and duffel bags, I’d sent back home. It was so liberating! Having everything I needed, knowing exactly where everything was, and the mobility during the travel back too.
After getting married, we switched several houses. Either the house had been falling apart and needed serious repair work, or the landlords wanted to prep that floor for their son’s upcoming marriage, or the landlords needed to move back to the city, or we would discover scary amounts of seepage issues in the house within months of moving in. Again, it helped and was a breeze packing-moving-unpacking, every time we owned less things and backbreaking and days of work, every time we happened to have acquired (read ‘hoarded’) a bit too much.
After our daughter’s birth, during the pregnancy and when I was in the hyper protective-mother mode after the delivery, I became overtly sensitive to the strong fragrances in all toiletries, beauty products and household cleaning supplies. And we started switching to the store-bought closest-to-natural and least fragrant possible, wherever possible.
The same thing happened to our eating habits as well from the pregnancy. Everything was scrutinized from a health and ‘baby’ point of view now.
Then, my husband’s health started deteriorating as he got closer to 40. Every day, he would come back home extremely stressed. Every week he had to travel for work. Every night was a late night. And he was burning out because of exhaustion as well as not doing what he wanted to do. Any sane person would opt for the more paying job, right? Wrong. We made a decision to quit the job, start something with a few friends, which would bring him joy. Something he really wanted to do. Even if it meant loosing half our salary. my family’s health and happiness would always trump traveling, shopping, socializing and spending. As expected, within months of the new venture, his health improved. Now he is home every evening, travels rarely and has found his sense of humour once again, romance is back in our lives after the long ‘baby’ gap. Our daughter is the only one at her school who spends time with her father every morning and for the entirety of every weekend, has both her parents dropping her every day, and coming to pick her up every Saturday. He even discovered that he was really into cooking after making the switch in his career. Who would have thought all that was achievable!
My mother survived cancer {TOUCHWOOD}. It’s still so surreal that we have crossed the six-year mark. But that was another big wake-up call to all of us in the family. Reduce the acidic levels in your food, sugar, salt, oil. Eat healthy, Get active. Stay positive. Avoid negativity and negative people. Reduce your exposure to plastics. Stop exposing your bodies to all the horrible chemicals found in most conventional toilet, beauty and cleaning supplies. Take care of your health.
Last winter, I started noticing how my hair was turning from bad to worse. In spite of all the costliest shampoos, conditioners, serums, treatments and colours, how my skin had started feeling all bumpy over the years, how my knuckles constantly looked cracked, even though I regularly invested in the most popular hand creams, was beyond me.

Cumulative effect of all of these, pushed me closer and closer to simple living, family time, health, natural ways. And they have proved, time and again, how wonderfully joyous one’s life can get, if we only focus of ‘people’, instead of ‘things’, and keep things uncomplicated and positive in life.
And then, a year ago, I came across all these amazing concepts like, zero-waste, minimalism, veganism, sustainable lifestyle, reducing your carbon footprint, growing your food and going green. #LOVE… For years, I had been talking to people about the exact same ideas, but kept coming across as a weirdo in most cases.
There is so much we have all got to do to fix our environment. Small steps in some cases. And bigger leaps in lots other. But all very doable. All the things our forefathers had been doing for centuries and a few new methods to tackle the newer man-made issues too. So much to do, so little time…which is indeed running out!
Ponder on
…S m i l e