Humour by Rehana Munir: Five easy lifestyle wins for those who need them

It’s not easy being a modern human of comfortable means and a sleepy social conscience

It’s not easy being a modern human of comfortable means and a sleepy social conscience. Are we truly optimising our potential using the ample means at hand? Here are a few gentle activities that give you that accomplished feeling when you’re too tired to aim for the stars.

Set dahi

It’s life-changing. Ok, not life-changing, but surely meal-changing. Mostly, it’s the process that’s the reward for kitchen atheists like myself, starting from the quaint ritual of sourcing the starter curd. Then there’s the buying of milk from a dairy, preferably run by a surly milk-seller who can look through your naïveté. Next: the boiling, the cooling, the stirring and the pouring. Find yourself an old pot, preferably a relic from your grandmother’s kitchen, for that fuzzy feeling of South Asian continuity, ideally with a sitar strumming on Spotify. Savour those hours of uncertainty, wondering if it will set.

Finally, enjoy the frisson of excitement when you discover the perfect dahi, made with a little help from your microscopic friends—lactobacillus. Thrilling.

Repot plants

It’s amazing how each plant requires a specific amount of sunlight and water—and how clueless we humans are about these crucial botanical differences. Then there’s the matter of digging up the earth in each pot, and regularly plucking out weeds. Enter Maali with the reassuring air of Harrison Ford in a crisis of presidential proportions. I have been informed that one of my plants is called “Mother tongue,” and another, “Good luck,” in common parlance. The bougainvillea will, in fact bloom again, if only I prune its branches before they grow as aggressively as those of McDonald’s. And that I should stop drowning my plants in watery love. Most importantly, the maali promises that he will return soon to correct all the errors I will undoubtedly make. Outsourced earthiness for the win.

Watch pressure-free TV

Netflix has released 20 new films this week, all of them billed as heartbreaking works of staggering genius. Your friend with impeccable taste has suggested a dozen new unmissable shows that combine sensitivity with sassiness. Besides, you have a filmed entertainment backlog that easily runs into two decades. These are conditions you find yourself in as you navigate the infinite waters of your OTT subscriptions. What follows is a bad case of digital paralysis, remote in hand and heaviness in heart. Fear not. I’m here to absolve you of any guilt or responsibility you may feel as a viewer in this golden era of “content”—a terribly unimaginative word. Watch things out of turn. Rewatch them for fun. Mix up genres, seasons, eras. Unguided tours across the virtual landscape are the best. And loiterers, drifters and abandoners have the most fun.

Free your memory

Our devices are where we live. And so, it’s unnerving to be served eviction notices with annoying regularity in the form of “Free some storage space” messages. My response is always irrational and inordinate: you can’t make me! I see the warnings as open acts of hostility and react with passive aggressive chilliness. Which is to say I do nothing. Soon enough, I’m on my knees, having to delete photos and videos, emails and documents that I have neither the energy nor heart to go through. I’m still working this one out, but I know I’m only days away from an in incredible sense of lightness brought about by a large-scale uncluttering that will put Marie Kondo to shame. I have elaborate fantasies of digital purging, effected with ease and precision and none of the anxiety associated with making irreversible decisions. Soon, soon.

Keep it private

One of our epoch’s radical freedoms is to do things without telling anyone about them. Oversharing is social media’s big curse, and to conduct one’s life completely away from its reach is unrealistic for most. But even within its oversized umbrella, there is the scope to step away and soak in the rainfall of one’s private universe. So—go ahead. Put that invisibility cloak on. Eat something, go somewhere, love someone without telling the world about it. It may seem strange at first, but like all secret pleasures, it’s intensely pleasurable. The simple yet transformative power of privacy, lost to us hyperactive netizens, OD’ing on continuous contact. Ooh, intoxicating.

Follow @rehana_munir on Twitter and Instagram

From HT Brunch, November 5, 2022

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