Transformations

I never used to be big on routine. Or planning. Unlike my dad. He was the type who would make a long checklist before our summer holiday trip to Chennai from Delhi and proceed to tick the items off the list at least 5 days before the start of the journey. Or take the customary leave at the end of the year to study for the correspondence course that he was perennially trying to finish. The type, who would balance all household expense accounts on Sunday mornings. And I was the type who even after umpteen admonishments would fill my school bag with the relevant books and notebooks only in the morning and never the previous night. Somehow, that always used to get my Dad’s goat, though I never understood why.

I don’t know whether I let out the suppressed rebel in me in this fashion, but I have always been the last minute man. We were always very unlike each other, my dad and me. While he was the outgoing charmer among our huge extended family, I was the uninteresting introvert. And with no other popular talent like singing or dancing that I could claim to possess, I always felt that my Dad was a tad disappointed with me in those family gatherings when my smart and good looking cousins would sing and yap away cheerfully to glory. And was I happy with his disappointment? I’ll never figure that one out. I was always a brilliant student though, that was my saving grace, much better than my dad had been and I think we kind of found our peace with each other as a result.

Six years of campus life and three years of sales managerial experience later, I am no longer an introvert, though I would still prefer no company to poor company. I still don’t sing, except along with my car stereo with the windows up but I have done a few things and learnt a few tricks along the way. But the biggest change in me has been the way I have nailed down certain routines and worked hard to make them happen over the last couple of years.

It really started with the gym. Its been a good journey, starting from the morning workouts before office, those painful first couple of weeks to the change in cities, jobs, residences, I have managed to stick with it somehow. The next has been my rediscovery of the joy of reading. That’s been on now for the last 6 months and I have been finishing at least a couple of books a month since then. Not bad. Then of course, there’s been the running, about which I have blogged recently. My blogging has been pretty consistent, frequency that is, no comments on the quality. And for the last three weeks, I have started learning to play the guitar again, using the same guitar, which my parents thrust upon me 16 years ago. I am liking it and don’t be surprised, o patient reader if you are one, to find some musical podcasts happening from this page in about four months time.

And with the way my hairline’s been receding after every bath, I just realised that I am becoming my dad.