Kick Starting On Self Motivation

I am one of those rare creatures whom God created without certain genes… like, those genes for being enterprising, for taking initiative and for self motivation. When He created me, he filled my blood with a lot of ambition but forgot to supplement that with drive. He fitted my eyelids with a microscopic ‘dream machine’ that churns out dream after dream after dream whenever I blink but he forgot to connect that machine to that part of my brain which will activate the right enzyme that will help me realize those dreams. So I have lived on this earth for almost half a century with lots of ideas and thoughts and plans that die a premature death inside me and leaving a graveyard of dead ‘what could have been’s inside me.


The death in the family and my subsequent relocation to ‘nowhere-land’ has forced me to at least rebel against His grand scheme for me on this earth! I decided to connect my dream machine to my brain and realize my dreams one by one…


Project one is whittling away all those layers of adipose that have gathered around me in a ‘waistful’ manner! Unwarranted and unintentionally unkind observations of kith and kin may have induced me to take this drastic step…. May be subconsciously I am trying to pay homage to the memory of my Appa who always, rather kindly, used to tell me ‘reduce or you will face the music’… maybe I am trying to just pass Time which crawls like a snail that has undergone knee replacement surgery…. Whatever the ignoble reason, I have started walking…


Whoever invented the euphemism ‘kickstart’ had me in mind, I suppose. Every morning I kick myself mentally out of bed, kick myself into donning my walking shoes and kick myself into climbing down the steps and out of the house towards the park in Bhadravathi which has a worn out walker’s pathway which is 817m long. Initially I trudged along half asleep while men and women decades older, briskly overtook me. After a couple of days, shame started coursing through my veins and I made my steps brisker to at least keep up with all those geriatric folk who seemed to throw scornful sidelong glances at my sedate pace as they overtook me.


With each round, I’d mentally calculate 817m X 2 = Enough For the Day…. And then it became, one fine day, 817m X3 in ½ hour = A lot of sweat , stiff calf muscles, a little palpitation and a lot of satisfaction.


But my arch enemy at home continued to jeer at me…The weighing Scale refused to acknowledge the buckets of sweat that flowed off my body, or minus it from my (colossal) weight. My BMI ( Bloody Massive Index) remained loyal to me. A very frank uncle hooted with derisive laughter when I told him I walk 3 laps of the park. He did 7 rounds in an hour… Just like all those oldies in the park…I consoled myself … retired… with nothing to do… So what are you? My conscience asked me. You don’t work… You have nothing to do… I had to concede defeat to such logic that slapped me on the face! I decided to add more laps to my morning rounds.


Easier said than done! The day after I decided that, I went for my customary walk. Waking up and donning the shoes have become robotic and routine, but the moment the third lap got over the legs automatically turned towards the turnstile at the entrance of the park. I could not even coax it back to another lap. The next day, I was armed to teeth ( to my throat) to fight this urge to quit. I had to forget my loser legs and the whimpering they do when I finish my third round. I decided to drown that whimper in music.


Now I can imagine the shock the public would get if I broke into a song while palpitating and panting. So I decided to have a mental Anthakshari session. When I started the third round, I’d start thinking of a song and then challenge myself to continue the game… Voila! Success… at the end of the third 817meters, my legs forgot all about exhaustion and Hurray! I did a 4th round. I didn’t want to push my luck and called it quits after 4.

The next day, I started chanting all the prayers instead of musing on the gait and mannerisms of fellow walkers from the first lap itself. But by the third lap, I was out of stock, in addition to being out of breath. I also realized then that my steps had quickened with the speed of my renditions. Now one can not dawdle while reciting ‘Aiyigiri Nandini’. Probably, it made me march brisker than normal. I hadn’t noticed the change in my pace due to my concentrating on getting the verses in the correct order. The same with Vishnu Sahasranamam…a la M.S. mode ( is there any other kind for a Tam-Brahm???) The problem with Sahasranamam is, I need a cue at certain points or I would end up chanting some verse that I have already chanted…. Or skip a few dozen namams here and there… my version ending up with a ‘satam’ or ‘dvisatam’ less than ‘sahasram’!

I decided to brush up again at home to jog ( no pun intended) my memory… But my prayers would come for only 2 and ½ rounds and in order to keep my legs entertained and preoccupied, I returned to my Anthakshari games… when the reservoir of slokas ran dry.

But I noticed one thing, Everyday, I would start with an old Raj Kapoor -Vyjayanthimala song “ Bikhraake Zulfein Chaman me na jaana”. I have not yet analyzed why.

When ordinary anthakshari became monotonous, I started with a tougher version. Instead of sounds, I had to start with the last word of the ending line…. This kept me active for a week. Next I started singing ( in my mind) duets. First a Raj Kapoor – Vyjayanthimala number ( you guessed right…Bhikhraake Zulfein…) then a song pictured on either R K or Vyjayanthimala with others … say, RK and Mala Sinha…then Mala Sinha- Manoj Kumar… so on and so forth!

Soon I tired of that I tried playing in vernacular, but I got stuck even before I did 50 meters… I am terribly out of touch with Malayalam and Tamil film songs…

I started thinking of my blogs and tried to think of and store ideas that would inspire me to return to active blogging…. But no….Bhikhraka Zulfein would intrude and there would be nothing but static when I tried to tune in to ‘Vividh Blogathi’ …

Though I am far…far… far from slim waist and hourglass figure….and still sport a ‘family pack’….and am still mad at my weighing scale for being uncharacteristically stubborn with me… and frown at my Mirror as it makes me look XXX large… and though my BMI is still stuck between ‘Overweight’ and ‘Obese’… I see a silver lining in this particular dark cloud!
I have started enjoying my morning walk!

Now all I have to do is persuade my brain to send the right signals to my legs when I increase my duration of morning walk! When? Soon…Soon… Let me memorize my Vishnu Sahasranamam once more and recall all the old Yesudas, P. Susheela and S. Janaki numbers I used to sing when I was young… and thin!