A Typical Day…
Actually it’s somewhere between the typical and atypical days
I remember when I first moved to Bangalore and heard the sound of the chirping birds at 6am every morning. In those moments, I wished more than anything that the birds would disappear. On some mornings, I wished something even worse for them but I’ll skip that part for now.
Today, I am back in Delhi (Gurgaon actually but I still think of myself as a Delhi girl) and my ears have almost become so sensitive to sound that I end up waking up a few minutes before my alarm rings just to avoid any disturbing sound while I am cozy and comfy in bed.
I have seen celebrities say that the first thing they do when they wake up is drink water or meditate or some other healthy lifestyle option that sounds amazing… and while I pretend that someday I’ll have a really fancy answer to that question, for now, the first thing I do when I wake up is play a game called Connections. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, I’m hoping you have heard of Wordle, and Connections is one of the newer games by The New York Times. A few months ago, I think I lost a little interest in Wordle but thanks to this new discovery by my mother, the first thing I do every morning is play these two games.
The rest of the morning at home is fairly standard — I brush my teeth, get ready, iron my clothes (only if absolutely necessary), make myself some black English Breakfast tea (since I’m in a no-milk no-sugar during the week phase of my life), pack all my chargers and my laptop, and head off to work (in a carpool which consists of my boss’s boss aka my mother and, my newest team member aka my sister).
Side note: Nobody believes me when I tell them that the three of us working together was not something we planned!
Another truth that I receive many shocked reactions to is that we live in Gurgaon and work approximately 35kms away in an area called Sarita Vihar, in Delhi. It’s also the place where I grew up and where my Nani still lives. At this point it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that my Nani also works at the same office, and this wasn’t her original plan either.
As you can imagine, 35kms would mean spending at least an hour commuting each way. One massive advantage I have is that I don’t have to drive (well, even if I had to, I can’t), but that gives me a lot of time to think about all sorts of things. Now when celebrities tell you about their typical days, they seem to forget to mention anything about how much your mind can wander and trouble you sometimes. They also don’t mention anything about stress and how work pressure or personal problems can play tricks with you. For me, that could happen on these long drives.
Initially the road, the people, general chit chat, maybe even some candy crush would keep me busy. Slowly, that became a boring pastime, so to avoid letting my mind get the better of me, I have now turned to listening to music. I remember when I was in school and people would ask me what kind of music I liked. I didn’t know what to say, butI knew I didn’t want to admit to loving Bollywood music. So I grow up not thinking of myself as a ‘music’ person. Over the past few months however, I have been fortunate to have these ‘musical’ people in my life who keep sharing some incredible music with me.
Side note: I think my next blog post will be about all the music that has made me fall in love with music.
Anyway, coming back to how music helps me pass this time… I almost plan my playlist for the day in such a way that when I am about 5 minutes away from work, I start listening to my most favourite track of the day and I walk into the office dancing. Some days my mother looks at me and laughs, and some days I’m sure she thinks her 28-year-old daughter is adorable!
I wish every day at the office was typical so I could describe exactly how my office hours are broken down, but no two days are the same. On second thought, maybe that’s what I enjoy most about my work. On most days I walk into the office and have absolutely no clue about how the day is going to go. Some days my boss’s face is so expressive about how busy the day is that it says “don’t waste too much time chit chatting about how your weekend was.” Some days I feel so productive that I am able to tick off more tasks than I had planned for that day (this kind of day is rare though). And then some days I think I am going to finish all these small pending projects and then we end up spending half the day tracking flights and making sure that the flight our guests are on is actually landing where it’s supposed to, and hasn’t been diverted to some other place. On those days, there are 5 people in the office (including me) who suddenly become air traffic experts, measuring the speed of the plane, checking the status of the previous incoming flight, keeping an eye on the weather in the landing destination, and speaking to ground operators in any and all locations that are involved.
When I think back, those atypical days (when there is a lot of stress), those have ended up being the most rewarding sometimes, because when the flight actually lands where it’s supposed to, we start cheering as if a space rocket we developed has landed on Mars!
People think that since I work in Travel and Tourism, I must be travelling a lot. And better yet, when I tell them I don’t travel that much, their advice to me is that I should be travelling more (as if I am the CEO of a luxury hotel chain in India). In reality, most of my days are spent behind a desk curating experiences for other people and more importantly, making sure that everything that I have planned for them runs smoothly. And to be honest, I absolutely love it. It’s the most rewarding feeling when a guest says that they had a journey of a lifetime or it was the most incredible experience they have ever had. And mind you, these are people who have travelled to more countries than I have ever heard of — okay, that’s an exaggeration, but they are well travelled for sure!
So, for about 8 hours every day, this is what I do — surround myself with incredible guest experiences and on the rare occasion, something that didn’t go incredibly well for them. That can be heartbreaking, but in the past 4 years I have learnt a lot about what to do and what not to do. The highlight of this time that I spend at the office, Monday through Friday, is my team. I have seen myself stressed, and seen them convert that stress into a calm space… and if you know me well, you know that that’s not always easy.
Oh, and in the middle of that (even on the very busy/chit chat discouraged days), there is some chit chat, some snack sharing, and for about 40 minutes, yummy homemade non-vegetarian food that comes from Nani’s house. It’s quite bizarre to some people I suppose, first that I am a ‘eat some kind of meat in every meal’ kind of non-vegetarian, and second that half my family works in the same office and sits and eats lunch together Monday through Friday.
After all the past, present and future guest plans have been taken care of, I make my way back home. On very tiring days, I may fall asleep for a little while but on most days I’m listening to one song on repeat (generally it’s the song that my friend and colleague would have recommended that day).
If you have seen Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, you know how Jaya Bachchan excitedly runs down the stairs in one scene to greet Shahrukh Khan. Well, every day (without fail), Zara does the very same thing… she runs down the stairs with so much enthusiasm. Her reaction is somewhere between ‘I’m so excited to see you after what feels like a month’ and ‘Why did you leave me for so long — who was I supposed to play with?’. On her moody days, she may not come running automatically and may wait for us to call out to her but a typical entry at the Alam Shah residence (whether you are an Alam Shah or not) is followed by the friendliest greeting by Zara.
I remember a time when as soon as I got home, I would automatically get a packet of ships, get into bed, watch an episode of a show, eat, and pretend like I don’t have to worry about anything ever. In Bangalore, it was not just a packet of chips but also a glass of Old Monk and Coke to celebrate the end of the day from college (you can guess which college I went to and why the day end made me so happy). Needless to say, this pattern had to stop because I didn’t want to struggle to fit into my own clothes. Now, a typical evening after Zara’s warmest welcome is a 30-minute cult-fit dance fitness live workout (which feels like my kind of cardio), a 30-minute shower (which is mostly accompanied by my favourite song of the day and a candle), a 30-minute dinner while I watch an episode of MasterChef (I cannot watch MasterChef if I’m not eating at the same time) and 30-more minutes of a movie or show. Currently my favourite show is A Million Little Things so after my shower, I watch an episode or two of that (depending on how quickly I fall asleep).
I don’t really know why I chose to title this article ‘A Typical Day’ because there are so many days that are atypical. Either there will be some zoom call that will come up at night, or my body just won’t cooperate and my energy will be so low that I barely make it through 15 minutes of that dance fitness workout, or I’ll obsess so much about something I saw on Instagram that my mind will just circle around that throughout the shower (regardless of what music I play or how beautifully lite that candle is).
I wish there was a switch that could control how I feel and what I think. There are so many days when my mind just unnecessarily troubles me or I end up feeling things I thought were in the past. There are also so many days that seem to be so perfect that it makes life feel perfect. I suppose a typical day is filled with the good and bad and many things in between. My days (typical and atypical) have as many moods as me. But even amidst all those moods, like me, they are beautiful! Some days I wake up feeling incredible and some days not quite, and yet I feel so grateful because on every single day I am surrounded by amazing food, some inspiring content, the most supportive people in the world, many comforts and most importantly, me ❤
