Monthly Archives: February 2016

Going a week without losing my temper

No bullshit. Cut straight to the chase – I have anger issues.

It’s not like I’m normally raging like a Cuban teenager all the time. But in the event of an incident that pisses me off, I pull out the gun, place my finger on the trigger and fire away like I am a character in Grand Theft Auto.

It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s something I have begun to acknowledge as part of my personality. I have soiled quite a few relationships in my life since I had no control over my anger, and then regretted losing my cool in a few hours.

If you’re someone who doesn’t get angry often, it is hard to describe the process. The anger is not a momentary thing, it builds up slowly. Bubbling and frothing like a Hans Zimmer soundtrack, it slowly rises up to your neck, fat and ripe, waiting for the final trigger. And the moment it senses the trigger – BOOM!

I often feel like an asshole within a few hours, but the damage done is mostly irreparable.

However, this is not meant to be a preachy post about my demons. Rather, a detailed explanation of an experiment I decided to undertake last week.

I have been reading up on Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s writings (you should too, if you are into that kind of stuff), and in his essays on anger, he suggests getting to the root of the cause without being judgemental on yourself.

It is an opinion echoed by Buddhism as well, which talks of anger actually affecting the angry person more than anything else. Which is probably true because if you keep getting angry, you begin to notice that the people around you stop caring after a point. You are automatically treated as a cranky old fuck, and that’s simply pitiable.

And to rid myself of such misery, I decided to keep my anger on check. It began with solutions from the internet, like Count upto 20 backwards. Which is nice in theory, but I’m so bad with numbers that I’d count down the numbers wrongly and that got me angrier.

There were other remedies, like listening to yourself breathe. Another great suggestion, but when I’m angry, I’m more caught up in the performance. I treat my anger like a theatre production – taking care to emote through my actions, tone, and words.

Finally, I decided the shortcuts won’t work. I decided to go through the painful grind of keeping a tab on my anger. I sat and listed down the situations that made me angry, and then in neat handwriting next to it, the reasons that got me angry about them. After a cathartic two hours, I was ready to test myself.

I’d spend seven days without losing my cool. If I lost my cool, I’d punish myself by not smoking a joint for a week. With the stakes set comfortably high, I laid out the rules:

Shouting counts as losing my cool.
Sarcasm doesn’t count as anger, as I’m still calm enough to think up witty, sarcastic lines.
Not shouting at the person, but spending the next one hour thinking of rebuttals I could have used in the argument counts as anger.

With my rules, my determination, and conviction firmly in place, I began the journey. I was prepared.

If cities had characters to themselves, Hyderabad would be like the annoying sidekick in Chhota Bheem. Annoying, pesky, and easy to lose your temper over. The weather is hot and sticky, or cold and damp. There aren’t enough trees around, and the vehicles and honking gets to you after a point.

But luckily, I was in Bangalore.

Bangalore is Zen, that way. Everything is calmer, the people more civilised. The evenings are pleasant, and a walk down a street is like getting a Thai massage if you’ve come from Hyderabad. The first day, I’m proud to say, was a breeze.

There was an incident where I’d placed an order for breakfast – nothing complicated – just two vadas and a coffee. I flipped through Bangalore Times as waiters duly served everybody around, except me. But I wasn’t going to lose my cool over two vadas and a coffee, come on!

I smiled and reminded him of the order, to which he smiled and caused further disorder. Finally, after another fifteen minutes, the vadas and coffee arrived. I gulped them down, both with hunger, as well as satisfaction over my mind-controlling powers.

I was so enamored by my own success that I began to show off to myself in the coming two days. I would walk into situations where I would normally have lost my cool, just because I could do it. Like Steve Austin from the WWE Attitude Era, I walked into danger, and swaggered out of it without losing my temper.

I was clearly good at this.

For someone who writes and maintains journals, I began to dissect the dizzying heights of success I achieved in those three days. I wrote about how I had been such a fool, and that one’s demons are in one’s mind. All one has to do is put them on a leash, and zoom out and look at the larger picture.

The next two days were easy as well. There was the case of a hotel boy who got me hot water to drink when I was famished, but I smiled and asked him to change the bottle.

On the fourth day, I got myself a haircut.

Now, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know I fuss about my hair quite a bit. I have had such harrowing experiences with barbers, that I only cut my hair once a year. The rest of the days, I’m Jackie Shroff in the 80s, carrying off a mullet with aplomb.

This particular barber sat me down on the hot seat and wrapped me in the shawl. He then proceeded to intensely watch a Shobhan Babu movie on ETV Telugu.

Somewhere between the haircut, I enquired if he watched films of this age, and he clicked his tongue in disapproval. It was the first sign that I was screwed. When he was done, and I put on my specs and look at myself, I could have cried.

Do you remember Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones? That’s an accurate description of my hairstyle at the time.

BUT. I didn’t lose my cool. I grinned when my friends told me I resembled a budding lesbian teenager. I went to the barber again and asked him to correct my hair. I then went to another barber to get a second corrective operation. Which was followed by my friend snipping scissors on my head, and a final corrective haircut in an expensive salon.

And all through, I remained calm.

I smiled like an ascetic, gushing silently about my victory over my demons. I had finally done it.

Yes!!

It is easy to remember your resolution when you’re awake.

When you’re aware, and fully conscious, you can steer your mind to places of your choice. But what happens when one is asleep?

What happens when one is a light sleeper, trying to catch forty winks on a semi-sleeper, with the seat curving at such an awkward angle that even a snake would get spondylitis?

And so it was that on the sixth day, I was on my way back to Hyderabad from Bangalore.

The bus guys graciously chose to play another film by Prabhas, and once that was done, people silently settled into their seats. The snoring picked up, the lights were switched off, the rumble of the engine acting as a lullaby to tired people who couldn’t afford a plane ticket.

I began reading Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, and I spent a good hour travelling to Gaiman’s wonderful, fantastical world. When I returned, I duly put the phone in my pocket, and pulled up the blanket to sleep.