Quarter- Life Chaos

By Sai Tharun Udhayashankar

20s are a confusing age, right? There’s turmoil in almost every aspect of our life – romantic relationships, drifting friendships, the sudden realisation of all the problems that exist in our families, choosing the right courses to help with our career, chasing our dream job, the fear of not having a salary that’s capable of managing our expenses, an impending marriage, a delayed marriage, the fear of parenthood, the compromises, the adjustments, the struggles; they’re all too real. They’re all right in front of us and there’s this whole chaotic world inside our heads much like the one outside. Whether or not we appear to be bothered by all this, our shoulders bear the weight of the expectations, the familial pressures, the peer comparisons, office politics, the passion-compulsion dilemma, all this and more! The content of Quarter-life Chaos was born out of the thoughts that ran me ragged night-in night-out as a 20-something-year-old. I’m sure your thoughts won’t be too far from mine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 16Leaves
• Release date: Nov 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9789395264884

Sai Tharun Udhayashankar

SAI THARUN UDHAYASHANKAR, part-time writer, podcaster, singer, full-time over-thinker. An eternal optimist with a tinge of cynicism who believes a wide smile can put an end to ill-will between people. Like every other middle-class kid growing up in Tamil Nadu, life’s path carried him to Engineering (obviously!) and MBA (duh!). As the vagaries of life took over and threatened to end his childhood, he turned to words to help him decipher the twisted language of fate and make sense of whatever was going on around him. In essence, this book is an attempt to paint a picture of all the worries, anxieties, joys, highs, lows, and other experiences that we all live through in our 20s.

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Sai Tharun Udhayashankar

First Edition, 2022

Copyright © Sai Tharun Udhayashankar 2022

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eBook ISBN: 978-93-95264-88-4

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I’m putting together a team of words to best recount my life during the past decade. I don’t know if people will like it, but I know I do. That’s enough for me.

Publishing a book has been a dream of mine, doing it with words that were birthed during my time with people who have been close to me and inspired me feels like a dream in itself. That’s what this is – a dream. A dream I hope to never wake up from. A dream I hoped to give life to. A dream I’ll never forget. The dream of a lifetime.

Until 2015, I never knew I could write. In 2017, for the first time, the thought of writing a book made its way into my head. I didn’t believe I had it in me to produce content that could make up even half a book, let alone a full book that’s worth reading. But 5 years and 110+ blog posts later, I’m here! I’m publishing my own book, which I hope is worth a read. Publishing a book today isn’t as hard as it used to be, but the courage one needs to go through with the act is quite something. There are a whole bunch of people in my writing journey, who have helped me gain the confidence I needed before going ahead with something like this and it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t thank them.

Firstly, I have to give a shout-out to the first person who told me I need to publish my own book – Aunt Arthi. After reading one of my blogs, she very casually texted me saying, Tharun, I really think you should write a book. That’s it. That’s all she said and it was one of those moments that makes one feel amazing while also stoking the fear and insecurity inside with the voice that whispers, Are you good enough to do it? I don’t think my brain would’ve really locked onto the idea if it didn’t have someone else who echoed the belief it so desperately needed. Thank you, Aunty.

The list of people who have been my guinea pigs and beta-readers for 6+ years is pretty long, so bear with me. My friends Shyam, Sundar, Pavithran, Anirudh, Abhishek, Aabha, Pratyasha, Krishnapriya, Ankita, Akshara; my father Udhayashankar, who has passed his super-cool confidence over to me; my mother Manjula; my aunts Saradha, Poornima, Gayathri and my uncle Dinesh who relentlessly share my posts on Facebook and WhatsApp like their lives depend on it; the friends of my mother who read my blog and shower me with praise I don’t think I deserve; and my grandfather Chandran, who once told me I should try writing editorials for newsletters.

I don’t know if I’m any good, but the words from all of you helped me believe I’m not half-bad. That’s all I needed. So, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all for everything.

Section 1:Home and Heart

Hero

Happy 50, Ma!

2020 – Out with the Old, In with the New

Away from Home

Home Sweet Home

Popcorn

Food and Sleep

Section 2:Childhood to Adulthood

Goodbyes

Home, Heart, Happy

Far from Home, April 2021

No Way Home

Bangalore Days

One Last Ride

Marvel, I Love You 3000

2019 to 2020

Section 3:Letters Unsent

Sunset

Lies and Jealousy

To the One Who Was Always Getting Away

Life’s Dream

Section 4:Painful Poetry

Love as We Know It

Top of the Hills

Shrink!

Linking Linkin Park

Offbeat

Section 5:Calmness Outside, Chaos Inside

Patience and Me

Revertigo

Enough With the Stories Already!

Friends Like Family

The Art of Letting Go

Cheerleaders

Me, Myself, and I

Parenthood – Curse or a Blessing?

Gratitude – A Forgotten Virtue

Mumbai, Midnights and Bicycle Rides

The Unenviable Life of a Modern Celebrity

The Longest Ride

Modern Marriage

Introverts – A Misunderstood Group

The Give-Take Seesaw

The Age of Misinformation, Hypocrisy, and Extreme Opinions

The Leaving and the Left

Kindness

In the Present

Out of Character

Be Selfish Because You Need To Be

Section 6:We’re the Millennials

Millennials

Life of a 90s Kid

The B-School Royal Rumble (& the Associated Scramble)

Hero

Hero – it’s a word that has grown to accommodate very stereotypical qualities of humankind (thanks to movies) – strength to face the enemy, textbook characteristics of goodness, a chiselled body, intelligent, sharp, smart, and the like. It takes a while for kids to understand that it’s all a big nacho-bowl of nonsense. To me, a hero is someone who inspires others by his way of being. That’s it. No grand gestures, no awe-striking qualities that we see in a Tom Cruise or a Rajinikanth on screen. Just simple daily habits that make you want to be a better person.

I’m 26 years old, so one would assume that I’ve met quite a few characters who have taught me what it is to be a hero. To an extent, it’s true. Others have given me temporary inspiration on becoming a better version of myself, all my favourite superstars from sport fall in this category. It would be unfair for me to say they are a daily inspiration because they’re not. But they’re all inspirational in their own ways, I’ve learned to develop a lot of my characteristics based on their best ones (I mean, I tried). But if you must ask for a daily inspiration, I’d mention my parents without batting an eyelid. My father is entering 60 today, and I can’t help but recall the days where I mimicked him in everything I did. Up until 7th grade, I was sure I was going to be a lawyer (my dad’s one). I have this constant thought in my head to enter social/civil services and actually try to do something for the betterment of society (my dad’s lifelong dream for himself).

One of the things I love about the human mind is that it registers events and memories, good and bad, and just lets them stay there. Maybe it’s a curse that I remember almost all of my past, but for the most part, it’s a blessing. It’s like having a DVD of your whole life inside your head. So one of those DVDs starts with a quote I simply love people. This is the first quote my mind ever registered (as far as my memory goes). My father was the one who had this on his visiting card. For any young boy, the first hero is his father, and I had my hero’s visiting card in my cupboard and my school bag. What will a 7-year-old do with a visiting card? Nothing, obviously. But I had it with me because I wanted to. I’d make these little trips to his office and watch him work while I sat there with a Fanta in my hand and played with his paperweight. The Fanta would be replaced every 30 minutes, as I’d emptily stare at him doing whatever he had to. Occasionally, I’d answer the phone before he did and say Hello, and then hand it over to him. You see? This was a time before gameboys and mobile phones/tablets. So as a kid, you either played out on the streets or inside your head. So, in the afternoons I spent with my dad, I was playing potential future scenarios in my head. I imagined what it would be like when I get to be his age, what sort of a lawyer I’d be, and just imagined myself doing awesome things, you know, like any other kid. My dad isn’t a practicing lawyer, but at that age, I didn’t think about that; I just wanted to pursue law.

After work, he’d take me to Hotel Annapoorna (People’s Park) and buy me Ghee Dosa. Then, sometimes, we’d take a walk around the city court, where he’d talk to his lawyer friends while I watched. Over the years, as I grew older, those afternoons of 3 to 4 hours shrunk to just 30- to 60-minute sessions at home by the TV discussing either politics or business. But 7- or 8-year-old me had a field time shadowing his dad at work.

But back to I simply love people, that quote, probably set the foundation stone for empathy in me. No 7-year-old boy understands empathy; he only understands love and anger. So, I understood love. In my head, my dad loved people, so I had to. There was no second thought. I saw him go out of his way to help people who weren’t even that close to him, simply because he genuinely loved people. He was happy seeing others be happy. There are only a frighteningly few of those kinds of people today, because it’s a jealous world we live in. But he isn’t, he’s just himself. As I met more kind and mean people in my life, my idea of empathy evolved and contributed to me striving to be a nice human being, but the seed had to be that quote.

We come across so many instances when people say, Like father, like son. They use it in both good and bad tones, but if anybody were to come to me and say, like father like son, I’d know for sure that I did something right in my life. I would be proud of myself, because I’ve been wanting to be like him for as long as I can remember. It’s funny, my signature is almost a copy of his. I didn’t intend it to be, but when the time came for me to create a signature for myself, it just came out of my hand onto the paper that way. If that doesn’t display my sub-conscious desire to be like him, I don’t see what else will.

This is the real world. Here, heroes don’t wear capes or masks (to cover their eyes, I mean). My hero wears white shirts and walks around in shoes padded with sole supports. My hero can’t jump off the top of buildings, shoot webs, or fly, but he can wrap everyone around him with a warmth, the strength of which can never be put in words. He can bring an energy and joy to a room like no other. He can give belief and confidence to a hopeless man better than most professional confidence coaches in the world. He can make you see light when all you see is a dungeon of darkness. Trust me, I know. I was jobless for 2 months with 2 EMIs burning through my bank account, and I would’ve lost it if I didn’t have his belief. I don’t have my belief, I have his. All of my confidence, all the trust I have in myself, and all the positive reinforcement I give myself are what he gave me over the years. I’m just extending them for as many years as I can, because positivity is a gift. Fortunately for me, it’s a gift I have in abundance because I’m lucky enough to be around him.

Happy birthday Appa, there’s nobody quite like you. And I doubt there ever will be.

Thank you for everything you’ve done, sorry for everything I haven’t.

Here’s to a future filled with colours of all the fruits in the world that you so love to eat.

Love,

A grateful son.

Happy 50, Ma!

My father kickstarted lap 60 in his journey of life 6 months ago. Today, my mother completes lap 50. And they’re about to complete lap 30 of their married life in less than 20 days. 2022 is an eventful year in that sense. Anyway, in February this year, I wrote my heart out for my dad. Today, I intend to do it for my mom. You see, there’s nothing else I can do to pay them back for everything they’ve given me. So, I write. It’s kind of a cheapskate escape route, but what do you give people who have no love for anything material? My father loves exotic fruits more than anything else and my mother, idly. I can’t possibly make her an idly that won’t scar her for life and ruin idlies for her, so I’m choosing the most sensible option – my words.

Over the years, I’ve used my words to mock her, needle her, annoy her, pacify her, love her, appreciate her, and God knows what else. If there’s one person in the world I don’t hold back on, it’s my mother. That doesn’t mean I’m a mean, disrespectful son or anything (at least I’d like to think so), I’m just a fun-loving boy who likes balancing out all the sweetness with an equal amount of spice. I’ve spoken about the qualities my parents have given me in previous blogs, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned where my words came