Stress busting

The last few months have been emotionally battering and physically draining. To deal with it all, many people have many suggestions. Retail therapy being the most common, perhaps. Yoga is a hot contender. Romance novels, my best buddy advised. Get yourself a nice man - another was all for that one. But I was all shopped out, the last time I tried yoga I had to be forcibly untangled from the lotus position, local bookstores did not have the right kind of romance novels and, as for nice men - apart from my father - they seem to be extinct or completely ineligible. So for some time now I have been finding my own sources of relaxation, some of which I have been familiar with since I was a very small child.

Perhaps top of the list is a visit to the supermarket. This, when I do not need to stock up the larder or look for a cobweb-removing broom that has not been created to my satisfaction, is purely to destress, to push those nasty clouds from gathering in my normally sunny mind. I go into the nearest large grocery store and head straight for the personal care products. I then proceed to exhale hugely before I start examining the soaps and shampoos, reading every label very carefully, down to the last molecule of di-ethyl-paraben and walnut oil. Equally satisfying in a voluptuously chocolate-truffle-ish way are the soap and bath gel labels, the more ‘organic’ and ‘natural’, the better. Apart from the one that alarmed me by stating “Work into a rich leather”, the way in which nicely rounded descriptions of what the gel or soap will do for your skin are somehow extremely soothing – soft, silky, satiny, sensuous….

Then there is cooking. Fabulous stuff to destress with. I always liked going into the kitchen and stirring up many forms of trouble, some even edible, but I learned the value of it all when I lived on my own in Delhi for a brief while. It had been a long week at work and the boss was being particularly irritating. At the start of the weekend, having got through the previous five days doing assigned work and a lot more, taking on the load of someone else’s inefficiency, my team and I were collectively heaving a relieved sigh, when the boss called. It was one of those rare times when I had actually switched my cellphone to my landline at home, so I was – unfortunately – available to be spoken to. He had a litany of complaints, all deposited messily at my door, finally ending the tirade with “Like Jesus, I will take the flak for you!” Clearing up the chaos took a while, but it was finally not even mine, or my team’s, to deal with. Leaving responsibility where it rightfully belonged after offering all help to manage it quickly and cleanly, I stormed into my tiny kitchen. Much to the wide-eyed alarm of my cat, I hauled every vegetable in my store out of it, chopped it all into an enormous pile and made a stir-fry large enough to feed all of China and some Delhi denizens as well. I ate stir-fried veggies well into the next two weeks, but cutting all those onions, carrots, cabbage and assorted other greenery hacked the aggression out of my system with great efficiency – all the efficiency that had not been shown by whoever made the mess in the first place!

Cleaning is another great way to get that nasty stress stuff out of the system. In college, my housemate was always rather nervous when I barged into the house and yanked the brush-broom out of the cleaning closet. She knew our small flat would be sparkling fresh when I was done, but the mutterings and black clouds that accompanied it would be dire. Even today, I rearrange clothes, books, shoes and bags when I get too wound up for comfort, and the to-be-discarded pile climbs as my ire recedes. And there is nothing like beating all hell out of the carpets – but that is so obvious, no?

People talk about the destress value of chocolate, sex and driving a Porsche down the extreme lane on the autobahn (the only place it is worth owning a Porsche, really!). For me, for now, soap labels do it best!