The importance of being earnest in rest for creative productivity to flow.

K & I at the end of our lovely staycation at the
ITC Maratha

‘We are going on a staycation till Tuesday. Will try to implement your suggestion of keeping the phone away except while clicking.’

‘OK. Hope the mini break keeps the back troubles at bay. Happy birthday to the missus 🙂’

This exchange between my therapist and me, the night before K and I went on a staycation to the ITC Maratha to celebrate K’s birthday, was in context of a discussion that we had in a session a few months back.

I had spoken about how I felt tired all the time. That even going on mini staycations did not help.

“When on holiday I post about my day and the food we eat. Which was fine when blogging was a hobby. It was a break from my routine. Writing or creating content on food is what I do all the time, and for ten years at that, ever since I moved out of market research. Which is possibly why my mind is not able to differentiate between work and play.”

Then there is the basic question of what is ‘work’?

I create content on food everyday. I do not get paid for it most of the time. One might argue that it helps build my brand. I feel wonderful when small entrepreneurs or home chefs write to me saying that someone has ordered from them after seeing me post about them. Or when someone says that they made a dish according to a recipe I posted and that it worked out well. I feel the happiest when someone says that their mood was uplifted when they came across something I posted about. But, is this work?

Can one define something as ‘work’ unless it reflects in the back account.”

The issue of ‘work’ is something that has often come up in our sessions and my therapist has tried to help me get clarity of perspective on what I do.

I have come to realise that nothing excites me more than being able to give someone a boost through the voice I have built over 14 years and 10 months of blogging. I like to be in the ‘corner of David’ and that is reflected in my focus on home chefs, women entrepreneurs and small businesses and street food professionals. Hence anything that I do towards my podcast Foodocracy For Her featuring women in the food insurer for example, is ‘work.’ From the perspective of Buddhism which I follow, I try to spread happiness, peace and hope through my writing. When people get back to me saying that something I shared brought a smile to their lives, then I feel fulfilled. I have been in the independent food content creating field for a bit short of 15 years and if I can do anything that helps those who are starting out to find their path, that’s meaningful too. I have gained from seniors who have mentored me after all.

Little Nimki joined me at my desk today

When it comes to writing, I am a diary-ist at heart. A columnist in media terms. Not a ‘chronicler,’ which seems to be the new term in vogue to describe those who document and preserve knowledge and history.

As a foodie, I am more than happy when I can lead my fellow foodies to good food. I rarely rant about coming across what I consider to be bad food anymore. I try to give feedback in private when I have been served something sub par and move on. I do not do reviews and the proportion of bad meals I come across is getting increasingly less. Perhaps I am getting more tolerant. Perhaps people are cooking better. Perhaps I am getting better at sniffing out good food. In some cases, I admit, people make an extra effort if they know me. I like to believe that this is more out of love than duress. I would hate it if it was otherwise.

This clarity has helped to take the blog seriously again. You might have noticed me writing a bit more frequently here of late. I approach my blog the way I would a column. Sharing tales from my life which honestly might be significant only to me. If so, so be it. the truth is that I have not enjoyed my writing as much as I have in the last couple of weeks in a long time.

What about financials? There are contracts and assignments that I am fortunate to work on and they have come to me organically as a result of what I do. We are comfortable, thankfully. It might come as a surprise to you, or might not (!), that coming to accept this truth this has been quite a challenge. We are conditioned so. To hustle. That is where talking with an expert helps. In a different context, we have gained a lot through our talks with our financial planner over the past few years who has helped us gain perspective. I have financial goals and dreams but I try not to let them overwhelm me. I am always on the lookout for good folks to work with but have learnt the value of patience.

My therapist suggested keeping the phone aside or even going cold turkey (‘use Kainaz’s phone to take pictures’) and to post when we were back the next time we went on a staycation. That might give me the break I so sought.

K cut the Le 15 Patisserie dark chocolate macaron
cake. Another tradition that started 10 years back
when Pooja Dhingra suggested it to me.

If you have followed me during our staycation at the Maratha earlier this week, you would have realised that I did not stick to plan. That I posted often through the trip.

Did I come back without feeling rested from the 3 night break?

Looks like a travel influencer shot?
K caught me candid when I woke up
from a post breakfast nap in our room

Not at all. This was possibly one of our most restful holidays in a long time. We would eat. Put the DND switch on. Sleep. Eat. Put the … the routine broken only by a soak in the tub with a novel (Sacred Games) in hand and with watching a bit of Netflix (Masaba) at night and a most relaxing spa session. And as I quipped, since it was not my birthday, I had no pressure if having to respond to wishes. K said that we were living the cliched American sitcom life of parents who check into a hotel and then sleep through the time. Think Modern Family. Ironically, she and I both fell asleep once we returned home (after a half hour drive back from the hotel with Loaf and Nimki joining us in our family nap). How sleep starved were we?

What about my posting on social media? Did it stress me?

Not at all!

From my Instagram feed this morning

My blog, and everything else since then, has been about sharing snippets from my life with food as an anchor. Though some might say I write more on cats these days than on food! Nothing has changed between 7th October 2007 when I wrote my first blog post and today. I shared stories of what we ate in the hotel just as I do when at home and share stories of meals cooked by our cooks. It is just that if it is at a luxury hotel people write in asking if it is sponsored. No-one has asked me if #noorbanucooks pays me to write about the maacher mudo diye daal she makes or whether #kayteecooks pays me to post about the dosa and chutney she makes!

I belong to an era when blogging was a hobby and not a profession. When paid or barter endorsements were the exception and not the norm, and would be stated as such when they happened. Unlike today when people say ‘not a paid post’ when it is not. Yes, having been doing this for almost 15 years means that one has got know people in the hospitality business and received a lot of love from them. I might get upgrades more easily than the average punter. Or room service breakfasts when the norm could be at the buffet. Unless when on contract, these come with no questions asked. No (visible) strings attached.

Take our recent stay at the ITC Maratha for K’s birthday which we booked at our end and got some add ons from the hotels end but then we have such a long history with them. Our first luxury hotel dinner as a married couple close to 20 years back was at the Peshawari here. K loves black dal. I read about the legendary dal Bukhara in Vir Sanghvi’s column (where else?) and spent my annual bonus taking her for dinner there. Market research early jobbers could not really afford five star hotels meals back then. At the end of a the meal, and after we ordered dessert, they got an entire (!) cake on the house as they figured out it was K’s birthday. We carried it home, thrilled about having a five star hotel cake coming back with us. Can I confess that the thought that we could have saved some money by not ordering dessert if they cake had come earlier did cross my mind. We had bought an apartment the year back and were broke.

With the birthday cake that she received at
the end of the dinner at Dum Pukht this time

Our first staycation as a couple was exactly ten years back. Again on K’s birthday and again at the ITC Maratha. This was in 2012 and I had been blogging for 5 years by then. I had just move out of market research and joined the freelance world. The only money I would make was from food walks. ‘Petrol money’ as I would put it. I wanted to do something nice for K. I knew the ITC folks by then thanks to a blog post that had caught their attention. I reached out and booked a room for a night. Surprised K in the evening and told her to pack her bags and we drove down. She protested about there being work the next day, but stopped once she was at the hotel and saw the surprise. I was in for a surprise too. We had been upgraded to a suite.

We ate at the Dum Pukht that night and K treated me to the Pan Asian for lunch the next day. The latter cost as much as the room rate and the DP bill that I paid. We came back happy and have been hooked to in city staycations since then and the ITC Maratha is where we feel the most at home and the most pampered.

Birthday dinner at the Dum Pukht this time

Which meant that unlike in a ‘sponsored stay,’ I was in no pressure to post during our stay. Nor was I under pressure to post because of the Instagram algorithm unlike many of my younger peers who are doing remarkable work as social media influencers. That is not what I am aiming for. I have run that race before. A bit like how some of the experienced Indian test players decided to sit out of the Indian 2020 team right from the beginning, giving space to the younger talent who were more adept at the new fast paced game.

I post because I enjoy doing so. Not because I have to. This realisation was a game changer for me. The senior Indian cricketers did play 2020 matches in the IPL with varying degrees of success. They found the shorter duration to be of help. The fact that you could bowl for a maximum of four overs in 2020 unlike the 20-40 overs a day that they might in test cricket. Or bat for a maximum of 20 overs in a 2020 game unlike at times having to bat through the day for three days or more to save the team. Test cricket still gave them the most joy but they did enjoy a bit of 2020.

I could relate to that. Social media content creation moved first from the written word to visual (through Instagram and Pinterest) and short form videos rule now (Reels, TikTok etc) and this has democratised the medium a fair bit. As an old workhorse one has learn to create reels using ones phone without much effort or, I admit, finesse. This means that one can tell stories while on a holiday without putting the amount of effort which the meticulousness of yore called for. And then come back to test cricket (the blog) refreshed, and type in long copy which hardly anyone will read.

Before signing off, I want to share a concept which my therapist shared with me in our last session. That of the psychological concept of ‘flow’ as defined by the Hungarian American psychologist Mihaly Robert Csikzentmihalyi who is noted for his studies on happiness and creativity. A highly focused mental state conducive to productivity. Or ‘being in the flow’ or ‘zone’ as one says colloquially. He once said, ‘repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.’

I could connect with this concept as there is increasing clarity in my mind about what I want to do through mu work. Which is why I thought I will share this with story with you rather than dissecting what we ate at the staycation.

A warm welcome back from Baby Loaf and
little Nimki when we returned

If you still want to know, you cannot go wrong with the dal Bukhara, mutton barrah kebabs and rotis at the Bukhara, with the kakori, shahi nihari (they have lovely wholewheat breads and the veg sheesh kebab was a healthy option) and the Awadhi Dum Pukht mutton biryani at the Dum Pukht (again nice wholewheat breads here, the prawn salan was very nice but the morel stuffed with clotted cream was outshouted by the gravy) or by putting yourself in the hands of chef Liang at Pan Asian for the double cooked pork, pork udon noodles, poached lobster, pepper prawns (‘you are my old friend and the best thing is you eat everything’ he tells me) or by requesting him to cook you his home styled food. Young chef Deepti, who had earlier been given the job of creating the Mahrashtrian local love menu at the Maratha and had done a great job of it, is now manning the Dakshin Coastal kitchen and is doing some fabulous food there as we saw in the Dakshin Sunday brunch. If you want a sugar free dessert, go for the sugar free (64 per cent cocoa and stevia sweetened) Fabelle ganache box and for all odd requests in general, try to get in the good books of the ever smiling chef Nikhil Merchant at the Peshwa Pavilion whom I have known from his Eden Pavilion days at the ITC Sonar. He does his best to make things happen and that’s how I managed the Dum Pukht Nihari for breakfast 🥳

PPS: Meals were on the house.