My office recently organized a chess tournament.
And since childhood, I have always been more Team Carrom than Team Chess.
I did try chess back then. I got brutally beaten.
In carrom, however, I could at least slide the pawns with some dignity. So we chose carrom, and I played it regularly until I was around sixteen.
Then came college.
Then unemployment.
Then office life.
Somewhere in between, the games quietly disappeared.
I always wanted to play cricket at work, but there were too few people. Enough for two teams, not enough for three times. So, like many dreams, we sacrificed cricket.
Chess, however, seemed possible.
I thought, “If I gave up chess, surely there are others who gave up too. And if I practice a little, I might actually beat them.”
So I said to myself, “Let’s practice chess.”
And I installed a chess app.
---
Over the years, I have learned one thing.
There are three types of advice.
First, good advice.
Second, bad advice.
And the third one is not neutral. It is not simple.
The third one is free advice.
Good advice is when I say,
“Cigarette is bad. Quit it.”
And I actually mean it, and I want you to act on it.
Bad advice is when I say,
“Oh, it’s fire. It won’t burn. Go ahead and touch it.”
I know it is bad.
You may or may not.
In life, we have all been bad-advice givers, and bad-advice receivers.
In the stock market they say, you either earn or you learn.
Life works the same way.
Sometimes you do not recognize bad advice.
Later, you realize it was bad.
And that realization itself becomes your lesson.
Which means, technically, you still learned.
And then comes my favourite category.
Free advice.
The kind you give whether someone needs it or not.
And then escape all moral responsibility by saying,
“Free advice. Take it or leave it.”
All this lecture is because I am about to give you one.
I will not call it good.
I will not call it bad.
It is free.
So here it is:
A man must have an addiction.
I know.
The word “addiction” usually walks with bad company,
junk food, drugs, porn, tobacco.
But take it in a neutral tone.
I know a person who cannot tolerate dirty dishes.
He eats. He finishes. He washes the plate immediately.
Some may call it OCD.
I call it addiction.
Another person I know is deeply into pooja.
He sees God in everyday objects and events.
That is also an addiction.
And then something happened recently in Bangalore.
A few months ago, the Karnataka government allowed full-body advertisement flexes on buses.
Like the Better Call Saul ads in Breaking Bad.
Any legal business can buy it.
One such brand was Vimal.
A tobacco product.
A bus with a full Vimal ad started roaming the city.
And then, a youth influencer recorded himself tearing the flex while the bus was stuck in traffic.
The driver did nothing.
Public safety is more important than one flex sheet.
The influencer said,
“Women and children don’t need to see this.
This is addiction. This should be banned.”
I was fascinated by the comments.
And even more by this Robin Hood act.
He did influence me.
No, not to damage public property. I will come to that.
But his action split my mind into two.
I was arguing with myself,
like Leo vs Damon in The Departed.
Who is right?
Who is wrong?
---
When I say, “A man must have an addiction,” I do not mean,
“Go and get addicted.”
I mean,
A man will have an addiction.
Whether it is good or bad, heroic or harmful, is not the point.
They say alcohol is bad and destroys families.
Yet we have seen people who drank every day and lived till eighty.
We also see healthy, fit young people die of a heart attack at thirty-five.
Coffee is socially acceptable.
But ten cups a day is still addiction.
The problem is not the thing.
The problem is the excess.
My addictions are coffee, music, and writing.
I consume them in limited portions, so they have not ruined me.
In fact, they keep me sane.
Some people are addicted to making their children’s lives better.
Some are addicted to their farmland doing well.
Some are addicted to achievement.
And some are addicted to doing nothing.
Even not wanting anything is an addiction.
So my advice, “A man must have an addiction,” does not mean,
“You are a man, go and enroll in one.”
It means,
“You are a man, and you already have one.”
You just do not know it yet.
---
Now, coming back to the chess I mentioned in the beginning.
I was quite addicted to chess for about two months.
I practiced.
I won.
I lost.
Brutally lost.
Back-to-back lost.
Then won again.
Then lost again.
It was very much like gambling, except I did not put any money.
Time was the investment.
There were days I woke up at 2 a.m. just to play.
Sometimes I won and played again, just for the kick.
Sometimes I lost four matches in a row and closed the app out of frustration.
Yes, I was consumed.
But I was also in a safe zone.
And suddenly, the glass was not half empty anymore.
It was half full.
There are many moments in life where something we see one way, at one point in time, suddenly starts making sense differently.
A Marwadi friend once said something during our hostel days:
“I looked at myself. I was not good-looking.
I cleaned myself many times.
But the mirror was dirty.”
Which means, even if we are good, the measuring unit that defines us might be broken.
And even if we are ugly, and we buy a brand-new mirror every day, it will not lie.
It will still show the beast as we are.
So the quote works both ways.
The glass is both half empty and half full.
Now go have that water, or whatever is in the cup.
Because a man must have some addiction.
That’s all, folks.
Looney Tunes. The End.
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