Foot-see and Me

It was my first time. 

Don’t ask how old I was, for by many standards it was late enough to have ushered in at least three babies, if not four. Perhaps, a few dinosaurs too. But so what? Don’t they say there is a right time for everything, and if indecisiveness, ignorance or fear-of-the-unknown has delayed the much needed, blame the lateness on a cocktail of Karma and Kismet with a dash of Zodiac? That is exactly what I was doing as I bathed and perfumed myself, and dressed it all up in Sunday best. Especially the tiny vales between my ten toes, you know, where the dirt unseen rests feeling cosily at home till you discover it one day when it has formed a tiny hill there, much like termites. Or moles. I wore my best flip-flops to walk to the occasion too. 

After all, I was going for my virginal pedicure. 

A lot of firsts happen after your marriage. Ouch! But many in the days just before it too. Somewhere in my 20s I was off to a salon which promised me the most freebies (read pint-sized bottle of Bisleri, a mug of coffee, an umbrella stand to hang my coat/dupatta). Freebies, for the palatial fortune I was to exchange for just getting my dear nails clipped. Moral of the story till now being, I like freebies, and that then I had no idea about pedicures.

A separate section called ‘Foot-see’ opened into a pink and black room lined with chairs which would put the PM’s gaddi to shame - with their grandeur, their gadgetry and the chest-size of the gentlemen standing behind them. Men? Suddenly my nervous lips licked the lip gloss away and my toes twisted into such strange positions of awkwardness that they could just have been possessed with the spirit of an ashamed exorcist himself. I cushioned myself into one which seemed three sizes too big for me, and dipped my feet into a tub of water I swear I wanted to put my head in. And drown. Why? Here I was, ready to risk a pedicure just to escape that-talk-which-forms-the-about-to-be-married-day-at-home, and all I got was a brain on an over-drive, trying to think of ways to keep the legs together enough to please the nuns and fathers who moulded me in school but apart still so the young man with the lovely cheek bones could reach all corners of my feet once they were soft. And supple. And ready to be peeled. 

I peeked at my two innocent feet somewhere down there and blessed the bubbles in the water which were, truth be told, quite relaxing. What wasn’t relaxing was the man with cucumbers on his eyes sitting next to me, getting a head massage, a facial and a pedicure done, even as he spoke on the phone sealing a property deal. Because now, as my eyes held him while his the cucumber slices, I felt it rising up my gut, twirling in my belly and knocking on my teeth to open up my mouth, for Laughter Express was on its way. With its brakes failed! 

Past tense.

To not laugh is impossible for me. Ever since I remember I have had uncanny urges to laugh at just the socially wrong times. For instance, as a little girl in stranger aunties’ and uncles’ arms I would laugh with glee, sometimes because their nostrils looked like obstacle courses and often because the hair on the chin would be singing to me in the breeze. Of course, I escaped censure then, for because of my laughter they gave themselves certificates of merit for being good with kids. Later, I started getting caught. In standard 7, after chopping the hard ink-erasing dirty green rubber into tiny pieces and putting them on the head of the girl just before me, I started laughing. Mrs. Abraham did not find humour in the concept of pulleys and fulcrum that she was teaching and I was standing outside my class the next moment. Still giggling, by the way. And braces on teeth played traitor too, for my mouth would barely close. In standard 12 it did not help to have a Hindi teacher who kept repeating to us ‘Bharat krishi pradan desh hai’ after every full stop, and tautology I do find amusing. What to do! Also, if you think no one gets sent out of class on laughing out-of-context (but in-context with what’s inside the head, imagined or in full view of) you are wrong!

Present, in Foot-see now.   

Testosterone had done its deed on that man next to me, and in patches it had left hair-free there was cream. If he was Greek, I could have passed him off as a chocolate frost cake with a cherry on top. But he wasn’t, and there was nothing on top. With jeans folded up to his knees his feet were getting massaged, as mine would be soon. I watched out of curiosity, I swear, for it was my first time and clearly he was a veteran. And then, the right pressure points started getting activated on his sole by a man in black who seemed responsible for his feet by the day, and his drunken safety as a bouncer at night. And how they touched his soul! ‘Why don’t you talk to Golden Foresssttt … ten, he will give ten … its two bighaaaa … aah … so what if the approach road it narrow … oooh … 20 flats? Hmm … mmm … no man, just getting paddy done ... nnnn...’ and it went on. Property dealing and orgasmic foot healing, as the pedi-curer did his job as if nothing was wrong with the world. 

My belly was distended with the whole 9 months of laughter, as if an army of feathers was tickling it on the inside. I had to get it out, oh, I just had to laugh. Should I fake a phone call and release it? Bathroom, no, I won’t reach in time. Shame shame! Marriageable woman and still doesn’t know how to hold it in. Little did I know the solution lay in the problem itself, for as my good looking worked my now-soft feet, the tickle buds all over them got provoked beyond all Edens. Forget awkward toes and legs apart moments and all monster men frothing next door. Forget even that I was all grown up. It started showing its teeth, from the feet upwards, and with all things in the head acting the very fuel for it.

First, a little giggle. Then two, together. And then, like floodgates of a whole generation repressed from expressing, I laughed. The mouth-wide-open, head-thrown-back variety of laughter. Louder than ever. The dumbstruck staff stared, first at my funny feet and then at my face contorted like a monkey, as I jerked my right foot alternatively away and towards my attendant to make them clean. Almost as if I was cycling! This had to stop. And stop it I did. I just told myself then that maybe this could wait too for after marriage, among other things. Ouch!   

Of course, I paid the full amount. My overly tickly feet were not their problem. Thankfully, neither was my tickly tummy for the man who was now in stage four. Of his paddy, of course. 

P.S. - I continue a virgin in this department. True story, this. 

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - From the gut - Tell us about the last time you had a real, deep, crying-from laughing belly laugh]

Book Review – Twice Upon a Time by Anjali Bhatia

Anjali Bhatia’s book ‘Twice Upon a Time’ drew me with its title. That most things, since the days of Aesop at least, happened once upon a time mattered not to this author. With her own twist to a phrase which begins most stories you and I hear, Anjali got me interested in her book instantly. I remember quickly checking to see if the book began thus too, but it did not. It did begin with an equally enigmatic scene-setting though. 

Arpit, Anjali’s young protagonist, is full of ‘reckless self-abhorrence’. Bitter about circumstances which he finds himself in as well as the ‘shallow pool of humanity’, he is ‘trying to make amends … to get back what he lost’. The first few scenes are wrought with his restlessness to come to terms with his past decisions, particularly to make his love, Mannat, more than ‘a beautiful phantom meant to be resurrected only in dreams’. This is when he meets Nishimaya, a modern-day mystic, who helps him travel back into his past psychically, re-visit through his dreams the seven key mistakes that he made then and through the process come out a man who first willingly embraces his demons and then puts them to rest. 

The striking idea of ‘Roots’, and author-speak

When I finished reading ‘Twice Upon a Time’, one particular word took root in my mind. Anjali Bhatia’s book circles like a vine around a central theme - of ‘Roots’. Within the folds of this novel you will find myriad ways in which this theme finds utterance. 

We know human aggression does not always manifest itself as violence, for the other side of a phenomenon like Partition is displacement of people from their native lands; severed not in head or limbs but in their roots. Dispossessed from places where they belonged – in body and in spirit. This idea of migration gains in significance in this novel, for it forms the background to the debate of country versus city, the movement of people away from their holy villages and green hills, the consequences of this relocation and the death of small towns. Reminded me of Gray’s poetry, one of the famous Graveyard Poets, who bemoans the emptiness which villages were fighting as young and old moved towards the outwardly glittering cities. 

Then, when such movement happens, one moves not just physically from a place but emotionally away from what we call ‘extended family’ and friends who once stayed as one. Arpit’s relocation to New Delhi and beyond from Meharsar cleaves his ties with people he loved as a boy, and dictates his decision-making such that later he wants to turn back time itself. It is only when he visits his village after years that he muses to himself – ‘How did I stay away that long?’ When people make up a place, the dispossession is of the hearts too. 

The book, as does its author, carries a strong ecological streak set in an India which has ‘been brought up on legacy of broken promises’. Through varied ideas, predominantly the fight of locals versus corporates over the holy lake in Meharsar, the chilling apathy of corporates and the government machinery towards it, Anjali’s “heart-from-the-hills” is not just making a bold point about sensitivity towards the environment and the ill effects of uncontrolled development but of the larger idea of co-existence as an organic whole; of man and nature in a symbiotic spiritual embrace of care and concern, not use and abuse. For instance, the lake in Meharsar, ‘where it all started, and it is where it will all end’, is perceived as a symbol to spiritually connect human misery with that of nature. 

I enjoyed the topicality she brought to the narrative sans preaching, and the mysticism she attaches to it all to make it quite interesting. Some of the lush green descriptions are stuff that dreams are made of. Literally, in this book, as you will find out.  

As for the rest …

While I admire Anjali for weaving her idealism within her tale and for impressing it upon her readers thus, the tale itself failed to impress me. The ways in which she incorporated ecology and its mysticism into Amrit’s story charmed the environmentalist, but certain aspects about the book as a novel did not the reader/reviewer in me.

The Story moves forward in two ways – either through Amrit’s dreams mentored by Nishi or through a series of coincidences. The dream sequences are well done. They are written beautifully, imagined even better and surpass real life events in significance of dropping hints or furthering the story line. I found the to and fro between the two worlds unique in usage. Something like what Nishi says – ‘Memories are dreams of what once was, and dreams are but memories of what is to be’ - prophetic dreams, used cathartically for Amrit and prettily for the novel. The dreams are so rich in images and sensory perceptions that they stand out as bright spots in an otherwise simple story. They show more than tell, with recurrent images from nature, creating in the reader everything from the dread of drowning to the amazement of sylvan surroundings. It is only the series of coincidences, and only coincidences which form and forward the rest of the story, that seemed a little problematic to me. 

Excess of not everything is bad. But an excess of coincidences defeats the idea behind using them in the first place. If every turn in the story hinges around one, neither do they manage to create a surprise element nor help in keeping the story believable. That is exactly what happens in this book. Event after event and either you end up saying ‘It’s a small world’ or you wonder if this is some other-worldly pattern that is beyond man’s, and thus the reader’s, comprehension. Can a string of unfailing coincidences be called a pattern? I don't know! Thus, deeper thoughts about Fate, karma and Time fail to rise. I do wonder. What if the only coincidence was the “travelling painting”, or the Baba’s face and not the scores of others which not just help the story but form the whole story? But that’s a thought for you after you read the book!

Then, many strands of the plot seemed bordering on cliché (I exclude the environmental ones, which are only too real!). Unshaven aimless lovers, fast unto deaths, black sheep in the family, family feuds, teenage love in hill stations, and I could go on. I wish Anjali had done justice to the psychic and mystical sequences by laying them in a story better than what ‘Twice Upon a Time’ enjoys. What a spectacular book the right union would have made!

Most characters could not grow beyond atypical for me. Starting from Amrit to Mannat, to even the well-meaning Veerji, the characters seemed to stand for ideas rather than human beings who I could not see from head-to-toe in my mind’s eye. Even their motives and aims, like Baldev’s (Amrit’s father) resolve to destroy his ancestral village over a family feud seems straight out of a movie. The uni-dimensional characters lack in depth, and I wish we were introduced to their minds through streams of consciousness as much as we are to some of their dreaming. Would have been great to see Amrit’s existential turmoil described better, for instance. Nishi is interesting for the powers that she possesses but not enough to make me admire the author’s skills at characterization.   

And then:

- Why is Arpit ‘wrong’ in picking a glorious academic seat in a college over Mannat when he is not even out of his teens?

- And then, why is he all so suddenly conflicted by those very decisions which even the readers see as ‘practical’ and sane?

- All the re-dreaming and hard work and is this the best closure that Mannat and Arpit could have been given in the book? The last image is vague and unsatisfying to my mind.

As a novel, ‘Twice Upon a Time’ did not excite me in aspects I mention above. It is not the most spectacular piece of fiction on the shelf. Neither is it a precedent setting work of Literature which I love to look for, and which safely go beyond mere touchstones of story, characterisations and language into larger realms of trailblazing trend-setters knocking on codified doors. However, if you enjoy mysticism and its related ideas or, like me, sadly watch the face of your hill town changing expressions in the face of development, you may want to pick this up for a light Sunday afternoon read. 

Title: Twice Upon a Time

Author: Anjali Bhatia

Publisher: FingerPrint

2014

Paintings which speak to me

How convenient it is to have definitions for everything. How comforting too, to know, or seem to know the what-why-how behind most things that surround us or make us. To have an instruction manual for a do-it-yourself, or even a pure white line of social conventions to tow. But this is what the "usual" side is made of, of a coin the other side of which reads "different".

To me, and particularly in art, "different" is a stimulus which challenges my brain's synapses into re-thinking and re-visiting all definitions which I have either imbibed or invented before the prick, pinch or as most like to call it, the spark of novelty brushes against my soul. It is the beginning of not just love then, but of an unending relationship with that art form.

In music, Jazz touched me for the "rebellion" that it stood for, and for ways it re-wrote its own notes in the book; pure noise to those who love it not enough. In Literature, the subjectivity of Modernism-Post Modernism made me reject reality itself as limited and limiting. And in painting, nothing has caught my eye as much as Impressionism did and the ripple-effect it had on other art forms, including on the love-of-my-life Literature.

Here, I show you some of my favourite pieces from this art movement which began in France, setting such unconventional precedents for things to come that in 1874,  at the first exhibition of Impressionist paintings, most observers reacted with sneers. An expected reaction by the keepers of all things 'classic' but later made popular by those who welcome what I call "different".      

Impressionism perpetuated the idea of painting 'sensory-impressions'. The artists worked mainly out of doors and in natural lighting, for a new aesthetic based on light and colour was being born. Sunbeams, shimmering radiance, elusive tricks of light and daring colour combinations were the ambiance in which the Impressionists bathe their landscapes and city views, their scenes from everyday life, and their still lifes and portraits. They (and the neo-impressionists who followed them) were revolutionaries and trail blazers: they opened the way to modern art.

I speak here of three important impressionist painters - Monet, Degas, and Renoir. All had their own unique way of conveying reality - Monet's landscapes, Degas's dancers and Renoir's portraits being their specialities.

~ Claude Monet ~

Monet succeeded in capturing fleeting impression neglected by his predecessors or deemed by them to be impossible to depict with a brush, by no longer merely painting the immobile and unchanging landscape but also the fleeting sensory impressions conveyed to him by its atmosphere and mood. Monet, thus, creates an incredibly powerful impression of the observed scene.

Impression: Sunrise

The name of this style derived from Monet's painting's title 'Impression: Sunrise'. The sunrise was depicted as an impression rather than a landscape. In fact, the old school refused to even call these paintings 'landscapes'.

View of the Tuileries Gardens

Notice the detachment from the factual world of stabilizing lines in favour of pure colour in the above picture.

Poppy Field at Argenteuil

In 'Poppy Field at Argenteuil', Monet dispenses almost completely with outlines. For instance, notice the poppies closely. He was, after all, concerned primarily with conveying a visual impression.

Waterlilies

There is no fixity of perspective here. No structure and not even a horizon you can see and hold on to. A seamlessness reminiscent of impressions.

Boulevard des Capucines

Graphic elements in 'Boulevard des Capucines' play a subsidiary role, while unmixed colours comprise the main means of pictorial organisation. The further away you stand and look at the picture, the clearer it seems.

~ Edgar Degas ~

Degas was known for his preference for surprising perspectives, and that makes him one of the most interesting painters for me. He positioned his observer so close to the self-absorbed subjects, it was like a peeping Tom painting them.

The Star/Dancer on Stage

Degas shunned artificial poses, letting the women follow natural movements - appearing so natural that critics surmised the artist was observing models through key holes. Don't ask about the theories that the rumour mill churned connecting his bachelorhood to his style of painting!

~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir ~   

Renoir was a celebrator of beauty, especially feminine sensuality. But I have picked here two paintings in keeping with the above-mentioned paintings.

Venice Grand Canal

'Venice Grand Canal' is flooded with light. You can see it reflected on the water, the canal front and the cloud flecked sky. Look how they shimmer! 

Dance at the Moulin de la Galette

Renoir allowed himself to be carried away with the surroundings he found himself in. He lived around this cafe for six months, spoke to residents, and in the midst of it all produced the wild movements of this popular dance cafe. Notice how his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.

No other style of painting comes as close to my idea of reality-fused-with-subjectivity as Impressionist Paintings do. By giving form to impressions, they give importance to the painter's thoughts and visions, even as they invite the on-lookers' ideas. A looking within and reflecting it without. As a person who has always enjoyed understanding not just various art forms but the minds behind them too, the paintings above speak to me at myriad levels. Interestingly, if you show me a photograph and then an impressionist painting, chances are I will find the latter more real. The fluidity, the motion in the water, the movement of bodies, the light and the flux that they signify is what reality is, isn't it? Changing and becoming all the time. 

Post-Script: These are photographs of pictures of these paintings from a book called 'Impressionism' that I have. As Plato would say, four times removed from reality, before banishing me from his Republic. If it interests you despite the banishment, turn to Google for more. In the mean time, click on individual paintings for an enlarged view.      

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - The artist’s eye - Is there a painting or sculpture you’re drawn to? What does it say to you? Describe the experience. (Or, if art doesn’t speak to you, tell us why.)]

Member-ship Issues

Let me tell you a little story first. Please don’t laugh.

Somewhere in the Sunderbans is a Netidhopani Tiger Reserve which has a tower. A very big one! It stands erect at all times, imagine, and such length it enjoys you can’t even see the spot where it ends. (Perhaps it goes up to the cloud Freud occupies, to tease his conflicts still not resting in peace) This tower in the wild is for spotting tigers if you’re lucky, and birds and bees and boars at all other times. Below the tower is a board painted in red and green, the sarkari colours for all things wild. And on the board is a very serious piece of advisory. Very serious! Hence, please don’t laugh at all.

I laughed when I read it though. And then I read it aloud and laughed out louder, loud enough to make a tiger respond with “who dares disturb my peace?” roar. Only one other out of the 20 in the group understood the word play, giggled, but gave his wife no company in her unabashed laughter. The rest 18 read the advisory like good boys, of course, and understood it well enough to have repeated the message by rote if they were told it’s good for getting plum postings. Thus, they simply stared at Mrs. 2006, thinking her mad. 

 Now, I wonder which is a bigger tragedy – only 2 on 20 understanding the unintended humour or the author of this painted master-piece not understanding it at all in the first place? But about that, later. A digression now.

Some words are born to be abused. ‘Member’ as a word is really abused. As a word. Only.

There are Members of all kinds – members sitting in committees, clubs and corporations. Powerful members sitting in the Parliament, respected members of the staff and quieter obedient ones in PTAs. Some members call themselves ‘Lions’ others ‘Masons’, some ‘Gurus’ others ‘Students’. Some members rise much higher than the others, say as Presidents or Chief Ministers, while others simply enjoy feeling bigger than they are in smaller circumstances, albeit under a little delusion. Social service members causing big causes to become bigger exist side-by-side with their lazier counterparts – those who just like to keep low, and hang in a state of sleepy wakefulness, getting up for this-and-that but never stirring beyond the garden fence. And then, every family has some members. Has to have! A single member cannot be called a family, even though may produce a family. Family members and members in the family. Same thing? Phew! I hate English language. 

They should ban this word ‘member’ from the face of the earth!

And then there is this very serious board you see, as mentioned above:

And I have nothing more to say. For I have seen enough and said enough. No more. 

You see, my dismemberment from civil society is not something I want to risk, since my dismemberment I cannot, not in this life. What you do deserve to know is that when I reached the top of this tower I instantly rushed back down. Why? Well, when I reached that high there were more than 40 excited members who had arisen atop the tower, all at the same time.

What a shame. No one reads the instructions!

But then we need to thank our dear Gods that not many understand them either!

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - No, thank you - If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?]

Swimming-Shimmying

I love swimming. Especially early in the mornings. You know, when the birds are twittering awake and the sun playfully winking at them from behind lush green trees swaying lightly to the cool and clear wind and …

Right, as if! When you wake up to 35 degrees at 6:00 am, the birds are tweeting rants in more than 140 characters and the brown trees trying their best to give the sun a blue eye for being such a butcher in heat. 

You exit your air-conditioned room where your cherub happily snores and it’s as if you entered a black hole spinning closest to the Sun. You gulp your cold coffee in precisely five sips lest it turns warm. As warm as the “fresh water” CPWD releases your way for an hour expecting you to tank-up and shank-down before the heat evaporates their whole office and the pipes run dry for the rest of your baking day. You water your plants and they seem too tired to raise their heads in gratitude even. Depressing. Try reading a newspaper under a fan-on-five-number and you might as well do dardey disco with your arms, neither needing eyes nor brains. 

And so, I thought of joining a DDA Sports Complex nearby to use their pool and spend some hot morning time feeling like a cool mermaid, swimming-shimmying up. And it is sitting exactly there, on a white sun bathing chair (which we Indians use like berths in a train) under an umbrella that came free with Bagpiper Whiskey, that I write this. Sitting by the side of the pool which my toes touched a few minutes back.

If I did not belong to Haridwar’s neighbour, I would have thought this is the ghat people come to dip their free sizes in after freely sinning. Citizens of a whole continent are in this pool right now, a length which takes me no more than 15 seconds to cover – all interruptions included. Like excited tadpoles in a mug of water the previous tenant left on the roof top, God alone knowing what the mug was used for. That many bobbing up and down, in that little space. And many around the pool too. 

Say that man under the shower just outside the men’s changing rooms. Little does he know this is not his ghar da shaavar, or that open air ones are for a token rinse only. He just began shampooing his hair – eyes closed tight as if his jet is landing and such chaos between the hurrying hands and the hair that soap suds are flying to stick like white whales behind another’s behind; a man’s, the one next in line who is waiting his turn, respectfully keeping his back to the lathering spandex while keeping his front reserved for public gaze. As I notice his eyes trailing to the ladies side of this family-time pool-time, I wonder which is stronger - his elastic I hear crying SOS under a monstrous belly, or that one leg which carries all his weight as the other stylishly extends forward. With hands on tilted-hips, he’s discussing politics with two men swimming breadths at the deep end. Both men periodically sprout mysterious bubbles up their back whenever they stand still, or are not burping. I switch undigested Times Now off to turn my face away, hoping for pleasanter sights and sounds. Certainly less hairy ones! And that’s when I am enamoured by a bra.

A gang of girls about 40 years of age are having a mini-kitty in 3 feet water. Two have held on to the side rails and are floating belly-up, admiring their nail paint on the toes while two others stand bent at the knees, gracefully keeping their bergs below sea level. I can make out the discussion is serious. Could be about the class 12 board results, or about Mrs Nanda’s long nose – both horrific enough topics to garner haws and hmms. One kind-looking lady's eyes just bulged forward enough to touch the strapped goggles now fogged over with what could be rage. Must have heard Mrs Mehta changed her boutique. Clandestinely. And for those couple of seconds she stood up, with knees straightened, water to the waist, hand on mouth, head shaking side-to-side I saw it. A brassier under the costume! (How lovable must their bond be that he followed her chastely to the pool! Oh envy!) The straps seemed to match the costume frilly leotard she’s wearing, so certainly intentionally worn and not forgotten to remove when in a hurry. Why, it kind of matched well with the eye shadow too.

I did decide to get in, exactly when the two teens making chapatti dives at the deep end were leaving. But at the ladder I found a face staring at mine with such concentration in its eyes and pouted mouth. What is this? Ek choti si love story happening in the pool?

The child, about three years old, looked as lost as the Batman on his floats was in this Punjabi pool. He had stopped flapping (moving as successfully as a fish on a treadmill) a couple of seconds back, and now just floated. Staring. I climbed down holding the rail, eye-to-eye, in slow motion, suspecting a loving lunge or maybe a water proof firecracker going off under me making my one piece become three. Like a prank. His older sister was trying to swim underwater but ending up much above it instead. Something was up most definitely. Well, time revealed nothing was up at all. It was all down under, for soon as my toes felt the warm water, he turned around and screamed with an ace performer's glee – ‘Mummy, I just pee-pee on my own in the middle of swimming swimming.’

In the meantime, Mummy across the breadth was too busy to have heard her boy’s success story. The two political bums in the deep continued to laugh and bubble over jokes they shared, while their friend, the second-in-line, was now vigorously wiping himself with a towel near the shower, soaping-shampooing over, of course.

Might as well jump in now? Not me! 

You?

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Might as well Jump - What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to? What would have to happen to make you comfortable taking it?]