The Golden Globe awards are over, and so are the BAFTAs. The Oscars are around the corner. If you are excited about feature films, documentaries and the entertainment industry in general, you might be really interested in all these celebrations of the craft, to the extent of staying up or taking time off to watch the telecast live, track it on twitter and if you are really a huge fan, you might make it a full party at home, perhaps with chips, salsa and drinks, or go the full hog and have a barbeque with friends and family dressed up to cheer their favourite movie, maybe even have a side of betting to make it spicy.
 
Awards season can be exciting, but for many others, these awards mean nothing at all, and they would be doing all these party-like celebrations for other things, like cricket, for example or American or European sports. Maybe some of you had Super Bowl parties and got your game on for Kansas, and others did something like that for European football. Maybe it is neither movies or sports, but pageants or MasterChef – the lists of awards and celebrations are endless. In a world where practically anything has an audience and special occasions are live telecast somewhere or the other, on the internet if not on cable TV, we get to celebrate these things live and on as big a screen as we want.
 
Whatever the hobby or interest area that you are keen on, there is something magical about watching it happen. The movie buff could very well just read about it on social media next day, and the sports fan could just watch the highlights along with the news or on Hotstar during their commute, but there is so much joy in watching things live, especially with loved ones.
 
Love is something like that.
 
One could also be in a relationship where everything is functional, and things happen by calendar appointments, routines and structures, with hardly
any emotion. Most of us though, want to love like it is the big awards night. We want out love to be the big winner, to be celebrated with friends and family, to see it live. That probably is one of the primary reasons why people have major weddings and commitment ceremonies for which they call hundreds if not thousands of people, throw enormous feasts and make sure it is an event everyone will remember – like having Jennifer Lopez and Shakira dance together for a Super Bowl and keep this one so special.
 
One could love quite privately, and really not want the huge big blowout of a party, but chances are that you’d still want to celebrate it in a more intimate manner, like the sedate but special ceremonies of the Nobel Prize announcements and the dinners after. The scale and size of the awards, and how public they are  might be different, but loving and being loved can certainly feel like the Best Picture award on Oscar night, and by all means, celebrate it.

As written for The New Indian Express

When was the last time you were at a clinic for a regular health check?
 
Ideally, all of us need to go in for a regular full-body health scan every so often. Doctors recommend annual check-ups for all people, half-yearly for people over forty, and quarterly for people over sixty, even if there are no known health issues. If anyone has a chronic health condition like diabetes, thyroid issues, blood pressure or any of the hundred things that could go wrong with one’s body, then there is a definite requirement for ongoing monitoring and management.
 
Chances then are that you probably go for these health checks every quarter, if you are a good patient, and in any case, at least once a year. While the first visit or two might be nerve wracking, after the first few visits, you get to know the routine really well, become quite familiar with the staff and maybe even really friendly with them. You know them by their look, might even know them by name and definitely smile at the staff with a sense of recognition and familiarity, and they very likely return the warmth, even if the place is crowded and you know they may not really know you or remember you personally.
 
It is the rare patient that remains cold and aloof in such places, and the rarer doctor, nurse or staff that is curmudgeonly in such a place. Even though it is a clinic, there is little that is clinical about such places, with the staff acting as though they were indulgent teachers in a nursery school and the patient behaving as if they were naughty children hoping to get the approval of their elders in the class. The family of the patient assume the role of parents in such situations, at once protective of their ward while at the same time, behaving like the guardian of the patient. It is evident in how the staff and the patient look at the blood and other body function test results – it is hardly different from how they might have behaved in a parent-teachers meeting when they were in junior school.
 
When you treat your body with this much regularity of care for its health, what would it be like if you took similar care for your mind, and more to the point, how would it be if you checked in on your relationships in this manner with regular checkups, and if you discover any issues, then to really work on it?
 
Love and relationships are like any other function in our lives. They can be running along peacefully for a long time, and you never know that some issues are cooking below the surface till they explode, like how we might discover an underlying blood pressure issue or diabetes quite suddenly, or discover there is a slightly off heartbeat in a regular ECG as part of an annual health check. Issues in our relationships may not be readily apparent.
 
Maybe we need regular health checks for love as well.
 
​As written for The New Indian Express