Dasara (dussera) is a special time at my cousin's place as my cousin and her daughter are very skilled and everything on display is made with their own hands. And some of them cannot be made in advance like the dolls she made with vegetables this year (Pictures - previous post) and are created on the day of the display.This year I took a friend along - she is from the North-east and is visiting Bangalore and I thought she might enjoy this new experience.
Everything went well - we went, we saw, we admired; got our share of sundal and haldi, kumkum and some goodies.On our way back I received a call from my cousin telling me to come back as I had left my spectacles behind. Now without my spectacles I cannot read anything that is less than font size 20 but I keep removing them all the time and leaving them everywhere and about 25% of my day is spent looking for them. And since my cousin lives 25 km away and this takes a 25 minutes drive plus 50 minutes wait through jams,( yes, welcome to Bangalore!) I decided to return and reclaim the glasses.
I planned to get the glasses and start immediately so I left the keys in the car. But in a series of unplanned actions,we found ourselves locked out of the car. It was a Sunday afternoon and a festival day to boot and not any festival but Vijaya Dasami and hence it was daft even trying to look for a garage or a mechanic. We borrowed keys from other Santro owners in the neighbourhood and tried to force it open. No luck. Luckily the duplicate key was in my house and my son was in the house. So we decided to wait until the duplicate arrived. Meantime regretful self-reproach commenced among others: "oh if only I had not..." "No, I should have.." "No, no, it is totally my fault."
And there I was , totally detached from this guilt trip - calm, happy in the thought that we have a solution in sight. And I was telling them: "These things happen. Look at it this way, it could have been worse. I could have carried the duplicate and they could be in the bag inside the car right now. Or Siddhu could have been at work and we would have had no one to get the duplicate." (Husband was already out of town.) And the best part was that I was not doing this out of politeness or just to relieve their guilt. I honestly felt this way and I thought we were actually in the best possible scenario under the circumstances.And I surprised myself.

I do not know when I became like this because a few years ago,I would have been the first person to start fretting in such a situation. I would have thought of everything I should have, could have, ought to have done to prevent this and blamed me for not doing each of those. There would have been anger at myself and a sense of shame. Shame because in our circle all such goofs became legends with your byline by being narrated at every family gathering, in excruciating detail. One was surrounded by people who prided themselves on their perfection and lapses and mistakes were frowned upon with the contempt reserved for the incompetent.
For a while, when I was young it was important for me to be considered competent and infallible. But then one fine morning I woke up and said:"it is alright to make mistakes as long as they do not hurt anyone, are not harmful and can be corrected." I think that was the day I became an adult!

Things can go wrong despite the best intentions and meticulous care. And when they do, what can be worse than to obsess about them and flog yourself? How do you learn if you never make a mistake? I may be wrong but I believe that people who believe that things can go wrong are better at crisis management. Until a few years ago, I have noticed that in India the government owned airline was super efficient at handling delays while the new and naive private airlines staff were clueless if anything went wrong.
Additionally acceptance of what is less than perfect allows you to experiment and try out the untried and untested. As they say, a man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault. The good thing about life is that it in most cases, it offers you second chances and everyday need not be planned or executed with the precision required for a space flight.

I sometimes think that my obsession with lists and memo pads might have its roots in trying to ensure nothing goes wrong or nothing is forgotten or overlooked - basically trying to ensure that there are no mistakes from my side. But things can and do go wrong sometimes like they did on Sunday and it was nobody's fault. In the bargain we got to spend an hour more together chatting as there was nothing to do but wait. And if nobody makes mistakes, why are there duplicate keys?
Nowadays I don't mind being laughed at for my mistakes - if mistakes make my life colourful and enrich my experience, I'd rather choose a more colourful and enriching life than a boring perfect one.