Aitedaal. Moderation. The Middle Path. It is a skill which is way easier said than practised. We are perennially on a ledge with everything in life that it takes surprisingly little to push us off of it.

I realised that when I was dipping my Marie Gold in some hot tea. For the life of me, I can never figure out the right amount of time it needs to be kept submerged to ensure that the biscuit soaks up enough tea to add flavour without compromising its structural integrity. If you pull the biscuit too fast, it stays crisp and won’t benefit from the tea. Keep it for long and you will see it breaking and collapsing into the teacup like some dead star turning into a black hole. And then, you have two options: One, wait till you finish all the tea, turn the cup upside down, and jerk it enough for the mud-like biscuit residue to fall into your mouth. You can also hold the cup in that position and keep your mouth wide for a while to get some assistance from gravity and hope that it slides down. If it doesn’t, make your finger crooked and scoop it all up. The second option is to simply get a spoon and fetch the biscuit with it. But it doesn’t work if you’re too lazy.

All this is just to exercise moderation with dipping biscuits in tea. Now, imagine what it must be if you try moderation with everything else you do.

What doesn’t stay in moderation is the temperature. We barely made it to the month of May and nature turns us into a medium-rare steak. On top of that, I stay in a city which is known for its open cast mines and power generation. If at all I get a call to record a Dying Declaration of a burn victim, my first question to the doctor will be to ask how many degrees beyond two! Because second-degree burns are what everyone already has and is the default way of life here. The burning loo that blows ensures that.

The hours post the sunset are not kind either. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to check whether I am sleeping on a mattress or inside a cooker, and I find that it is always a cooker. I turn and twist in an attempt to fall back to sleep. The heat continues to radiate from what should be called a memory fume mattress.

I saw this heat somewhere else. The markets. All that unfounded optimism of the last two years which took stocks to an unseen high seems to be collapsing. With inflation raging high and the threat of the US Fed Reserve and RBI hiking their rates to control it, the foreign investors are likely to pull out and the domestic corporates are likely to freeze expansion. The war in Ukraine is as hot as it was at the start and the end is not in sight. Even the most risk-averse mutual funds seem to be dipping. All the short-term investments, invariably, turn long-term. It is as if I have started to plan for my retirement, something that is over three decades away!

As I turn passive towards markets, there is so much I look forward to. The FIDE Candidates, the Leclerc v/s Verstappen fights in Formula One, and more importantly, the mid-term elections in the US which are undoubtedly going to give away the Senate, and in all probability, even the House, to the Republicans as Trump re-spawns. All this is sufficient to keep my mind occupied, especially as I struggle to sleep.

I do attempt to sleep, but the mind wanders. It is its job to do that. Imagination runs amok which either helps spend leisure time or fuels creativity. All that keeps me sane. But the pursuit of moderation always remains unaccomplished. I have resolved many a times, and I do it again, to actively be conscious of how much time and effort I put into anything I do. Whether I succeed or not, I shall report on this blog as and when I must. There ought to be a day when I figure out for how long I should dip a biscuit in my tea.