The Date: 7-7-7. Apollo Hospital, Chennai.

My wife’s gynec comes out of the Operation Theatre and tells me, “I’ve got Good news and Bad news for you!”
“Good news is, you’re now the father of a baby girl.”
“Bad news is, you already had one Cancerian in the house, now you have ONE MORE! All the best, Milind!”

Maybe she was joking! But she sounded serious.
11 years later I’m still trying to figure out how having two Cancerians in the house (or even one) can mean bad news. The way I see it, we MAKE UP STORIES IN OUR HEAD about how people are. Oh, she’s a Cancerian so she must be moody and she’ll give you a hard time. Or, he’s a North Indian so he must be aggressive. And so on.

We generalize. We make assumptions. We make up interpretations. We assign meanings. We are Master story tellers. WE MAKE UP OUR WHOLE WORLD! And then we get upset. WOW!

When I get caught in my own web of stories, I PINCH myself. I tell myself, “MJ, DROP the story. People are not demons and people are not saints. They are just people. And Men are not from Mars and Women are not from Venus. Everyone is from Earth! Including Cancerians.
DEAL WITH THAT!”