Tag Archives: Health & Fitness

Health & Fitness, Nutrition

#84DaystoDiwali Challenge: Interview with the Winner

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In June 2017, after having suffered one of the worst phases, health-wise, in my life, I started the #21Weeks21Habits #HealthyLiving journey on Facebook as a way to get a semblance of health back into my lifestyle. They say that announcing to the world that you are taking up a challenge improves adherence – I thought Facebook would be the best medium to make such an announcement.

Those 21 weeks changed several things for me for the better and reignited my passion for health and fitness in a way I had not imagined. Egged on by a dear friend, I launched another challenge on Facebook in August 2018, with the small difference that I opened it up to my friends and their friends.

I called it the #84DaysToDiwaliChallenge #HealthierVersionOfMe. Why 84 days? Because it is 12 weeks, just enough time to feel, see and show significant improvement in lifestyle and health. Also, it is the reverse of ’21’, but easier to stick with. Why Diwali 2018? Because it provided a neat marker that led us to the holiday season that one would, hopefully, be well prepared to handle and enjoy. The Challenge ran on a weekly basis – I posted a challenge each week, adding a new challenge each week. All participants tracked their own adherence and progress on each challenge cumulatively, twelve challenges in all. I announced the movements on the leader board each week.

This post is about the journey of the Winner of the Challenge, Shraddha Sinkar, through the 84 days, (almost) in her own words. But before I get to that, some quick statistics:

  • Number of people who signed up to the Challenge: 21
  • Number of people who did not begin the Challenge: 6
  • Number of people who dropped out by Week 6: 5
  • Number of people who completed the 12-week Challenge: 7
  • The toughest Challenges for the group: ‘Drinking enough water’ and ‘getting out in the sun’
  • The easiest Challenges for the group: ‘Rewarding themselves’ and ‘taking their vitamins’

For many of those who completed the Challenge, it was a reminder of how easily one can adopt a healthy lifestyle. For others, it was a turnaround of sorts to discover what they were capable of accomplishing. For everybody, though, it was exciting to be doing this together with a bunch of strangers and feeding off their enthusiasm and successes.

Now for the interview (from mid-November 2018)…

Maithilee (MSJ): Could you please introduce yourself to my readers?

Shraddha (SS): I am a software engineer, ex-Deloitte, now running my own agency. Being self-employed gives me a lot more flexibility in my day-to-day schedule, which works well for our family of three, including my 9-year old son.

MSJ: What made you sign up to the #84DaysToDiwaliChallenge?

SS: I had already been thinking about doing something specific and effective for my health for some time. I felt that there was a lack of schedule in my lifestyle and I needed some reinforcement to bring it back to order. The Challenge was the perfect opportunity to do that.

MSJ: Which weekly challenge(s) was/ were new or unexpected for you?

SS: The ‘getting out in the sun’ challenge was the most curious for me. But a few others, such as ‘sleeping 6-8 hours a night’, ‘rewarding yourself’, and ‘catching up with friends/ family’ were also intriguing – things that I had not given enough thought to.

MSJ: Which weekly challenge was the hardest for you to keep up?

SS: The ‘sun’ challenge! (Laughs)

MSJ: Which one was the easiest to follow?

SS: ‘Avoiding data on all devices an hour before bedtime’. I had often thought of implementing a rule like this. Participating in this Challenge made it happen. Now, even my husband tries to keep up with it. (Smiles)

MSJ: Talking of your husband supporting and accompanying you on this, how has your family been involved in this Challenge?

SS: Apart from the ‘no data’ challenge, they are automatically involved in the ‘planned meals’ programme since I prepare the meal plan for the entire family, so that they get all their macronutrients, especially protein. In addition, ‘drinking enough water’ is something they have also taken to heart, especially my son!

MSJ: You were on the leader board consistently through these twelve weeks and finally won this Challenge. Are there any aspects that you believe you still need to do better on?

SS: Yes, on ‘getting enough sun exposure’,  ‘exercise’ and ‘drinking enough water’. There is room for improvement…

MSJ: Have you felt any palpable changes in yourself since beginning this Challenge 12 weeks ago?

SS: Yes, absolutely. Firstly, there was that ‘feel-good’ sense of doing something good for my health. Secondly, I needed lifestyle changes to help support the thyroid problem that I have had – I believe I have those things in place now. Finally, I lost about 9 inches overall in these 12 weeks!

Thank you, Shraddha, for taking the time to share your story with my readers and me. Wish you greater success on your health journey!

 

P.S. The interview above is an abridged version of the conversation with Shraddha, since we spoke in both, English and our vernacular language.

Body composition, Exercise, Health & Fitness

Will exercising more help me lose weight?

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It was a memorable summer. For all the wrong reasons. While I had just returned from a great vacation and was mentally recharged, physically I was in the doldrums, inside and outside. In the three months prior, I had had a super hectic work schedule (which made the vacation that much more gratifying), as a result of which, my lifestyle had suffered in every way possible – food-wise, exercise-wise, rest-wise, family-time-wise, and personal-time-wise.

I felt drained, sluggish and apathetic most of the time. 

I’d developed a chronic lumbar pain, which made sitting for any period longer than 10 minutes painful. My immunity system had taken a hit, and I was struck by long bouts of cold and cough that lasted several weeks. An old shoulder injury had made itself apparent again. Horror of horrors – I’d gained over 3 kilos within a short period of four weeks! And they refused to budge. I wasn’t sleeping well (the cough and the bad back contributed to that equally). I felt drained, sluggish and apathetic most of the time.

But I’m a fighter. I fought back with all I had. I had to get fit. Three days after I returned from vacation, I hit the gym with a vengeance. I briefed my personal trainer about the new health goals I’d set for myself – get my back functioning normally again, drop all the excess weight and then some, and gain meaningful muscle, over the next three months. The almost threatening tone in my voice told him I meant business.

I thought I was killing it. But, alas! 

And business it was – functional training three mornings a week, strength training three evenings a week, yoga twice a week, and a walking routine every weekday. I also downloaded a calorie-tracking app and tracked everything I ate for two months straight. I thought I was killing it. But, alas!

In truth, I was killing myself. I had become a victim of overtraining. I felt worn out and tired all the time. The thought of another early morning HIIT session, another turn at the power cage in the gym, or another walk, put me in a lethargic state of mind immediately. I strengthened my back and lost the extra weight all right, but overall I was drained of energy.

Have you ever gone or seen a friend go through a similar experience? Did the extra exercise ‘work out’ in the end?

Too much of a good thing can also be bad for health.

Exercise has several benefits for the body and should be a regular ritual for everybody, regardless of age or gender. At an overall level, it improves heart health, energy levels, immunity & mood, strengthens bones & muscles (depending on the type of exercise), and helps to manage weight and stress.

However, too much of a good thing can also be bad for health. Your body needs a certain amount of stimulus to allow for removal of waste tissue and generation of new tissue. Exercise provides that stimulus. A well-rounded exercise programme will lead to improvement on all five components of fitness, including an ideal body composition, which addresses fat loss.

But, one must bear in mind that exercise is only one leg of the health tripod, the other two being nutrition and rest. Give yourself less energy than it needs, through a calorie-restricted diet (as I did), and your body will not have enough resources to regenerate its tissues, which break down or get depleted during exercise. Give yourself minimal time for rest and recovery (as I did too) and your body will not have the time to use those resources even if you eat well. The result will be a body worse for the wear.

Exercise is only one leg of the health tripod.

So, to answer the original question, exercise, at the right intensity, does help to streamline your metabolism by providing a stimulus for growth and repair, thus, assisting in weight loss or fat loss. However, simply adding more exercise time to your schedule without appropriate nutrition and rest is only a recipe for disaster.

What other myths/ dilemmas do you face when it comes to exercise?

Body composition, Exercise

I’m not overweight. Why do I need to exercise?

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A very close relative, a contemporary of mine, let’s call her P, was a skinny child and a slender teenager. I envied how she never had to care whether any of those cute prom outfits would look nice on her or not. She was decidedly a mesomorph. Her lifestyle allowed enough room for culinary indulgences without causing a large change (pun intended) in how she looked. While I was always goaded by my parents to exercise, she was hardly ever at the receiving end of such parental concern. Luck favoured her well into her twenties. Then, it ran out.

She was decidedly a mesomorph.

A dramatic change in her lifestyle and diet, when she relocated to another city, first started to show up on the scale – she gained over 10 kilos in a single year. A demanding and erratic work schedule aggravated the issue, bestowing digestion problems in parallel. The stress soon began showing on her face in the form of unsightly eruptions. When she got married a few years later, it was as if P had left all cares for her health behind. Five years and a child later, P weighed a full 30 kilos more than she did when she was 22, with her body fat percentage having doubled from 20% to over 40%. She also had severely weakened knees and the beginnings of hypertension.

Luck favoured her well into her twenties. Then, it ran out.

P’s story is not out of the ordinary – this is an eventuality that most women, especially in India, take for granted. Childbirth and raising children are, in fact, considered a licence for letting oneself go and not have to answer for one’s health. The same goes for many men who seem to expand at alarming rates after marriage, all their indulgence justified in the name of love and appreciation for their wives’ cooking. Really? Whom do they think they are kidding? What about the accompanying diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, you-name-it-lifestyle-disease?

I believe this complacency begins early in life, when age, hormones, and the relative lack of responsibilities are all on our side. As children or teenagers, nobody holds it against us if we look a little heavier than average. At that age, the body is so forgiving and supportive that even the most half-hearted exercise regimen can right a lot of dietary wrongs, thanks to a relatively faster metabolism. That’s also when one starts to believe that exercise is not required if one is not fat.

Childbirth and raising children are, in fact, considered a licence by women for letting themselves go and not have to answer for their health.

However, fitness is much more than just about carrying excess body fat. It involves four other critical components too:

  1. Cardio-respiratory endurance – the ability of your heart, blood vessels and lungs to function adequately for a prolonged period of time while carrying out any aerobic activity (recall how some friends of yours quickly get out of breath with the slightest cardio activity?)
  2. Muscular endurance – the ability of your muscles to adequately support your cardio-respiratory system for a prolonged period of time while carrying out any aerobic activity (remember the time you had to cut short your dance class because of the catch in your thighs and shins?)
  3. Musculo-skeletal strength – the ability of your bones, tendons, ligaments and muscles to exert maximum force against any form of resistance (the time when you had to move a heavy log of wood out of the driveway comes to mind?)
  4. Flexibility – the ability of the body to achieve maximum range of motion around joints (recall the moment when you not only managed to touch your toes but also wrap your fingers around the soles of your feet when your Yoga teacher led you through the Pashchimottanasana, the seated forward bend?)

Fitness is much more than just about carrying excess body fat.

Now, two important things to remember where exercise is concerned:

  • No single type of exercise can lead to improvements in all four components of fitness. Hence, depending solely on the ‘30-minute walk everyday’ or ‘Yoga three times a week’ or even ‘Crossfit five times a week’ cannot help you improve on all four counts simultaneously.
  • Having said that, however, any form of exercise is better than no exercise at all, since it will positively affect at least one component of your fitness.

So, which exercise should you do and why? I’ll get to that in a bit.

PC: Height And Weight Tips 

Body composition, Health & Fitness

Weight loss or fat loss – which is better?

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It was one of those New Year’s eves when you decide you’ve had enough and need to take charge of your life. This particular one was memorable because I actually managed to stick to my health-related resolutions for over five months in the new year. I’d celebrated my first wedding anniversary and the ‘new bride’ glow had started to wane. The weighing scale seemed to have taken on a life of its own, adding numbers at will. Within just a year, I had gained almost 10 lb, firmly putting me in the ‘overweight’ category. I knew I had to do something. Leveraging my past experience, I turned to what I knew had worked in the past – exercise.

I had gained almost 10 lb, firmly putting me in the ‘overweight’ category. I knew I had to do something.

I had always been involved in sports while at school, thanks to a carefully crafted regimen at my quasi-military style alma mater (something I can’t be thankful for enough). While at college, I’d got introduced to Yoga and fallen in love with it. The one thing I wasn’t too proud of was my endurance level. I decided to kill two birds with one stone – improve my stamina, and lose the excess weight. The first hour of my day was, thus, reserved for jogging (as far as I could go without stopping) followed by a routine of intense Yogasanas.

The first moment of exhilaration came when I crossed the 5-km mark for the first time, about eight weeks into my schedule. I was ecstatic to find that I did have some endurance muscle fibres in me after all. The Yoga practice was supporting the cardio schedule admirably, with outstanding improvement in breathing capacity and flexibility. I did not own a scale then so was not distracted by minor fluctuations. The diet was unchanged but the eating was mindful. In about three months, I’d reversed all the damage of ‘newly-wed’ celebratory feasting and then some.

“Are you not keeping well?”

I was feeling highly accomplished. That’s when the reality check happened. One day, a colleague that I was collaborating with again after several months of being on separate projects, casually asked, “Are you not keeping well?” …er…what?

Have you ever had a friend or relative return from a health retreat, where they promise dramatic weight loss, put you on a detox diet of ‘healthy’ juices, boiled and tasteless vegetables, and lentils cooked the ‘zero-oil’ way? You wondered why he looked so feeble that he might fall if he stood in the way of a mildly strong draft of wind? Or a cousin or aunt who took up marathon training to ‘lose the flab’, but at the end of the annual marathon calendar ended up not only weighing several kilos less but also looking several years older, with sunken eyes, gaunt cheeks, and far more wrinkles than you remembered she possessed?

Without going into a lesson on physics, let us understand what ‘weight’ actually means in the context of health and fitness. Our bodyweight comprises two things: lean body mass and body fat. Lean body mass further comprises internal organs, bones, muscles, skin, and body water. Of these, muscle tissue is the most metabolically active tissue, requiring more energy than the other components for growth, repair and maintenance. In terms of changes in weight, it is the muscle mass that can gain or lose weight in the short term, a few weeks or months. The only other component that can change in weight quickly is the water in the body; just a few days are enough.

The prolonged cardio activity definitely burnt the fat, but only after it ate into precious muscle too, hence, the weathered look.

In the case of the friend who patronised the health resort, what he probably lost was water weight. In all probability, he promptly regained all the lost weight within a few weeks of his return as his body readjusted to the usual levels of water intake and retention. In the case of the marathoning cousin, she lost valuable muscle tissue along with the dispensable body fat. The prolonged cardio activity definitely burnt the fat, but only after it ate into precious muscle too, hence, the weathered look.

Appropriate levels of fat loss, while retaining existing skeletal muscle mass, will automatically give you the lean look.

The ideal body composition focuses on body fat as a percentage of your bodyweight. Hence, one should aim to lose fat rather than simply losing weight. Appropriate levels of fat loss, while retaining existing skeletal muscle mass, will automatically give you the lean look.

Now, here come the twin dilemmas:

  1. If a so-called ‘healthy’ diet only helps to lose water weight then what should I eat to lose fat?
  2. If a challenging physical activity like marathon training costs me precious skeletal muscle mass, then how do I protect it? (Everyone says walking is the best exercise. I thought I’d take it to the next level with running. Should I simply walk then?)

More on cracking the dilemmas soon.

 

PC: http://bodycarehealthclub.com.au/

Health & Fitness, Nutrition

The ‘fat-free’ revolution that made us fat – the biggest con in the food industry

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In my last post, I recounted my initiation into calorie research. Like many rational and reasonably intelligent people, I arrived at the same conclusions that others do: fat eats into the calorie quota quickly, and it takes up too much space in the body, and, thus, would make me gain body fat. So, I should eat as little fat as possible, which will result in two benefits – I get to eat more, and I don’t get fat!

I soon became a pro at figuring out which foods contained fat and which didn’t, reading food labels for their fat content, looking for skimmed and low-fat options on supermarket shelves, and even cooking fat-free meals. Despite all this diligence, I could avoid neither the hunger pangs nor the weight gain. The way my requirement for larger clothes was going, I knew the weight gain was from fat, not muscle. It was definitely not dietary fat that was making me gain fat thanks to my thoughtfully crafted low-fat diet. Then what was making me fat?

Ever been through this before or know someone who has?

The answer lies in the inequality of calories. A calorie from fat will always remain a calorie from fat, and be stored as triglycerides, until it is required for providing energy. Calories from carbs and protein, however, are talented – they can change form. Carbs that are unutilised by the body are converted to fat and stored for later use. Any protein that is excess, after completing the job of growth, repair and maintenance, also converts to fat.

OK. That explained the metabolism issue, or the lack thereof. But surely the body should have been able to tolerate some amount of fat, especially if it was not getting any from my diet! ‘Some’, yes, but what about the body fat that was already sitting there and not getting used?

The human body has evolved over a couple of thousand millennia to use its resources in the most efficient way possible. For our ancestors of the Stone Age, starvation was a real situation that presented itself every so often. The store of fat in the body was what kept them going during those periods, which could very well last a couple of days or a few weeks. The reason being that the body has unlimited potential to store fat. Our ancestors, however, were different from us in that their bodies knew how to metabolise fat since they needed to do it frequently. On days that they got enough to eat, their bodies used the quick-energy providing foods, i.e. carbs, for immediate uses, and stored dietary fat as, well, fat. Obesity, hence, was a rare occurrence, if at all, since the body was adapted to burning fat.

With the advent of agriculture, about ten millennia ago, a dramatic shift occurred in the eating habits of human beings, since vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes, largely carbohydrates, became far more easily accessible to wide proportions of the population. With a rise in their consumption, the body started adapting to a sugar-burning mechanism (all carbs essentially being a form of sugar, once the fibre is removed). Now, the human body can store only about 2,000 calories worth of carbs at any given time, basically enough to last a day or at most two, versus an average of 30,000 calories from fat.

The food processing industry amplified this change by an order of magnitude. And guess what types of food were processed the most? Carbs! From raw vegetables and fruits to fibre-less juices and sugar-laden smoothies, from dehusked grains to polished ones, flours and breads, from steamed, whole tubers to dried and fried snacks.

With human bodies having essentially switched over to becoming sugar-burning factories from the highly optimised fat-burning, muscle-sparing ones, requiring feeding at small intervals (mostly carbs again) is it any wonder that rates for obesity, not to mention diabetes, have broken all records in the past hundred years?

What we actually needed to do was not cut out the fat from our food but to reduce the proportion of carbs, especially the processed ones.

So, how does one switch back to the fat-burning metabolism without subjecting oneself to starvation? That story begins with understanding ‘metabolism’. And I’ll get to it soon.

For those who like to do their own research, look up The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living by Jeff S Volek and Stephen D Phinney.

Health & Fitness, Nutrition

A calorie is NOT just a calorie! The first diet-related myth

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I still recall the first time I became cognisant of food calories. I had just polished off several courses of a lavish breakfast spread at the five star hotel where my consulting team was put up during an international project. My colleague, a fitness junkie, then in the pursuit of the elusive six-pack abs, had been observing the careful consideration I had put into picking up an eclectic mix of breakfast items. He waited patiently for me to wipe off the foam from the coffee, which served as the finale of my meal, before remarking casually, “You know you’ve exhausted more than 60% of your calorie quota for the day already, right?”

“You know you’ve exhausted more than 60% of your calorie quota for the day already, right?” 

“What!” That couldn’t be right. I had understandably eaten a big meal, but surely those dainty Danish pastries, choco-chip muffins, baked beans, cold cuts, and the egg-white omelette could not add up to that many calories! I consoled myself that since I was going to have ‘just a salad’ for lunch anyway, perhaps the big splurge was justified. I vaguely recall that the lunch did not end up being ‘just a salad’.

But I clearly recall that I spent a good part of my morning looking up the calories in various foods. That was over twelve years ago. And that’s how the initiation into my self-guided study of nutrition happened. The fascination has not stopped but now I’m well guided in this matter.

I’ve heard the refrain ‘A calorie is a calorie…is a calorie’ several times. The import of that statement is that what is important in a diet, regardless of the health goal, is the number of calories. At the most basic level (we’re talking survival here), this is correct. But if one has certain goals in mind, then it is critical to understand WHERE the calories come from, i.e. the three energy-providing macronutrients – carbohydrates, protein and dietary fat. Water, termed the fourth macronutrient at times and an essential nutrient at others, does not contribute any calories.

If one has certain health goals in mind, then it is critical to understand WHERE the calories come from. 

While each gram of carbs and protein provides 4 calories, a gram of fat provides 9 calories, more than double the energy of carbs or protein. So we would need fewer grams of fat than carbs or protein to provide the same number of calories. As a corollary, one should be able to eat more grams of carbs and/ or proteins vs fat to fulfil their calorie requirements, isn’t it?

Now, consider this. Fat takes up more than three times the space of the same quantity of protein in weight. Hence, 1 kg of fat will occupy at least three times the space of 1 kg of protein. This is the reason why two people with the same height and weight can look slim or obese depending on the proportion of body fat. More reason to consume fewer grams of fat, because who in their right mind wants to be fat, right?

Wrong!

The reason that we have had this upside down for so long is because of the understanding that all calories are equal. In reality, one must ask what type of calories we are talking about. This is because each macronutrient has a different role to play in our body. Carbs provide quick energy – their calories can potentially be burned almost as soon as they are ingested. Protein grows, repairs and maintains the body – muscles, organ tissue, blood vessels, hormones, enzymes, antibodies, hair, skin, nails, etc. Fat provides a long-term store of energy, regulates body temperature, enables brain functioning, and allows vitamin absorption.

Just as the role of each macronutrient in our body is different, so is the manner in which each is used by the body. Carbs are used for providing energy instantly and for aiding digestion if they are fibre-rich. Protein, although used primarily for growth and repair, can be used for providing energy in times of distress, when adequate energy from other sources is not available, but at the cost of muscle tissue. Body fat, stored as adipose tissue in the body, is used for providing energy only when other sources of energy are not available or when the body is in starvation mode.

Here’s the kicker – any calories from carbs and protein that are not used by the body are converted to fat in the form of adipose tissue! So much for avoiding dietary fat, huh!

So, which calories should one consume? I’ll talk about this in the following posts.

P. S. The self-guided ones might like to pick up Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, which puts to bed several arguments on calories. Will provide my own review of the tome soon.

Health & Fitness, Services

What I gained by switching from #Uber/ #Ola to the #MumbaiLocal

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One of the small joys of living in a metro is the ability to hail a taxi easily and go about one’s business without requiring too much logistical planning. The advent of #Uber and #OlaCabs on the Mumbai public transport landscape made this even more convenient. For somebody (like me) who commutes upwards of 50 kilometres daily, this availability is a blessing. What, then, made me give up this uber convenience (pun fully intended) and regress, in many ways, to the popular yet infamous #MumbaiLocal train?

The answer lies in yet another characteristic of modern urban living – a sedentary lifestyle and…sigh… the resulting lower back pain. I realised I needed to change something drastically in my daily routine to overcome this situation. The solution came to me easily but I still took over six months to implement it.

I’ve come to the wonderful realization that those 30 extra minutes each day have been well worth the time.

Now, the commute to and from my place of work is not a tough one, by Mumbai standards, but the workplace being located at one end of the linear public transport route map of the city means that the nearest suburban railway station is about a kilometre and a half away, a 17-minute walk (as per Google Maps). This number is not frightening for the average Mumbaikar, I know, but to somebody who had happily adjusted to the ‘no-local-train-travel-in-the-past-10-years’ status, it did seem a tad challenging, not to mention the ‘adventurous spirit’ that one has to cobble up for the local train journey itself. Add to that number, the 10-minute kilometre-long walk from the train station at the other end to my residence, and I was looking at an increase of about 60% to my total one-way commute time, an additional 30 minutes. The math should not have made sense. Yet I lumbered ahead, all in the hope that my lumbar, at least, would applaud the decision. I decided to undertake at least the return leg of my commute by local train each workday.

I’ve kept up the practice for over a month and a half, and I’ve come to the wonderful realization that those 30 extra minutes each day have been well worth the time. I’ve gained in mind, body and spirit.

Mind

I am able to use the time on the train to (finally) catch up on my reading. Books were always a close companion on the train. These days the Kindle does just as well.

I also use the time, when I don’t find space convenient enough to read, to mentally organise my to-do list and prioritise my activities for the next day.

I’ve discovered parts of the city that I never knew before in my search for the shortest/ fastest/ cleanest route to and from the train station.

Body

This was, of course, the primary reason for making the switch – to get some exercise for the limbs. The lower back pain is history. The heart and lungs seem to have become stronger. A flight of stairs doesn’t seem daunting in the least anymore. And did I mention the mildly pleasant 3-lb weight loss?…

I also get some weight training in because of the 10-lb backpack I carry since it can weather the jostles and shoves of fellow train riders better than an elaborate office bag.

I feel more agile and alert since being on any Mumbai road requires you to be mindful of the next passer-by rushing past you, the large automobile merrily threatening you even at pedestrian crossings, the stray dog that decides to leap across exactly the same puddle at exactly the same time that you are about to hop over it, or the water tanker backing into a no-vehicle one-way street.

Spirit

I am able to use the time on the road to talk to myself and go over the events of the day/ week, introspect on what went well and what needs to get better.

I get to experience and enjoy the elements, whether it is the marvellous sunshine or the refreshing monsoon shower. It reminds me of how much natural wealth we have as residents of a tropical coastal city and how much of it we miss being ensconced in our air-conditioned cars and taxis.

I also get to mingle with the ‘average consumer’ of this large economy, who often becomes the subject of my work-related study and writing. I not only get to observe their interactions but also partake in the commercial activity in daily essentials that occurs on this critical lifeline of Mumbai, away from malls, e-commerce portals, and, I daresay, GST worries…

While these are the most critical takeaways for me, there has also been a side benefit – the substantial savings in travel costs. For the cost of a single Uber ride, I get a two-way unlimited use season pass for a whole month!

What’s not to love about the #MumbaiLocal?!