A Crazy Old Woman and My Laptop Taught Me A Life Lesson!

Event 1:

If you know me, you know where I live. A few blocks from my apartment building, there is a road that connects to a major highway. The road is filled with your general Indian buildings: bungalows, row houses, shops, and what have you.

If you're lucky you'll meet a nice person and possibly even make a new friend. But if you're unlucky, you'll meet an old woman who is mentally unstable and may literally hit you if her mind fancies it!

No, this isn't satire.

An old woman lives in a bungalow in the aforementioned street. When she has to go somewhere she stands in the middle of the road, trying to catch a ride to a rickshaw stand or a shop. Someone of course stops their vehicle and drives her to wherever she wants to go. And then things are alright.

But when people don't stop to help her, she literally screams and shouts at passers-by; trying in vain to make them stop. The more people ignore her, the louder she screams at vehicles and the harder it becomes for her to catch a ride and the cycle continues until someone helps her. Also it is less likely that she pays the cab rivers, but I'm not completely sure about if she does.

Some days she literally screams and shouts at passers-by for no apparent reason! I heard from a friend that she once threw a stone at a auto-rickshaw-wallah during one one of her tantrums. The guy had blood come out of his head. To say that she is mentally not fine and needs help is an understatement!

A few months ago the nearby dwellers had enough of her. They got together and signed a petition saying that they want the police to take strict action against her and maybe put her in an asylum. According to an old lady who sells dairy products on the street, the petition had 50 signatures and almost everyone who lived near her had signed it!

But alas the police could do nothing. Apparently there is no law, no legal course of action in existence that could be taken against her. And apparently her family wants the people to just forget about her and forgive her and tolerate her! The police just left without doing anything!

But WHY did the woman go crazy in the first place? Was she always like this?

No actually. As it turns out, the old lady's husband died a few years ago. After that traumatic event her tantrums started. Her kids don't live with her (not 100% sure if they do, but I don't think they would be). They love her and hope to see the day when their mom will be cured. They also refuse to put her in a mental asylum or a get her proper care.

Event 2:

My laptop was suffering from a lot of problems since 5 days. I bought it in 2016. Today is 2024, so the laptop is almost 7 years old!

The 'body' was broken in various places from years of use, the battery went dead months ago, the internal hard disk was malfunctioning, the Win10 OS was broken, the power cable was not working and the Power Button broke and was stuck.

I had it taken to a repair centre 4 days ago and they replaced the body, installed a new battery and I bought a new power cable. I got it 2 days ago but still it was shutting down when I opened Photoshop or similar software, and often without me opening them for no good reason!

Today morning when I opened it the loading screen would was going nowhere and I was really worried. So I took it to the centre again and they installed a new Win10 OS complete with updates, put 256 GB SSD and fixed the Power Button. The 1TB HDD that was inside is broken I'm told and I'm advised to transfer my files somewhere safe as we can't say when it may fail. I'm not out of the woods completely yet, but things are stable for now.

Not only does my laptop have my personal data, but also of my clients! It's got all my design files that I have made for work for various clients. If that data is lost I'd have to design the creatives all over again. I was very stressed and felt like crying. I kid you not, if someone would have given me any kind of mental pressure I would have actually cried!

I'm a freelancer since 3.5 months now and my laptop is my only source of income (except my portfolio and skills and creativity, of course!) I kept imagining various bad scenarios in my head where I was forced to take up another graphic design or digital marketing job at an agency or a company. That seems okay for most people but you have to understand that I am over the corporate life. I really don't want to go through a new company, possibly a new city, a new boss, the office politics, people saying stuff that is humor to them but very offensive to me, late marks, the drama when asking for a holiday, getting up early for work, the 10 alarms to wake me up for work, not enough sleep, coworkers who don't respect my boundaries (physical and metaphorical), forcing me to be invited to social gatherings outside of work, and women at work to name a few!

WHOA! Even I'm surprised by what I wrote above!

Anyways...

Quiz: Can you spot where the Crazy Old Lady and I went wrong in these 2 instances?

Revealing the answer in

Three...

Two...

One...

Where we both went wrong:

If I had to write the answer in a word: Attachment!

The crazy old lady cannot let go of the fact that her husband is no more. She just couldn't let go of him.

She was attached to her husband.

(Also, the old lady's children are waiting for her to get better. Her children are attached to their mother's now-absent sanity.)

I was worried about my laptop's well-being.

I was attached to my laptop.

According to Buddhism, attachment creates suffering. Vaishnavism also teaches this, as do almost all spiritual and religious practices.

Detachment is very important in life. Detachment is a very important step in the progress of spirituality. Learning to let go frees us a little from the agony of losing something, tangible or intangible.

I hope things work out from the old lady though. I hope she gets better. I don't have any judgement or hatred towards her, but understanding. It just happened that I learnt of her story yesterday from the old lady who sells dairy products, and my laptop needed fixing since 5 days. The two events coincided. I just thought that life is giving me a lesson in detachment from two sources simultaneously!