Tried hard and still trying

When I was really small and Achchi and Loku Nanda were overjoyed to find out that I was the newest addition to the left-handers’ gang in the huge family, it did not stop them from training me to use my right hand when I feed myself. The training I found very much torturous as a five-year-old. Their attempts were somewhat successful as I learnt to use my right hand when I ate things like rice and string-hoppers.
But when it comes to culinary etiquettes I was very much compelled to use my own etiquettes rather than the standard forms of practice; worse still when I have to eat things like sandwiches or cake I very much prefer to use my good hand. Even though, this has never been a cause of embarrassment for Amma and Thaththa, at the age of twenty-two, I am very much resolved to discipline myself before it becomes an embarrassment to someone else.
Some years ago, biting nails had been on top of my list of bad habits. I would happily chew into my thumb nail while watching Sri Lanka pathetically losing a match against a visiting team. Those days, stopping my fingers from going into my mouth was harder than swallowing the bitterness of defeat. When Saha was crowned with the title ‘Miss Beautiful Hands’ among us girls I was ashamed to raise my hands to give her a loud applaud. But things changed when I was out and away from tennis courts and among the bunch of Visakhians. For once in lifetime, I let my nails grow just to see how it would look like. The final result was my decision to let them grow as they seemed much better on my fingers than in my appendix.
The habit which annoys me most perhaps is converting my handbag into a mobile garbage bin. I would take the credit of not throwing bus tickets, hand bills and toffee wrappers on the roadside like most of the other pedestrians do. So trying to be the ‘good girl’ I always make it a point to throw away all the bus-tickets and bills as soon as I come home from work. But that is the very thing which escapes my memory. The final outcome is producing heaps and mounds of hand-bills and bus tickets when the bus conductor asks for change.
Even today, when a silent drizzle is falling over the plants growing outside my window, I have been playing a certain Hindi song from morning perhaps for the five-hundredth time. Even though it was downloaded only this morning, Nangi had already grown sick of it thanks to my excessive replaying. Now, the next battle would be stopping myself from humming ‘thujé deka deka sonâ’ every thirty seconds.
I have been wondering why it is always easy to get used to something bad yet very hard to get over with it. Wrong poses, eating junk food, smoking and drinking are some of those killer-habits that can cross your health at the wrong side. It is also funny that most of these bad habits sneak into our lives when we are wise enough to weigh things before choosing. If that is one of the benefits in growing up, I’d rather remain in my childhood and make others do the same. After all, sucking the thumb is much healthier than sucking in tonnes of tobacco and tar.