Excerpt: Want To Embrace The 'Joy Of Missing Out'? Get Real With Yourself

Amidst a perfectly average life, Nanki Mehta finds herself at a crossroads, torn between a sense of belonging and the quest for authenticity. As she struggles with age-old questions echoing Arjuna’s uncertainties on the battlefield, a chance encounter on Instagram introduces her to River, a fearless Bungy Jump Master from Rishikesh. While Nanki grapples with fears; River sells courage for a living. Together, they navigate through the profound questions which are relevant even today— Who am I? Why am I? How can I be happy? Can Nanki truly rewrite her story?

Embark on this journey of self-discovery and join her as she discovers how to fall in love with life and the joy of missing out.

An Excerpt From The Joy Of Missing Out

Chapter 1  

I have, I suppose, always been a closeted oddity. I’ve never belonged to the room, whichever one I’m in. But I bet you could never tell if you met me. Now, that’s an art I’ve mastered over my thirty-one years of residing in this body, and I live the most regular life you can imagine. It is a standard template: How not to get caught? Blend in! 

But that’s not where my mastery lies. That’s textbook for any version of an oddity not yet ready to be outed. My mastery lies in how I can shine even while staying concealed.  

Hi, I’m Nanki Mehta, and in case you need to know, I  identify as she/her, banal enough to coincide with my biological gender. Born into a middle-class family in a gated community near Qutub Minar, Delhi, I’ve lived, pretty much rooted like a tree, out of this very piece of earth for as long as I have existed.  By some weird tryst of fate, even after I married Rithvik four years ago, it just so happened that instead of me moving out, he moved in with me, along with my grandfather, Nanu.  

I don’t hate it. Not this arrangement, not this colony, not this city. I am however certain that this heart is a vast thing because  I have never seen it content within a small box, however much you may perfect it. The box, not the heart—that one remains hopelessly, thankfully untameable. 

Maybe that’s why I made the choices I did. During my college placement interviews, I met Jaya. She represented an unheard-of marketing firm in the country and told me that I  would get no pay for the first three months but would get to travel a lot. I took the job, and that became my career. What do you expect, trusting twenty-one-year-olds with those kinds of decisions? The job gave me what it promised, and I gave it my all. Anyway, ten years later, she’s still my boss. It can only have been luck that Jaya went so much beyond that in my life.  You’ll see!  

My parents, however, found another way to break through the monotony of 26 Geetanjali Enclave. A year after my wedding, they decided to relocate to Kodaikanal to live out their retirement plans, leaving me this property as a generous marital gift to settle into. Nanu, of course, had been too old to uproot and replant, so he came along with it by default. Now, he’s my favourite souvenir of that feeling called ‘home’. 

It would have worked, you know. I could have stayed comfortably hidden in this perfectly average life. But then this stupid world broke. 

1.15 a.m. 

I do one of two things at this hour. Ruminate over the day or scroll through Instagram. Right now, it seemed to be a bit of both.  

Rithvik was already asleep, satisfied from having whipped up an excellent Tomato Pulao. I could hear Nanu cough through his sleep in the other room. Basically, the day had been as normal as can be right now, all things considered. Yet another lockdown was announced in the city, and we worked from home. Today was the fourth day I hadn’t washed my hair, and it showed despite the messy bun that usually hid it well. 

I was currently working on rebranding a sports beverage that aimed to ‘give people just the energy boost they needed’. As if. No, there is nothing subtle about milking the cow of this ravaging sickness to increase sales. If it feels opportunistic and wrong, that’s because it is. Yes, I’m aware of how I’m enabling this scam, but before you judge me, know that I have bills to pay,  and morality isn’t exactly affordable at the moment.  

Having shared the drafts I knew were average, I wondered if my neighbour had found a hospital bed. Life, as we knew it, was crumbling down, and I was left trapped in it.  

I pick up my phone after it beeps with a notification. Is it just me, or are we, as a generation, having our deepest conversations with Instagram now? I don’t mean with our friends on the app.  I mean with the app. Maybe, Instagram can hear our thoughts because it just threw up a post that was a direct response to my train of thought.

Can’t wait to experience the world again?  

We’ve got something you can hold onto! 

Send us your story—why daring to take the last  step off the edge is just what you need, and  we’ll gift you the experience of a lifetime: 

INDIA’S MOST EXTREME BUNGY! 

In Rishikesh! 

Now that has my attention. 

Chapter 3 

1.45 am 

I want to consume those mountains and inhale them 

until they fill me up 

and nothing else remains. 

I don’t expect to hear back. No one responds to random  

Insta DMs anyway. I just wanted to touch Rishikesh, I guess.  But within minutes, I see three dots light up and down. This random stranger, with clearly nothing better to do tonight, was responding! 

You’d need an enormous appetite for that! 

Oops. There was a person on the other side of this phone.

Oh lol! 

I meant I want to consume the mountains  

like you do as you dive into them, 

while I still have the chance  

and while they still stand there,  

unchanging and majestic. 

I imagined him typing from the exact same spot as if he lived on that bungy bridge. 

The messages weren’t yet seen. I check his profile. It was the official page of the bungy place—Jumpin Heights. The bio read:  This is where you meet your fears. Got Guts?  

1 new notification 

The stranger had responded with a picture. It was blurred for privacy’s sake, and I wonder if I should open it. Oh well, it’s a brand page. It couldn’t be unsolicited pictures of the human anatomy. Or could it? I checked the time. It is almost 2 a.m. now. Got guts, eh? I take the risk, and carefully, suspiciously, I  open it. It was a live picture, almost pitch black. In the distance,  however, I could see the faint silhouette of the mountain ranges  I know only too well: the Garhwali peaks at the foothills of the  Himalayas. The mountains, right now. 

Below it, he had written: 

When this is all over, 

they will be right here, waiting.  

Unchanging and Majestic.

I stare at the picture. I take a deep breath and shut my eyes to  burn the image in as if to lock it safely inside me. After a minute,  I heart the picture because there really is nothing to say except, “Pahaadon ki sardiyaan, aur kulhad waali chai. Bass, aur kya?” Dad would have declared it as a life motto to a view like that.  Remembering his deep, big voice now makes me feel safe and  warm despite the chill in the air. 

I zoom into the mountains again. If I look closely enough, I  can almost hear them breathe.

Excerpted from The Joy Of Missing Out, written by Niharika Nigam; first published by NU VOICE PRESS 2024 | An imprint of Hubhawks Pvt. Ltd