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I am getting so stressed by people conspiring to tell me I am stressed. I got back from India the other morning and in the few days I was there, I got this distinct feeling stress-busting is an industry.

You know where I get most stressed? By anything or anyone that tells me not to get stressed. I am up to here with people who are stress experts. Physical trainers, writers, cultural pundits, psycho-babble-ists, TV show hosts, your friendly next door neighbour and just about anyone who has clambered on to this bandwagon and can’t stop nattering on about it. There is a sign at the airport and it says: ‘Is stress killing you?’ Great welcome home.

I think this anti-stress thing is getting out of hand and the way it is being hounded is making me feel awfully sorry for stress. How would you feel if everyone was ganging up against you?

In any case, I love stress. It gets my adrenalin going, it makes me feel I can face the next pebble flung into my path of life (mine, sunshine, is strewn with pebbles, gravel, potholes, unknown meteorites and other obstacles) and overcome it.

Without stress all I would be is a limp little pathetic nobody.

So please stop with this stress will kill you business. If you don’t have it, one thing is for sure: you’ll be dead.

You can’t pick up a magazine without someone telling you that it is the stress that is the big killer, all those pent-up emotions sloshing about inside, creating mayhem.

Yeah sure.

To make it more dramatic they called it Executive Stress. This is supposed to make you feel good about yourself before you do yourself in. After all, you didn’t succumb to your downmarket garden variety stress, you high flying executive, you.

My friend who runs an empire goes home and puts on sounds of the sea and lies there in the dark chanting anti-stress mantras and he is the scourge of the boardroom. He also places cucumbers on his eyelids for peace. I eat them. Not the eyelids, you twit, the cucumbers.

And having got the human race into this cowering position of surrender these Stressperts have made a financial killing telling you how to combat it. That’s what it is, a multi-billion dollar scam, way beyond the 2G whatever.

Thousands of us nervously measuring our stress quotients?

Do you feel fatigue? (Of course, I do, I work 12 hours a day, now you want to guilt me).

Are you inclined to lose your temper (yes, when I am asked moronic questions like this and when three people get promoted over me and when the bills mount up and when schools bleed me dry and when I forget to pay Salik, you have a hassle with this?)

Do you feel frustrated? (Yes, because I can’t make you see sense and also largely because I am in a rut and there is no ladder in sight, okay?)

Uh oh, three out of three, you are stressed, that’s it, Clyde, better hit the road, you are a basket case.

So, be like me. Stop worrying about worrying. Take your stress factor and throw it out of the window. Immediately, you’ll feel better about yourself, like you have been freed of the shackles.

Be on the bus. Take the ride. Go for broke, land on your feet, push your own envelope, get on the playing field, don’t stand on the sideline, write your story, do it your way and tell stress to hike. Hit the ground running and make stress your buddy.