Indispensable

There's a piece of recitation I remember from my school days. It was titled The Indispensable Man. It went somewhat like this (I am not quoting exactly):

Whenever you are feeling important, take this simple test: Fill a bucket half full with water. Dip your hand in it, up to the wrist. You may splash about and shake the water. The hole that is left when you take your hand out is the measure of your indispensability.

Am sure you've figured the point that the piece above is trying to make. There was a point of time, I'll confess, when I believed the above to be largely true. I still believe it to be mostly true in the context of organisations and workplaces. After a brief period of adjustment, everyone WILL get on with things, and your office will continue to function without you. And no one will be happy or sad for all eternity.

On the personal front however, it is a much grey-er area. On the one hand yes, life does not stop and we learn to be happy and move on. So if it is about mere functionality, then yes, no one is indispensable. But then people are not about mere functionality (that's the domain of machines). When one does look a little deeper than mere functionality people do become indispensable. They are capable of causing lasting happiness or sadness to those they come in contact with. There is a warmth and comfort and sense of security that they do provide. And while someone else can provide some of that, no person is completely replaceable. There will always be something missing, a little void that only that person can fill. There will also be the happiness that only a person can provide.

Tomorrow is not really Another Day

The days are exactly the opposite of as slow or as fast as I want them to be. Or rather in retrospect they seem to have flown by and the present crawls along. Tomorrow I won't know where today went but as long as it is today, each moment stands out in sharp relief and I can almost capture it or so I think. But as soon as I wake up in the morning, it is a fresh slate.

I am happy in a way for then there are no grudges, no hurts that are carried over from their previous day. But then I wonder is just a clean slate or a denial of the undesirables that have happened over the past one week? Only time will tell which of those it is and I hope that one day it will truly be the former.

MICA in that sense has been such an emotional roller coaster ride. And, as I wrote in a post long long ago, everything here is magnified, intensified by the isolation, by the fact that it is still there tomorrow. Things seem to play themselves out repeatedly in almost every imaginable permutation and combination but the lock still does not click and the safe is not yet open. One day I might remember the combination that I never knew to begin with - here or elsewhere. But I am getting impatient. I hope that day comes soon.

Till it comes, there is the everyday - work, books, friends, music and writing - MY LIFE as I have lived it so far! Chinar is becoming rather like Kachnar in the emotional meaning that it is beginning to have for me. I am drawn almost everyday to go visit No.18 again. Perhaps to find the sense of peace that I had there as opposed to the restlessness here. I will before this term ends... sit there again before I lose the chance to. Recapture my first year of independence as I prepare myself to leave this place in about half a year. I am suddenly eager for things to move on, to find something new, to get past this Standing in Motion that my time at MICA has been.

Tomorrow is Not Really Another Day - It is just Another Today!

The Day Comes Ever Closer

As the days come closer, the emotions well up. A sudden memory brings a smile of longing, a thought unsettles the peace that I had found only recently. It feels like a paddy transplantation - to be uprooted from one place and planted in another.

I've lived away from Delhi for more than a year now but it remained home. The place I returned to ever so often. The place of comfort, happiness and cherished memories. Growing up - from school to college to MICA - it has been a part of it all. My most cherished memories, the most cherished people in my life.

I remember one night. 3 friends, we had just finished a highly experimental Japanese dinner at this restaurant with my friend's sister and the three of us just decided, at 12 at night, that we wanted to eat ice cream at India Gate. Not that the ice-cream there was anything special but just to stand there, on that long straight road, in the middle of the night, is something else altogether. So, we sat in the car and drove off. My friend driving, me in the passenger seat and the third sleeping on the back seat. We floundered our way through the circles of Lutyen's Delhi, trying to find our way to India Gate on one of our first excursions out alone on the roads. We weren't afraid of getting lost (in a circle, you'll always come back right!) and so what was a 20 minute journey became an hour long one as we wandered through the circles and radials. We did get to India Gate and the ice-creams finally but it is the time spent that mattered, that made the memory.

Many such moments - rediscovering friends on the streets of Chandni Chowk, in sophisticated restaurants, in a cricket stadium; walking endlessly in winter along the wide roads I found friends, loves, became who I am. Every cherished memory belongs there, has its roots there.

The city is still home I guess but that tangible place called home will soon be gone. I know I'll return to that someday but the wait is indefinite. It could be a few months, a few years. I'll see that home for the last time in a few days. Wonder how I will react, how I will let it all go, see it all put into boxes and cartons.

A Second Beginning

I haven't written here in quite a while; something that I suspected might happen once I got back to MICA. The rains have made the campus lush, setting off the green with the brick red of the buildings. A peacock left me speechless with its beauty and grace as I ate a bowl of hot maggi at chota. Its blue-green feathers set off the dull grey sky, adding a touch of glamour and vibrance to a bleak and damp day.

Campus is abuzz with activity but I still feel that distance. That wall that never lets me be a part of this place completely. The first year made me a woman from a girl. I want to see if I can find that girl again, or at least a part of her, for I find I enjoy womanhood too.

The tranquility of the monsoon air sets in; its fragrances putting the mind to rest. Memories of moments past create anticipation of the moments to come. A term that is filled not just with studies and career choices but also fun, frolic and parties. In this gaiety, I wonder how much I will write. A batchmate commented casually the other day that people write on blogs only when they are angry or sad or want to criticise something. I want to do none of that now. Just to absorb and to live each moment of the next 9 months. So let me see how much I write in mirth and gaiety or do I turn hither only when I need a listening ear that will not judge my deeds.

Starting a new life

Puberty. A growth spurt, transforming the body from that of a girl to that of a woman. It pushes the physical frontiers, encouraging discovery and rediscovery. It is a time of tumult and confusion, looking for explanations, answers and realizing that there are none. The physical growth that it brings along ends with the teens. The emotional journey just begins, taking the changing physical form and metamorphosing it into something so different and so much more complex than anything one could expect. Driven by the body, the mind and heart come into their own, exploring their boundaries and choices.

I finished college, graduation. It was like a full stop. The end of a chapter as I got ready to move out of my parents’ home to discover the world on my own, in my own way. To come back at the end of a day and not have anyone asking about how my day was. Having the choice to tell or not tell, I chose the latter. Sometimes I wished I could and so I wrote to myself digging deeper into myself to find out what I really thought and felt when I was alone. But then you could also ask am I alone?

I live with more people that I ever have. 32 women in my immediate vicinity, 200 odd people if you count every one who is within a minute’s walk away. Solitude amongst the milling crowd; peace only when there is noise; such is life in a hostel.

MICA – more than just a place where I am doing my post graduate studies. The first place where I have built a home of my own. A little 7” x 10” room is my haven, the space I have created for myself this year. A space to laugh in, cry in, find peace and rest in. I came to bare white room with a few pieces of furniture. I transformed it and am being transformed by it. My first 3 weeks here were full of fun, jest, laughter and sleepless nights where my mouth and mind worked as they discovered people and places. I pushed the limits of my own freedom.