I wrote this essay while travelling home from Delhi for the weekend last night. It is a reflective piece, and captures some of the recent capriciousness of my mind. But writing it helped make me feel more centered. Maybe writing is indeed my meditation.
What does it feel like to be a grown up? And at what point
does one know that one has reached quite the right age to be deemed a fully
capable, functioning adult? Is it a complete break from one’s childhood and
adolescence? Does it arrive all at once, like a cloudburst? Or is it an
innocuous process that keeps coming at you unobtrusively, growing inch by
subtle inch, until you wake up one morning and you know that childhood is over?
These are some of the thoughts that have been gnawing at my mind for many, many
months now. And yet, I have no answers.
According to social and legal norms, I am an adult now. I
have been so for a few years. I am nearing twenty three, and it is dawning on
me increasingly what a strange and curious time of life the early twenties are.
To borrow from witty Instagram posts, I have contemporaries who are married and
in the family way, and then there are others who have to plead with their
parents for permission to meet with friends. There is every other kind in
between, from globetrotting solo backpackers to couples living in together,
from ardent corporate kids to dedicated artists and social workers, there are
the slackers and the workaholics, the party animals and the couch potatoes. And
then there is me.
I finished the Young India Fellowship in June, and went back
home to West Bengal for a month to relax. It was the first proper vacation I
had ever had: the previous ones had always been term breaks and annual school
vacations, with some examination or course preparation always lurking in the
back of my mind. But this time, I had really reached an extended period of separation
from my academic pursuits. This time, I was taking an ‘off’ period before
embarking into a working life. I had made up my mind even before joining the
Fellowship that I would work for at least a couple of years after the
Fellowship ended before continuing with full time academic engagements. Accordingly,
I started applying actively to job opportunities on and off campus since early
into the Fellowship. It was a strenuous
and emotionally exhausting process, as anyone who has ever hunted for jobs
would know only too well, but I had the privilege of choice between several
engaging offers by the end of the year. Since I had also planned ahead for the
vacation in July I informed every organisation of my availability from August.
Meanwhile, I took the time in July to weigh between a couple of offers and
finally decided upon an associate researcher’s position at Katha India’s Child
Poverty Action Research (CPAR) Lab in New Delhi. I have been in love with this
city for years now, and since Calcutta with its abysmal job opportunities
beyond some tech companies could not be a meaningful option, Delhi was the
obvious choice. Zeroing in on a job brought much needed clarity and
contentment, and my mind was free at last to breathe easy and enjoy the leisure
days. And enjoy I did, in my own unique way, consisting mostly of sleeping and
eating and indulging in long awaited adda
with my parents. And of course, there was lots of dreaming and fantasizing
about the future.
The month passed all too soon, and on 31st July,
I was back in Delhi. It is always with a wistful twinge of the heart that one
leaves home behind, but I had the not-too-common privilege of being genuinely
glad to be coming back to this city. It makes life so much easier if one can
start a new life with more glad anticipation than mere misgivings. That first
week back in town was a whirlwind time for me. I had already booked a room in a
shared apartment in Chittaranjan Park – the mini Calcutta of Delhi – before
leaving in June, and I meant to finish the work of moving in to my new home as
far as possible in the few free days I had before work began on the 5th.
I did so, with unending help from my gem of friends Alisha and Asmita, and of
course Shilpi Di. The boxes and trolleys seemed unending, and by the time I was
done getting everything into place, it was already Monday, and time to start my
professional life at Katha.
There were two other people joining the CPAR team along with
me – Kartikeya Jain and Pratyush Dwivedi. They were classmates and friends from
their time in Ambedkar University for their Masters, and through a lucky
coincidence, had both been selected to join CPAR in research positions. I went
to office on the first day with a good amount of apprehension, my socially
uptight, reclusive tendencies threatening to rear their ugly heads at any hint
of discomfort. But these fears were laid to rest pretty quickly, and a few
hours into the day we had already slid into a comfortable sense of camaraderie,
relying on each other for help in keeping up with the information and
instructions being bombarded at us. Shilpi Di was my boss now, of course, and
Aparna the second-in-command of the team, and as the weeks went on, we
continued to shave off rough edges, so that now, one month down the line, we
make a group of perfect weirdos steering possibly the most eclectically
productive team in the organisation, with Chikoo the old mutt our constant
mascot!
But this post is not
really about starting a new job or getting a new place, though both of these
form very important elements of how my life and thoughts have been shaping up
lately. For both of these are integral to my quest of finding my own place in
this world as an independent grown up. And so we are back to the question with
which I started out. When does one know, really?
Much seem to have changed over the last two months, and yet,
surprisingly little feels different. I am a salaried employee of a reputed
organisation, with responsibilities and expectations toward my workplace. I
have to pay the rent, the electricity and the maid, and I shop for groceries
and cook my meals more extensively than I have ever done before. I am referred
to as ‘ma’am’ much more frequently than I was used to. I have recently become
the local guardian to a friend’s brother. I am seriously considering getting a
dog in the not too distant future. I have savings and insurance plans in place,
thanks to Baba, and I have short and long-term career decisions hanging in the
offing.
However, I still have a tough time getting out of bed each
morning, spending more time than I would like to admit bargaining with myself
for an extra five minutes of snooze time. I have quickly established myself as
the slightly clownish baby of the team at work, and play the happy combination
of roles as butt-of-all-jokes and receiver of most pampering. I struggle while
making healthy eating choices, giving in far too often to the temptation of
cakes and ice creams. I get happy buzzed on wine and beer and romp around in my
room late at night in my tattered, pale pink pajamas, singing mushy romantic
songs. And I am still deathly scared of cockroaches, and call up my parents
several times every day to chat and complain and wail about life.
I am the same person that I was two months ago. I enjoy the
same hobbies and curl up in bed in the same peculiar poses. I have clearly not
got over my college sense of humour, often leading to vague awkwardness at
work. But somewhere, there is a faint
hint of someone a little more somber, a little more restrained. I have taken to
bringing work home at times, so as not to feel guilty about not earning my
keep. My interests and expectations concerning love and romance have shifted
significantly toward something a little more level headed, a little less
tempestuous than what I have been used to these past several years. I am
looking for a stable, peaceful individual rather than a fellow wild child. I am
ready to put in time and effort into something meaningful and potentially long
term, and am willing to walk away from half hearted attempts at ‘time pass’. And
lately, I have been thinking deep and long about the meaning of life, the
reason for my existence in this transitory world.
Do these changes make me more ‘grown up’? I really do not
know. And, quite frankly, I do not care overmuch about it. I do not fear
growing older; in fact, it has been a standing joke with my friends at Ashoka
that I am the ‘mommy’ of the pack, always watching over them like a mother hen.
I have never been the usual kind of youngster anyway, with very little interest
in parties and shopping and living the ‘high life’. I do not really feel like a
different person; maybe just a tad bit less higgledy-piggledy! I am writing
this essay while on a flight back home to Calcutta after a long and tiring
couple of weeks at work, not for a leisurely weekend but because of some
medical troubles in the extended family. I am going home to stand by my mother
in a time of need, and that, I suppose, is grown up enough. I can forgive
myself for occasional slips into childish behaviour. So long as I can continue to
tread this balance, I will be doing well enough, I think!
