Grateful.

For silence, for people I didn't think I could admire any more than I already do, for quiet resistance under unimaginable circumstances.

Sometimes what you've been looking for isn't out there or in front of you or even within yourself. Sometimes what you've been looking for manifests itself through something you never wanted, and couldn't have imagined.

We always say goodbye with the heaviest of hearts but how do you say goodbye to the very idea of what your hero should look like? You don't. You just dismiss hurt and plough on. You don't flinch because all you've ever been taught is to try to be like your hero, even if you know that all you're really trying to be is a fraction of what he showed it was possible to be.

  

Big events, small margins, and a whole lot of relief.

Bz got a job! :D

Middle of Centre

"It's not so much what you say to her, Eashan", she said, "what really makes me happy is what you say about her instead."

I've finally figured out that the stinging, tired eyes and the arm that ceaselessly spits out vile spurts of pain are no more than excuses. The truth is, I've been running on empty for a really long time without appreciating it. I still don't have answers, though, and that's just a terrible feeling after a day that made my heart feel so complete and brought so much of the finality I had quietly been looking for. There's another bag of rocks that's been strapped to my back and I'd gladly take it on if I could just get that one chance to lay all the bags down for a little while and start over. I know what's likely to happen - two short weeks will pass, things will inevitably move on and I'll regret that I didn't quite feel that one moment of complete tranquility that could've made these rocks so much easier to carry. 

It's been gnawing at me in an incoherent, incomplete sense for several hours now but if there's one question I'd like to ask myself from two weeks in the future, it would simply be, If I know I have so much more to give of myself, why do I feel so utterly hollow inside?

The Red Parcel and Bags of Candy

It's a wonderful feeling when a genuine smile can so fully validate an occasion, a friendship and weeks and weeks of quiet expectation.

My heart feels full, my mind is at peace, I'm really, really happy.

Here's to more unexpected three hour phone conversations and to more ways of sorting out our lives' endless little problems. :-)

The Truth About Everything

The smoke was swirling, the carpet was blotched with spilled drinks, the faces were a blur as they passed me by. I’d been here, of course. The failings were all too familiar, too soul-crushingly irreversible to do anything but be courteous, walk away, go back, bury my head under a pillow for a couple of hours and cajole one more early morning airline dash from a body that had seen far too many sub-6 a.m. economy class queues in the past two years. So I told myself that this wouldn’t be about trying or pretending or keeping it real – it would just be about saying thank-you, nice-to-meet-you, see-you-soon, buh-bye. That it ended up being a lot more than that really had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with someone who has, much against my will, got me to care deeply about an imaginary rubber duck.

I’m overwhelmingly thankful to you, in a way that I haven’t been to anyone in a long time. For being unafraid to tell me things, for pulling down the barriers I had so pettily constructed in my head, for giving my meaningless ideas only as much credit as they deserve, for saying sorry when you didn’t need to, for processing details of events, people and places rapidly enough for our conversations to not get bogged down by minutiae, for leaving me time only to react and not to think, for your rolling laughter over the phone, for doing all this without making it seem like a big deal. There is so much more to learn from you and there is so, so much more to tell you. I hope that, in the days and months to come, I get the time and attention to do both. I’m truly amazed at how much of my time devoted to you has resulted in overwhelmingly happy memories. I’m even more amazed at how, whatever the complications or context, you just get it.  

A lot of this is still so absurd that I can barely wrap my mind around it – I have no idea if you have a good singing voice, I don’t know if you hate clubbing, I couldn’t even begin to guess what your favourite colours or fruits or books are. But having spent the majority of the past three years dropping the heavy latch on that door without a second thought, I’m finding the effort involved in keeping that door propped open just a crack a challenge worth pursuing. 

It has also been accompanied by a realisation that I didn’t think I’d be willing to share with anyone up until I started writing this – that maybe this isn’t about locating or sharing happiness or sadness or emotion of any description. That maybe what we’re after isn’t love or companionship or empathy or acceptance. Maybe what we’re after is what we’ve both had within us all along. 

Anniversary

The IIT Delhi connection turns 28.

Happy anniversary, folks! Evidently, there's something about ashtami weddings. :-)

Four Word Proposal

I've always believed that, as obvious as it may seem, the way people write mirrors how they feel. I'm delighted to say I've rediscovered about five years' worth of writing through an old friend this morning. In tribute and celebration to our many disagreements about poetry and love, here's to you:

Four Word Proposal

August 14, 2012

(Prologue: I was, in true heavy metal style, going to "call this one 'Wasted'" and "dedic it to my ex-girlfriend, may she burn in hell" but I realised (1) that my ex-girlfriends are adorable people and have been unreasonably nice to me even though they've had no reason to be and (2) this isn't about my ex-girlfriend(s) anyway - it is entirely fictional.

Second prologue: I wrote this in sharp, inspired two-line bursts. The rhymes came out of nowhere - it has literally taken me twenty minutes to put it all down. Must be something in this mid-August air.) 

***

Economy of words has always eluded me

Eschewing 'no wasted motion', I'd rather be free

It should come, therefore, as no surprise

That it is my editor's blue pencil that I most despise.

Back and forth into his little lair I'd go

Having my words brutalised in the rain and snow

In whatever little I'd salvage of my all-consuming day

I'd find time for lunch and I'd find time to pray.

Each day, my little prayer would be exactly the same

That somehow He could deliver she who has no name

For I'd exhausted all possible avenues and every resource

In fruitless courtship, leaving only remorse.

Charm her, please her, they would say

Chip away at it every single day

It doesn't matter if progress is slow

You've got time, go with the flow.

And so I pursued but she would not budge

But I stuck to her like sweet chocolate fudge

Tirelessly, relentlessly, till I was obsessed

Stopping only when I was under blue-pencil arrest.

Slowly but surely she began to crack

Starting to like me though I was a hack

As more time passed, it just became vanilla

I know that makes no sense, this line is just filler.

It turns out they were right about persistence and its reward    

But it had taken too long, it was time I couldn't afford

So I decided for certain that this would be my time

Just so I could put an end to this rhyme.

I spoke without fear, without the apprehension of failing

At least when she said no, there'd be no wailing

But as I began my choreographed soliloquy

I started to tremble and so did she.

So I asked her what she was so fearful of hearing

And shushed at the window where my friends were leering

I got her to talk like she'd never talked before

And with every word she said, I realised more and more.

That come what may, I would always be around

Be that friend if she ever fell down

And slowly but surely, as you can probably tell

I sank quickly and without a trace into the friend zone well.

Suddenly women started coming out of the woodwork

'My boyfriend's a sexist, a druggie, such a jerk'

So I became a yes-man to the prettiest women - it was a cruel tale

Turning into an agony aunt a hot-blooded twenty-four-year-old male.

Long nights of 'Uh-huh' and 'I understand'

Dissolving mental images that had once been grand

But somehow I'd think back to that night when it came undone

And what a miserable story I had spun.

***

The news, when it came, hit me like a two-ton weight

She was leaving for good and I knew it would be too late. 

So finally in the fifth minute of injury time

Armed with a row of shots and loads of lime

I finally put the record straight with Miss Best Friend

And told her in no uncertain terms that this must end.

I waited anxiously for the tears I so richly deserved

But was astonished to see her so taciturn and reserved

What must I do to get a reaction, I thought

Many years of trying are all coming to naught.

So I did what all opportunistic buggers do

I waited for a time to come that we all knew

A couple of hours, maybe more

Till she finally staggered through that door.

I wasn't playing hard to get, I lied

I'd actually been playing conquer and divide

We sat down to talk like the old days, when it all made sense

And I realised there were no more moves, no more defence.

In this soliloquy, though, I felt something strange occur

I felt a real connection when everything else was a blur

And it dawned on me that this is what she had felt all along

And if I let her walk out that door, I'd be doing something very wrong.

So I engaged her, indulged her, told her she was right

And we talked forever and late into the night

But when the moment came to say our goodbyes

I saw friendship and trust but nothing else in her eyes.

And even though years have passed since I dusted that book off my shelf  

On lonely nights when I cannot sleep I still ask myself 

Was she blind, could she not see

That my four word proposal had become three?

The Tradition

GB, VM - Fantastic news, boys - I'm absolutely thrilled! I don't know what specific place became "your place" during the B.C.L. rollercoaster (mine was L-19/L-20 of the Graduate Reading Room in the Law Bod basement) but think back to all the hours spent there over the course of the past year and you'll start to realise exactly what this means. It's an achievement that is as intensely personal as anything you will ever experience and all I can say is that it couldn't have happened to people who deserved it more. :-) 

The Empty House - II

Icky feet, aloo paranthas before 10pm, women's golf and men's tennis, Bhutanese curiosities, why international calls don't get charged per second, the gap between not caring and pliability, girls who like boys who like girls and why, the impending denouement of the Buffy era, weight-loss competitions at work, the dog leash, a friend of a friend of a job interviewee, being in the same places and what it means, a night in and out of consciousness lost in the darkness and the sound of the Oxford drizzle to go with the sight of morning light through a door left ajar in the middle distance.  

But somehow, all we could think of was what AJ will do when she's special guest referee at Money in the Bank. 

Yes! Yes! Yes! :-)

Absolute Truths - III

Priyanka, you are the burly, black t-shirted arm at the entrance of the nightclub that is my life.

Mere Yaarzz Ki Shaadi

Chaitanya, Krishna - I'm absolutely delighted for both the two of you and even though your time in India is about to over, your married life is starting, so I think better you prepare for the same.

But seriously, it was great to be there and there was a sense of occasion about Saturday night that I wouldn't have traded for anything in the world. Over the weekend, I also thought back to how and when I got to know you guys and...I don't remember at all. And all said and done, that's what I've always really admired about you - how distances have faded into insignificance, how seemingly naturally everything has come together and how the genuine happiness on your faces on your wedding day somehow didn't seem that far removed from those endless evenings in law school where Chaitanya would call me and say "chal, Harry ke saath hangout karte hain!"

So here's to a wonderful new beginning and much happiness for two of my favourite people in the world. :-)

Chicks, Academics

It's the best thing that you ever had, the best thing that you ever, ever had.

It's the best thing that you ever had, the best thing you had has gone away.

I never thought I'd be in this place at this time. I'm able to look back happily at what was, let those words soak in and feel genuinely thankful that it all played out the way it did. No regrets, no second thoughts, just a willingness take my life forward and be the best me I can be.

Another one of these watersheds will arrive in a day short of one month from today and that hurt a lot more than this ever, ever could. But I survived that too and I look back upon that day as the dark before a pretty incredible dawn. It still bites at me on occasion, it's meant to. But it pushed me into a corner, it made me ask myself some difficult questions and, ultimately, it made me put my heart and soul into one of the toughest challenges of my life.

That I got through that, of course, was due in large part to the best thing that I ever, ever had. And so the whole thing comes a full circle.

The Empty House

About as oddly peaceful as an evening could possibly be, despite the unanswered questions, the speculation and the vague tension.

I have come to accept that this is my reality now and that it's a pretty good place to be in. It is a point that was made as forcefully as it was silently; as much with talk of fear as with talk of courage.

After months and months of over-thinking and giving in to the silliest of whims, I must confess it really does feel, even though that nagging sense of uncertainty over the coming months is inevitable, like I'm slowly and patiently turning the corner.

Crowned by a magnificent backs-to-the-wall performance by Chelsea against Barcelona (and no yelling at the TV!), I have a feeling I'm going to point to last night as the night I finally started to sort out things I haven't had the courage to for far too long.

Thank you for a magnificent evening, KB. 'Start as you mean to go on', indeed. :-)

200th

I don't know if I can ever put into words exactly how amazing my Dad is. I called him this morning to wish him a happy birthday and, at the end of that short phone call, he was wishing me a great day at work.

Sometimes, it isn't about what you achieve in life, it's about who you are despite what you achieve. The phone call this morning made me realise that I still look at him through the eyes of the little boy I once was, truly astonished at how nothing seems impossible for him and how he's so genuinely down-to-earth in the face of everything I've seen him go through over the years.

I assure you that it's pure chance, but I couldn't have picked a more fitting subject for my 200th blog post.

Happy birthday, Papa! I'm in awe of you and I always will be.

The Good Feeling

Today was a day of many ends but all I can think of is how magnificent and memorable the last two weeks have been. It's been a frantic, exciting, tiring, happy ride and I can look back on it with a kind of fulfillment and closure that I've never really experienced before. Some of the best times I've ever had in this city. Seriously. :-) 

Tuesday's Two

Over the course of seventy-five engaging minutes this evening, I discussed enforced bonding, the four questions you should ask yourself about your friends, how travelling long distances for short meetings is often worth it, how the group of people you end up staying in touch with is entirely your doing, NG's 'simple but deep' lyrics, the kinds of plans you should try to avoid on Sunday afternoons, the mysteries of life, the universe and the purpose of meaning and, of course, whether the standard of the hypothetical addressee envisioned by Lord Reid at page 355 of Technograph v. Mills and Rockley [1972] RPC 346 is that of a skilled man or that of a nerd.

Alright, so I made up that last bit. But not by much, I'll have you know.

NR, thank you for letting me be me. :-)

Back amongst the familiar

After two weeks that have been as perfect as can be, there's just one overwhelming feeling I have right now.

I love my Mum. If it weren't for her, there would be no me. I know it takes only so many words to express the sentiment because it's true (and always will be) in a literal sense. But in the last two weeks, I've realised how true it is in every possible sense. And that's a feeling that no amount of words can ever do justice to.  

Never forget

Never forget who your real friends are. If you do, you'll never hear stories emerge out of thin air in conversation, you'll never quite fathom why you make the kind of sacrifices that you do and you'll never experience that familiarity, comfort and solidarity that convinces you and anyone else concerned, that the person at the other end of the line really, really cares about you.

I had one of those conversations a few minutes back and it ended with the words "when will you call me again? I still have a lot to say."

That, quite simply, is what real friendship is about. 

A long time coming

This has been a long time coming. It really has. A while ago, I was told (and duly posted) a typical Eashan Ghosh blog entry and, in many ways, this is one of those. Yet, there are no dates I can remember, no ambiguous language I can ever remember using, no unsaid feelings that I can ever remember harbouring. However, just to comply with the stereotype, I shall call her Quidge, I shall refer to anonymous conversations and I shall tag this under 'Personal Crap' and 'Special People'.

Though I've never told her this, I'd heard a lot of negative stuff about Quidge before I really got talking to her properly. To some extent, a steady trickle of negativity about her continues to filter through to me even today. However, separating the meaningful from the  irrelevant has never been difficult with Quidge. I know that her first reaction to reading this will be to rebuke me for not telling her what others have been saying to me about her. That, in itself, shows an imperfection that's very, very funny to observe, because almost all her decision-making will otherwise be based on what's good for her. :-)

Suffice to say, unlike several other girls who I have very openly and publicly been in awe of, my liking for Quidge was based on her imperfections, her very human reactions, her very obvious motivations and her very predictable thought processes. We've never had a problem understanding each other - our favourite phrase is probably 'you know what I mean, right?'

I remember the first time she was even slightly uncomfortable talking to me was when, for some reason, we discussed if it surprised her that we'd become so close as quickly as we had. We settled that conversation with a sort of indifference that made me uncomfortable. But by the time I went to my room that night, I was certain that the way out was keeping her focused on curiosities, on little things, on our ever-growing movie list, on who said what about whom, on a certain indie rock band from southern California, on pre-school entertainment.

More importantly, the way out involved keeping her insulated from what was happening around her and so, for the first time in my life, without ever intending to, I learnt what it was like to be protective of someone. I also feared then that it would all disappear without the steady flow of attention that was almost inevitable once I left Bangalore. I'm delighted that, in the ten months since I've left, this hasn't happened.

And that's because Quidge and I were always meant to just be there and nothing more. It's something she told me that night when we first talked about it, but I hadn't really believed it then because there was no reason to believe it then. But I've become more convinced - and thankful - for it every day since I left.

Quidge has shown me that silence, honesty, tolerance, flexibility and moulding your behaviour to adjust to other people can be very, very valuable things. I'd never have said that three years ago. Maybe that could be because I've grown a lot in the last three years. But I really doubt that. I think she's been sweeter than I wanted her to be, spent time with me when I sometimes wished she'd go away and foisted millions of her little thought bubbles onto me when, perhaps, I had better things to do. And for that, I'm immensely thankful. Because ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, I'll look back on this relatively brief period of time and mark this out as the first time, after (at least) six  years of constantly being around girls, I was finally turned into a pliable, accepting person.  

Yet, somehow, my lasting feeling about her from my five years in Bangalore will be one of incompleteness. In Quidge's own words, "I wish I had gotten to know you much much before I really did. But I know I wouldn't have treasured you if I had." That I have only one such instance to point to not only indicates that she doesn't get so directly emotional without reason but also that when she does, it tends to be the kind of stuff that you're likely to remember. I wish I could repeat everything she said to me then but, of course, I can't. But I will say that it means the world to me. And the only reason I've written this is so that she knows it does.

Whee!

I take back every complaint I've made over the last six months about 'that stupid moot' taking away from time meant to be spent talking to me. You've most certainly prioritized the right thing and I am immensely, immensely happy that you did - not just for yourself, but for your teammates and for law school in general. Congratulations!