On travel

Curly from work is only in third year – or would have been in third year if he deigned to attend classes in my city’s landmark college on landmark road (– guess which? )

But Curly decides no, he won’t go to study economics and the WTO but join a newspaper and write — which seems all right, and behooves a responsible kid but on the other hand, if one has a lifetime to work, must one start early?

After all it is only once in life that one is twenty, must one spend the year working in front of a broken keyboard on a broken chair in a dingy, poorly ventilated office. He has a lifetime to do that.

But then he says, I went to college for two years, did not attend class ( cos no one does, even the teachers), did what other kids do and wasted time splendidly. I’ve been there done that, tell me what else should I be doing if not working, he asks.

And I rack my brains hard enough. I worked too when in college, after lectures unlike Curly who’s younger to me by whole four years, I’m hardly the person to say, don’t work.

But if my college was like that, with assured attendance and an assured degree and no lectures then I might have traveled. Maybe saved enough money and gone to Europe, and the Central Americas. Maybe gone to the North east or the Valley or sailed in the Sunderbans, instead of hankering after all of that now, when even a month’s leave means having to pay for it.

SO I tell young Curly that is what you should do my boy. Travel. Forget college, you unlearn all of it in less than 2 months after one joins the workforce.

And after this sage advice I removed myself to continue reading about Mugabe’s Zimbawe, where Cholera is raging and poor George Bush, who no one wants to talk to, not even his own party people. And I cannot help feeling that the world would have been less dangerous if these two had traveled in their youth.

 

On living

Dee once said not able to live alone was a sign of a ‘high maintenance’ person. That phrase stuck. We were discussing about high and low maintenance people and emotional neediness, clinginess, needing someone to be around when you return from work, in other words — not able to live alone meant  high maintenance emotionally, according to wicked Dee.

So I want to tell Dee, hey I’ve managed to live alone these last two months. It’s all right, even if it is crazy sometimes. But a room mate might be nice.

Learning to live with one-self is tougher than learning to live with some one else.

With oneself, one is left to deal with a whole lot of mess all alone, and not all of it is emotional. In the past two months, I’ve left the gas burner on twice  the first time for seven hours and I was not even home that time.

I thought I’d burnt down the house. We had gone to watch the closing ceremony of the CYG and each time the cell rang, I thought it was the office calling to report a fire in K.

One night I came home and went straight to the bathroom and a big flying evil cockroach leapt out at me. Many nights, I’d get nightmares about lions and tigers chasing me through the woods. Living alone means battling insects and animals on your own. IT means if some nut case broke down your front door in the middle of the night, you’d have to handle it yourself.

Then you’ve got to keep the house clean. You’ve got to pay all the bills on your own — and keep track of the bank account, and see how the money disappears regularly—the heart really bleeds.

It’s almost easier to sort out the emotional aspect. One becomes tougher, independent, you answer to no one else. You’re drunk on freedom. After a while, talking to the walls is even fun.

Its tough to live alone, but it can be done. But I’m arguing for living with company. It’s a chance at joy. It can be exasperating, but there has to be delirious, glorious joy sometimes. I’d recommend to get a friend to move in as  neighbour, but that might not be economically practical. More practical is to get a room mate. The trouble only is when the room mate ends up being unbearable. One’s own mess can be ignored for a while, but someone else’s mess is intolerable, they say.

The question for me is — is it better to be depressingly angry and exasperated with a roommate or inconsolably depressed and suicidal with oneself?

Mother was talking today about 20 years ago how the family considered IE as a paper that broke the news first but was ’ all a pack of lies’. The hindu, even if it took a long time, wrote the truth. ‘Is IE still like that?’ heh.  

Sit down to chat in the evenings on an off day and you realise that everyody else is working, and v busy. the deadline is on their head. 5 other days I’d be like that. it is the strangeness of the job. This business is fast, it never stops.

Catching a ride with a drunk guy is one crazy thing I would never do, no?

What happens when appointments or stories don’t work out? nothing. we take ourselves too seriously.

 A poster in my office says ” Being ambitious is just an excuse for not knowing how to chill. Relax.”

I love ‘Snow’. I’ve read only 20 pages of it but I love it. Each time I finish a book, it gives me hope. I think:’there I’ve finished that one, that bug has still not claimed me. I can still finish what I undertake to begin.’

I love the Woodhousean world. Who doesn’t? wrings the oesophagus and the waist. A wodehouse a day keeps the depression away.

We live in an irresponsible world.