The day dawned bright and sunny…and a little foggy. Winter is coming!! “Early morning, cup of tea and the prospect of an entire free day. To do and be as one pleases.” Was what I was thinking as I gazed out of the kitchen window. ‘Well, actually the prospect of 3 free weeks’ said my happy little inner voice. And then a decidedly darker voice followed, ‘Well, truth be told, you are looking at the prospect of several free days, months rather. Maybe an entire year’. And that was about the time when my little bubble of “what a lovely day to be alive” burst tragically! Ohh dear!! Free months…Months where in the answer to the question, ‘So, what do you do?’ will be an awkward ‘nothing!!’.
Ohh God! the tea quickly lost its piping hot charm, the happily chirping birds suddenly seemed to be crying out in melancholy and I began to sink just as fast into something akin to depression. And it was only 8 30 am. I had an entire day to mull this unhappy thought over. “Wrong my dear! You have an entire month ans perhaps more to mull it over…hahahahha!!!(loud cackle). This was no doubt my evil inner voice. Its quite an incorrect notion that you have jut one inner voice. I say, you might have hundreds. All the tiny little versions of you running around causing havoc, while you yourself just have to be content standing idly by, trying to find the voice of reason.
Trying my best to shrug it all off, I decided to allow myself the luxury of being ignorant about my future. It is Diwali after all…fuck everything else…lets focus on getting ready and going out with family!! “Yes, yes. Look alive and pretty and lets takes selfies!!” That was probably the inner voice of ‘lift your spirits’. “Yeah, take lots of selfies an post them and then try to assign worth to your unemployed ass based on the likes you get…(evil cackle)”..STFU evil inner voice!!!
Finally, ignoring all the inner voices before I started suspecting myself of being a Schizophrenic, I got myself out of the door and into a rickshaw with mummy and Mothi Bahin. And then, like a shining beacon of light in an otherwise dark place…I heard it….the voice of reason!! But an external voice of reason…from an unexpected source…specifically a rickshawalla who was probably having a drunken brawl…I didn’t care to check. What i heard, though, was a very simple line…said with great confidence…by the aforementioned Rickshwallah…”AEEE, Ek hi haiii”. Simple, but effective. He was right!! “Ek hi hai”. I dont know what “ek hi hai” was from his point of view. But, Satyavachan…”Ek hi hai”.
There’s only one me…and only one lifetime…Whats wrong if I am relaxing and enjoying the unexpected break…Toh Break pan tr ekach ahe na…Is it the worst of crimes if one is happily unemployed?? Just for a little bit. Does everyone not deserve a break….? The thing is that we are so focused on how other people will see us that we forget to understand how we see ourselves. It depends on what you see as ” failure” for yourself. And the trick is to free one self from the shackles of fearing “log kya sochenge”. Though very very cliched, I have been letting this notion control most of my life, albeit subconsiously. We are not supposed to be thinking this way are we…yeh who is educated and free thinking an capable of intelligent conversations!! Well. its high time to fuck what one is supposed to be doing and supposed to be thinking….”Ek hi haii”…and I certainly don’t wanna waste it worrying and crying and drowning in a sea of self pity!!
And that is a very important thing “being free to do and be as one pleases”(I know its a pitiful euphemism for darker stuff :P). You are free to do and be as you please….If only for a little while…You get to be in a blissful happy place where you can follow any passion you like…Cause these are the days you just might miss when you find a great job you love….or move on to the next level in your Quest for…umm whatever your Quest happens to be. So this, dear readers, is my message to whomever happens to be stuck in limbo like me…or whomever happens to be figuring out the next step..””Ek Hi Haiiii””…
Go live it up!!!
The Merry Dilettante 