Some call it the lull before the storm, some call it the inaction before the war, but i call it somethings that are just between new beginnings and old endings. A chapter that began but 24 months ago has slowly crossed over to being the past. The everyday things that heralded another beehive of activity have changed into things that i did when i was at MICA. My geography has changed, my co-ordinates uprooted and scattered across the country. Physical distances seemed to matter only at term breaks, and those were few and far in between. But today i wake up to a new reality, that hop-skip-and-jump was an alter-reality. It seems like in just two years, i have compressed a lifetime. Of friendships, of growing up, of being right and learning from wrong, and of loving and losing and learning to love again.
When i went there i was more a child than a girl. More sure of what I wanted and how. I emerged a lil older, somewhat wiser, and definitely more open to seeing what i needed and coveted. I met not just people who understood and accepted me for my quirks, they had enough of their own to know, but also learned me better. Things black-n-white blurred into a blissful grey and sometimes emerged in bright pinks, blues and copper. I found my own pace, a lil faster than some, a lil slower than the rest. A long 24 months that now seem to have whizzed past at break neck speed.
Rituals and rhythms, conversations over the nth cuppa chai, cheese paranthas with butter on top, french fries wid mayonnaise simply coz it looked like rain, and the marathon walk to Shela lake. Peacocks that broke the silence with shrill mating calls and squirrels that were gunning for certificates at gnawing perfectly at swing ropes. Mad langoor chases, the lone bicycle ride in the dark, shooting stars by the canal, birthdays fit for a queen. DJ Abhijeet with the beautiful people dancing until dawn. Lectures sometimes interspersed with interesting CP and DCP. The people in the last row, authoring their debut piece of work and artists capturing more than the eye spied. Formals shrugged into with the determined look saying, you got me for now SPC, but just wait until they're gone....
I will start work soon. But right now is a something of an in-between. The hyphen before the next word, imperative, but pondered about for its true meaning and worth. It was a good hyphen though. Worked some, played some, did things i always wanted to. But that was part of the plan for the summer. Now is another tiny in-between, a semicolon, a pause to conjure up more images of what the future holds, what i want it to hold and a sackful of hope. Every bit of this journey has been worth it, time to move into the next phase, bohemian or not, you gotta get with it, blend in with the folds, learn to breathe in a different world.
