Delhi 2.0

I don’t think my brain has reset its settings to Delhi yet, because I feel like I’m doing everything in a bit of a daze. But that’s probably because I’m still living with relatives, and a friend almost always accompanies me to work in the morning. My parents are going to be here in six days for a couple of days, so homesickness hasn’t kicked in either.

The new workplace is interesting. The setup is very different from my old job, and that will take some serious getting used to, but the people seem nice and it seems like if I can learn how to write well while being pelted with entertaining but often unnecessary information from all sides, I’ll do well here. I’m still mostly quiet at work, because I haven't figured out who I'm supposed to be here. I haven’t been the new girl anywhere in ages, and I was so used to being the baby, the mean girl, the fantastic untouchable over-achieving genius at my old workplace that I don’t know how to be okay with being the person who doesn’t know anything. But of course I don’t know anything and I don’t have much time to learn the ropes, so gotta pull up my socks.

And then, of course, if I can just get my writing mojo back, everything will be fine. But there’s no way of knowing how soon, if at all, that will happen.

I watched Tamasha last night and it was okay. It was beautifully shot and I wanted to go to Corsica, but I don’t understand or agree with all these raving reviews about how it’s such a realistic portrayal of a modern-day love story. Maybe I don’t know what love looks like anymore?

I need to see my friends. Soon. Maybe then I’ll feel like I’m back.

The Sabbatical ends

Between overwhelming farewells and overflowing to-do lists, I forgot that I was leaving. Moving out. Leaving the nest. Again. Unless something goes horribly off-track, I doubt I’m coming back to live here. I’ll come and stay during vacations, but I don’t think I’ll get the chance to live with my parents again. And despite the fact that so much has happened in the last 18 months, the fact remains that right now, seven hours away from taking the train that will take me back to the city I was missing like a phantom limb, I don’t want to go. Suddenly, I don’t know why I ever wanted to live alone. How the hell will I manage everything? My mother’s been teaching me how to cook, and so much can go wrong that I’m worried I might burn my new place down.

But my bags are packed, and my new workplace awaits. From Home 2.0 it’s going to be Delhi 2.0, which I was worried was never going to happen. It’s happening. It’s here. Will this truce continue?

This time next week I would be nearing the end of my first day at the new workplace. Considering I haven’t even started packing, that seems inconceivable right now.

In the 48 hours of the last weekend, I went to Delhi, apartment hunted, came back to Jaipur, said goodbye to my brother twice, attended my parents’ anniversary lunch, danced at a school friend’s sangeet and saw my best friend smile after three years at her roka. The last two events made me very nostalgic, and my mother very grumpy because everyone seems to be getting married except for her daughter. It is kind of true, though. People on Facebook are joking about how I’m the official maid of honour this wedding season. They’re watching too many American movies.

If I’d had this kind of happening social life in the last 18 months, I probably wouldn’t have cribbed so much. But nothing ever works out according to a mere mortal’s plan, so we’ll let that be. While apartment hunting in Delhi, I got so depressed looking at all the 1BHK apartments. My new house seems nice, but of course it’s not Jaipur, it’s not my home town, with the negligible traffic and big houses and a mother taking care of everything. I’m very worried about this whole living-alone-for-the-second-time business, to be honest. On the plus side, my new society has many cute dogs and at least one very cute dog owner.

I’ve started to see friends and have farewell meals with them. Yesterday, while having lunch with a friend made from the old blog, I ran into an ex. I will not miss this in Delhi – running into questionable high school love interests. 

I have five days left in Jaipur. I gotta learn how to stop time.

So it turns out that leaving everything for the last minute has its drawbacks. If my father is to be believed, and he says this is only tentative, I move on the 21st. That gives me less than 10 days to do everything. And because I’m going to be house hunting in Delhi this weekend, that leaves me with even fewer days to do things and meet people in Jaipur. You have literally two friends in Jaipur, says my mother, so what's the fuss. That’s technically true, but I have other things to do. I can’t explain what, but I can’t just say goodbye like this.

It’s also the last day my brother and I will spend together for the foreseeable future. Because we have extended family staying here at the moment, I can’t seem to have a minute alone with him and that’s pissing me off. The to-do lists are only getting lengthier and I’m very clearly running out of time. And because elders know best, and maybe they do but please at least pretend to listen to me, nobody is paying any attention when I say what I want in an apartment or how I want to do things during this move. 

It's probably not helping that I blew my diet today with all the laal maans and keema baati and tiramisu that was consumed during lunch with a friend and now can't shake off the guilt. Plus I'm a little concerned about my relationship status right now and that kind of early 20s drama is not something a 25-year-old should be dealing with.

I’m listening to Isharon Isharon Mein on loop and getting teary-eyed. This hasn’t happened to me in months, so I don’t know what to do with myself right now.

Diwali

I’ve been making many lists in the last few days, most of them related to moving. Lists soothe me, so I make them. It doesn’t mean that I actively worry about ticking things off them. So far, the only list I’ve managed to tick things off of is the one involving places in Jaipur I want to eat at before leaving. And for every crossed out café or restaurant, I add three more.

Tomorrow I might do lunch with a friend and her new husband, and then day after tomorrow I start house hunting will all the focus I can manage at this curious time.

Happy Diwali, you guys! May you stay happy, healthy and hilarious.

Because it's always been Delhi

The house is always crazy loud this time of the year, because our relatives come home for Diwali with their sons, who’re my brother’s age, and the three of them can’t be calm or quiet. This year, I’m extra sentimental. Because I’m leaving. It happened. The thing I’d been praying for for 18 months finally happened and I couldn’t take the time to write about it here.

Last month, two days before leaving for a trip to the hills with a friend, I applied for a job. It was a Delhi job, but for some reason I repressed that information and didn’t dwell on it. I applied because I’d been ignoring vacancies and saying that I was having too much fun in my sabbatical to end it so soon. I applied because I wanted to know my value in the job market. I applied without first understanding if I wanted it. All I knew was that I was wanted them to want me. So two days before I left, I applied, told barely three people about it, interviewed on the phone, and pulled an all-nighter to take their copy test. I sent it the morning I left for Delhi to take a bus to Manali and then forgot about it.

Until six hours later, when, unexpectedly, while I was still in Delhi, I got the call. They liked my writing. They wanted me to start ASAP. They wanted to negotiate salary and talk contracts. I couldn’t breathe. What was happening? Was I going back to Delhi? Was I going to take the job? It was then that I realized that there was never any other option. I’d always wanted this - not the job as much as the city. By chanting Delhi like a mantra and refusing to let go over the last year-and-a-half, I’d somehow made it happen.

That day, still in Delhi, I talked to my parents about returning. About moving out again. There were so many things to consider. My health, my doctors, my diet, my life. To give them credit, my parents were surprisingly chill about it. They never said no, not for a minute. They were just discussing logistics. How much money? When do I join? By the time I took that bus for Manali, seven hours after the call, I’d negotiated the salary and told them I needed 24 hours to get back to them with a joining date. The next day in beautiful but boring Kasol, with everyone high around us all the time, I made the call. Yes, I’d love to work with them. Yes, I want the job. Yes, I’ll join in the last week of November. I hung up and came back to the table where my friend was drinking beer, and we hugged for one whole minute. That night, she made me try red wine. To celebrate, she said, because you’re fucking coming back. Was that what was happening? I wasn’t leaving home, I was just coming back.

The next night in cold Manali, stoned and stupid with laughter, I called up my (kinda) boyfriend. I was worried about his reaction for many reasons, but he was only happy I was coming back. I messaged a couple of friends that I was moving back, I told them about the job. I got excited phone calls in return, where I tried very hard to conceal the fact that I was high for the first time in my life.

I was happy, my friend was happy, but I banned us from talking about the job until I got the contract in my email four days later. She focussed on my boyfriend instead. What was happening? What were we doing? Will we get our heads out of our asses now that we weren’t going to be long distance anymore? We discussed everything endlessly, and came up with theories that were bizarre but fun. We kept trying to look for reasons to talk to the two Dutch men who were staying across the hall from us. When they asked us about the hot springs, we were giggling so hard we couldn’t answer properly.

We took long walks and sat by the river and ate trout and prawns in every café that we went to. We kept trying to click pictures of each other that would be worthy of putting up on Facebook. We talked about her legit boyfriend and our jobs and bosses and friends and everything. We hadn’t spent this much time with each other since we lived together in Delhi and I was so relieved that we didn’t get on each other’s nerves despite spending a whole week together.

I returned from Manali just in time to participate in my zumba group’s flash mob and go clubbing with them on Halloween as Supergirl, my last-ditch effort at a costume. That night, as we posed for pictures and danced till 2am (I’m surprised my parents didn’t kick me out when I came home), I realized that I had a class eighth type crush on one of the boys in my class. I don’t even care if nothing happens, I just get crazy happy every time he so much as looks at me. I started hanging out with this group often and then told them that I was leaving.

I also started the process of telling all my friends, who are all very happy with the development but also very surprised that the sabbatical is ending unexpectedly soon. I also had a few difficult conversations about this job with a couple of people, who can keep their opinions to themselves.

Now, I’m supposed to be packing and house hunting, because I move in less than two weeks, but I can’t seem to get anything done. I have moved quite a bit in the last few years. First from Jaipur to Delhi, then thrice within Delhi and then finally back to Jaipur. Now, after 18 months of talking about going back without ever actually believing that I would, I’m moving back to Delhi, to the reality of living alone which is far from the fantasy I’ve been reliving in my mind for so long.

Everyone’s asking me how I’m feeling. I’m very happy but I’m also very scared. What if, along with losing my freedom when I came back to Jaipur, I also lost the ability to live alone? I might be on a truce with myself, but I'm still superstitious.