Flying high

It’s 1.50am on a Saturday night, I’m unwell, but I can’t sleep. Plus I’ve been meaning to blog for a while, so this is as good a time as any.

This time last Saturday, I was in Bir, Himachal Pradesh, slightly stoned and very happy. For the first time in my life, I had a four-day weekend off, and instead of going home, I went on a trip with a friend. In the first week of March, I wrote that I wanted, no needed, to do something crazy, like bungee jumping, and in the last week of March, I did. This has literally never happened with me in the past, considering I am 100% not an adrenaline junkie.

When we were deciding where to go that long weekend, the names Bir-Billing kept coming up, but the only thing to do there is paragliding, which sounded scary and insane and totally not-me. We kept trying to put off booking the bus tickets because of a host of reasons, until it became clear that if we didn’t book them we wouldn’t be able to go. So finally we decided to go to McLeodganj, and wing it for Bir-Billing. Except that McLeodganj was a shitstorm.

I can’t say much because I also went there from Delhi, but literally half of Delhi was there. It was bursting with people, we were staying in a shit hotel, and we had to walk everywhere. Had it not been for Illiterati Café, I would have started crying. We left that town in 20 hours, after I did some underhanded deal to get some hash, which after frantic Googling, my friend and I confirmed was the same thing as charas. I know, didn't instill any confidence in us either.

The drive from McLeodganj to Bir was gorgeous enough to lift our spirits, and when we reached our resort in Bir, it was clear that we’d stepped into Eat Pray Love land. There were just trees and butterflies and dogs and three people serving us average food and dubious looking nimbu-paani. The weather app was telling us that it could rain any time, so when we were asked if we wanted to go paragliding right away, we said yes without thinking too much about it.

Sleep-deprived and a little grumpy, we got into the car that would take us to Billing, the world’s second-highest paragliding site. The road trip was scary intense, and my friend and I held hands the whole time. The only time we felt vaguely okay was when Main Hoon Hero Tera came on the music player of the car, and she said, ‘Bhai hamare saath hain’. We giggled and prayed and second guessed the entire thing, and somehow reached Billing, which was breathtaking. The snow-capped mountains were just a stone’s throw away, and while I was busy clicking pictures, my friend was losing her shit.

She didn’t want to do it, she didn’t want to die, and she was shaking a little bit. I was surprisingly game for the whole thing, or maybe I wasn’t trying to freak her out more. I’m not sure, because before I knew it, she had run off a cliff and was in the air. Within two minutes, a big backpack was being strapped on to me and I was also being told to run off a cliff with my pilot. Um, no freaking way, I thought, as I ran. The next thing I know, I’m flying. I’m in the air, in the sky, and everything is tiny as fuck.

It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life, and almost indescribable. My mind went blank and I was just happy. You can see it in my dorky photos and video. When I finally landed, and hurt my ankles, I ran to my still shaken-up friend, who definitely didn’t enjoy it as much as I did. We had some incredible nimbu-paani with trembling hands in the middle of that field, and went back to our resort for a nap.

We woke up four hours later, finally rested and very hungry. We asked for some momos and wai-wai, which were turning out to be our best options for food in the trip. My friend rolled joints, taught me how to, and opened a bottle of wine. Over lots of emotional songs and unnecessary cigarettes, we talked endlessly until the resort dudes brought us dinner. We went to bed with headaches. I woke up in the middle of the night to call my best friend back home, and ask her if I should call my ex (ex? I don’t know what to call him), and ask him if the rumours were true and he was getting married. I don’t remember how she talked me out of it.

For the next couple of days, we literally left that resort only to go to the ATM and a monastery. We stayed in our little cottage, stoned and full of stories, happy, hungry and restless about what we were doing with our lives. When we came back to Delhi, we’d checked off some things off our bucket list, and tried to pretend like that was enough.

***

Two years ago in April, I was asking my boss to be transferred to Jaipur in my old job, and acting like my life was getting over. In my defense, it really did feel that way. Two years later, it’s a different job, but it’s the same city, and when you live in the same city as your past, you sometimes run into it.

I don’t want to write about what happened on Thursday in detail here, because it was equal parts awkward and heart-breaking. For almost 10 minutes, I was pretty certain I was going to start howling in public. I didn’t. The feeling passed, I survived, and I was unexpectedly okay the next morning. What I didn’t know was that I were to have some kind of a blast from the past weekend.

The boy, my ex, whatever, I don’t even know what to call him, he got back in touch, and we seem to be falling back into our exhausting routine while avoiding the question of what the fuck we're really doing.

I don’t know man. I don’t have time for this right now. If everything goes according to plan, my work is about to be tripled in office, and it’s so hot my brain refuses to work half the time.

But hey, at least now I know how to fly.

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.