If wishes were..

'Tis the season to be giving thanks. All my feeds are flooded with the Oscar speeches you wish you'd never heard- people thanking their taps for giving them water and the Tiger for not eating all the Cheetos, and much else. Of course this set me off on my own personal vote of thanks (which no, I shall not suffer anyone reading this to endure).

The list is long, and complicated, and I'm not entirely sure yet whether I am thankful for it all. No, I am not mature enough to see everything in the world as a blessing. Some things just suck, and should never have happened. (That's a pretty easy list to make, perhaps for next year though). But in the middle of it, what struck me was that I was most UN-grateful for my times of inaction.

When I had an opportunity and didn't give it my all. For fear of not having prepared enough(No, I can't pitch an editor with that!). For fear of looking like a fool (No, I will not dance). For fear of failing (What if I suck at it?). For just no reason (Never mind, I'll get to it later). Those are the times I wish I hadn't.

There is only one way to find out if you've prepared enough, if you suck at something or really have it in you to be good at it. Just doing it. And sometimes, when you take that leap of faith and pitch that big-time editor with your completely half-baked story idea, it is followed by absolute panic. But you do it anyway, because you asked for it, didn't you? You work through the half-baked pitch, the 10,000 word transcript and the even less-baked last minute draft. And then, once in a while, you hear something like this:

"We are editing your wonderful (article). Fabulous stuff!"

And it makes you wish, even more, for another chance at all those times that you didn't try.

Reprieve

I used to memorize poems when I was little. Before I knew what the words meant. John Donne and Tennyson and Browning and Keats and Santayana and Gibran. They just sounded good, even though I still don't understand some of them. Here's one, to remind me (and you, if you read the last post), that for every fearsome, loathsome, horrifying, meaningless word, there are so many perfect others.

Simple words, placed and timed effectively, that continue to dance in perfect rhythm long after their writers are gone. Like these: (The brook, by Tennyson)


I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
by many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
with here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silver water-break
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

Jargonese

I am so tired of big, clunky words.
Some of them are horrid. Pharmacogenomic.
Others are meaningless. Actionable.
And the rest are scary.
Periventricular leukomalacia.
Pulmonary hypertension.

Words bigger than the babies that try to fight these diseases. Words so big they stretch across the country from my friends' lives to strike fear in mine. Words so strong they can make me totter in my confidence at being a writer.

The words we have to fight these things, they are so small.
Hope. Love. Prayer. Faith.
And yet we hold them so, like these butterfly winged little things could flap out all the storms, and keep these babies, these dreams alive.

Anonymous

Words sometimes arrive with long kite-tails of attachment. A second story trails behind the story they frame. The body speaks of experience and reality, while the spirit that trails behind whispers of more.

Here is my story, the spirit-story reminds you. It is a story that will carry you to the farthest shores of tears and inspiration, laughter and love. On winds of kindness and experience, some words fly in like kites from distant lands. Bright and travel-worn, as rich in their living as in the intricacy of their crafting.

Some stories live so truly I wonder how they can bear to remain untold. If they were mine, would I hide them from the world? But they are not mine, and sometimes, perhaps, stories like tired kites only look for a place to lie beyond the reach of the wind.
So I hold these stories close, as precious as the people who share them with me.

Blog-speak

I ran away from home when I turned five. I wanted to find my own way. In a perhaps unique tantrum for a child so young, I was angry with the world, convinced I knew more than the grown ups, that I had it right and they knew nothing (Don't most of us do this at 13 or something?)

At five, I wandered off into the world to pretend to be a grown up who actually knew it all (unlike all the others who had NO clue!). I used big words and wore nice clothes every day. I 'did lunch' with other people who wore nice clothes and talked about value propositions and "incentivizing" projects. I bought a fancy car and dreamed of grand vacations.

You'd never have believed I was only five, honestly. I felt like a 30 year old professional, in my coordinated outfits and pretty red car zipping around like a California girl in the movies.

But even 30 year olds slip into sleep dreams every night- dreams in which they are five, and wandering far from home, and trip in high heels. Dreams filled with simple words, like "writer" and "hope" and "want" and "love", where big words only mess up the patterns. Dream-spaces where there are no slots big enough or complicated enough to fit grown-up things like budgets and therapy and value propositions.

These ideas are far too big for a five year old to handle, even when it's pretending to be 30. So if you're still reading, forgive this blog, while it tries to find its way back. You see, it only turned five last month, and it is still figuring a lot of things out.

My days of late have filled themselves without my noticing it really. For someone (like me) capable of over-reacting hugely to the tiniest annoyance, I would have expected to notice this. The days overflow with tasks at work, chores at home and desperate attempts to organize. Suddenly, I have no time to garden. No time to harvest tomatoes and basil, or watch the chrysanthemums put out new shoots. I have no time to think or feel my way to words in this space.

And yet it is not this lack of time that bothers me, but the abundance of doubt that fills it. Too many conflicting ideas, of what priorities at work should be, of who I am and what I'm doing with my time. Attempting to sort through the tangled skeins only makes me trip over the one thread that holds taut and strong through the mess.

I am drawn back to one of my favorite quotes. To paraphrase, who is the worse off: he who has never seen the light, or he who saw it and went blind, and now only has the memory of light?

Yes, that is an over-dramatic representation of the situation. I wish I had the time, and the confidence, to lay out my tangled web better than this. Perhaps this post is a first step to figuring it out.

Being bold

A task I set for myself looms closer and closer, and I am terrified to do it. It's a simple enough thing: an interview. I've interviewed enough sources to be familiar with the process and know what makes for good material. I'm not quite yet at a point where I can be casually confident enough to pick up the phone to interview someone without stalking them and their work in every way possible.

This limbo paralyzes me with fear. What if she thinks I'm the most idiotic person she ever spoke to? What if she loses her temper and hangs up half-way through? God, what if she asks me if I know the first thing about narrative before she hangs up?

The questions refuse to stop. On the one hand, I want to kick myself for signing up for this. On the other, I refuse to criticize one of the few apparently sensible pitches I made. And so, I am terrified of talking to a writer as another writer.

I think there are two kinds of people who 'get the job done'. There are those who know too little to be afraid, and are enthusiastic enough, determined enough, to just do it, ignorant of what they know not. And there are the battle-weary folk, who've been there, done that enough times to know that eventually it will all fall into place. I stand somewhere in between: too aware and too inexperienced to be fearless. A little knowledge is certainly a dangerous thing, especially when you are the one holding it.

One by one, the stars fade.

Two monks were charged with chronicling the nine million names of God. No one knew what would happen when they completed the task. At the end of their mission, there was no more being to the world: No ideas to conquer, no understanding left beyond the nine million names. And as they watched, the stars began to vanish from the night sky.

I watch the stars fade and dim in these patterns, and think perhaps we have chronicled all there was to this little corner of the universe. I have counted the 9 million names of God to make this work, and now all there is this waiting, this watching the stars dim, this wondering of what universe I must learn to live through next.

What it means

Thank you for sharing your responses, everyone! If you haven't yet taken the test and don't want to read the responses, stop reading NOW :). (The quiz is here)

Read on and drop a line letting me know how accurate the quiz was for you!

In order of the questions, with further explanations/ interpretation in brackets:

The person you're walking with is the most important person in your life at this point.

The size of the animal that jumps out at you represents the way you perceive problems/ challenges in life (the most typical answer is tiger/lion, so scale accordingly if you picked a much smaller animal, like a rabbit, or a much larger one, like an elephant)

The way you deal with the animal represents how you handle problems/challenges in real life. Do you attack it, play with it, stare it down?

The fence around the house represents whether you distance people. If you had a fence, you tend to keep them at a distance.

The size of the house represents your ambitions (Rather obviously :)).

The dining room is supposed to be a symbol of personal satisfaction: If you mentioned food/ flowers/fruit etc. in your description, you're generally a happy, satisfied person.

The material the cup in the backyard is made of symbolizes the strength of your relationship (with the person you're walking with). Typically, the cup is made of china/ porcelain. Stronger materials- wood, metal- imply stronger relationships.

What you do with the cup represents the way you handle this relationship in your life. For example- if you choose to keep it outside your door rather than bring it indoors, it might imply that you don't let this person into your 'inner life'.

Walking on out, the size of the water body is scaled to your 'basal' desires- material, sexual, financial, etc. Here, I think the scale is more in terms of one's own perceptions- did you visualize a small pond or a view of the ocean?

How wet you get (or how close to the water you are) when you cross it shows how far you will go to achieve your desires.

Imagine this.

A pop personality quiz a friend shared with me several years ago. I was surprised by how accurate it was (and still is). Relax, and visualize the scenarios that follow as fully as possible. Don't put too much thought into it- just your instinctive, first response answers. I'll post the explanations in a few days. Of course, feel free to share your responses in the comments, though you don't have to :)


You're setting off for a walk in the woods. Who are you walking with?

As you walk, an animal leaps out of the bushes at you. What animal is it?

How do you react to it?

You continue along your walk and come to a clearing in the woods, where you see your dream house. Does it have a fence around it?

On a scale of 1-10 (5 being average), going from small to large, how big is your house?

You walk into the dining room of the house. Describe the room.

You wander out into the backyard, and find a cup-like vessel lying there. What is it made of?

What do you do with the cup?

Continuing on, you reach the end of your property, where there is a water body. What kind of water body is it (pond/stream/ocean) ?

If you had to, how would you cross this water body?

Of shadow cities

I write frequently of trees, and grass and flowers and oceans. But my roots are in cities, and it is cities that complete my mental landscapes like no other geography can.

Excerpts from books about two of my favorites, New York and Bombay follow. The books also happen to be some of the best writing I’ve read recently, and Shadow Cities, in particular, is a masterpiece on so many levels.

(The books: Shadow Cities, by Andre Aciman, and Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts)

From Shadow Cities:

Some people bring exile with them the way they bring it upon themselves wherever they go. (..) An exile reads change the way he reads time, memory, self, love, fear, beauty: in the key of loss.

It is difficult to explain what seclusion means when you find it on an island in the middle of Broadway, amid the roar of midday traffic.

Perhaps what lay beyond the trees was not the end of Manhattan, or even Paris, but the beginnings of another, unknown city, the real city, the one that always beckons, the one we invent each time and may never see and fear we’ve begun to forget.

Sometimes finding you are lost where you were lost last year can be oddly reassuring, almost familiar. You may never find yourself; but you do remember looking for yourself. That too can be reassuring, comforting.

Here I would come to remember not so much the beauty of the past as the beauty of remembering, realizing that just because we love to look back doesn’t mean we love the things we look back on.

(..) all these people and all these layers upon layers of histories, warmed-over memories, and overdrawn fantasies should forever go into letting my Straus Park, with its Parisian Frankfurts and Roman Londons, remain forever a tiny, artificial speck on the map of the world that is my center of gravity, from which radiates every road I’ve traveled, and to which I always long to return when I am away.

And a few from Shantaram:

They knew the place in me where the river stopped, and they marked it with a new name. Shantaram Kishan Kharre. I don't know if they found that name in the heart of the man they believed me to be, or if they planted it there, like a wishing tree, to bloom and grow.

I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.

Every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness.

One of the ironies of courage and why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for somone else than we do for ourselves alone

The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.

If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.

Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way around.

It's a fact of life on the run that you often love more people than you trust. For people in the safe world, of course, exactly the opposite is true.

What characterizes the human race more, cruelty, or the capacity to feel shame for it?

Sometimes you break your heart in the right way.

Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it.

Tipping points

A familiar point of amusement for me is the three phases my relationships go through. Most of my friends are people I like instantly and deeply, within a few minutes of meeting them. I go through an initial stage of near-infatuation, where we have long conversations that linger in my mind and the person can do no wrong. On several occasions, I have fought with family and others to defend my friends and their actions. Following this, there's a phase where I find the person incredibly predictable and equally annoying- when I experience something (something I read, or a movie, or whatever else) I know EXACTLY how they will respond. And everything they do irks me.

Beyond this, there is an 'acceptance zone' where people fall in at various levels, a zone where I continue to love them but stop being irritated. I can accept their actions and behaviors as part of who they are and no longer feel the need to judge them by my standards. I like to think these zones are not obvious to my friends unless I mention them- the irritation is as unintended and inexplicable to me as the affection, and though the former passes, the latter persists through the course of these moods of mine. If I wanted to make this sound grander than I think it is, I would probably describe this equilibrium I reach as the point where my heart and brain come together in a relationship- I love, and I judge, and finally reach a phase where I can justify each to the other. (Why do I love this person and spend so much time/conversation/etc. on them? Why do I judge this person unless I care about them?)

The length of the first two phases varies- I remain infatuated with some people longer, make my peace with some sooner than others. But in every case through most of my life, I can mark off the three periods distinctly. I wonder if this is typical? (since of course, this isn't something I discuss with most friends, nor intend to!)

And in a parallel mood, I wonder if my sense of my surroundings is reaching this phase of acceptance as well. First, I couldn't get enough of being an independent adult. Then, I longed for the simplicity and security of childhood, as I (metaphorically!!) held up every cleaning rag and electricity bill and vacation plan to the light of childhood happiness asking, "Really, is this all there is to growing up?" Now, after constantly reacting to nearly everything I encounter, my body and mind are learning to fall into an equilibrium where I can move through my days with ease, and less need to evaluate each move and decision.

Two reviews

A self-absorbed prologue (skip down if you only want reviews ;)):

I rarely write reviews, here or elsewhere. It takes more immediate thought and depth of perception than I am willing to spare for most of what I come across. I like talking about books and movies, but that is about all. Beyond that, I cannot summarize what I read nor answer the question “What are you reading lately?” with a simple title or two. It is easier to say what I am remembering, what words from books or movies or songs I stumbled over previously are most resonant with my present. Two recent encounters led me to write this down, though, and so, here goes:

Not quite magic

Perhaps obviously, the last Harry Potter movie. Perhaps equally obviously, I didn’t like it very much. None of the movies lived up to my connections with the books, though I could never quite put my finger on why as precisely as I could with this last film.

As the better part of two hours flew past on the wings of albino dragons and suits of armor coming alive, the finale was met only with an insipid, not quite heartfelt, “Does it hurt to die?” In my imagination, this is the point where the 17 year old turns to childhood once more and resurrected ghosts offer more solidity than the giant trees that surround him, where the man who has done more than most ever dream of is faced with the last great fear common to Muggle and Wizard alike. On the screen, I see a marginally annoying teenager displaying neither emotion nor much else.

I didn’t quite "grow up" with Harry Potter, reading the first book when I was 15 and the rest along the way. But like my connection with books I particularly love, I remember each encounter like a meeting with a loved set of friends, and could blabber endlessly about personal connections with each one, how I stumbled across the books before most people had even heard of them(Imagine a time when you could walk into a bookstore and ask for the third HP book and be met with “Huh?”)and much more.

Most importantly, like so many other kids/adults fumbling through life, I’ve practiced the spells with Harry and Hermione and the rest. I’ve cast personal Patronus spells at anxious interviews and Riddikulus-ed away nightmares in the dark. I have learned that to use an unforgivable curse, you must mean it, that to transform a mouse into a teacup you must be able to visualize it first.

The books, you see, were never about the magic alone. They were as much about allegory and myth and growing up and finding strength as they were about learning to cast a powerful spell. The real magic was the people in the stories, not the things they did. And the movie, though well-made for a film, fails to capture that. The movie is about the fireworks and the effects, not the maturing of character and subtleties that captured my heart the first time around. It’s like licking the icing off a cake. Though I won’t say no to the icing, I prefer savoring the layers.

Magically real

And secondly, am I the last person to be reading Shantaram? I tend to avoid over-hyped books, especially when they are ‘sold’ to me by eager wannabe intellectualists over late-night bar conversations. And biased as I am in my views, I tend to be wary of books about India. But this- it is rich and layered and magical and familiar, Bombay in my eyes as I read his words. Street-smells rise off the pages and I almost feel the rickety bus and the weight of my bags as I hold them tight. Colaba streets and night-time by the Arabian sea and the ease with which the words flow. The humor reminds me of the cleverness I love about Salman Rushdie, every few lines I come across a turn of phrase or a sentence that makes me want to grab the words out and wave them on a banner that shouts, “Look at this!” and the love that seeps through the words keeps me turning the pages. Even only a few chapters in, I am hooked. And even if the rest of the book disappoints, this I would come back to.

An explanation

Saying a well thought-out "no" is perhaps one of the most empowering acts possible. It takes introspection and deep thought and much courage. Despite my tendency to optimism, I believe the capacity to refuse something is just as essential and important as the ability to say yes. This implies, of course, a certain degree of self-realization and maturity in the person involved. The refusal I refer to is not the childish tantrum of a toddler refusing his green peas, nor the denial of the eternal pessimist who believes nothing is possible.

No is the stand of a person who has seen two paths and made a choice. It is not an thoughtless process- "here I am, let me pick one and see where it goes. Why think about this?", nor is it the un-choice of the person who drifts with the tide, "Yeah, let me just see where life takes me, maybe it will work out." No is the choice of the teenager to stand up to peer pressure. It is the refusal of a person to take on more work to keep everyone around happy. It is the stand of the woman who is not afraid to take time for herself away from her family. It is the choice of the person who refuses to bend to circumstance just because it exists.

Just as important as voicing the refusal is enabling another to voice it. Perhaps the parent who has raised a child capable of saying no is a better person to explain this. In my mind, raising someone to a level of self-awareness where they have both the knowledge and strength to refuse something is an act of power. This is not always welcome, of course, since any extreme growth comes with pain. And even if the refusal is directed at the parent/ teacher, there must be, somewhere, some measure of pride that they have raised a human being who knows their mind and is unafraid to use it.

And yet a refusal rarely makes sense to the person on the receiving end. "Why must I go through this pain and this struggle?" asks the hurt voice. If there is a purpose, perhaps it is this. This was never about you. You were meant to teach someone else something about themselves, give them a degree of knowledge and strength they did not have before they met you.

Logical progression?

:Tell me the way to the big city.
:Do you want to go there?
:I don't know. Give me the directions and then I will decide.

If the journey is all that matters, why set a destination? Enjoy the sights along whatever path you are on.

If you want to reach the big city, find a way to get there regardless of what the directions say.

Unsure of both desire to reach a destination and the means to reach it, one can rarely get anywhere.

Among others, I am

I went to a party yesterday. One where I didn’t know a soul and my RSVP, sent thrice, had not been acknowledged. I walked into a tiny room filled with people and wine and beer and food, conversations and laughter and those big, intimidating circles of people who all know each other. I spoke to people I had never seen before, and eventually even the person who had ignored the RSVPs wandered over and introduced himself. About 30 people spent over two hours together, and at the end of it I was among the last 8 hanging around and chatting as we made plans to continue the conversation at a nearby bar. Bottom line: I enjoyed it, and met some good people.

If you had told me a year ago that I would be this person, I would have laughed in your face and bet my first-born child upon proving you wrong. If you were to tell anyone that knows me, they would probably do the same. I am the person who skipped out on a party I helped organize because I couldn’t talk to the classmates I had spent two years in a dorm with. I’ve skipped out on countless reunions and lab lunches, work outings and dinners with friends, only because I was “too shy”. And yet, I would do yesterday evening over without a second thought. Have I, “as a person”, changed so much?

I try not to dwell too much on the self. In terms of a personality, I don’t care for discussions or analysis of who I am. My tastes, the things I like or the ways I behave are not significantly enough a part of who I am to be held on to like symbols of identity.

Am I shy or talkative? Am I the kind of person that hangs out in bars? Am I sufficiently devout and respectful of tradition? Am I a fashionista or a geek, a chick or a scientist? I try to avoid clichés not because they exist, but because I don’t think they serve much purpose. The “person that hangs out in bars” is not always an alcoholic, and the “shy” person is often far more egoistic and full of themselves than the girl that chatters to every stranger. I don’t like being labeled, and refuse to label people based on such traits.

A personality is a set of survival tools for society, and I view it as such. At a more innate level, I am a person with ambitions and desires, a specific set of goals that bring me different kinds of satisfaction: physical, emotional and intellectual (I will not discuss the spiritual here). My “personality” is what helps me get to those satisfactions.

Cocoon

Inside these padded walls, I can bounce my ideas around. The walls lob them gently back to me, creating a resonance of harmonious theory. Nothing crashes, nothing breaks inside the silk cocoon. Any dissonance is quickly blended in until it is unrecognizable. Occasionally, an especially sharp notion may poke through, exposing the padding and threatening to break my shell. Poke the stuffing back in quickly, frayed threads and knots and all. Sew up the hole, and all that remains of the uncomfortable idea is a scar where the walls were stitched up.

Each of us creates our own padded spaces, surrounded by people and ideas we are comfortable with. Within this space, we like to think of ourselves as diverse, open-minded folk. Yet the best measure of being diverse is when one's ideas are threatened.

If everyone you speak to agrees with you and slips seamlessly into your cocoon, you never even see diversity. If you aren't being challenged, you have no idea of where to expand, where your padded walls need to be mended. The measure of your growth is how your cocoon handles challenges that don't fit into it already.

About me

Considering how much time I spend writing about myself here, it seems unfair that I should be annoyed by other people's bios. I hate having to write "About me" sections, bios or anything else that requires a snappy, succinct sentence that sums me up. And when I come across one that attempts to be humorous or deep, all I want is to rip it apart. One person describes herself as "Delightfully Indian". To whom are you delightful, and what makes you more Indian, or more delightfully so, than every other person in the sub-continent? Are you really no more than a uniquely gleeful conglomeration of race-determining gene variants?

Or someone else who says: "I like blue M & Ms". What's wrong with the rest? Yes, I went out and ate an entire pack of every color to find out what was so great about the blue ones (nothing?). Would this person get along better with the blue creatures from Avatar than normal human beings? The people with sparkly one-liners about themselves abound. I, on the other hand, must prepare for hours to introduce myself in a professional setting, just listing my qualifications. I have no world-views I would kill for, no candy fetish, and much as I love certain geographies, I like to think I am more than just "Indian", delightful or otherwise.

For myself, a recent conversation with a friend helped me understand. I like the idea of being always amused. Amusement, which stems from the verb "muser"- to think. I am constantly encountering things that set me thinking. Things I do not understand, funny things and sad things, strange things and things which explain older things I didn't understand. They all make me wonder, and most make me smile. I finally have a bio: "_ is constantly amused by the world and everything else." And even that amuses me. Ha.

If you had to pick one word or phrase to define your (most frequent) state of mind, what would it be?

The point is to live everything

Too much in the recent past is unexplained, and I struggle to find answers, even as I feel ashamed to be so expressive in this space. There are others who wonder and hurt far more deeply than I ever wish to, children and parents, lovers and wives and friends. In lieu of greater comfort, I rediscovered this:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.“
— Rainer Maria Rilke

Echo

Somewhere today a lab is out of order. People walk the hallways asking, "Have you heard?", "She was going to finish in a few months" , "She worked so hard.. poor thing."
A greying professor remembers her first emails to him. Enthusiasm bordering on desperation, the years she put into getting to a point where she could send him that email. He may even remember how he wondered at her perseverance as he presented her case to the committee, asking them to fund her graduate studies.

Somewhere, a brother takes the first flight available to meet his sister. There are anxious parental phone calls, logistics, endless paperwork and planning. This I cannot bring myself to imagine.

In frozen time-frames she walks into my room at night, after roll call, demanding and distributing her 'jaadu ki jhappis'. I hear her echo "-TA" when I call her Sanchi, completing her name emphatically. I hear her laugh and I see her dance, listen to her voice in countless conversations, real and virtual. What next, we ask and say, what next?
We've talked of plans, after hostel and after Baroda, what the US is like and the tedium of grad school, buying cars and non-academic options after a Ph.D. And each time our refrain, What next and what else?

Somewhere, there is an echo of our words that goes round and round the globe, a string of electrons magically dancing through cables under the oceans and continents. What next, it whispers, what next?

Even as the words bounce around, you are gone. In frozen time I feel the crash of metal and flesh and bone on a dark highway as it ripples under my skin, my fingers trembling in a mocking echo of yours. The smell of the fruit samples in your car and the sound of the sirens and helicopters and paramedic voices. Your emphatic ending of your own name resonates in emptiness and hits me harder than anything.

The words of our friend as she tells me you are gone. The way I wish for someone to hold her close through this.

Somewhere, shouldn't something be more ordered than it is here? Are the partings here balanced out by reunions elsewhere?

Or perhaps our echoes have no balance. Just the strength they find in their repetition as they bounce around the world, fading as we fade and revived by resonant times as somewhere, an advisor reads an enthusiastic email from a grad student. And somewhere, a brother flies out to meet his sister for a reunion happier than this one. And friends talk of things other than death when they say, What comes next?