Winter 2014

Delhi in winters is distinct from Delhi in any other season. This is the first winter I am home after skipping the entire season last year. Fog and dust swirl around. Flights are canceled, plans are disrupted. The sun is watery, filtering through clouds, promising warmth but not quite delivering. Still we chase it, through the window, in the balcony, while eating our meals outside.

Snapshots

It is dusty, so dusty outside, that no matter how many times I wash my hands, I can see (or imagine) a layer of dust coating them. I decide today is the day I venture out, the list of small tasks has grown and in a way, I am now itching for action.

Dilli 2014

Let the shenanigans begin (quietly).

The Winter of Listening by David Whyte

No one but me by the fire,

my hands burning

red in the palms while

the night wind carries

everything away outside.

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

What we strive for

in perfection

is not what turns us

into the lit angel

we desire,

what disturbs

and then nourishes

has everything

we need.

What we hate

in ourselves

is what we cannot know

in ourselves but

what is true to the pattern

does not need

to be explained.

Inside everyone

is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born.

Even with the summer

so far off

I feel it grown in me

now and ready

to arrive in the world.

All those years

listening to those

who had

nothing to say.

All those years

forgetting

how everything

has its own voice

to make

itself heard.

All those years

forgetting

how easily

you can belong

to everything

simply by listening.

And the slow

difficulty

of remembering

how everything

is born from

an opposite

and miraculous

otherness.

Silence and winter

has led me to that

otherness.

So let this winter

of listening

be enough

for the new life

I must call my own.

Dear Old Me and New Graduate Student

Being a graduate student is such a finite experience. If I could go back in time, and give myself advice, I would ask myself to outline my expectations from my graduate program. What do I expect from my classes? What do I hope to learn from my professors? What skills do I want to develop? What software should I learn? What should I be doing to advance my career? How do build my professional networks? What is it I want to be able to say when I leave graduate school? I would remind myself that after several years of work experience, I have useful things to contribute to many, if not all discussions, as well as much to learn.

Adulthood

I think of part of the joy of adulthood as finding those who calibrate at and around the same wavelengths at which you like to live your life. A line that I remind myself of, again and again, year after year, joy after disappointment, lifetimes after moments:

"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path."

Buddha

Reprieves

The occasional, unexpected (but so, so needed) reprieves from things too important to be ignored, places that require presence of body and the brain, conversations that made being quiet impossible, have been the saving grace of this semester. A chunk of time here, an extended deadline there, calm moments on empty buses, and somehow the juggling becomes less frantic. Netflix has been replaced by my lifelong love for reading, and those little breaks to lose myself in a story well-told are wonderful and heartening. Learning to say no, and not letting the voice of guilt dictate all my decisions, is hard and yet so freeing. I would like to leave chastising by the wayside, but till that happens, forgiveness is a wonderful thing as well. I hope your Wednesday has been kind as well.

Tales from Bemidji

The lake booms, the ice cracking as we walk on it. It sounds like a gong, sometimes far, sometimes not too distant. It is breathtaking, it is quiet, almost surreal. It is peaceful, there is a restoring calm to the moments I spent on the lake. The winters, the snow, has grown on me. This was a break well-spent. I had reservations about leaving. The semester has been rough, and it felt wrong to leave. There are always too many things to do, even as I am teaching myself the art of saying no to the things I like, to avoid playing the busy game.