Life is an Experiment

I was going through some old photographs and came across one of my grandparents. It was probably from 10 years ago. They were standing on the balcony of our old house- with beautiful smiling faces, looking right into the camera. The light was falling on my grandfather’s hair from the back. The hair was completely white, yet he looked young- younger than I remembered him to be. My grandmother had a smile on her face- a kind that I haven’t seen on her in a long time. 

My grandfather passed away 3-4 years after this photograph was taken. It’s not like my grandmother doesn’t smile anymore, but I guess, standing next to someone you love, someone who loves you, makes you smile differently. There was a kind of peace and security- a sort of completeness, that radiated from within her.

It makes me wonder, if she smiled so heartily, before she got married to him, and fell in love with him. It also makes me think about how life, the universe, takes away things that it gives you. Like youth. Like loved ones. 

Meghan Daum wrote in one of her essays, “Most of us have unconscious disbeliefs about our lives, facts that we accept at face value but that still cause us to gasp just a little when they pass through our minds at certain angles.” Like our own death. Or that of our loved ones. The uncertainty of death is constantly around the corner, throughout our lives, but it becomes more real as we age. After our mid-lives, we tend to accept at face value, that the countdown has begun. Not only can we die at any point in the near future, so can our partners, our parents, or our friends. Yet, the loss of a loved one can shake us, like no other, and nothing can prepare you for what’s to come. We are faced with emotions, that we didn’t know we were capable of feeling. 

When daddy, as we all used to fondly call my grandfather, died, my brain managed to bring forth childhood memories, that I had completely forgotten. Until that day, they were probably ordinary moments, which somehow in the finality of his life, became special. Maybe, until that moment, I had never slowed down to look back at my time with him. 

In daddy’s final days, I was pre-occupied with the stress of my work and career, and for a long time, all I had felt was frustration and anger. I was unaware that he had not been doing well, even though we lived in the same house, and therefore I was absolutely unprepared for his death. Each of us in the family, dealt with the loss differently. While my sister was haunted with the thoughts of his afterlife, I was enveloped with a strange sense of comfort and love- that was brought about from all the forgotten memories. It was a bit of a relief, to feel something else, other than the anger and frustration caused by work.

We were drowned in grief for months that followed. Every tiny thing reminded us of him. It was difficult to utter his name out loud, without welling up with tears. It was impossible to talk about him without crying. Sometimes, it helped me to listen to his favourite music and cry it out. 

I was lucky and blessed to have spent a lot of time with him while growing up. He dropped us to school and picked us up for most of our school lives. My parents were always quite busy bringing up three children, getting us educated and disciplining us. All the fun, love and pampering came from my grandfather. Till date, reminiscing about the summers in my early childhood days, sitting between my grandparents on their bed, having delicious cut fruit while watching TV, with the cool ‘breeze’ of the air conditioner, brings a sense of peace and comfort like no other. 

A post after a really long time. Just a reminder to my future self, whenever I go through this- Be patient. This is something I learnt about very recently. All good things take time, patience and sacrifice. It has been said over and over again since the beginning of time, but you only truly understand something, when you go through it.

It’s extremely hard to fight the society, that expects overnight success from you and some incredible outputs and a 6-figure salary. Well, I wasn’t a child prodigy at anything and only truly started learning ‘with understanding’, very recently. 

I feel, the process of working hard and waiting to get better is beautiful- more beautiful than success achieved overnight. Just patiently do what you are doing, but just do not forget to live. 

Post after Ages

1. Filling up most of the seats for SEEKH registrations.

2. Attending Pune Design Festival

3. SEEKH Tickets & Tags

4. Having an amazing eye-opening weekend about retail with Mr.Santosh Kumar 

5. Having Natural's ice cream- Papaya+ Pineapple flavour and little bit of tender coconut icecream with Nishtha

6. Attending stand up comedy- Abish Mathew, Varun Thakur & Khanees Thukral  at Arc Asia

7.Realizing that I still remembered what I had learnt in 11th, 12th & undergrad

8. Trying out authentic Maharashtrian cusine at Wah Marathi

9. Seeing how people with special needs are addressed in retail stores eg Levi's 

1.The most eventful train journey from Pune-Mumbai-Delhi. One berth & 4 happy people, good music, good view, good chat & lots of jokes. {Only God knows how I carried my rock of a suitcase, 5floors down, on two locals and then to Delhi.}

2. Being able to wake up early morning & peacefully work n my assignment with morning tea, in the train, with a beautiful passing view.

3. Diwali & Bhai Dooj at home. Being with my family & especially my siblings is the best feeling.

4. Catching up with my cousins & extended family & late night chilling scenes with them.

5. Going out with mom & siblings for Diwali mela.

6. Catching up with my college friends after long.

7. Evening drives & Delhi Street food.

8. Catching up with school friends. Meeting Sanchit & his persian cat- Ghost.

9. Realizing how much I love to write.

Life is about the people you meet & the things you create with them. 

Loving  Ray Eames' cute bows and pins, I spotted, in a book about the famous duo in the library. 

Source: The Story of Eames Furniture by MARILYN NEUHART

1. Random plan to go to the mall on a depressing day, and eating North Indian Thali from Moti Mahal Deluxe (The Daal Makhani in this vada pav land has never tasted better), followed by the yummiest, cheesiest 'Vegetable Nachos Grande' from Chico Mexico and a meetha paan to digest it all

2. Stumbling across 50 Epic Dance Moves on youtube and doing them with a crazy bunch of girls after a boring day in college. This was followed by an imitation of drunk punjabi people dancing.

3. Making it to class after 3 long days and ticking off everything on my agenda that day.

4. Being able to figure out the new mechanism to fix the flaws in the bioscope. #projectbiosocpe

5. Discovering the most amazing volumes on Charles & Ray Eames in the library.

6. New Curtains in the room, thereby getting rid of the ugly blue mattress covers which were functioning as our curtains all this while

7. Discovering Life hacks and flaunting how to take out one tictac from a tic tac container to my friends :P

8. Reading almost an entire issue of Vogue, after ages.

9. Coming up with funny punjabi names for all my friends and shouting them loudly from a distance to embarrass them