Category: Musings

#17 Postcard – What do you make of a messy room?

Is a messy room indicative of creativity, or is it a personality problem? I care about public perception now, the younger me is frowning at that and the older me is partly helpless.

“If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.“

I used to be very okay with a messy bed, as long as one side was clear to sleep on. Something changed though and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.

Growing up, I ‘ve seen disappointment on the faces of parents, brothers, aunts on stepping into my messy room. I have had (at least) one friend who was as messy if not messier than I was – she’s a writer – and articles used to pop up in my feed about how messiness is a sign of creativity. These days the search results I get are discourses that messiness might be a sign of a personality problem. Does Google know that I crossed over?

Mess bothers me now to the extent that I take care of it within the hour. I think I can now see what others saw in my messy room, and the cause of their disappointment. But it also bothers me that mess bothers me, and in trying to understand why I realized why it didn’t before.

A mess on my bed was something I was cognizant of. I didn’t find it nagging when people exclaimed What a mess! – I already knew the mess existed. Their comment didn’t spur me into action, I knew no reptiles would emerge from the pile, there was no safety hazard like they suggested (on a different note my notes and work desk have always been organized). But more than awareness, I believed the clutter in the room was under my control, no matter how much it looked like it wasn’t.

(I’m sure somebody is comparing that with how addicts say they can stop smoking whenever they want to.)

What bothered me at one point was how concerned and annoyed the adults and more so my brothers were. It wasn’t mere disappointment – it was often anger that I didn’t take care of my room. You would think I was on my way to self destruction or worse, family destruction, from their manners (the latter makes me laugh but wait.. maybe therein lies the answer).

They probably saw lack of discipline, a disorganized mind that manifested as the mess in my room, when it was just laziness and not being able to see the point when there was clearly an extra bed in the room. Why was what went on in that bed anyone’s business but mine?
I hear my father saying It’s my house, I accept I was in the wrong.

Then, around the age of 23, my mother stopped complaining about the mess. I need to ask her why, maybe she accepted it’s wired in me*. Or maybe she somehow figured I’d change at 26.

The change probably started after I watched the video (where lines at the beginning are quoted from) on the other side of my 20s, kickstarting a Do It mode in me. Nobody’s going to forgive you for a messy room after 25. You may have a roommate or a friend or a spouse who isn’t okay with mess, because they see mess and they see an undisciplined you yada-yada. So you keep it tidy for them, and keeping it tidy for them puts you at ease.

And it did do me good – I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve glanced over to the made-up bed in the room when a meeting wasn’t going well or when I just wanted the workday to end, knowing the bed I made is waiting for me. And it indeed made a difference to know that I made it.

The world has impressed on me that a responsible, perhaps even trustworthy adult probably keeps things tidy.

But I still don’t think a messy kid has a problem, I don’t buy that a messy room is indicative of other issues. The messy kid didn’t care about public (or family) perception. It would be wrong to say that being organized is our natural state – it’s conscious effort that might later turn reflexive.
I care about perception now because it can affect the way people make decisions about you, decisions that may not always be apparent yet are important, the younger me is frowning at that and the older me is partly helpless.
I’ll have to find how much of this keeping-room-tidy is conformist and how much out of choice. I’ll update if I figure it out.

* which is what I’d like to write about next

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#12 Postcard – Choices and the Roads not taken

They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?

They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?

I cannot think of any city I have lived in without feeling that lump in my throat, except Trivandrum. And maybe that comes from the knowledge that Trivandrum is home, it’s where I’ll always go back, and there is no leaving, really.

I’ve lived in Delhi, Georgia, Texas. And there are different, younger versions of myself residing in all these places. I only have to go back to see them.

When I visit Rajiv Chowk, I see the 22 year old me on my way back from visiting Valyamma or Achu Annan, waiting for Dwarka line on the other side of the rail. My backpack is filled with the fish fry Valyamma packed for me, or all the Haldiram’s Achu Annan bought me. In December that kid is preparing to become an IAS officer, in March she’s decided she will do International Relations in JNU, and in 2 years I’d be there for my visa interview at the consulate before I leave for Atlanta.

Years later, when I moved from Atlanta, I was sad. I was leaving behind my grad school friends, a place I had grown to love and that I could see becoming my home, a college that gave me my graduate education, a campus I loved to walk around in, gardens and shops I grew to enjoy visiting. I haven’t gone back, but I know I’ll find that 25 year old kid walking the bridge to Target, smiling mindlessly at dogs and the sunset and the dressed-up women posing at the Memorial gate.

There is comfort in familiarity, and I embrace that fully.

To think that we’re where we are because of choice, chance, and the associated what-if’s I grapple with if I ponder long enough (and I’ve had the privilege of choice for a few years). What if the 22 year old me followed another trail of thought to discover something else, what if I’d stayed in Atlanta and not moved?
But we could spend the rest of our lives playing What If, and then some.

Today I was walking back from the Indian grocery store, and I realized I’m growing comfortable here as well, and I’ll miss stuff whenever it is that I leave. I’ll always miss Delhi because it has some of my happiest memories, and that happy innocent kid that I can never go back to. Atlanta, because it gave me so much. Texas, too.

So maybe what we leave behind is our present selves, because we know there’s no way to hold on that comfort even if we want to, except in the form of memories.

But whenever I visit, I know I’ll find those younger versions. They never ask, How are you? Because they aren’t curious, somehow, they’re happy right there.

That Delhi kid still lives somewhere around Karol Bagh. She looks forward to finding out what’s in her evening tiffin, shuffles her way through the loud crowds of CP and reads her yellow Vision IAS notes on the long metro rides home. In Atlanta, Crash Into Me still plays in my room on a dark, rainy evening while Uma hums a tune in the kitchen, putting the chai on.

And maybe we like to think there was something more there, something we missed out on by leaving, that we can’t get back to. That secret, the answer to the what if, only the version that stayed behind knows. Yet when you visit, they only offer you a naughty smile. It’s a secret that will stay there, stay there with that version of you that you left behind. 🙂

#13 A life too long, too short

Life is precious because it’s short, that’s why it’s special, because we know it’ll end one day.

I watched 24 Netflix/Prime series this year. One of them was The Good Side, a show about afterlife that I watched mostly for Jameela Jamil, where heaven is filled with people drunk on happiness to the point where they are brain-jaded and simply want to leave. Like a death after death. At that point Kristen Bell observes Life is precious because it’s short, that’s why it’s special, because we know it’ll end one day.

Today (two weeks from the day of sharing) was not a good day. Today I also realized that Adulting is hard not only because there’s nobody providing after you, but because it feels like even Nature seems to have stopped keeping track.
At 5, 10, 15 years of age there’s a whole set of social and biological changes you (are expected to) go through. Parents walk (or maybe push, and some yank) you through some of it, but Nature takes care of the rest. There is so much to be discovered and to look forward to.

One day at school your friend tells you her elder sister got her periods, and then you wake up with pubic hair one day. Everyone watches as you grow taller/fatter with cyclically better/worse features while you can only hope it ends well. One day we’re discussing male anatomy over our biology records, and on another we are finally texting guys and on another kissing them. There is just so much new stuff to explore, so much awkwardness that you slowly find your way around.
(Okay I realize all my examples had to do with sexuality and reproductive health but you get it – or maybe that’s all we are as human beings and that’s all Nature intended to keep track of anyway, but I can’t digress today).

Then all of a sudden you’re 25. All you have to look forward to are when the barely-visible but definitely-there folds appear, when the freckles spread over like curry on hot rice and when those inevitable greys make their way. You’ve seen just enough of the world to not have too much to look forward to. Sure you learn new things about people every day but it feels never-ending. People are simple, people are complex. You’ve by now figured out what you need to do to keep in touch with those in your life and with some you indeed do, but you always wish you knew more people and yet once you do you aren’t quite sure if you want them to stay, or if they would.
And on most days they are annoying but by now you know people are what really lend your life meaning so really there’s no way out.

So then what else is left? Why isn’t daily life rife with learning? Why is personal growth all that remains? Why isn’t Nature edging me towards it? Are we just bound to witness trees change the same colors (and not even that in the tropics)?

What do I have to look forward to? So that you can help those less fortunate than you was what I came up with when I was younger (but really my mom came up with that), and I don’t seem to have discovered anything more exciting since, and I am not sure there is one. (And I do agree, it is good enough).

So today for the first time, I wondered at how long life is, and maybe just maybe wished it was shorter. What if we were told we’d only live until 40? How different would things be? My head hurts trying to picture that and I will not vomit that oft-repeated tirade on live every day as if it were your last or whatever.

What else is left?

And I get why people get married then, because what else is left? Yet it’s weird because how can it be that there isn’t more to life, especially when both companionship and progeny are optional? So then it makes sense to me now – it looks like this what Nature had in mind because it begins to deprive you of things once you pass the “reproductive age”. (At the time of publishing I have found something worthwhile, but that doesn’t change the four weeks of hopelessness when I was lost, and I can’t be sure it wouldn’t return.)

I think my issue is the realization that I have been so passionate about so many things all my life, my struggle has always been picking one thing out of my long list, life has always seemed too short to do it all and mortality has appeared cruel, and for the first time my list feels blank. Maybe I’m disillusioned because at 23 I was certain I could help everyone I wanted to but today I feel like our problems are too big to be solved (maybe that’s what a year and a half in the US did to me, or maybe that’s just mid-twenties, I’m welcoming ideas). Once blasphemous, today I can almost understand how the prospect of death might be charming to some, and for all the wrong reasons I believe.

Tomorrow I’ll come back to say life is indeed too short to do all that we want to but for today, I’m wondering what a long life I have ahead of me.

Note : As of the day of sharing, I have found one thing to add to my list so I’m happier (thank you Rohit :)). Last year I thought dancing and training my body muscles was a good personal goal to have but it somehow seems too short-lived a desire today (in other words, I’ll be over it too soon). Reading other mortals’ thoughts seems like a nice thing to look forward to. I’m still not back on the life-too-short sentiment yet but I’ll come around soon, I hope.

Also I’m not depressed, I just feel different and am still navigating my way through unfamiliar territories.

PPS : I almost forgot my GitHub reads an extremely self-centric “The day you feel that life’s long enough to do everything you want to, is the right time to get out and search for something new 🙂“. Well, child is father of the man, no?

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