Lights out Alice!
My job involves a lot of travel. Travelling to different parts of the country as part of the field work to understand on ground reality that would in turn inform our marketing decisions. What I am noting below is a feeling that creeps us on me every time I am about to fly out of Mumbai.
I wouldn't call Mumbai home. At least, not yet. I wouldn't stop calling Kolkata home. At least, not yet. However, given that I have been in Mumbai or operating out of it for over half an year now, it has at least become a safe haven.
To be fair, nothing feels like home anymore. Home is a feeling that one gets when one returns to a place which is safe, familiar and familial, the last one requiring presence of people you call your own. Reality of life has become such that two of my board members are in Kolkata and the third one in Delhi while I am here in Mumbai.
However, for me, a person of habit, a place becomes something that I can grow into liking when I establish patterns that cater to my specific needs. A specific place to walk, another place to watch cars from, a place to centre myself and shun the noise, another place to find solace in the humdrum of a crowd. As soon as I establish these patterns, I grow to understand the place a bit better, enough to give me a sense of belonging which allows me to happily sit on the corner while watching the metaphorical world pass me by.
What has also been going through my head, especially since December, is that every time I leave for a tour outside, I feel some heightened sense of importance or coming of age feel. Don't worry, I know my job is shit/ my contribution is negligible and I have zero heightened sense of self. But I do feel that somehow, because I am travelling outside, there is a niggling optimism that creeps in, spreading a positivity that sweeping changes would occur in areas that are aching, making things magically fall into place, similar to the ending of every movie I liked in the past(guess that fuels the irrational thought).
More to the point, every walk I take on the eve before I leave for fieldwork, a feeling crosses my mind, if only for a second (okay, more than that but I will not admit that). I always feel that somehow, someway, magically, she will come back. That she will see the error in her ways and the fact that I am leaving would bring her back to her senses. Irrational, foolish, narcissistic, YES. However, I do not agree with the feeling. I talk back to myself and ask why that would ever happen. It is not like I am going to serve in the army or for a cause. It is just another visit that is a pretty routine part of the job. More importantly, she made a choice. Good, bad, right, wrong, it was a choice. A choice to walk away from all this. It is only foolish of me to pine over somebody that does not reciprocate the feeling.
To be fair, it hurts more than it heals. The only thing that I think keeps me coming back to this feeling is the fact that it is pretty hard for me to go through this process all over again. To figure out another person, to understand their bandwidth for communication and to match mine against theirs. Then ask the tough question whether I want to do that in the first place. The back and forth. The confusion. The eventual misstep that I would make. The inevitable overthinking that I would do which would lead me to conclude that I am being a bother and subsequent withdrawal from any communication initiation and telling my brain that it is the best course of action for all parties involved.
In an honest evaluation, it is overthinking that gets in the way. The feeling that I am being a bother, that I should not text them first, that if they were interested they would have texted. It is hard for me to open up, it is hard for me to ask the questions that are necessary to get over the initial awkwardness towards eventual comfort. However, it doesn't mean that I am exempt from it. I must do the due diligence.
It hurts, but I must go on Alice!
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