Note: This article was originally written for one of my beautiful friend, who is now fortunately also a junior. She runs this amazing blog (https://anepistle.wordpress.com) and I truly, deeply hope that a few efforts by all of us collectively lead to a tiny, little change in the world. Touchwood!
Funny, weird thing to even think about but I am going to try telling this. I was sitting in a class last month and tea was served with some delectable strawberry cream biscuits. The lecture wasn’t nearly as interesting as I had imagined it would be and sleep was running after me in a Tom-Jerry relationship. All I wanted to do was to dip that cream biscuit in tea and take a bite. But then, this was a formal setting and I did not know if I should do the seemingly gawaar (uncouth comes the closest, I guess) thing of making the biscuit all soggy and then putting it in my mouth. Plus, what if the biscuit just fell in the tea in the middle of someone talking about Awas yojana? How embarrassing and downright inexplicable an action!
Now that some of you have established me to be a downright nutcase, let me tell you that I am going to analyse this further, even if it means half readership. It’s a matter of principle for me.
I sat there thinking about the consistency of that particular biscuit. It was important after all. It could be a softer thing, immediately loosening and drowning in the tea, or something like a Marie consistency that would give me the pleasure of watching as the tea rises into it. I was also looking for a few cues where the lecturer would look the other side – there were only 6 of us, 3 seated each side of the table – so that I could do my thing. It was a multi-stakeholder, multi- product, even multi-ingredient problem right in front of me. The tea was getting cold, and I had to decide, choose. Heart rate? Don’t even ask.
And hey, just so you think this is trivial, there were philosophical questions too, some of which you could even go ahead and brand spiritual. This was not difficult, right? Right? Why couldn’t I just decide already and just dip or not dip my biscuit? On the one hand, I did not want to follow the norm because it deprived me of my pleasure of enjoying a good cup of tea. I might have regretted not having the courage to break through this. On the other hand, no one likes getting embarrassed if things go awry, or if there is a judgment.
You see, the fight is always about finding your place in the different worlds we keep walking into. Fitting in or finding the courage to not. The society might be, you know, strawberry shaped and what if some of us are just potatoes poking out like sore spots? If you fit in, it is easy. If you clear an exam, want to have kids, you are conventionally beautiful/handsome, rich, speak conventionally well, dress conventionally well – all is good. Life is sorted. You fit in, the majority is with you and hardly anyone would demand an explanation from you for being like this or wanting all this.
Living the Writeful Way 