Hello notes app, I know it’s been a long time. I have missed you. But I haven’t found time to articulate the random bursts of inspirations into some constructive writing over the past few months. I don’t know what to call it, but it hasn’t been a writer’s block and I’m just glad about that. First things first. They should’ve included ‘packing your entire life in two heavy and almost overweight suitcases and moving to a different city’, in the engineering syllabus. And even if it’s a totally out of syllabus question that most engineering students encounter in their final semester, it’s exciting yet equally overwhelming. One day you are suddenly paying bills, shopping for grocery and calling technicians to get a washing machine installed. What is even more surprising is that how one day you are dancing your heart out in a college fest and the next moment you are calling a plumber to fix the water taps in your flat. Green veggies excite you. A full vegetable compartment in the refrigerator gives you peace. And a leftover veggie that you forgot to throw annoys you more than anything else. Yes, that is when you know that you’ve just entered your adulting era.

Oh yes, they’ve romanticized this term called ‘adulting’ quite a lot. What they tell you is that you’ll be treated like a grown up and will have a lot of freedom. What they don’t, is that you’ll spend most of your time trying to figure what you are doing, and ironically enough you end up doing the same thing. That’s how you spend each day as an adult; waking up irrespective of how tired you are and pushing your limits in pursuit of your goals. And then after running around for the entire day, you question yourself whether or not you did enough today. You know, as an adult, there are rare occasions wherein someone reminds you of your duties. But day by day the feeling of self expectations reaches a peak, so much so that you stretch yourself even if you know you won’t be able to. There are situations where you feel thar ‘I thought that I would be able to this, but I can’t’.
It’s a paradoxical phase, you want to explore everything on your own and yet wish to have someone who tells you what to do when you face a crossroad of ways. Adulting is an art; obscure yet vivid. And each one’s an artist, having their own palette and their own canvas. And however different each one’s colors might be, the art of adulting stands testimony to the fact that art can be beautiful, even if each one paints a different, messy, chaotic or even obscure picture.

They say that adulting begins after 18, but I would say that even then, adulting has its own phases like a butterfly in metamorphosis, each passing phase making us ‘adultier adults’. And here’s the spoiler alert: no, you are not satisfied with the adult that you are in your present phase, you keep expecting more from yourself at every step of this journey. You feel that maybe growing up you will be at peace with yourself, but nope. You just keep on expecting more, quite often forgetting about what you already have and where you’d actually started. And when you feel that you are the youngest in a room, you forget very easily how hard you have worked just to be in that room. And that my dear adults, is why however big an adult you might be, it’s always important that you remind yourself that you are making the adult in your previous phase proud.

Yours truly,
A person wearing a tshirt that says ‘sorry I can’t adult today’ 🙂

It was a summery Sunday evening. I stood in my window, gazing at the twinkling city lights, sprawled over a great expanse. The roads were quiet, and the occasional sound of a car engine revving up the street was the only significant thing to be heard. Looking at the tall buildings afar, I stretched my vision upto its farthest point. And then I started thinking. Ten years ago, as a young girl of about 8-9 years, I used to stand in the same window, admiring the same city lights. My younger self used to make it a point to stand in the window, everyday for merely ten minutes or so. And here I was, looking outside my own window, like a stranger, unfamiliar with the view. The view hadn’t changed at all, except perhaps for a few buildings here and there. It was me who had grown. I was inevitably reminded of that young girl who used to stare at the night sky, each night and the joy she experienced in doing so. That’s when I thought. Life changes, doesn’t it? You change, your priorities change, the people around you change. The more you grow, life becomes more fast paced. You often forget to enjoy the journey while in pursuit of the destination. You start taking all the mundane things for granted but you realise their worth only when thay are no longer a part of your daily routine. And then this realization hits you, suddenly out of the blue. You realise that the age old dilemmas might have reached logical conclusions, but there are newer challenges to overcome and bigger obstacles to cross. And that is how you keep growing and materialising into newer versions of yourself, each day. They say that nothing changes day by day, but when you look back nothing is just the same. And at that point in time, I could truly feel this. And as I experienced the rush of these thoughts, I noticed that the twinkling stars in the sky had held my attention for longer than I had imagined. And so I wrote,

somewhere between then and now,
I forgot what it was to stargaze
to stare into the depths of the cosmos,
to get lost in the celestial daze.
I forgot how the sky looked like
on a clear December night,
forgot what it was to chase
those tiny pinpricks of light.
and today when I sat,
under the same sequined sky
I was reminded of the small girl;
realised that time indeed does fly.
it was this spectacle that had
been etched so firm in my mind,
never had I once thought that
I’ll leave my obsession to stargaze behind.
and so somewhere between then and now,
I left behind a piece of my heart with the sky
only to find it today, intact just as it was
even if the years have flown by.

-mugdha

It was one of those days when I got time to ponder upon something that had been shunted to one corner of my mind for quite a long time. It so happens that we are so wrapped up in our routine and we tend to easily gloss over the intricacies and the minute aspects of the things that make us what we truly are. Run behind the big things- that’s what they tell us. But can’t we just-perhaps for some time- slow down a bit and look more closely at the smaller things?

There are almost a million things that go on daily in each of our lives. But when was the last time you stopped to actually think about something that only you yourself could fully appreciate? At times, it so happens that something just strikes a chord with you, something so deep and yet impeccably simple. I mean, anything as plain as a cup of hot tea on a wintry morning can make you feel happy for the entire day. 

We go on chasing happiness in every possible way we can. But the tiniest of things can leave us feeling satisfied and content. Isn’t this paradoxical?
Don’t all of us feel happy when our favourite song plays on the radio, even if we perfectly know that we can just plug in to Spotify to listen to it anytime? Doesn’t a beautiful sunrise spread a glow in our hearts everytime we feast our eyes upon it? Doesn’t a simple ‘how was your day’ fuel us to talk endlessly about random stuff? That’s just what it is. We get so attached to the things we like that it’s like we embed a part of ourselves into them.

Ever heard the gentle tinkling of your grandmother’s bangles? Or the chirping of a small bird in the early hours of the dawn? These might seem insignificant to some, but they can mean a lot to others. The more I think, the more clearly I realise that happiness is that thing which is hidden in the most unlikely places- all around us. It’s there in the cream on your coffee. In the smell of the pages of your recently bought book. In the messy notes and doodles in your class notebook. In the oldest of your dresses- those to which even you can’t explain so as to why you are so dearly attached. In the warmth of your favourite sweatshirt. In the late night brainstorming sessions with a close friend. In the loud laughs and conversations at the dinner table. In those quotes that you run through again and again, especially when you need them the most. Yes, these are often neglected but believe me, these are the things that complete us. And the best part is that no two individuals can ever share the same set of things that they have a personal connection with. This is what precisely defines the vibrancy in the human race. And it’s beautiful. It is exactly like a plethora of emotions that gets hooked onto every person associated with a feeling. All these trivial things sum up to portray what we, as individuals truly are. All these thoughts crossed my mind like a series of blurred images in just a few minutes. But I understood more firmly than ever, that it is the smallest of things that redefine what the big ones truly ought to be.
-Mugdha Deshpande

Even the butterfly was once a caterpillar. He didn’t know what he would eventually become. Yes, he had a very trying time when he wasn’t at his best. His transforming phase wasn’t something that was admired by all. And yet, he didn’t give up. Do you think the caterpillar knew that he would one day become a beautiful butterfly, who would spend his days dancing on flowers? Surely not. And yet he went on. Isn’t this so relatable to us humans too? No one appreciates you when you are in a moulding phase. You have to face innumerable challenges the moment you wake up each day. There are some days when you are totally clueless about what’s going on. You are one big, confused bundle of threads, struggling and trying to figure out what you would become. Yes, sometimes challenges do seem endless. Sometimes things you want seem to be sailing out of your reach right in front of your eyes. And believe me, that is the most unexplainably painful feeling you can ever feel. But you have just got to trust that all this is simply a part of your developing period. There might be days when the extrovert in you turns into an introvert and avoids talking to people mainly because they question your choices to make you feel uncomfortable. Sometimes, all you need is to give yourself the generous amount of time that you deserve. Have faith and trust the process. I know all this might sound far-fetched when you are actually caught up in the middle of a storm. You have all the logic and critical thinking you need but you just can’t think logically. Everything just goes haywire. Minutes seem like hours, hours seem like days and you try in vain not to think too much, not to revolve in the same round circle again and again. But in spite of all the odds, you hang on there. You stand there, rooted to the spot with all the energy you can muster. And that is what makes things change. Slowly first, and then so rapidly that even you find it hard to comprehend them. It is your belief and grit that finally does what it has to do. The once terrible dilemmas reach logical conclusions. You discover what you really want. After days and days of incertitude, your brain finally finds its sorting algorithm and tries to place thoughts in an orderly way. Things begin to fall in place, magically like the pieces of a puzzle. Distorted tiles come together to form a mosaic. The abstract shapes begin to make sense. Shaky lines materialize into figures. And again, you are awestruck. You can’t do anything but just sit and stare and perhaps try to understand all that is happening quite suddenly. That is the moment when everything seems worth dodging all those obstacles that tried so hard to make you take a detour. You are fully aware that challenges are perpetual and getting through this one can gear you up for the next. And at this point in time, there is no one who can appreciate yourself more than you can, when you finally sail successfully through that intimidating storm. And that is when the caterpillar in you transforms itself into a butterfly.

-Mugdha Deshpande