Change

Forget washing machines and regular cooked food. One of the luxuries of living at home is the guarantee of arms and legs not being infested by mosquito bites! Most creatures have a purpose of life. Mosquitoes...they have none.

It’s been three years since I’ve lived away from home. And the past four days have been the first time that I have lived alone. It’s been brilliant, so far. Yaamyn, solitude can indeed be addictive!

There are people who thrive on six hours of sleep at night. I am not one of them. In Bombay, my flatmates knew me as the one who was always asleep. Sleeping all day is a very pleasant pastime for me. I cannot function without (lots! of)sleep. Infact, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that my love for sleep makes me one of the laziest people I know. 

This living alone business though, has been great for my lazy habits! Every morning I sweep the flat before heading for class and get my breakfast together. Today was a particularly productive day. I attempted a thorough cleaning of the flat (two hours!), expelled hundreds of red ants from the floors (ant-freeness-yet another luxury of home!), rearranged some crap and created space to neatly stack my shoes. Oh, and after that I went out, bought veggies, came back, chopped them, cooked them, packed some for the grandmum and went off to visit her. Ate lunch, and made my way to a talk on ecology by a scientist*, and on the way home a couple of hours ago bought a dustpan, a strainer, mousambis and dahi**.  I reached home and then put the rice on the gas to cook***.

It’s awesome to discover new things, no? Being the not-naturally-academic  kinds, I’ve always been uber slow to understand academic disciplines and what they really do. It’s only been a couple of years, for instance, since I understood the point of Sociology (and a little less than that to understand what in the world Development Studies is). Even as my knowledge of social science disciplines expanded, the area of science remained firmly stereotyped. Scratch my surface and I believe most engineers and scientists are idiots who believe there is no social science (and read only Chetan Bhagat. Okay, I have a slightly better pre-conception of the reading habits of scientists). But now I have a cultural studies prof. who is a medical doctor. Yet another rockstar literature and cultural studies prof who is a Physics graduate. And the scientist who gave today’s talk on ecology was so well-versed with people and ideas usually associated with social science.

See, now THAT is why I’m so happy about my decision to do an M.Phil :). At this level, one is only playing with ideas. Not engaging with them because one has to. And so one can truly try and build an inter-disciplinary or discipline-less understanding of whatever it is that one is interested in. It lets you be in a room full of people who are talking about something that they may never have engaged with before formally. If one has studied literature it does not mean that one can’t also be passionately interested in biology and economics.

My trajectory in life has been Literature-->Globalisation and Labour-->and now an inter-disciplinary M.Phil in the social sciences. A lot of people don’t see the link between them all. And I would have been one of them a few years back. Now my mind is unshackled though :)

Oh dear, a chhipkali has decided to grace the flat with its presence. Oh well. I hope it eats up all these annoying tiny-flying-insects. What a pity it doesn’t eat mosquitoes.

*This is an informal group that meets occasionally, bounces ideas off each other and publishes (now only in Bengali-alas!) a well, publication periodically. It’s called Sanhati/Sanghati, but since today was my first meeting, all I know about the organisation is that it was pretty radical at one point and is still critically important (critically as in critical theory critical and not very important critical).  

**We’ve all read about the frozen yogurt desert crap right? And the eating of muesli and fruit preserves with jam and yogurt? Well the latter isn’t ridiculous: I find it’s the best desert I’ve had in a while! At home, I would never try it. Here though, on my first night, I had a sudden craving to improvise. YET another cool thing about the living on one’s own thing...:D

***Note to self: Next time check with a real cook exactly how much rice expands. So as not to have to eat undercooked rice because the vessel couldn’t contain its expansion.