Pooja Wanpal's Blog

It is only when I open Google Photos & it reminds of what I was doing this time last year, I realise how much time has passed. The summer has come & gone and the rain is back, and with it the promise of more. 
Looking at Google photos of what happened before is a mixed bag - it is what I imagine a bag of Bertie Bott's every flavoured beans would taste like. Some pictures bring back memories - clambering on the rocks near the sea, so close you can taste the salt on your tongue; clammy air and the faint sound of drunk second years in the background as you look up at the stars in the amphi; the cold air and the turbulence as the Himalayas shine below; the smell of chakli and chiwada in the air and glow of earthen lamps. 

Some pictures tease you about how much has changed since. It is all about missed opportunities and roads you took. I like seeing those too - they are the ones that remind me that the reality of today is better than the dream of yesterday. I think of all the leafy lanes I don't haunt anymore, the cup of coffee cooling on the counter, the sea lapping at the golden sand. 

But this is today, this rain falling on slick green leaves, and the yellow buds peeking from the foliage. For today, it is enough. 

I am a part of a tribe.

In this post MBA-catalytic world, where the reality has finally smacked all of us in our faces and shown us how empty we actually are, my tribe flourishes.

We wear expensive clothes because we can afford it. We drink at pricey pubs and long for the days when all we could afford was old monk with a twist of lime. We brunch and reminisce about the tapri wali chai. We take cabs from Andheri to Chembur because comfort is important and in that hellhole of a ride, we make power-fucking-point presentations. We live in dreams and the reality keeps killing us. We all think we are special.

Even our dreams are the same. We long to quit our jobs and pick up a backpack and travel across the world. Find answers to the emptiness inside. Yawn.

All conversations are the same.

'Bro, how is your job?'

'It's shit dude, what about yours?'

'It sucks.'

'Yeah, tell me about it.'

Why is everything so meaningless? So repetitive? If real life is actually like this, what kool-aid were we drinking that we thought otherwise? In the exchange of this conversation, my tribe flourishes.

What did we miss so much that we all started searching?

This June, I completed four years in Mumbai. Bombay.



I was astounded - it couldn't be, I told myself. It couldn't be that I had been away from home, from Pune, for four years and I could still be this...restful. I no longer haunt the tree-lined bylanes of Fergusson College road, no longer sit on the steps of the cake shop drinking pathetic coffee spewed by an angry machine, and I no longer beat the dhol when the skies darken and the cries of Ganapati Bappa Morya echo through the streets. I don't write as much anymore, and I don't read as much I used to. I don't dream that wildly nor do I make tall statements that have no basis in reality other than  my fervent desire to make them come true.



I am not that person anymore. 
I am a Bombay person now. I carry an umbrella everywhere, I have m indicator on my phone, and I time my life not by hours, but by minutes.

I stay in a rented flat with walls that are white and clean, and the only hint of my personality is a large dreamcatcher that catches dust more than it does my dreams. I do not know my neighbours - they don't know me, they don't care to know me. I don't blame them. It is difficult to see a never ending stream of working professionals walk in through the door - girls tall, short, smart, bespectacled, loud, shy - all on their way somewhere - anywhere but here. That's when I know I am in Bombay Navi Mumbai.



Dual Existence.

That's what I see it as. Split between today - this moment, and the memory or this moment, and the longing.

I'm in office, working on an excel sheet that perhaps nobody is ever going to see, and I'm in Seogwipo, on Seongsan Ilchulbang seeing the waves break their hearts over the dark, rocky shore.


I am painstakingly cutting an onion, and I'm on Sinhagad, eating dahi from an earthen pot.

I am cleaning out my wardrobe, and I am playing with Prakhar.

I am walking to the canteen, and I am walking down to the dining hall to eat the same old matki usal.

I am sitting by the window, looking at the night sky through the haze of Bombay, and I am sitting by the window, looking at the night sky through the haze of Bombay.

I am now a part of those who are gainfully employed. I have joined the ranks of the 9 am to 6 p crowd. I am now one of those women wearing inappropriate footwear in Mumbai rains and expensive jackets that serve vanity more than utility. I am now one of those women who talk about the targets for the year and clip clop around the office in dangerous heels. I am one of those women who lug a laptop bag everywhere and give presentations in slick meeting rooms. I am all that and hope to be more.





This transition to corporate did not feel like a shock - four fieldworks have ensured that. Rather it feels like slipping into old shoes that I had stopped wearing (why these shoe metaphors today, I wonder). 
But that does not mean I do not miss TISS campus. I crave the green lattice on damp roads, the steel tables and the smell of hot tea in the DM canteen, the rain drenched amphitheater, and the smell of cold rain on hot soil. 
But in the past weeks, I have sat through numerous talks about my new company, and slowly I am coming to terms with it - the size and the shape of it, the sounds of it and the smell of it. I am coming to realize its geography and its nature, and somewhere within me I feel the slow unfurling of presentiment. I feel my wings flutter. 
Is this what growing up is? 

Have you met Gudetama yet? He's the lazy egg.




Say hello. He probably won't say anything back, he's lazy that way so I totally understand.




He spends his time being fried, boiled, cut and made to suffer other indignities, but he always prevails and returns to spread the noble message of indolence. He clutches to a strip of bacon as a blanket, is always tired and his past-time is lying tiredly.



I totally get him.

I love him.


Thank you, Mohita for the introduction. You may now call yourself the duenna of matchmaking business.

Struggle is eternal.
Don't roll you eyes. Don't scoff at me. If my twenty-three years (yes that many now) on this planet have taught me anything, it is that struggle is eternal.

The knowledge for the struggle of existence is innate. For Darwin, struggle for existence was the basis of natural selection. The war of nature is a reality. I prey on you, you prey on him, he preys on her. This is not a lesson in pronouns; it's the truth.

Juxtaposed on theory of literature, this finds four forms:

A. Character versus Character
Ex. Pooja versus Sonakshi (bwhahahahahah)

B. Character versus Society
Ex. Pooja versus Middle class Morality (I am a heroine don't you know!)

C. Character versus Nature
Ex. Pooja versus Mumbai Rains (especially when she wears inappropriately expensive footwear to fieldwork)

D.Character versus Self
Ex. Pooja versus her pet demons.

There you go.

A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead, even as the AC is running at full blast. My legs throb with a dull pain - I have been standing for four hours now. A lady in red approaches me - she sees me smile, she sees the glint in my eyes, and she tries to side step me, but it's too late, I'm already in the fray.
"Hello, good afternoon! Would you like to taste Lipton Ice Tea?"
She gives in. After a small spiel, and a five minute discussion about Mumbai weather, she is on her way with two packs of Lipton Ice Tea in her cart, and I am closer to my goal of the day.
This is Modern Trade Blitzkrieg, and like me, there are several interns, and managers in the market, working side by side with the field forces that drive the monolith that is HUL.
 I am almost at the end of my two month stint in Hindustan Unilever. My days might seem to follow the same set pattern - hurried breakfast at the 'Wadala Sheraton' (an affectionate, slightly derisive nickname for the guesthouse we have been staying at - okay I lied, it's mostly derisive), a cab ride with three other interns which generally helps me understand what's spinning on the rumour mill, opening the laptop and getting into the mountain of work that seems to have piled up almost overnight, chasing managers in the company for one-on-ones, frantic coffee breaks with other interns to solve mini existential crises, and at the end of the day, a ride back to Wadala which is generally quiet and reflective as we marvel at the miracle - we have survived yet another day. However, each day I have spent in these two months has also been markedly different from the rest.







It is challenging. One of the first things I realised in my first week at Hindustan Unilever was that this internship would challenge me every step of the way. I have pushed myself beyond what I thought my capabilities were - I have stumbled, I have fallen apart along the way, but I have also picked up the pieces and moved on. This, I think, is the biggest learning I will be taking out of this place. This place has truly taught me the adage - it is not how many times you fall, but how many times you pick yourself up.
It is rewarding. All internships, I believe, make you question your existence. They make you feel that you have fallen short, that you are somehow something less, and at the end of the two months, they make you feel that all the while, you were something more but you just didn't know it yet. How can that not manage to have a lasting impact on your being?
It is transforming. I can honestly say I am not the same person I was when I first walked through the glass doors of this office. Some mornings I have cocooned myself in a large blanket and watched television till my eyes hurt. Some nights, I have worked till the purple dawn broke and the room filled with light. I have made friends. I have rediscovered old friends. I have memories. What more can I want?

March drives me crazy.

I've written about it before. (http://thesilkenthreadofnescience.blogspot.in/2012/03/march-madness.html)

And yet the specter of March continues to haunt me. How can it not, though? The sky above makes me want to be a cloud, and the soft wind of the night brings with it a pleasurable chill.

But here am I, reading one research paper after another, waiting for the exams. Curse of the student life strikes again. Another March gone. I still feel that restlessness in my soul, the hunger that very few things in the world can quench.

As this month will recede into the next, I'll be looking forward to something else. My internship.

Maybe March is just a harbinger. That's why it brings out that madness in us. It's everywhere - in the water, in the air. Say, can't you just smell the anticipation?

There are days like these.

There are days when life is passing you by.

Things are happening to you.
You are the froth on a raging wave, helpless and tiny,
and nothing you can do will change your course.

The only thing you do is persevere.

Life is passing you by.

You are the sidekick now.
A sidetrack, a comic relief in you own sitcom,
you don't know where the star is,
and hollow disembodied laughter
follows your every action.
You peer into the darkness.
To no avail.

Days like these, when time passes you by.

You are waiting.
Still waiting.

But the darkness is closing. You are Valdimir and Estragon
that's why you are waiting.

 But don't you know?

He's never coming. 

Mumbai baffles me.

A lot has been written about it. Songs have been sung, films have been made, stories have been told.

For me, Mumbai has not quite been the city of dreams. But it has given me something else - hope. I came to Mumbai in June 2015, with a heavy suitcase containing all my material posessions, and a heart heavy with dread and anticipation. My love for this city blows hot and cold, but it's not that fiery obsession that would consume my soul - that honour is reserved solely for my beloved Pune.

My self is torn between these two places, which are for all accounts as dissimilar as chalk and cheese, but are similar only in my regard for them. One is my 'janmabhoomi'. The other, in all probability shall become my 'karmabhoomi', 

In a few days, this year will end. This year, that turned my life upside down. This year which closed some chapters in my life, and started some new ones. This year taught me that dawn comes after the darkest hour, that there is sweet torment in anticipation, that happiness comes from people and places, and love is transient and permanent, and opposites cohabit. I have truly loved and lived in this year, and for that, I'm thankful.

Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai