A year in the UK

Poorva yesterday pointed out that it has been exactly a year since I left India to start a new chapter of my life in the UK. I am trying to remember how I felt. At the time of applying for the scholarship, I was just very unsure - I thought that I would be immensely unhappy in a foreign land, and therefore doing a degree abroad was simply not worth it. Then I got the scholarship, decided to pursue it, and continued with life at McKinsey. After spending a few months on a project in Amsterdam, I started feeling more confident. As I got closer to leaving, I was almost defiant. I had been told things about life in the UK, and I was determined to continue life as it is.

One year down the line, I feel like I have completely yielded while maintaining the pretense that I haven't yielded at all. Many things have changed. Many more have remained the same. I coped up much, much better than I had expected. In fact, it was something I realised about myself - that I am designed to cope well with solitary life. It goes back to my childhood when I could keep myself entertained for long hours. It's quite wonderful how these idiosyncracies of the childhood can become great strengths (or weaknesses) when grown up. But that's a tangential point. I want to write about my most significant learnings this past year.

My biggest learning is that, willingly or unwillingly, we become ambassadors for communities we come from. Despite not being overtly 'Indian' in what I talked about or what I wore or how I behaved, just my familiarity with all things Indian made me some sort of representative of India. I then felt a burden of trying to be a good representative of my country - positive and neutral at the same time. Many of my ruminations this past year have been about India, about its victories and its contradictions. Some of my thoughts are captured in the blog post I wrote earlier this year.

The second learning has been about how valuable discipline is in the western world. Being lazy can be very costly here, just because the entire burden of one's world is on one's own shoulders. Unlike India, we do not have cheap labour to help us discharge the mundane activities of daily life. It's not even necessarily the maid (or servants), but even the ubiquitous families that set up an ironing shop in every housing complex. Which makes me wonder how this world is essentially a treadmill - we earn more, drive up prices so much that the standard of living may be the same, or even lower. Of course, that doesn't justify not correcting the historical injustices of the cheap labour that we silently exploit. However, it also calls for discussion on where we as humankind are heading. Keeping social or cultural aspects away - even economically, do we want India to become like the UK? Or do we want to create a different society? If yes, what will that society look like? And are we heading in the right direction, then?

Travelling has been one of the highlights of my time in the UK. Europe has been a frequent hunting ground just because of physical proximity. Travelling has given me some new perspectives in life, and as I look ahead to a long time of no travel (except to India), I have the consolation of having travelled very frequently recently. I have made friends from across the global, and some of the conversations I have had have been very encouraging. It has also been most exciting to compare and contrast those with India. All in all, I am glad that I made the decision to come here - it has added to me in very significant ways. Staying in India and working there would also have surely added to me, and I am in no position to compare whether I would have been better off or worse. I can also look at my present contentment, and justify that decision.

Good night.

Humilty

I have recently been in a long-drawn unpleasant experience. For weeks, I tried to be extremely understanding. My patience was tested, and at times I experienced my body giving me very evident signs of stress that I tried to hide. Finally, one fine day, I let it out as verbal aggression towards another person. Things have improved since then, and I find this individual's behaviour towards me having become much better. I have since then returned to my old peaceful ways.

I have been thinking lately about humility, and found my dilemma analogous to this situation. Till what point do I try to be humble, and at what point do I crack the whip and use arrogance (or at least high-self esteem) as a tool to discipline my world? Humility, in my experinece, is one of the most valued traits people want to see. The esteem in which humble and successful people are held is amazing. I have sometimes craved for that kind of adulation, creating a perverse incentive within me to display humility that I don't really feel within. As I find my feet in the world, that tendency has thankfully been going away.

But my initial dilemma remains. I like to differentiate between public and private humility. Private humility is what one experiences in the conversation one has to have with oneself. To me, this aspect of humility is absolutely necessary. I have found that arrogance breeds a tendency for self-preservation; and therefore stagnation. Arrogance is status quo-ist. Humility, by keeping me on my toes, makes me look for avenues to grow. Very important, also, is humility towards one's past. I have seen around me people who show condescension towards how they were in the past - the way they looked, talked, behaved, etc. However, I find this pointless, and perhaps a bit damaging. At the end of the day, it is the hard work of that "past I" that brought me here; that "past I" has achieved more than the present I has, and therefore deserves respect. Internally, I find peace in reminding myself that I am only a reflection of the "past I"'s, which itself is a reflection of other people - friends, families, peers, teachers, situations etc. The more I think about it, the more I realise how much my inner values are shaped by my parents, especially my father. I realise how much my external relations are shaped by my mother's relation with me, and my friends' unflinching love for me. From the Sanskrit teacher in Grade 8 who talked about the benefits of breathing through the nose to the English teacher in Grade 5 whose pronunciation of my name I have now retained - it is only over time that someone's influence becomes clearer. It is disarming, and comforting, to know that very little of who I am has anything to do with me.

Humility externally is the bigger struggle. Arrogance is often useful to establish presence or to demand respect. However, the more I think about it, the more I find 'success' to be found not in being a leader, but in either being a follower or finding followers. Teams, and not people, are what create success. And for this purpose, humility is what helps forge teams. A willingness to acknowledge mistakes, and to go the extra mile to make teams work. And then, external and internal humilty creates harmony in life that'll probably make you happier. At times in life, I have found myself so split between internal humility and external arrogance - and that is something I'd rather avoid. Of course, given the stage of life I am at, I know very little about what works and what doesn't. Some day, hopefully, when I will be genuinely successful, I will have a more developed point of view about this.

Till then, if you're reading this and have an opinion you feelI could benefit from, feel free to email, WhatsApp, message, whatver. 

On love. And companionship.

It has been a quiet summer, away from the hustle and bustle of regular life. I have had some time to absorb the new experiences of the past year, and reflect on what I have learnt and where I have come. The transformations within myself have been natural and building up over the last year, but now was a good time to reflect.

One of the major learnings I have had is my new way of dealing with this thing called love. I belonged to the school of fanatic, all - encompassing love. I loved intensely, and at several points in the past found myself on the verge of falling apart, but picked myself up, achieved something professionally and then glossed over the injuries festering within. Working for two years had numbed me to an extent, but when I came to Oxford and was pulled into the cacophony of new relationships, I found that my healing process hadn't been completed. I found myself drawn once again into the cycle of attachment - expectation - disappointment - disillusionment. Once again, my response was a strong professional comeback. I exercised. Did yoga. Did a bunch of extra - curricular stuff. That created a distance between my mind and my experiences, and have since then helped me weave myself away from that to new beginnings. To companionship.

Companionship, to me, is love on slowburn. The flames of passion are subdued, and the bond of duty is what guides the ship towards a destination. Companionship enables. It holds your hand gently and walks with you. It helps you grow. It is there for you to talk to. It is there to admonish you gently, and yet come to your rescue whenever you're in trouble.

My recent life had only been an attempt to be a magnanimous and generous lover, but now I see how short - sighted I had been. Relationships, like much of life, need much investment. Good relations probably have lots of patience. When one wraps love in these layers, that is where it starts becoming companionship for me. My thoughts on this subject are still evolving, and I'll post next when I've matured my thoughts a bit further.