Still Just A Boy

 This weekend, I binged on the show Ghar Waapsi, which tells the story of a 28-year old Product Manager in Bangalore who loses his job and therefore returns home to Indore for a few months. This forced return home made him reflect on how much he was leaving behind in pursuit of his so-called dreams. The joys and sorrows of being with family. The leisurely pace of life. The friends and social networks who show up for you no matter what. It was a simple and straightforward story of coming back home.

The show unearthed some emotions that I had hidden deep within me. I left home slightly earlier than most of my peers, when I decided to stay back in Delhi for my twelfth grade while my parents moved to Kolkata after my father's retirement. Since then, I have only twice spent an extended period of time with my parents - once between college and my first job, and the second after that job and before going to England for my post graduation.

More importantly, I chose a path that saw me hit the heights of academic success, but involved me changing my emotional DNA. I became obsessed with success, and I embraced the cycles of emotional turbulence it brought with it. This emotional turbulence, in turn, saw me raise emotional barriers that neither my parents nor anyone else could scale. With a single-minded devotion to my career advancement, I did not invest similar energy in my familiar relationships. I let my introversion run amok, and let many of these relationships wither away.

When I watched the show, however, I realised that somewhere under the hard exterior I always maintain, there's deep emotional vulnerability.There's still just a boy - one who feels that he moved forward way too fast, who would rather spend a leisurely weekend with family than live his corporate life from weekend to weekend. I am not sure who I am. At times, I feel I really enjoy my work because I find meaning in it. That is how I breezed through the pandemic-related lockdowns, in fact.

But another part of me worries that this is not enjoyment, it is obsession. The same obsession with success that caused the earlier emotional issues I just spoke about. Somewhere along the way, I fear that I've lost sight of who I truly am. I yearn for the innocence of my childhood. I crave the little joys that used to fill my otherwise mundane life. I think of the late 1990s as some glorious, idyllic time. An occasional samosa takes me back to when I used to walk to the shop and get samosas for the entire family. Fish curry takes me back to visits to my relatives' homes.

Recently, I met many relatives and family friends after a long time at my brother's wedding. It was like a little time capsule - uncles and aunties who I hadn't met in years. My heart filled up with warmth at their sight. Mishra uncle and aunty, at whose home I had spent many weeks after I returned to Delhi from Vizag in 2003. Or Yeolekar uncle and aunty, with whom I have early memories of travelling to Rajasthan. Arun Kumar uncle and his wife, who still tell me stories of how I used to ring the phone of their house.

While I'm sure I'm far from the only one to experience such nostalgia, I worry that I am hurtling away at rapid pace from all vestiges of that life. I am continuing with the single-minded obsession with success, and not making any effort to retain the bonds that defined my growing up years. I form deep but nonetheless transitional friendships at work, and keep moving from one to another. In summary, I feel very worries that all those aspects of my life that made me happiest will not be part of my future.

I remind myself that there is still time. I can still go visit my elderly uncle and aunt who live in the same city. I can still pick up the phone to call my old friends and family. I can still put myself in places where I make friends outside of work. But I don't. I keep continuing down this path of chasing something at work; in life. And while I'm tired of chasing, I'm addicted to it to. Only when the pursuit of happiness becomes as important to me as the pursuit of success - only then, perhaps, will I find what I am looking for.