Incomplete

Everyone knows that change is hard. People piously talk about how change is the only constant. Most refer to change in the external environment. But what happens when the external world is excruciatingly unchanging, while only your internal world is changing, evolving, expanding, imploding?

Life is still technicolour, its just on slow-motion. That will make any picture seem duller. It’s the flashing lights that make the most lurid images, the ones that flash by just fast enough to evoke a thought or an emotion, before it disappears.

When everything is slower, every step takes longer, all the flaws are exposed. The novelty wears off and even the most sophisticated sonatas will seem mundane. When Covid started, it was a pleasure to slow down, to take a breath, to have time to do nothing. Nearly 2 years on, its hard either way – going back to pre-Covid pace of life seems beyond exhausting, but continuing in the middle lane is boring and somehow still more exhausting.

I used to have 3 weeks a year at “home-home”. Every day, every meal and most interactions with friends and family were vivid and full of detail. The luxury of being here for longer now though doesn’t automatically translate to more of these interactions. I struggle with feeling neglected, like people around me aren’t excited enough that I am here. Is it because I am here for longer, thus time together is easily taken for granted? It could be just that everyone is drained from Covid fatigue. Stepping outside the safe bubble is both exhilarating and deeply stressful. While the numbers in western Europe soar, all naïve daydreams of vaccines ending the pandemic have been shattered. Will we ever be able to join the pieces of our broken lives together?

Previously I used to focus on how much everyone has changed when I came back. I would worriedly look at my parents walk, unconscious movements and conscious complaints and gauge how their physical and mental health has been faring in the 6 months since I’d last seen them. This year I find myself wondering whether my home here was always this loud? Or is it the new constructions around? But what about those annoying neighbours that wake me up with their morning prayer rituals? And those birds seem to have gotten so much louder, cackling every morning on my windowsill. And the heat?! After vehemently scolding anyone who so much as hinted that “India is so hot and humid”, lecturing them about how dry Pune is and how perfect mid-20 degrees Pune weather is in winter, here I am sweating in the top-floor bedroom in 32 degrees and 85% humidity, because I pragmatically told my parents to not install an AC in my room “because I am never there in summer”. Screw global warming!

Things here are the same, but still very different. Slower, but not in the way that I want. After another long and sometimes lonely year, I looked forward to some more action and togetherness. A togetherness that is taken for granted by my family, that was “stuck” together for another difficult year and lockdown. The space they value as they take refuge in their phones and rooms, is the very space that I want to close.  A family vacation that went awry only increased that distance.  A flood divided my partner and me for several months, now it is administrative issues that’s keeping us apart and holding us back. A part of me is always missing, it's always waiting, divided by a continent and an ocean. Until now this feeling was “limited” to friends, which was bad enough. Respite came once a year, but now, it’s been over 3 years since. And now, it’s also with family. The incompleteness, the part that’s missing, that's waiting to be reunited. This time it’s a change in me, that’s overwhelming me.