Turning Twenty-Five

"You need to continue your career in research, pursue a PhD from a great institution, become a leading expert in a physical science, guide a lot of people, and bring praise to your family and country. But before you start, you must get married, otherwise, it'll be too late says the astrologer", explains my grandmother.

'Twenty-five and settled' was the vision I had when I was fifteen, preparing for entrance exams in my last years of school: 'Go to one of the premier institutes, land a job that pays in the millions, and one day come down to the basement of my apartment with my best friend, take him to a brand new sportscar, and throw a bunch of keys at him across the low-lying body, watch his jaw drop to his hands and tell him, "Machan, nee edra vandiya (You take the wheel)".'

I could hear the car rev in my dreams (Vrrrrr). It was enough motivation to go through the soulless grind of preparing for an entrance exam, although I also enjoyed discovering dormant talents and areas of my personality. It was a crutch for me to rise up to a challenge. It made me study hard, but once I got where I wanted... *poof*. The dream slate was clean. This was the last time I had a vision of being 'settled' at any time in my adult life.

The purpose of the dream was never in its fulfillment, it was to trigger a passionate attempt to 'shoot for the stars'. Like all such periods of intense passion, it simply carried me to another point in life and completely changed me.

I feel like my life is exactly that. Whenever I've had a strong sense of purpose, I've dived into it and let it take me where I want to go, but the closer I got, the farther I strayed off the path to fulfilling my initial desire. By that time, my interests changed, my purpose changed, and the journey of life kept going on. That naive fifteen-year-old survives in me now, in my starry eyes, ready to unleash love and sacrifice himself for passion. He sees different, feels different, but he sees and feels just as much and more. I have betrayed his dreams but not his ability to dream.

Three days before I turned twenty-five, while I was out exploring a festival in rural India, a heavy blanket fell on my high spirits. Memories of love from a long time ago sneaked in through the noise of my mind, and a hush fell through. A familiar sense of loss emerged from the silence to weigh me down. Sounds from a past life cracked through like a broken tape recorder, with no way for me to choose what I want to hear. Snippets of conversations in a language I have half-forgotten, jokes passed with people I might never meet again, the laughter of best friends made continents away, loud silences that hung above sparkling alpine lakes, all hung in the hallway of thought like windchimes - clashing against one another in a sudden wind of nostalgia.

Then surfaced more thoughts on a different 'career', different life I have left behind. A more comfortable life abroad, more easily rewarding; where mistakes are not as costly, and even welcome in the laboratories of academia, and life is engineered carefully for the benefits to last a lifetime and beyond.

As I slowly sunk into these swirling emotions, a new wave of frustration grew in me. At the festival, I found myself strangely hindered. The experience knocked me over, and I could not find any way to express my experience through words or photographs. And for the first time since starting to do both seriously, I was dealing with the ethics and principles of being politically sensitive in the process of storytelling. It dawned on me more vividly that it would take me perhaps years to produce any meaningful work, I had so much to learn and see. I had to figure out my principles and grow from the very ground up.

And there lay a monster, a corruption - a desperation to do well. A desire to be good enough not to get somewhere I want, but 'to be able to get anywhere I want'.

This desperation was simply one side of a coin - the other side being fear. Fear of facing the consequence of being bad, of losing social status, of not getting anywhere, of time running out and chances slipping by. Abstractions of the mind arising from a weakness of the ego trying to stay comfortable and preserve itself.

The minute I realized both sides of this coin, I knew what I had to do. All of these abstractions had to stop. All of this noise had to die so I can tune in to the silence all around me right there. I dropped my desperate ego, and let it shatter into pieces. I had done this before and with this familiar feeling, a familiar voice rang through -

"What measure is there, other than the fact that at one point in your life, you trusted a feeling?" - Philip Guston

A stream of tears rolled down my cheeks. The richness of this one moment - to have scaled mountains before, only to restart all over again; to have the chance to go back into the inviting arms of friends eagerly waiting to take me back; to have people know I'm good at something else I no longer have the heart to do; to have it all on one side and still cross that bridge to feel utterly insignificant in this empty field in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by no loved ones, unable to say a single word, watching birds fly in rounds under cloudy skies, like the thoughts in my mind; to smell the sugarcane fields and the approaching rain; to feel mud under my feet and the sweaty itch on my neck from the summer heat of 'home' - this is all I have.

This is everything I want out of life. To be reminded that intensity of life always comes at the expense of self. To feel so keenly alive by dying to the moment. To feel a shot of vitality and strength in my blood, surging through my veins.

Now I have aged backward. I am physically, mentally stronger and more agile than I have ever been in my life. My hardships in life have been trivial, paltry, but I am not protecting myself out of fear of larger ones. At a point where the norm is to build a comfortable facade around my ego, I am on a quest of tearing down every single illusion I have lived with so far.

There's a world waiting on the other side of this bridge I have crossed. It's clear. Laid out. Pristine. Comfortable. As good as a still painting.

Dead.

On this side is a breath. An empty canvas that I know will wipe itself clean the minute I look away - the conspiracy of all things alive and uncertain.

Everything that can be said, has already been said, already been said.

Every kind of life desired has already been lived within other lives, within other lives.

I don't know if it's a great life, but I know that it is life. Never have I been more sure of this path.

Now let me set fire to this bridge.

What is youth But the hiss Of an ice-cold truth Meeting Fire in the blood?