January ends tomorrow and, regrettably, I have not achieved much by way of dissertation writing, or even having fun. I have lived most of this month without my 2020 perspective (see what I did there? 😉 ), and have been facing, not very well, the resurfacing of old fears and anxieties about the future, including wondering about what in the world I’m going to do to earn an adequate living. The test of my (privileged) pandemic-life endurance will probably come this year, unlike most people, for whom it came last year. I’m always late for everything 
This is the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing my family. I’m now positively aching for a few cafe days, or even a cappuccino. A bus journey. Airports and airplanes. I miss Delhi, and walking around CP. I miss walking around my favourite Kolkata neighbourhoods. I miss Dakshineshwar.
I’m wondering, again, whether my creative plans and ambitions are foolish and unreasonable. I’m wondering where all my confidence in my abilities came from last year. I’ve been almost self-flagellating myself back into my auqaat.
But what even is anybody’s auqaat if not the expanse of the entire universe itself? We take up the space we think we deserve, and it’s okay to be reminded every now and then of just how fiercely our little selves try to limit us. Being confronted by the limitless expanse that is freely available to our selves can be frightening. Illogically so (one would imagine that we’d grasp happily at limitless growth!), but for most of us, inevitable. The older I grow, the better I understand why the caged bird hesitates to leave the safety and familiarity of the open cage.
Many years ago, in my early twenties, before I knew my mind and inner world adequately, I was once frightened by a reaction I had while facing the expanse of the sea from the beach, waves lapping at my knees. As I looked at the horizon, my friends some distance away having a whole lot of fun in the surf, on a beach where we were the only ones there, along with a few fishermen, I realised I had a strong, strong desire to keep walking further and further into the sea. In that moment, it frightened the hell out of me, because obviously, endlessly walking into the sea would produce death. Did this mean I was suicidal??
Now I know that it was the very opposite; far from being a death wish, it was a yearning for the eternal, a desire to merge into the infinite- physically embodied sometimes by oceans and mountains and skies- is the natural response of the soul that sometimes expresses itself in us, despite ourselves.Whether we are alive to the presence of that eternal, unchanging soul or not. We keep seeking many things in life, but nothing satisfies fully, short of the merging into the infinite.
I take hope in the knowing that our fleeting glimpses and experiences of the limitless expanse and the infinite, and every soul’s deep desire for it, means that we will continue struggling against shrinking ourselves into sizes we think we ought to be. Sometimes we’ll be able to struggle harder, sometimes the fight will be weaker; but, enticed by what lies at the end of it, on we’ll keep struggling, and on and on. And in so doing, realise that joy is threaded to the process itself, and is not withheld till the finish line.
I’m now one month behind on the two chapter deadline, and frightfully behind on multiple household tasks. However, perhaps I can take comfort from the fact that even though I’m not writing as fast as I need to, whatever I have written, I’m satisfied with. And that it is already longer than I thought these two chapters would be. It is fruitless to be impatient with myself and frightened when I’m unable to stick to the timelines I need to. I have to have faith that the writing will flow in its own good time, and that whatever time I have left is always going to be the time I need.