Table For One
By: Ravneet Bawa
Tags: Sabbatical, Writing, Reflections, Life, Life Choices

Photo by Adam Jaime on Unsplash

If you don’t already know this, then you should that I have been on what one book calls a radical sabbatical this year. I quit my job in May and against all sane advice, and my own jittery gut, decided to not go immediately back into another one. It is true that while like most other people, I moderately cribbed about my day job and had several, if-only-I-wasn’t-working-I-could-have moments on a regular basis, I hadn’t really planned on quitting. But once I had put in my papers, almost in an overnight decision, the only choice I had was to look ahead and ask, “What next?” In time though, I came to be wary of that question. I resented me asking it of myself. I also began to resent people asking it of me. Part of the reason I guess was that I did not have a plan. But a large part of the answer was also that there was almost this expectation of a neat, peer group acceptable answer that if I did not have, I was somehow failing in some unspoken post MBA, feminist pact of being an independent working woman. It took some heft on my end to get out of that mindset and focus on what I wanted to do — which was to meander. To just be. All those if-only-I-wasn’t-working moments? I told myself that I am not sure if there will be another good time to give everything a shot. To see what I do with my time and energy, when I have full control over both.

There are several (several) days, when I have woken up and felt all ugh. But when I sit down and reflect on everything I have been able to do, I know it has been worth it. It is an year where I travelled four ways — with my parents, with my husband and my daughter, with my closest friend and alone with strangers I had never met before. It was an year in which I woke up everyday and read random research reports about the state of world happiness, loneliness and about institutionalizing kindness for hours at a time. It was an year of flirting with the idea of a second masters degree. It was the year of working on three separate business cases. It was an year of talking to investors and therapists. It was an year of interviewing for an entrepreneurship incubator and failing. It was an year of reading 30 books.

It was an year of finally compiling my poetry in one volume, picking up scraps from all my old blogs, from notes on my phone, from my writing notebooks over the years. It was the year of reading my poems on the mic, in Kohima, in a cafe full of people I barely knew. It was an year of taking art walks through galleries in South Mumbai. An year of watching plays alone. It was an year of several solo lunches. I overheard people talk, listened in on life unfolding around me and marvelled at how bizarre the world is when you care to look.

It was an year of beginning singing lessons. An year, in which I tried the martial art of Kalari. It was an year of curating a gender conversation platform talking about the art of personal narrative. It was the year of taking a workshop on writing memoirs. It is also the year of watching all the episodes of all the seasons of one series — Mad Men. It was the year I attempted and completed Inktober — a comic panel sketch every day for 31 days. It was the year of connecting with art and artists and learning that what they don’t teach you in large, brick and mortar offices is courage.

It was the year I read the seminal “A Room of My Own”. It was also the year I finally had a room of my own. It was the year of succeeding at building a meditation routine. It was the year of developing an idea for a children’s newspaper. It was the year I discussed Partition with 7 year olds and came away feeling that the one thing they don’t need is adults. It was the year I journalled regularly — even when I did not know what else to do, I opened the diary and wrote till I felt empty. It was the year of noticing my dreams because I kept a dream diary. It was the year of writing.

Thirty thousand words.

It was the year I saw my daughter grow. I noticed the curl of her lashes, the mole on her chin. Her brown knees. I saw her blush when Monica and Chandler kissed. The year she said to me, “I didn’t know you could cook.” It was the year when we sat down for evening chai, Sujit and I, only one of us was stressed. It was the year I remembered what he wore to work that morning, the year I noticed how subtly his wardrobe had moved to solids, his beard had sprouted grey.

It was the year I had time for friends, I could listen. I really could without needing to immediately tell them how fucked up my life was. Because it wasn’t. I learned someone else’s misery is not made better by your own, it is made better by giving them the space to be miserable. By letting them feel and exhaust the emotion.

You know what else I realised? Money validates our mediocrity. And by corollary, the absence of money makes us feel worthless. So when you do something for the pronounced joy and satisfaction it affords you, it is easy to succumb to the thought that it is meaningless unless someone pays you for it. It is only when you separate meaning from money, when you allow yourself to fully feel the emotion and acknowledge that it may be an unpaid, unrecognised, unpopular choice or action — but it is yours, and of this meandering you will find one path, then next, and even if you get lost, you would have seen a path you didn’t know existed. That is when you feel wholly free.

Toward the second half of the year, I knew that the question, “So what do you do?” is entirely unavoidable. And I prepared an answer that worked well, I would say, “I don’t know what I do but I can tell you what I have been doing today?”

We deny our multiple selves, because several of them don’t add up in the linear mathematics of how the world works. But when you step out of that equation, when you say I exist outside of how you define I should, that is when you can walk up to a fine dining restaurant on a sunny Friday afternoon, and confidently say, “Table for one”.