Back to where it makes sense: Does it? (Monday, August 20, 2007)

I have fought the battle against my own wish, not to go, the urge to take the next flight to Calcutta from Bangkok after reading a letter.

Now I am returning my abode (can’t call it a home still) after a long day in the sprawling campus with red buildings contrasting the green grass and trees. I have debated to those issues that I always wanted to. I am with those who value my thinking rather than my position, yet when I see the Peet’s coffee my instinct tells me not to buy it. Perhaps the best brewed coffee is sold a mile from my abode and I refuse to buy it. Even a few months back I would have spent anything for a pack of Peet’s, but suddenly (not so sudden), the meaning of coffee transformed. Drinking coffee is something like success, where its true laurels are found being with those that matter. And now as the bus takes turn from the Business School towards the house I see children play, friends saying bye with the promise to meet up for the evening beer and the couples fighting and sharing their struggle, I ask what constitutes happiness?

When I was working with Frost, AMI I cursed each day of my life where nothing made sense; reporting to intellectually challenged individuals, applauding the galactically stupid postulations and come home exhausted, sleep and live for another day. But then, those who mattered were just a phone call away. The friend of seventeen years, the buddy who saw through my sketches, and the one who listens to all my tribulations 24*7. Now I am in a place where I am not judged whether I am wearing my tie, if my shirt is ironed and starched, and the looks of the powerpoint rather than the elegance of the solution, yet when the sun rises, when it hides behind the clouds, when it sets, when the evening engulfs the sun, I think what have I done? There is so much I wish to say…face to face.

I wish to talk about the beauty of the campus, I wish to speak on the droplets on the leaves …but I can’t. So what do I do with a pack of Peet’s? I touched the pack, squeezed and smelt the fresh beans and in a split second I was reminded of what’s not with me. Peet’s back to the shelve.