My Sabbatical From Suck

(Hopefully a) Prologue

I’m not naturally a negative person. I can see a cloud with a silver lining in a clear, sunny sky. Ask anyone who knows me.  So it would have been an easy thing – once I embarked on my indeterminate number of months-long sabbatical – to write a blog about what an amazing, life-transforming experience it was. But all of us already have insecure, narcissistic Facebook friends who try to make us feel bad about our mundane lives by posting pictures of the fabulous things they’ve been getting up to. You don’t need more of that from me or from this blog. This blog won’t make you feel bad about your lives.

This is a feel-good blog. It will make you feel good if you enjoy reading about other people’s misfortunes. Especially tiresome people, who take sabbaticals, fuelled by a spiritual awakening and LOVE. You know they only do it so that an innocuous question about how they met their partner can be turned into a dinner-long monologue about their amazing life and relationship. You know they’re going to repeat the same story at all dinners for the rest of their lives.

So if you’ve been looking for an antidote to Eat, Pray Love. For a tale of someone who chucked everything to chase love and to perhaps find himself but instead, between Delhi’s heat and a lover’s deception, he lost his appetite and prayed for a quick way to end the sabbatical that had sucked right from the first day. Well then this is the blog for you.

Or at least that was the plan when I started writing this a few months ago, on a luxury bus to Dharamsala as it lumbered through the darkness over an unapologetically unpaved, unlit national highway. (If having the Dalai Lama traverse a road a few thousand times cannot inspire a government to pave it, then nothing will.)

I was resolved to recount to you, dear reader, everything that went wrong on my trip. To see every glass as at least half if not fully empty. To forget not a single, unpleasant happening - not the inconvenience of missed flights or the incontinence of queasy stomachs; not hours spent in traffic jams or days spent wallowing in self-pity.   

And I shall still try to do it. But it will no longer be a spiel of unrelenting despair as the one I’d hoped to write. You see, my ambitions of writing an uncompromisingly negative narrative were constantly derailed by family and friends, old and new. As a collective bunch they insisted on inviting themselves to every step of my (mis)adventure – and constantly showering me with such badly disguised love and support that it was difficult to sustain a crabby mood for very long.

They let my dog trample and shed over their beds and couches simply because they’d seen him sprawl on my furniture in Facebook pictures. They played Santa Claus on a grand scale – offering me the use of their fantastically-located, furnished South Delhi home and automatic cars and then tearing up checks I made out to thank them in a small way. They booked bus tickets for me when I had the desire but not the energy to figure out how to get to the mountains. They called and messaged me from across 6 or 12 time zones to make sure I wasn’t down or if I was, to determinedly drag me up. Drove twenty kilometres on a scooter through rush hour traffic so I could have 3G on my phone enabled a day or two sooner. Demanded an explanation for my skipping meals. Let me traipse in without notice and request sliced mangoes and three-egg omelettes for brunch. Bought beds on Craigslist (yeah there’s a context to that that makes sense). Went to the same sites for the fourth time so I would have company for my first time (Even Bali must get boring after the third time!) and then insisted on paying for the trip. Set me up with eligible bachelors. Showered me with professional contacts so I could find a job I liked in India and in SF. Didn’t get upset when I reached out to only a fraction of those contacts. Involved me in writing and marketing projects. Invited me to their homes and insisted I stay - in Faridabad, Chhatarpur, Vasant Kunj, Mayur Vihar, Safdarjung Enclave, Gurgaon. In Jaipur, Bombay, San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale, DC, New York and Jakarta. 

Listened to me for hours even - actually especially - when I wasn’t my most entertaining, attractive self. Cooked Goan curries and roasted whole chickens for me. Drank with me. Gave me Reiki. Meditated with me.

But there I go missing the dark clouds for the silver lining. Let me practice looking at this with a jaundiced eye. It isn’t hard to do – it’s just a different way of looking at things, right? Just needs a little practice. Here goes:

So basically - at the end of nearly five months off, I’m certifiably single, still without the perfect job, separated from my beloved dog, with considerably lighter pockets and all I have to show for it is the knowledge that there are people scattered across the globe who love me lots and love me back? Dear Universe, I kinda knew that already. Clearly, this sabbatical sucked.  I'll try and do a better job of proving it in future posts. 

And given a chance, I shall do my bit to make sure my friends' and family members' future sabbaticals will suck too.

Sounds of laughter, shades of life Are ringing through my open ears

Inciting and inviting me

Limitless, undying love, which Shines around me like a million suns

It calls me on and on across the universe

****
From the poem Across the Universe by John Lennon