Writing is serious commitment. And the events of March 2009 killed any little trace of that commitment that I might have had. I re-located but for a while I remained moored to the shores that my body had left. It all sounds very strange. But truth is often cheesy, shitty and nausea inducing. However, I believe I have moved on. Not that there isn't that occasional incising pain, but I treat as a remnant of an operation that was not performed properly. So, here I am, in the US of A, a doctoral student. A couple of years (hopefully) from having alphabets before and after my name. I remember that afternoon at the British Council Library, Kolkata when promises were exchanged, this is what I had wanted. It was all uncertain, but this was it. And here I am living it now and boy isn't it god-awful at times. I curse myself, but at the next moment as I get engrossed in understanding what some theorist, researcher, someone has said in some part of the world and how that is shaping the way I feel about my world and surroundings, I feel a strange calm. I don't know if it is natural. But, I feel mighty good.
I have traveled a bit in these last two years. Have seen a few more things in this planet of ours, which still remains (contrary to technical claims and thanks to border control) rather large for me. Traveling is good, I enjoy it and my only hope and wish is that I can keep earning enough so that I can keep traveling all my life. Work (if I land up with a job that is) will no doubt get in the way. And that is precisely why I want to continue in academia. The pay is shit and you will not drive a fancy car (well unless of course you are saving the world's future by depleting its present resources as scientists often do) or have a palatial home, but you will get summers off. And thanks to conferences and the need to go to them to get and give slaps on the backs (both the sexual and the "bravo, well done" kind), you will see new places and hopefully the university will foot the bill. So, when I get a job, hoping that I will, I can say that I have chosen wisely. Till then, I will drink seven cups of coffee everyday, go to bed at 3 in the morning, drink cheap alcohol and forget the meaning of the word breakfast. And yeah read 200 pages every 3 days and write about 100 once every six months and wank my dick off while hoping to get laid (being a single graduate student is particularly miserable). Ah well, the usual bitterness has crept into this note. I was seriously hoping to take it toward a positive direction but that seems to be difficult given the circumstances.
Will think of something along those lines the next time I write, which will be (one can only hope) soon.
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