Bits and Bobs, a.k.a., the Miscellanies
On Life, the Universe, and Everything
Ten days ago, I entered the year of enlightenment. Assuming Adams got it right, this year I will find the answer.
Over the last couple of years, both G and I have been coming to terms with the costs associated with trying to improve our physical quality of life. What all we are giving up (rather, have given up), just to be able to breathe clean air, not be sick all the time, being able to walk around, having to deal with lesser population densities and associated competition for resources, etc.
And what have we given up? The sense of society. Belonging. The insider feel.
A recent interview with Ai Weiwei triggered this current bout of reflection. One thing he said really hit home—living in Germany for a decade, he never got invited to anyone’s house for a meal. If I had read this interview back in India, I would have attributed this to the famed Northern European individualism. But sadly, this is so true in Cape Town as well. Barely marginally better.
In the eight years (two in and out, and six full time) that we have been in Cape Town, we have been invited to six people’s homes for meals. Out of them, two sets of people we knew from India, and one set we get invited to when common friends from India visit. In the six birthdays I have had while at my current workplace, I have been wished once by one colleague—in contrast, colleagues from my first job nearly 20 years back, who I haven’t seen in person for more than a decade, still drop a birthday wish.
Fine, being invited to someone’s home and being wished for birthdays might require passing certain social criteria. What about meeting outside of homes socially? More often than not, such queries begin with the opening of calendar apps.
…we all profess to “study” informality, but there is no informality in any of our interpersonal interactions.
It’s all well and good. We had a premonition of what we were in for when we packed up our lives and moved here. We wanted some peace and quiet. We got that. We have made a few good friends. But sometimes, especially when going through some dark moments, it really hurts that one needs to think a second time before trying to speak to someone. Will they be comfortable being approached on such matters, is the first thought that comes to mind.
Even if one forgets the norms, overlooks that first doubt, and initiates the reaching out process, there is but one or two people who will not open their calendar app first.
That, perhaps, is the true cost of not being told that you need a nose job to deal with cray cray AQI.
And then there is the fascination with titles. The “oh, you’re doing a PhD” being equal to “you must be 20 something years old” phenomenon. Do those two letters prefix to one’s name actually change one’s life? There is (/was) no respect for being an older doctoral researcher, the assumption typically has been that like the majority, you too must be fresh out of an undergraduate and masters programme, never having worked in your life.
I get it. There’s the career of a full-time academic. That involves a certain pathway and progression, and playing certain games. God forbid there’s someone who might be trying to make a career change. (Or, like me, trying to escape the real world and seeking refuge in the academia bubble.) Instead of trying to understand and characterise that outlier, it’s easier to just assume that the outlier is the same as the mean. Makes the application of the game-rules easier.
Perhaps this is just the regress-to-the-mean ideology at play.
Understandable, but it still does pinch. Especially when the age factor locks one out of the younger crowd, and the student status locks one out of the age group.