How often is writing the observing of the observed and the observer? I wonder about the process and now the tumult that is in my head as I am trying to make sense of my research and getting to start to write my thesis.

I have been fence sitting to be honest, going around in circles of a task that is incumbent upon me. It is like I am always thinking about writing but not writing.

It sure worries my guide, and I see that in her.

It sure worries me too, yet I stand and watch how the process unfolds to get me to the stage of putting it out on paper.

A task so humungous that I am surprised I have come this far. A subject so dear that as I go about talking and reading I am caught deeper in its whirlpool and seem to meander about clueless of where I am heading.

It has been frightening, as if this last leg of the journey rather than being exciting, has been intimidating to me, scaring me of something I am not very sure of.

And the incessant call of the stories swimming around in the air I breathe, asking me to listen, just listen and speak, as if there are myriad souls wanting to find an intermediary, a voice, but am I good enough for that? And the work of course, with multiple excels that need submission almost on hourly basis, and my fear of anything numerical compounding my worries to no end.

I feel tossed and turned like a pendulum swinging against extremes, trying to hold my stance, worried, yet somewhere a feeling of satisfaction creeps in, as if the process painful as it is is also one of deep joy, that I should have the comfort of worrying about writing and not perhaps putting food on the table, that’s is a state of achievement in itself. A feeling that the worst is behind me keeps the smile stitched on the face.

Knowing the paths that have led me this far, I know of the learnings that have stood me in good stead and the friends that I have found on the way, and if death had to stop by and call, I would say happily, come, let’s go, I have done my part though of course, I could do more. Which of us can’t or won’t want to do more.

I seek the comfort of knowing that the the universe, sits by my side and eggs me to complete the learning process that I started before I jump headlong into the next.

I seek the presence of a soul for whom my learning was a ticket to a better life, though he chose a different path and left too early to another home, perhaps a better one, and gave me enough fodder to keep learning forever.

I look at my parents for whom my efforts at learning is a validation, being taunted for not learning enough in life, and living in a certain shame, which try as I do, they cannot seem to overcome, ‘after all we didn’t study beyond 10 th std’ is now replaced with amma’s constant crib, ‘if only I had the opportunity to learn’! to which I have no answer.

I look at her wilful spirit that recites a poem now and then, that learns sanskrit shlokas and talks with pride of the book I brought out and I have to smile, living as I do carrying the dreams of two in one life, that of my brother and mine, and sometimes tiring out in the labour of it all, yet finding strength as if from above.

I look at my daughter for whom it is ‘important to see you happy, ma and I know you can do it’.

So long, to my PhD Thesis writing, I bow and seek blessings from the universe and somehow deep down know that she says, ‘thathastu’.