Valence Electrons

           

                         Apart from the chilling winter evenings, I am fond of Decembers as we tend to ponder upon all the previous months; collating incidents, vacations, new jobs & coming a full circle.The year 2018 will be thought of as the time when I was trying to hold on to a naive person running around, attending weddings, stressing over shopping and then waking up at 6 am like an adult to go to work. When I asked myself if I have truly entered adulthood, there was no clear answer. While we still remember the college jokes, plan to have that Iced tea near hostel and make time for the night outs; we prefer walks, less of weed, long talks & going to make-believe parties to wash off the office madness that grinds us every week.  

                                     It has been a year of holding on to who I was a few years ago and living up to what is expected of me today. Losing a close friend while finding new one's, the void kept getting filled like electrons interchanging places to make a valence bond. When I was leaving Pune earlier this year, I thought I was coming back to fill just one valency; a new job. I was done being the terrain girl, no place for new people and was happy that it would be all mundane after all. I had accepted that slowly,  the radical or irrational part of me will turn into a stable person and saw the hustling or clumsy self fading away. 

        The year gave me so many memories, electrons interchanging & transmitting energies which brought me ideas to write but I never made it to my laptop because I was glued to my work laptop. We all have succumbed to do what's easy and we have grown to love it too. It's easy to complain about a busy schedule & give an excuse. It's easy to take things for granted. It is difficult to be the bigger person and let go if our people hurt us. However, will it not hurt us more when you realize that you could dial up her number but she cant pick up the call any more? The friend who showed you around the city on her Silver Vespa, cursing Mumbai won't have pasta with you in all the Cafes. She can no longer put sense in you in her searing Puneri accent. You will always regret not having the one hour phone call with her one last time. Whom do you go to if your Go-To person disappears? In the world full of Koregaon Park lovers, my friend was a soulful Shivaji Nagar person. An electron lost which will take time to be replaced.

     

      I imagine if there are compartments packed up and labelled in my mind much like a messed up wardrobe. Compartments of me making bold choices, good choices, the last minute trips emptying my pockets, stranded in a jungle with no human contact or network & meeting some people that I never thought would be a part of my life. It is like every compartment or a bin location carrying different stock keeping units (SKU) in a warehouse. Each one unique which demands different energy levels; breaking bonds and forming new one's at the same time in a split second.

I couldn't help but wonder as to what will I make of these compartments in the next year. Maybe they will grow bigger, probably break down the neighboring ones or coalesce and bring out another version. I wish to remember people who made a dent in there by driving up to 120 Kilometers just to help you with something silly, stay with you on the phone while stuck in the traffic for 2 hours, meet up in the ladies room just for a hug amidst the work mayhem. Each one being a special valence electron transmitting energy to keep you going and shouting out loud with you just like Jesse Pinkman did.

Yeah, Science!