The Graphic Designer Episode

Sometimes when I sit back and think about life, I find myself to be a rock star. Sure, its in my head. But when I get objective about it, I figure I am actually a pretty cool loser. 

 

Once a while, there is something beautiful about not getting what you want.

As a child I wanted to be a road roller driver. I was fascinated by the road roller. As I grew up a bit I wanted to be a wife. I thought that was an occupation. Sooner than you can think, I figured it wasn’t. Now that I know better I changed my mind back. Turns out, it is a full time occupation after all and for being the best at it, I salute my mother. But I definitely didn’t want that for an occupation anymore. For starters I didn’t want to compete with her. I am a cool loser. I am not stupid. Either way I'm happy I got neither. 

 

I am from a small town in India with a very patriarchal family. When the realization struck that I didn’t want to be a wife for occupation purposes, it struck pretty hard. So much so that, it became the very reason I became anything at all. I literally did everything I could to make sure I wasn’t made a wife. I thought if I didn’t do something or the other at any or all points of time, my father would get me married. He won't admit to it now but I think he probably would. So I did all kinds of courses, classes & jobs just to make sure marriage stayed off the cards. 

 

Moving ahead I got pretty good at biology and I wanted to be a doctor. Yeah I know that’s like saying I was good at eating so I wanted to be a cow. But I had a whole other hurdle. 

I have a serious phobia for needles. Yeah, you want to see me ball like a child, come with me for my yearly blood tests. And you thought, I work out and drink ginger water to keep fit? Ha!

 

Well I obviously didn’t become a doctor. I was looking for an easy way out. Something simple where I didn’t have to work too hard or study too much. So I landed up becoming a producer. Now I don’t work hard at all. I just wake up at 3 am in the morning and work till 2 am in the night. It all worked out pretty well that way. 

This is what my job looks like. Comfortable seating, the earth for an office and a rather large phone. 

But you see, my personal life didn't really have that detailed a route down to settlement and peace. I have my head to blame for that. I cannot really tell you what my head is like. But think of it like a pit stop on the Mumbai – Pune expressway. It never sleeps. At any point of time there are more than a million thoughts. Some on the move, some parked, some are not able to escape because I haven’t cleared their bills, some are waiting for change, some are just ignored since all the brain cells are busy serving other thoughts. Some quickly come & go. Some just decide to settle down and do business there. Like open a coffee shop or a tire shop. 

 

But for sometime, I did have some calm. It was sudden, it was momentary but I'm happy it was there. In this super busy pit-stop, one fine day a person walked in. Haven’t you had a vision of something perfect for you? That office, that shoe, that cat. Of course it evolves very much like the road roller driver ambition. This time funnily it was a graphic designer. No, I didn’t want to become one, I just happened to like one. Relish it because that’s the only one specific I am going to let out. 

 

So this amazing person was simply a pain in the ass. Oops. Maybe that's the second specific. I know what you are thinking, I am lying, he must have been client-servicing. I assure you there can be rather painful people in the world who are not client servicing. Rare but possible. 

 

Anyhow, he got transformed into a thought in the pit stop that stayed. Waiting patiently for my other brain cells to attend to him. Given how bright I am; it took me a year to get to him. But better late than never right? So after almost a year I landed up asking him out for dinner. And suddenly my entire pit-stop of a brain lit up like that old fragile granny’s “bijli” moment in the movie Swadesh accompanied by Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony. All my thoughts were suddenly dressed in soldier uniforms. What? Don’t judge. World around, people celebrate in weird ways. 

Here’s the funny thing about good things. The ‘good thing’ itself is not really the ‘good thing’. It’s the feeling leading up to it that’s the good part. You live and revel in the anticipation of it’s arrival.  

 

This is where I would usually go terribly wrong. The road roller driver or the doctor version of me would crank up a picture of this person in my head and make a whole big deal of him even before I got to it. When he didn’t turn out to be this amazing person from my head, I would get disappointed and the world order would follow. But hey, I can be foolish only for so many years right?

 

Now that I am wise, none of that happened. We simply had dinner. A rather long one. And then in intervals of 3 and 4 weeks, we had many more required or un-required meals. It was pretty amazing; I have to admit. No, I wasn’t wrong about him being a pain. That he is. But I am weird too. So something hit for me. But unfortunately the hit wasn’t in the same plane for the both of us. No melodrama here. I was not head over heels in love or anything. But I just really liked something about  him and wished for a chance to explore it more is all. Ah.. well, life decided otherwise so my thoughts slowly and steadily changed back from the soldier uniform to casuals. Actually when I think about it maybe one stayed in the soldier uniform just because...

 

I sound like a really old grandmother narrating a really boring story with no point whatsoever to a very dull child. So be it. I think about him sometimes. For no reason really. I pick up the phone to call him or text him just to say hi but I eventually don’t. I have no idea why. But this rather boring story is one of my coolest loser stories. I didn’t get the guy and have a melodramatic ending like most of my other stories that end with me and Lionel Richie in bed for 3 days. I don’t know what it is about him. Maybe his pain in the wrong places, somewhat composed, annoying and simply complicated personality but something about him made me want to be gracious about everything to do with him. I mean you should see my messages to him. I used vocabulary that had words like innuendo. Until then I had no idea how good my vocabulary actually is. Well it’s not a story really because you see, it didn’t actually start. But he is good memories. Happy memories. 

 

It’s been years. He’s long gone. Oh! lord no, not dead. Just gone from the usuals of my life. But there is something that he has left behind. Even with my great vocabulary I am not able to put words that really explains it. It’s a kind of happy-sad-peaceful feeling. It would be nice to get more time before he had to go but it's not like all is lost. I did get something else in return. There is this peaceful feeling whenever he comes to mind. It’s momentary. It goes more than it stays but in my otherwise super busy vada-pav selling pit stop of a brain, very few things bring calm. He is one of them.

 

And if you think, I calmed down after that for life, you got that totally wrong. With the very next guy I went back and met Lionel Richie in bed for 3 days. There was nothing calm about the next one and I was back with my old friend melodrama pretty quickly. But the graphic designer's calm somehow stayed on and became a part of my life. And that’s why I think I am a rock star. Just when I learn something and show some sign of maturity, I do find a way to take it right back. It’s my super power really to make good and bad choices and then spend a bunch of time correcting the bad ones and relishing the good ones. 

 

But that's just life. Isn’t it? 

Some drama and some calm. 

Picture Courtesy : Imran Shaikh