Tag: Independence

The Two Sides of Quarantine Life

Today marks exactly one month since I have been in self-isolation. Exactly 31 days since I last went out for brunch. 31 days since I sat inside a cute restaurant and ate avocado toast with poached eggs. 31 days since I went to a coffee shop and sat outside in a sun-warmed chair, sipping my cappuccino with the pretty foam art. 31 days since I last browsed in a bookstore and bought yet another cute journal to add to my burgeoning collection. It has also been 31 days since I last saw anyone I know.

The final cappuccino, March 14th 2020

We’re living in rather surreal times these days. The COVID-19 pandemic makes every day feel like a horrifying new episode in a dystopian TV show, where reality and rules shift rapidly. Most of us are cooped up indoors, terrified of this invisible virus that is wreaking havoc around the world. It feels like a zombie movie, except the zombies are too tiny to actually see. I know this situation has been around for a while, but a part of me still can’t believe that this is actually happening. It’s surreal that we’re living through a true global pandemic, with different countries and states implementing quarantines to varying degrees – from total lockdown in India to New York’s PAUSE. I almost feel like Anne Frank, scribbling away and recording all my mundane happenings in the midst of a petrifying period that will go down in history.

I don’t know about you all, but I am vacillating between two very different mindsets here. There have been a lot of changes in my life in the last three months – I graduated and left Weill Cornell, moved out of my beloved Manhattan, applied for jobs, got a job, started a job, got a new apartment in New Jersey, and promptly started working remotely, after a mere two weeks of working in my new office. With the onset of the pandemic, every choice I have made feels weightier, has more severe consequences.

First, my choice of job ensures the ability to work remotely, as opposed to my PhD, in which physical presence in lab was mandatory for any work to get done. The job also ensures that I have an external fixed schedule, with meetings and deadlines – all of which are very helpful in setting up a daily routine (my innate discipline is nowhere up to such a monumental task). Second, my choice of apartment was serendipitous – it happens to be outside New York City, outside the immediate epicenter in the US. My final choice has been to live alone for the very first time in my life. I have spent the last eleven and half years living with roommates, some of whom I’ve loved, and some not so much. I was eager to strike out and live on my own. And now due to the virus, I am all alone in my apartment every single day. These choices have led to a much different lifestyle than I’m used to, and a confusing duality.

One side of my quarantine life is shrouded in fear. I am constantly worried and panicked about what might happen. I am terrified to go to the grocery store. I am too afraid to go for walks, because viruses aside, this is also an unfamiliar neighborhood with no helpful Manhattan-like street grid for navigation. I don’t go anywhere and stay indoors at all times. I am constantly worried about my family and friends, none of whom are immune. I desperately want to keep all my people safe but there’s nothing I can really do, which makes me feel tiny and helpless. I wish I could put everyone in insulated bubbles, safe from the world. Though I guess that’s essentially what we are doing by staying in our homes.

I am also a little worried about the perils of living alone. Sure, it is an empowering sign of independence, but also means that at the end of the day, I need to handle everything on my own. If anything ever happens, nobody else is close enough to help me here. It’s not student housing, so I don’t have my friends living in the same building anymore. Here, I live in an unfamiliar building in an unfamiliar state. I also have new health insurance, new doctors whom I’ve never actually met, in medical centers I have never entered. So all I can do is make sure I stay safe to the best of my abilities. This has led me to wash my hands for so long and so frequently that they are constantly dry and cracking. No amount of hand cream seems to make up for it. I have to mostly fend for myself, food-wise, and that’s not something I enjoy or care to do. I don’t know when I’ll get to see my family. We had plans to meet next month for my PhD convocation, and that is out of the question now. I am worried about the flailing economy and what that could mean for me, now that I have an industry job. And the worst part of all this is the sheer uncertainty. Nobody knows when this will end. When it will go back to normal. If normal is even possible after this. As an obsessive planner, the uncertainty bothers me the most. If I knew that we’d stay in limbo for exactly 3, 6, or even 12 months, I could work with that. I could plan my life around it. But we now live in times where we can make no plans, and the future stretches out in front of us, a gray, bleak cloud with no end in sight.

And yet. Once I take a breath and look for the silver linings, there are plenty to be seen. When I take stock of the situation, I am grateful for everything I have – I know I am privileged in so many ways. Because on the other side of this strange new life, well, living alone for the first time has been pretty incredible. I love having a place that’s just mine. I can furnish it the way I like, organize my things the way I like, and my apartment is exactly as clean or as messy as I like -everything is according to my standards. Nobody else is leaving dirty dishes in my sink, nobody else needs to shower exactly when I want to take a long bath. I can play loud music in the living room while I’m cooking myself dinner. I can talk out loud to myself, put on the silliest karaoke performances, have impromptu dance parties, and once this pandemic is over, have guests over without worrying about inconveniencing any roommates. I have pulled out all my journals and art supplies to start flexing that creative muscle again and am happily binge-watching new movies and shows. I can do as many loads of laundry as I want (having an in-unit washer/dryer feels like the heights of luxury). The lack of commute allows me to sleep in longer (thank goodness, ‘coz mornings are my nemesis). I can use the entire fridge for my food, instead of cramming everything on allocated shelves. I can eat what I want, wear what I want, do what I want, when I want, and there’s nobody to stop me. Living alone is so liberating! I didn’t get enough waking hours in my apartment after I moved in, but now the pandemic has gifted me time to truly enjoy my place. I have an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and I get to see miles and miles of land around me. I get to watch the sunsets, which look a little different every evening. I get to watch all the lights turn on in NYC in the east. I see the clouds scuttling across the skies, rain and storm and sun passing me by. I get to see the ever-changing interplay of shadow and light, and I am wonder-struck at the beauty of the world.

The sunrise over NYC on one of those rare mornings I was awake to witness it

This pandemic is also making me marvel over the power of human connection. I am in awe of how much beauty there is, the strength and resilience of mankind in the face of crisis. You can see it in the little things, of people reaching out to their neighbors, of clapping together, singing together, finding creative ways to reach out and survive this new reality. From old-school phone calls, to video calls, to Zoom happy hours, to Netflix Parties and House Parties -we are finding newer and different ways to connect. There is such beauty in all the ways we cope and talk and laugh, in all the glorious arts we are consuming and creating, in the collective human spirit which is shining so brightly through the darkness and fear.

Having said all that, I am aware that I am one of the lucky ones. There are millions of people who are worse off and can’t stay isolated at home. I am in awe of everyone who is out there, on the front lines, fighting the battle for us all and ensuring that we remain safe. If you are essential personnel, I commend you and thank you – you are our heroes. The rest of us – please let’s all stay inside, stay safe, and stay connected with each other. We’re going to get through this. Take care!

Travel Diaries: Exploring Florence

After falling in love with Lisbon and being shocked by Venice, the next stop on my Euro trip with Swetha was Florence. By the time I left Venice, I was in exceptionally high spirits. We’d figured out how to navigate the cobbled Venetian streets and cross all the beastly bridges, we’d had delicious gelatos at the train station, and we were heading south – which had to be warmer than where we’d just left. We found rather luxurious window seats in the train, and as I pulled out my Kindle, sitting in a warm spotlight of sunlight and watching bright blue skies over bright blue waters – life was pretty great.

Here is the next (long-overdue) chapter of my European adventure:

After falling in love with Lisbon and being shocked by Venice, the next stop on my Euro trip with Swetha was Florence. By the time I left Venice, I was in exceptionally high spirits. We’d figured out how to navigate the cobbled Venetian streets and cross all the beastly bridges, we’d had delicious gelatos at the train station, and we were heading south – which had to be warmer than where we’d just left. We found rather luxurious window seats in the train, and as I pulled out my Kindle, sitting in a warm spotlight of sunlight and watching bright blue skies over bright blue waters – life was pretty great.

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The view from my train seat!

 

When I walked out of the station, I was filled with a wonderful sense of self-confidence and assurance I had never felt in a new place before – this feeling of knowing a place before actually seeing it. It was both exciting and comfortable, without any apprehension or anxiety. Florence was bright and sunlit, there were wide paved streets, I’d already mapped out our 11-minute walk to the hostel, and this time Swetha and I would have an actual room all to ourselves, which we weren’t sharing with four or five other girls. Such luxury! Such excitement! Nothing could ever go wrong.

But of course, we spoke too soon. Three minutes into walking, the handle of Swetha’s much-battered bag broke off.  After bumping our bags up and down the bridges of Venice, this didn’t come as a complete surprise, but it did make our lives harder. Now we were in a new city, facing an additional challenge of repairing or replacing a strolley bag before we left for Rome. While we had two days to deal with that, the immediate problem was of mobility – it was hard enough carting around our many bags while they were all intact. Anyway, this had a straightforward solution – we just hailed a cab to take us to our hostel (unlike Venice, Florence had actual roads and cabs! Already an improvement). We leaned out of the windows and pointed out the sights, the markets, the street artists.

Within no time, the driver dropped us off at the address we had. This turned out to be two imposing doors in dark mahogany, which wouldn’t budge unless we were buzzed in. The guy renting out the apartment was nowhere to be seen, so we waited until some other tenant of the building let us in. Once inside the lobby, we were faced by four long flights of stairs. There was a rickety glass elevator, which we called and called, but wouldn’t come to the ground floor. There was no way our bags would make it up the stairs, and of course none of us had functional phones to call our landlord – all because we decided to go old-school, and didn’t get data packs, or any kind of international roaming. So much for Florence being problem-free.

Eventually hunger won out, so Swetha and I left our bags inside the deserted lobby, pulled the mahogany doors shut, and hurried into the little deli next door. While I ordered some pasta to go, Swetha sought help from the proprietor, who took pity on us and called up our landlord himself. Ultimately, our very first meal in the lovely city of Florence ended up being cold pasta on the stoop of our building – so we could eat, guard our bags, and keep look-out for our landlord, all at the same time!

Finally, finally, we got to check in, the landlord taught us how to operate the elevator (first climb up the stairs to the first floor, call the elevator there, ride it to the ground floor, and THEN put your bags in to take upstairs – how silly of us to assume otherwise!), and we were off.

Our first stop for the day was the church of  Santa Maria del Fiore. Being a close walk from our hostel, Swetha and I just strolled over to the cathedral complex in Piazza del Duomo. The facade of the cathedral looked beautiful, the bell tower stood tall and proud, but we rushed inside, to see the frescos painted on the famed octagonal dome.

A view of the cathedral and the bell tower
Inside the cathedral
The gorgeous Duomo!

 

At this point, Swetha and I had our first disagreement of the trip – she wanted to walk around the streets, and chat with the local artists to get a feel of the real Florence, while I wanted to go the touristy way, and climb all the 463 steps to the top of the Duomo and the viewing gallery outside, to get a panoramic view of the city just while the sun set.

So we agreed to split up, and meet in about 4 hours. Now this may not seem like a big deal, but at this point of time, this was very much out of my comfort zone. I’ve always claimed that I can either explore an unknown setting with at least one known person, or be all alone/with unknown people in a known setting. Wandering around a new city without the only person I knew sounded mighty uncomfortable, especially since we had no working phones to contact each other at any time.

But we did agree to meet up at a specific time, at a very specific location (this Christmas tree located exactly across the basilica entrance), and headed off on our own ways. And as I started climbing up the 463 steps to the top of the Duomo all by myself, I started feeling really good about it. It felt quite empowering  – the realization that I didn’t need company to explore a new city, I could actually just do it on my own.

The climb wasn’t as tiring as I’d expected. Even though the steps were narrow and poorly lit, the occasional glimpses of outdoors were enough to spur me on.

Narrow stairways
The only light
Getting closer!

 

I struck up conversation with other people, tourists and locals alike. One particularly cute Italian guy seemed to find my India – New York – Italy backstory just as fascinating as I found his stories of Dante’s Inferno and the seven levels of hell. So instead of feeling lonely and intimidated, I ended up finding a companion who told me interesting tales, took photos of me (he owned a selfie stick, which I pretended not to judge), and took me out for authentic Italian caffè. That’s a pretty successful outing in my book. Plus, the view from the top of the dome was staggeringly beautiful – it was so worth the climb!

 

The view from the top!
The Campanile

 

And after a few minutes, the whole sky above the Tuscan countryside turned a blazing golden. It literally felt like I was on top of the world.

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After climbing down from the dome, I wandered around on my own, went to the museum near by, and checked out some of the exhibits. I decided to do some shopping – sauntering in and out of shops, buying tiny Italian leather purses, calendars, bookmarks, and magnets. I walked into a store which had an entire Harry Potter display, and squealed with joy –  these kind of things make a new place feel instantly like home. Pottermania is quite universal – although I’d definitely expect it in a city originally called Firenze. 

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By the time I met up with Swetha, we both had lots of tales and photos to share. We had a nice dinner, washed down with a dollop of gelato, and then headed home. While it was pretty great to finally have a room to ourselves which we didn’t have to share with five others, we did realize (after much struggling) that we didn’t really know how to pull the main doors shut and lock them. So we finally settled for locking the inside door, barricading it with a chair and hoping for the best. Pro tip: if you aren’t springing for an expensive hotel, just reserve a hostel room you share with multiple people – don’t attempt to find a cheap room for just two people and expect much security!

The next morning, we headed straight for the museums: the Uffizi Gallery with its long corridors full of statues, and artwork famous enough that it looked incredibly familiar when I did stumble upon it, such as The Birth of Venus, and La Primavera, which I learnt meant ‘spring’, and wasn’t just a type of pasta sauce. Both of these paintings were large enough to take up a whole wall each.

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The Birth of Venus

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La Primavera

 

We then went over to the Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David, which was as imposing and detailed as it’s made out to be. We also saw a display of the first ever versions of the piano, created by Bartolomeo Cristofori.

 

We ended the day on a serendipitous, magnificent note – street musicians! It was late in the evening, and we were walking around a plaza with incredibly detailed statues, lit-up fountains, the cheerful gurgling of water in the background, and the scent of warm pizza in the air. And in the middle of this casually beautiful scene: a handsome musician, playing plaintive tunes on his violin. Not the kind of music that makes you clamor around, bop your heads, and tap your feet with the beats – but the kind of mesmerizing music that creeps up on you, and fills up your soul with melancholia and pain, tinged with hope and the promise of love. The sort of music that swells up inside you, and clutches you, raw and true, so tightly in its grasp that your eyes well up with emotion hard to define, and you have to remind yourself to breathe. It was a moment out of time, out of space – a moment when all your barriers fall away, and the crowd is hypnotized and swaying to this music resonating deep inside, dropping their illusions of normalcy and sophisticated banter – we weren’t just a mix of tourists and locals individually dealing with our specific triumphs and losses – in the moment, we were all raw, real humans, unified by emotion. Our lives and issues may be different, as are the ways we cope, but we all recognize and respond to basic emotion.

The musician
Outside the Uffizi Gallery

 

Finally, after a lovely dinner which involved a baffling mix-up with our order (I swear we ordered something chocolate for dessert, but ended up with a single glazed pear), we headed back to the hostel. Since this was our last night in Florence, we finally had to figure out a solution to the broken bag problem. So despite being exhausted from all the sight-seeing, we headed off to various bag stores to ask about prices, and if they took cash or card. Of course they all needed cash, and that involved a detour to the foreign exchange counters, which were, of course, closed this late at night.

We finally decided to wake up early the next morning and tackle the problem before leaving to catch our train to Rome. This ended up being a whole series of unfortunate mishaps in itself – involving running back and forth in unexpected rain, forgetting to take passports to the foreign exchange, checking out the market right across the street for sturdy bags that weren’t expensive Italian leather, and trying to find a cab in the narrow alleys where our hostel was located – until finally managing to fashion a makeshift handle for Swetha’s handle-less bag using a strong belt. It wasn’t ideal, but it was enough for us to drag the bag all the way to the train station, just in time to catch the train to Rome.

Thus concluded the Florence chapter of my Europe adventure. I liked it a lot more than Venice – there was certainly the old-world charm and culture I was looking for, but it was interspersed with just enough modern conveniences to survive comfortably. I’m particularly fond of Florence because that’s the first place I realized how independent I could be – it was the first city I felt brave enough to tackle without a companion, without knowing the local language, without an internet connection. Florence was where I realized it’s fun to figure out everything on my own. And yes, in every city I’ve visited after Florence, I’ve made it a point to go off exploring all by myself. So thank you, Firenze, for that little bit of personal growth. I’ll see you soon!

Alone in a Foreign Land: Part Adventure, Part Challenge

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I have been living away from home for a long time now – it’s almost a decade since I moved out for the very first time, as a naive sheltered 17-year-old girl. Nearly five of those years have been spent in New York City. That’s half a world away from India, away from where I grew up, away from all the people I love the most. I have had to build my support system from the ground up, while also learning to navigate the streets, conduct research in a new lab, and understand the culture of a foreign city. It’s been quite the ride, and I have lived and experienced every moment to the fullest – the highs and the lows, the twists and turns, the victories and delights, and all the bumps and bruises. And while I have many, many thoughts on how my life has turned out based on all the choices I have made so far, it’s hard to sum up what this phase of my life has meant to me. What does living all alone in a foreign country entail? Is it the best of times, or the worst of times? Is it a glamorous adventure, or the toughest of challenges?

The best part of living abroad by yourself? Most definitely the independence. The freedom of living life on your own terms, and exploring the streets of a strange and exciting city. The sheer independence of not having anyone to care about what you wear, where you go, or what time you get back home. The ability to test your own limits and set your own curfews. The liberty to spend your money on whatever you deem necessary, be it Seamless deliveries at midnight, or a cute mermaid tail blanket just because you saw it and now cannot live without it.

Living abroad by yourself is when you can immerse yourself in a whole new culture. It’s fascinating to observe how fast people walk, the left-right escalator etiquette, the public transport system. And if you live in NYC, every now and then you’ll come across a new location which seems strangely familiar – before you realize, oh right, countless movies and TV shows have been shot here. Oh, these are the steps in Central Park where Blair and Chuck from Gossip Girl got hastily married. This is the Roosevelt Island tram which White Collar’s gorgeous Neal Caffrey climbed up to escape capture. You can scout out all the famous locations, but you can also hunt down tiny little bookstores, in alleyways you wouldn’t wander down in the dark, and find new hidden cafes with nondescript doors and wonderfully eclectic interiors. Everything is ready and waiting to be discovered – like being in a real-life choose-your-own-adventure book with multiple chapters and endings just waiting to be explored.

Living abroad on your own also leads to self-exploration. You end up surrounded by a completely new culture, and you get to decide if you want to hold on fast to your own culture, adopt the new one, or find your own unique blend of old and new – your own set of beliefs and rules, and use them to fine-tune your moral compass. Living abroad is the time when you can figure out who you truly are, far away from all the expectations and societal pressures – getting some distance is what allows you to recognize those, and realize how much you’ve unquestioningly internalized. You can now question what you’ve never questioned, behave in a way you’d never have imagined, figure out the person you truly are – underneath all the people-pleasing, expectations-fulfilling, rule-following persona you’ve developed over time naturally and unthinkingly because that’s just the way it was. Living abroad allows you to remove all those masks and uncover how unconscious your core beliefs and biases are. It helps you grow into an authentic, messy, real version of yourself – and forces self-discovery like nothing else. Living abroad is an exciting, thrilling, and fascinating experience – I highly recommend it!

 

What’s the worst part of living abroad by yourself? Once again, the independence. The anonymity of being all alone in the crowd, and not having anyone who cares about what you wear, where you go, and what time you get back. There’s nobody who would automatically check in on you. It’s surprisingly easy to become isolated. You’re all by yourself in a completely new place, and every step is a new challenge – from finding the nearest grocery store and navigating unfamiliar social situations, to filing for taxes, and getting your social security number. Coming home at the end of the day can feel dreary, because you’re welcomed only by your (most likely, unmade) bed, and perhaps a plant or two. There’s no warm food on the table, no warm companion to ask how your day was. There’s no automatic social interaction after coming home, unless you specifically make plans with friends. You’re completely by yourself, and while that sense of freedom is liberating, it can also get lonely.

Also, the whole process of figuring out who you really are and testing your limits and beliefs is not easy. It’s unnerving to question what you’ve always held true. The transition period while you’re coming to terms with loosening your grip on the old belief system, and building a new one? It’s uncomfortable. It’s disturbing, because all of a sudden, ideas are fluid instead of rigid – and if you can’t rely on what you’ve held onto for twenty-something years, what’s the guarantee that this new system will serve you? All the absolutes start dissolving into relatives, there is no perfect right or wrong anymore. While building your own system from the ground up is essential for personal growth and self-awareness, the process can be rather bewildering . Change is good, but change is also hard, and while adventures are really exciting, they are by nature quite terrifying as well.

 

Knowing what I know now, would I do it again? Would I head out on a whole new adventure, or would I prefer stability and familiarity? Will I spread out my wings and fly out to a whole new phase of my life, or will I hang up my boots, and say, enough flying, I’m done – I know who I am now, and am happy with it, so now, after having accumulated all that experience and knowledge – watch me put down my roots now?

I’ve thought about it long and hard, and my conclusion is: while the idea of safe familiarity is tempting, so very tempting at times – I am an adventurer at heart. I’m always looking for the next challenge, the next hurdle, the next battle. I am not the kind of person who would be happy to settle for just good enough – I always want to be better, do better, strive for more. That path isn’t always easy, but it’s the path I choose. It’s the path I want. The bumpy one, with the crazy ups and downs. Because while the lows can be devastating indeed, the highs are just so incredibly rewarding. The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. So bring on the next adventure. And watch me fly!