Long bye

This is my last week at work. Already on Monday I delivered three reports which took all my energy – both mental and physical - and were happily finalized on the weekend. For a long time I haven’t felt so light-hearted as I did when the warm pages filled with the neat graphs, tables and sense-making text were coming out of the printer.

I am very impressed with myself – usually my byes are very quick with finishing unfinished right before leaving and leaving in a rush. Farewell party with 30+ people around and unpacked suitcase in the middle of the room staffed with things and me shuttling back and forth from one to another. That is yet to be faced in a few months, so we’ll see how much wiser I’ll get by that time. For now I am just leaving my work.

So, I am taking my time to finalize everything at the office in a proper way. Minor corrections to the report, cleaning up my documents, sharing and saving a copy for myself. Discussing how my certification should be written and when I can come back to deliver a presentation on gender Russia. In the meanwhile I am doing a preliminary search as per my ideas about my glorious prospects, planning the two-week trip with my sister who is arriving in a few days and chatting with Kate – increasingly about future (no that we talked less about it before, but now for a whole number of reasons all this talks have acquired particular significance).

And every day after work I am heading home with huge determination. This week has not yet given me any chance to realize how many people had left. Or this is me myself not letting myself to find out. I am ignoring the reality just staying at home. And the latter is badly needed as the least transient thing I have got here as a place which is certainly mine and where these days I can enjoy unlimited privacy (yet coming at the cost of the increased rent).

These days I feel really happy as I seem totally decided as for my priorities and the concrete plans. I feel grateful to myself for indulging this chance to explore my true aspirations and taking the right steps on the path of their pursuit – I totally relate it to my stay in India, the work I have being doing, the people I got to work with and me having absorbed as much of it as I could so I can select the best suiting me path.

Yet, I realize that somewhere in my un-conscious I am suppressing a sort of confusion. The confusion, actually, is very well grounded: once again I feel done with something (my work here) and anticipate starting so many things anew. Leaving the well-known path of the familiar routines and venturing into a journey with the paths not known yet.

Short-term-wise…. I am also very excited about my sister coming down to India as once again the occasion is lending an opportunity to re-think our relations with her and my relations with the place in a new context. I find that sharing the place you truly love with a very dear person is one of the greatest joys in life and I am very happy that my sister was the one who gave me this chance. I know that today for both of us it is unreal to think that she can be somewhere around, but so much more mind-blowing it is to think that already tomorrow it would become true.

I am as full of plans as undecided about my life here in India in the remaining three months. I have got some preparation to make for the further, some projects to venture in with Kate, do all the writing on earth I want and travel-travel-travel – to saturate myself with all various flavors of the country - sandy-beach-bikini Goa, blessed-with-greenery Kerala, exotic Tamil Nadu, metros of Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai, culture-abundant mother town of Piyali – Calcutta and who know what else.

But before all that I am taking my time to say bye to the life I had before – it truly deserved a long and thoughtful bye.