As a kid growing up in the 1980s, my weekends were filled with the rousing aroma of spices and masalas emerging from the kitchen and engulfing our house and the neighbor’s. Non vegetarian food, ‘NV’, as it is called in India, was a rarity those days, experienced only on weekends, unlike the world today, where any form of life, plant or animal is devoured on any day, immersed in the layers of any cuisine from any part of the world. Sundays during childhood always meant something extra special — aromatic biriyani, flavored meat dishes or curried fish. Sundays were also a time for families and friends to bond over food, music and games. Life on weekends was terribly slow, yet soulful.
Decades later, as I reminisce the past and wade through my weekends in meaningless haste, I realize that a piece of my soul had been left behind in those lazy Sundays of the bygone era.
In April 2022, I announced my decision to join executive MBA classes on weekends. My daughter let out a startled cry, “What will happen to me?” she remarked. “I will feel lonely without you!”, she added, crest fallen. It took me a good deal of cajoling and reasoning to make her understand how important this move was for me and how not being at home on alternate weekends will not change anything in terms of our bonding. I promised her that, we will make up for the lost time together, on alternate weekends when I won’t have classes. Little did I know that, my new found MBA would take away all my weekends, in the form of classes, assignments, group studies, field visits and the likes. But, there was no looking back. This is what I had been wanting to do, a formal post graduate education, since time immemorial.
Thus, started my venture into the world of case studies, presentations and examinations. The idea of going back to a classroom and being seated with 30 other students gave me a nostalgic high. The initial days of college saw me struggling to stay awake during lectures, trying various techniques such as drinking gallons of water, scribbling on notepads, asking random questions to professors, rolling my eyeballs etc. Gradually, I fell into a reasonable routine. I started loving the grind, the hectic weekends which took my mind away from mundane chores and lazy chill-out activities. My daughter also peeked into my new world inquisitively and found excitement in the tons of ppt and home work I was doing. MBA became a part of her life as well. I saw her attempt storytelling techniques, presentation skills and research methodologies in her school projects. She has also been employing negotiation techniques when conflicts broke out in her class.
After the first semester, I was able to curate a routine where I spent time on weekdays to catch up on assignments and freed up much of my time on weekends. This proved to be a bane, rather than a boon, for I began spending these extra hours binge watching Netflix and reels on Instagram. I was hardly taking my weight off the sofa. I was guilty of being glued to the idiot box than to my idiosyncratic family.
I decided to fight and overcome the inertia this year. I signed up for art classes and sketching workshops on weekends, most often with my daughter D. While some of the workshops were online, a majority of them had us travel to the heart of the city, meet new people and imbibe new scents and surroundings. Immersing myself in the world of paints, pastels and water colour was therapeutic, to say the least. It helped me slow down in my tracks, breathe in life, find my lost soul and unleash the creative demon within. We did a lot of sketching in the open air, on the move, with passers by casting quizzical glances at us. Some of them stopped by to find out what motivated a bunch of people to paint sceneries, sprawled on the streets, in gay abandon. Little did they know that, this was our “pursuit of happyness”, the ideal state of our being, an utopia of our dreams. A day which otherwise would have been spent idling on the couch, was illuminated by this unique creative pursuit on the streets.
These workshops energized me to the extent that, I no longer experienced Monday morning blues. I walked into the week with a good deal of vigor and zeal, quite like the bunny in the “Duracell” ad. My family being part of my weekend expeditions, was the icing on the cake. This is the perfect weekend I had been yearning for, a gateway to a world filled with serene, soul warming calmness and a nonchalant flow of creative energy.
This is my story for day 2/100 of #2023TheStoriedWay by Your Story Bag.
