Serendipity.
It’s been a fun week: workation with a bunch of friends, which was basically struggling to get any work done. I tried to reflect on the week to look for inspiration. Had a couple of hours before I caught my flight, and the airport seemed like a cool place to write.
As I had just begun, a middle-aged woman walked up to me to strike up a conversation. She had about 6 hours to kill before her early morning flight. She was a school teacher, who was immensely fulfilled with her job and was dissapointed that no one wants to teach and school teachers aren’t as respected as some of the other professions. She connected me to her daughter — who is also pursuing engineering, has recently been placed and of whom she was clearly very proud. She shared her special pav-bhaji-style-maggi recipe, the colour of her room, how the Hyderabad rape case really scared her to stop travelling at night (and hence reach airport so early). She had a lot of simple details to tell me, but restrained herself as she felt my time was more valuable, given I work in IT.
On another occasion, when I was trying to wrap up office work at a cute cafe before I hit the beach, I heard a group jamming to some good music, from the living-room-style cafe in the basement. Naturally, I moved to the room, and so did a few others. Two upcoming artists happened to be at the cafe, and soon it turned into a delightful live remixing session, with everyone sitting together!
My original plans didn’t end up panning out, but what did was incredibly raw and joyful.
In a time where we are constantly being surrounded by grim news and it feels like things are constantly going downhill. It is the little moments — small acts of kindness, moments of connection, and confessions of dreams and insecurities — that remind us of all the love around, that the world is actually getting better, that most people still want to be good.
There still is so much magic in the world.
