Looking back, tilting forward

I declare 2025 the Year of Confidence

Jan 01, 2025

Dear Fellow Ramblers,

I’ve been trying - and failing - to write my reflections about 2024. How do you write about a year that was forgettable, yet peppered with big achievements? How do you reflect on a year where the giant strides in your interior life are made invisible by the utter ordinariness of your daily routine?

And while the struggle for expression is real, 2024 taught me that the best way to tackle what seems impossible is by doing what is immediately possible. And that is how I will tackle the task of writing this daunting essay, even as I look forward to the New Year.

November and December

Isn’t it always the case that we long for what cannot be? It’s certainly how I have felt right through the last months of the year. Weeks into taking on a demanding job with a structured 9 to 5 routine, I found myself yearning for slow languorous mornings, filled with the aroma of coffee, the sunlight streaming into my window as I enjoy the freedom to think and write. I was filled with doubt about my life choices - my job, the decision to renovate my home…well, it became far more existential that this, but I’ll spare you the details.

As the year draws to an end, a part of me enters a reflective space, while the other chases adrenalin and action. This duality is deeply familiar to me. Since my childhood, and more sharply so during my teenage years, I have operated in two different registers. There’s the social, confident me, infectiously energetic and fuelled by instinct and sharp flashes of insight. And there’s the pensive, calmer me, digging deep, asking difficult questions, taking pleasure in the calmness of ritual and routine. All my life, I’ve struggled to pull together my polar personas, and figuring out how to blend them better has been one of the more gratifying aspects of growing older.

This strange combination of existential angst and self-awareness about my dual persona has had its uses. For one, it has allowed a balance of empathy and stability, which helped me lend support to several dear friends who happened to suffer unbearable pain and loss in recent weeks.

But angst tends to direct my focus to what did not quite work out, what continues to be a work in progress. It invariably leads to a sense of disappointment, of incompleteness, of exhaustion for being caught in an efficiency cycle you are hardwired to ride despite knowing its not all its made out to be.

To shake off my year-end ennui, I started scrolling the photos of the past year on my phone. My captures reminded me that 2024, like every year, was filled with many amazing moments, some interesting travels, and oodles of new experiences.

January through March

I knew right at the outset that 2024 would be dedicated to completing my PhD, a project I had started thinking about in 2016, registered for officially in 2018, and worked at consistently alongside a full-time job for all the years in between. Through 2023, a year that was straight-up horrible (a story for another time), I had managed to piece together various bits of it. And so it was that in January 2024 I found myself sitting with a full draft of my PhD manuscript.

Life continued to unfold outside of my PhD journey. January went by enjoying some family time and savouring my son Udai’s vacation visit. February offered up an opportunity to perform a short kathak solo at a local cultural forum. Especially because kathak lessons have been erratic since the Covid interlude, it felt extra special to have the support and confidence of my dance Guru through this! We enjoyed Delhi’s fabulous spring in March, topping it off with two birthdays. It was special to party with my freshly minted 16-year old, and have all my loved ones around me.

Some of the many people who make life very worthwhile!

April through June

After a gruelling editing process, in April, I finally submitted my PhD for examination. This felt a lot like sending a child into the world, that curious mixture of joy and worry both familiar and novel.

Peppered with farewells and reunions, April and May were emotional months. These were also slog weeks for Aadyaa, as she prepped for, and then took, her Grade 10 board exams. We were home a lot, trying to hunker down and get stuff done!

Starting end May and until mid June, we took a well deserved vacation, meeting up with Udai in New York and spending a few amazing days exploring the city. The week we spent hiking, swimming and relaxing in New England will go down as one of the best family vacays ever. We kept the pace very easy, gave each other a lot of space and yet managed to find many things to do together. The kids’ teen years have not been the easiest on us as a family, but those two weeks renewed my faith.

As June ended, I received the happy news that my PhD had been cleared by the external examiners with minor corrections required. I was relieved and elated. It had been an amazing summer, but little did I know that the slog months would be back again!

July through September

Paperwork. Paperwork. And then some.

I had never experienced being drowned by process and bureaucracy before. The PhD felt so near and yet so far in these months. Finalising jury members, getting them to agree on a date for the final defence, completing a million formalities on the university portal, finding a designer and working through iterations of layouts and cover designs, finding someone in Rotterdam who could get hard copies to relevant offices, send them to my examiners and so on. Everyday brought new setbacks, but slowly and steadily, the gargantuan project pushed itself forward.

Again, life went on alongside at its own jaunty pace, with workshops and social events and even a super quick getaway to a monsoon-drenched Panjim to meet a dear friend!

October

October was marked with a unique sense of lightness and joy. Thought provoking conversations with colleagues, another joyous trip to Goa and fun times with students, all these kept me in great spirits even as I prepared for my PhD defence. I rode the wave of optimism and accepted a job offer that finally came through after having been in the pipeline for several months.

And finally, I made that wonderful trip to Rotterdam to defend my PhD. Erasmus University’s formal and quaint PhD rituals were daunting and amusing in equal measure, but I was thrilled to have Ma, Aadyaa and my Dutch family as my cheerleaders in person, and grateful for Rahul, Amma and a whole host of well-wishers back home who watched the ceremony online.

Any doubts that I had had until then about the value of finishing a PhD in my late 40s vanished on 24th October, as I stood there and presented my work, answered all the questions the examiners asked, and saw the pride and happiness in the eyes of my advisors, colleagues and supporters.

Renewing confidence in me

I’m winding up this walk down memory lane a couple hours into the brand New Year, and wondering why I let the stresses of the last couple of months take away from the enormous achievements and big moments of 2024. Beyond the big ticket items, the year gone by was marked by meaningful improvements in my mental health and many concrete steps in self-development including more focus on my writing practice. I learnt to invest in myself, and saw that by doing so, I am more available to my loved ones too. This was a priceless revelation!

I’ll be happy to build on these foundations in 2025. Its a year in which I hope to embrace my extremes. I want to roar like the lioness I am meant to be. I want to go deeper within, and find ways to quieten the ever-present anxious murmur inside. I want to conquer every doubt, silence every critic and be an outstanding professional/mother/friend/spouse/daughter/teacher/mentor. I want to get better at sitting with the discomfort, at trusting things to work themselves out, and at being kinder to myself. But most of all, I want to stop doubting myself.

In 2025, like Maria in Sound of Music, I want to have utter confidence in me.

Rambling in the city

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