Bags heavy, legs strained, face sleepy, I landed on Ludhiana soil. It was around 10 at night, and shops were closed. Though it was spring time, I had some sweat on my face, perhaps a result of sitting in the bus for 8 hours (with only one stoppage in the way which lasted twenty minutes), a bus that was filled with passengers at all times.

The moon of Ludhiana resembled the moon of Delhi, three-hundred kilometres away, only a little clearer than that. A little, because both the cities share the common fault of being two of the most polluted cities across the globe.

Off from the bus, I ran a quick glimpse over my belongings – the bag that lay on the road, the bag that was hung on my shoulders – then patted my pockets for mobile phone and wallet – then my face for the mask. This took only a moment, and then the bus started to carry on its journey. On its own way. At the exact moment, as if having felt my momentary satisfaction.

Started at 2 in the afternoon, I had expected to reach earlier than this. But roads didn’t like the proposal. So I was late, was already sleepy. I crossed the road (traffic was thin), and found an auto-rickshaw waiting for passengers like me. Exchange of a word with the autowallah, and then I was on its seat.

The engine was on, but he wouldn’t drive for some time: he would wait for more passengers. In two minutes, one passenger came, and took the seat beside me.

But the autowallah would still not go. Another came in five minutes, and took a seat in front of mine. The autowallah sat on his driving seat, his hands on the handle. But foot not on the gas pedal. Still not ready. Still not wanting to move. His head turned as backward as possible, searching for more passengers, searching nearby, searching in the distance, on this side of the road and that side of the road.

My initial emotion was annoyance. What was he waiting for. Weren’t we three enough, so late in the day, with one of us already sleepy? Maybe a tad of this annoyance reflected on my face, but no one paid attention. Fellow passengers in their mobile phones, the autowallah in his quest.

Conflict of interest in an area of forty square feet.

Two minutes later, disappointed, he pressed the pedal and decided to start. Fifteen minutes later, I was at home, reunited with my family in person. After two weeks of my first of the many periodic separations from it.

But that image remains fresh in the mind: me annoyed, and the autowallah still looking around. Every time I go back to the image, I am more convinced than the last time that no person would have searched for more passengers with three already seated inside, at 10 pm in the night, unless it was such a need.

Unless it was such a need.

It is a normal return from college to my first floor room in Hudson Lane. I put down my bag on the bed, and just as I am about to sit, I find a little feather on the bed.

A feather on my bed? Really strange. I remember properly locking the door of the room before leaving in the morning, and there was nothing else suspicious to be found. Everything untouched, just as I had left, just as it had been there in the morning as I had shut the door – except for the little feather.

I try to survey around it a little, before I decide to pick it up. Yes, it’s a feather, nothing fake about it, but everything strange that can be. Yes, it’s the feather of a bird, but the window was closed, and there’s no other entrance to the room.

If I have to supply a reason to this, I can practically. Perhaps it stuck to my clothes when I was out before this morning, and remained there. Perhaps it left my clothes this morning to rest on the bed, and I had missed seeing it. Perhaps it was flying randomly in the air, carried by the wind like a pollen grain, and had entered clandestinely the moment I had opened the door at some time today or yesterday.

But I don’t feel the need to. The need to supply a logical reason to how the feather chose to enter. It’s a trivial question.

A more pressing question is what to do now, once it is here. Should I brush it away? Should I just ignore, and do what I was about to do? Why is it here even, in the first place?

I sit down, but before that I pick it up. I scan it, then rotate it in my hand, and scan it again from the other side. Who does it belong to? – A sparrow, a crow? Perhaps a pegion.

The feather carries a story, and I can feel it more and more as I see, caught in a trance. It was born and nourished in a family of feathers. Its world was a flying world, and it grew there like a tree. A world that sometimes was at rest, and sometimes in flight. Sometimes it was calm and peaceful and dark, and at other times, quite windy and swift and blue.

And then some day it got uprooted, separated from the other ones, and it found it was in a new world now. A world that was larger but highly mind-boggling.

And then it landed here, on the flat-purple world that my bedsheet is. And now, for the first time, it is seeing eyes – my eyes. It’s a meeting. The eyes are themselves a world, but shielded, distant, but attractive. There’s a fear of being dropped again into a high and mind-boggling world.

Everything depends on the hand that is holding the feather. Possibly everything. What remains mysterious is whether the hand is afraid too.

Tomorrow I sit for my last exam of first semester examinations. That will mark the completion of the first sixth part of my stay in the college. These really were one of the fastest six months of my life – fast, true, but not devoid of anything that should happen in the ample period that six months is.

Well, that seems like a change that I can see. In the recent years of my life, although time seems to have been flying past, fast as anything, yet too much has been happening at the same time. Too much to be able to take a step back and make a proper record. Each day is worth a story, each experience worthy to be retold, but either there is no time to do so, or words not so proper in order that the thing can be described in a way that it deserves.

At times like this when I have sat down to look back, or times when I can’t decide what else to do but to recall, I return to the bits, traces, breadcrumbs, little trails that I have been leaving behind. At times they feel too grand to be contained, and at other times too trivial to be made public. But everytime, there is so much to describe, and yet words run out before one has written anything.

I can’t count how many times I have pulled up a Word document to write something, to record a happening, to word down some thoughts – and suddenly – a blackout. On rare occassions, I have been able to overcome the blackout and manage to pen down, while mostly, I press Alt + F4 and take the exit. As an aspiring writer, that is something I need to overcome.

And then I remember having periods of life – months at a stretch at times, when words have come so naturally that I have filled hundreds of pages with stories, hundreds of pages of diaries. The last time that happened was in the beginning of last year when I was working on an ambitious project, and then for a brief period when my board exams were postponed.

Since then, I have mostly struggled to write. I have been suffocating with lack of ideas, lack of inspiring prompts – or, on a personal level, a lack of properly channelled effort from my side.

Analysing the reasons for that, I think these have been months when each month has had something happening. Exams being cancelled, result being declared, university forms being released, cutoffs being announced, admissions being concluded, colleges being started, colleges being started offline, exams…

Another muscle that I think I need to develop in light of this is to embrace change in a good way, and still find time to stay true to who I am and who I want to be. To still find time to write. Maybe one of the rants that start like this abrupt article will ripen into a story that satisfies me like those that have in the past.

Cool stuff I discovered

     - Physical Things
          1. Laptop – a productivity tool
          2. Wearing mask while working to be productive
          3. Sanitiser to feel active
          4. Five-minute Hourglass to practice five minute rule

     - YouTube channels
          1. What If
          2. Being Honest
          3. Elizabeth Filips
          4. Sheen Gurrib
          5. Thomas Frank
          6. Muniba Mazari
          7. Yes Theory
          8. RC Waldun
          9. The Deshbhakt
          10. Newsthink
          11. Kurzgezagt
          12. Macro Room

          13. Veritasium
          14. Vsauce
          15. Soch by Mohak Mangal
          16. Tom Scott
          17. Aperture
          18. Jaspreet Singh
          19. Vishavdeep Singh Kirtan Academy
          20. TechAltar
          21. Newsthink
          22. Omeleto
          23. SantwinderSinghWaraich
     - Blogs/Newsletters/Websites
      1. NaNoWriMo
      2. Conceptually
      3. Medium
      4. Austin Kleon
      5. Ali Abdaal
      6. Wait But Why
      7. Slow growth
      8. Sikhnet Daily Hukamnama
      9. Slow Growth
      10. Seth's Blog
      11. The Hindu
      12. The New Yorker
      13. Kristen Keiffer
      14. PointInCase

   - Books
      1. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
      2. Show your work
      3. Metamorphosis
      4. Everything Happens For a Reason— and other lies I have loved
      5. Himalayan Blunder
      6. Start with Why
      7. Ramaz te Rahass
      8. Old Man and the Sea
      9. The Little Prince
      10. Of thee I sing
      11. 1984
      12. Animal Farm
      13. Hamlet
      14. Jeevan Kani
      15. Numbers don't lie
      16. Scoop
      17. Purple Cow
      18. Productivity Superhero
      21. The Prophet
      22. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

   - Apps
      1. Mailchimp
      2. Monday.com
      3. Revue
      4. Google Keep
      5. Iriun Webcam
      6. Live Kirtan
      7. BBC News
      8. Instagram
      9. Rythm Free
      10. ReadEra

Creations

   - Stuff I created (that I can claim)
      1. Lockdown Mine
      2. Stories with Books
      3. Stephanian Diaries
      4. Jang di Sair
      5. Roshni diyaan raatan
      6. Khyaalan diyan Khabraan
      7. Story of Sajjan
      8. Rana Bhabor English Translation
      9. Vismaad Katha
      10. Agitation Anecdotes
      11. Mystified One Night
      12. Eighteen Years on Earth
      13. Macbeth &#38 Me - articles
      14. Macbeth &#38 Me - videos

   - Group stuff
      1. ABC
      2. LPG
      3. Riveting Readers
      4. Andin Kirtan
      5. Omaha
      6. Sehaj Gun

Reflective Questions

1. If you had to teach one thing you learnt this year (that would improve one’s quality of life) what would that be?
Judicious use of internet – not just to consume but also to create. There are so many possibilities for one to be organised and do something with his life, that not going for something of the like seems uncanny. An example would be Zoom. This year, I was a part of many online reading clubs. Books like The Prophet couldn’t have been finished if I had started to read them alone, let alone understand various dimensions. Distance is no more a challenge. You can connect with anyone, befriend anyone, and go about your adventure. If given to choose two things in this list, I would add Canva and web-designing. Both are so cool and powerful tools and empower you so much. You can do anything with Canva and a website.

2. What kept you up at night with excitement this year? Was it worth it? Would you want to do more of it?
1984 by George Orwell. I remember already having read almost two-third or three-fourth of it those days. My board exams were nearby, and making myself a night owl for that period, I had a routine of keeping awake till 2 or 3 pm in midnight.

One such night, I felt bored and picked up the book. Winston and Julia were caught by the very man they trusted of all the people in the world, turning out to be a party insider. Separated, they were taken to cells, and interrogated horribly. Attempts were made to kill the “enmity” instead of the “enemy” - so much epic stuff, simply put. I had decided to pause at the end of some chapter, but each ended with some strong cliffhanger. One epitome of this was the one which ended in “Room 101”.

I ended up devouring the entire book that night, and stayed put till 3.30 am in the morning. Was it worth it? Absolutely yes. Will I want to do more of it? Of course - but 1984 was a book of its own kind.

As a side-note, I would like to briefly mention that my liking for 1984 doesn’t just come from its story part, but from the its beautiful and horrific philosophy, which steals one of many restful sleeps. Day in and day out, you are being faced eye-to-eye with the myriad ideas of the book. I myself could not get the book out of my mind unless I had put all my thoughts in this personal diary called Stars Hide Your Fires.

3. How did you have fun differently in 2021?
Were I to name this year, I would call it the Year of Interactions. I built so many contacts this year, met so many new people online and IRL. Each new person brings a new dimension to your life. Unless someone becomes too dependent on you, or you on him, in most cases a new name in your phonebook comes with some additional value. So the winning source for me this year were not books, neither YouTube, nor an anime, nor an outstation trip, but from knowing new people.

4. How did you suffer differently in 2021?
The suffering of uncertainty. It was there all the time. First it was about board exams. Then about their cancellation/happening. Then about admission procedure/CUCET. Then about missing application deadlines. Then cutoffs. Then interviews. Then results. Then further results.

And after results and selection, uncertainty about being able to do what is expected. And then those sporadic encounters of Imposter Syndrome - uff!

5. What things did you stop caring about in 2021?
My grades in class. That is true. My not being on the first position in my class in class 12 didn’t disappoint me, for good or for bad I can’t say. But for one thing, grades suddenly lost importance. Yes, sometimes they are reflective of learning abilities, but then - sometimes. But now I think I’ll start caring again, for a good reason. I got admission in my college due to grades. They motivate you to do hard work, and are an achievable visible carrot tied up to a stick suspended from your head. The race is bad, but the act of running just because there was some trophy is good.

The bare-minimum questions:

1. When have you felt proud of yourself in 2020? What were you doing?
Upon seeing my name in list when the result of St Stephen’s College’s waitlist was announced. I was returning from Amritsar at that time. Might sound cliché, but it was hard believe.

2. What new habits did you create in 2021?
1. Taking book notes on Notion, and also regularly saving new learnings in it
2. Making a blog for everything
3. Noting down the idea of a poem, even if it is incomplete
4. Doing kirtan alone regularly for spiritual upliftment
3. What new thing did you spend a lot of money on in 2021?
1. Buying notebooks, highlighters, books and other stationary
2. But also a lot of money on fast food this year

3. What did you rediscover pleasure in 2021?
1. Writing poetry (especially in Punjabi)
2. Writing down personal anecdotes
3. Diary entries
4. Elocution
5. Trips and tours
6. Solving a Rubik’s Cube
7. Playing Chess
8. Not using YouTube too much