On staying put and sticking it out

On a recent trip to Ernakulam, I went to Bharat Tourist Home for a masala dosa. I grew up in Ernakulam and in a world where skylines change by the minute, it was heartening to go back to a joint that I have been to as a child, a teenager, and into my 40s now. While the layout had changed, the tastes were the same-- a masala dosa that spills out of the plate and a tea with thickened milk, that should be in the category of confectionery than beverage. But what was most satisfying was to be served by someone who had served me when I was a child, whose dangling feet did not quite touch the floor once upon a time.

“It has been 38 years”, he said, smoothing down his blue uniform shirt on which was pinned his badge of commitment.

At a time when switching jobs is the norm, I was delighted to bump into him again, after all these years. One familiar face is all it takes to open a dam and leave you awash in memories. 

It is my 25th year with the government. I have been posted across two ministries, across different roles and been in various teams. But the central idea has remained good governance and public service. I have been across many states and office buildings, unlike the head waiter who has been in the same building for nearly four decades. Given his widest, satisfied smile, I would think he has been having a good time and must have enjoyed being with people. So many new faces everyday!

As I force words out of my stiff fingertips in freezing Delhi, I am taken back to the sylvan NIFT Bengaluru, where I was once the Director and tried to make sense of the lives of the students who resigned their jobs in 3 months, left internships in between, switched them without intimation or dropped out of electives after two weeks.

We have normalised exiting at the smallest discomfort, looking for other options and keep moving from one to the other, not investing our whole anywhere.

What makes us stick?  While for lizards, the hairy appendages create Van Der Waals force that makes them stick to walls and ceilings, what is the force that makes humans stick to other humans and jobs, offices and houses, parks and hotels?  Is it the vision or the people (team)? Is it the comfort of the familiar? Like that fuzzy feeling when you slip into your worn out pajamas or lay your head on your old pillow. Are some risk-averse or some just learn to find joy wherever they are?

I would argue that it has to be a combination of everything. While commitment to the cause is commendable, it is also the people around who make it worthwhile. My grandfather would make his trips to Kottayam town and would never miss going to Best Bakery to get flaky salt biscuits that came wrapped in butter paper. You built relations over time. He knew them, they knew him and his order. People stayed, formed connections and lived through familiar faces. There was no glorification of the nomad life or yearning to escape lived realities.

When someone retires from the same job after 35 years, there is an aura of uncool that is hard to miss today. The goal now seems to be to do short ‘gigs’, move cities, meet ‘new’ people and see ‘new’ places. The fascination for the ‘new’ is not new. It is what pushed Renaissance and its adventures. Vespucci called Americas Mundus Novus (New World), the journey itself propelled by an appetite for the new.

The romance of routine, of quietude and predictability that one achieves with persistence and by staying for long is not often talked of. While there maybe twenty-one reasons to quit (the old job, the old partner and what not), there is also a strong case for persisting. Of learning to operate around your discomfort, asking hard questions about one’s own flaws and showing up differently to situations. The old Serenity prayer for discernment to know the difference between things one can change and one cannot, is relevant more than ever. 

I lived in Bengaluru for more than a decade and I have seen restaurants open and shut in the blink of an eye. Amidst this, to sit at the red gingham clad table of Koshys for a round of cutlets and coffee is reassuring even as artisan coffee and noodle bars are opening by the dime. Oh, to wend one’s way through the many delights and chaos of Gandhi Bazar to enter the doors of Vidyarthi Bhavan! In a lifetime, one has seen parks closing down, bungalows with wrap around verandahs being demolished for high rises, gardens vanishing and lake/river fronts being claimed by private greed for ‘water front’ properties. But the joys of permanence, growing roots and long stays, why don’t we talk more often about those? The experience of walking into iconic eateries that you have gone to as a child-- like BTH in Ernakulam, Indian Coffee House in Thiruvananthapuram or Koshys in Bengaluru is unparalleled. Ask my friends who grew up in the North and they will say Kwality’s Chhole Bhature at Delhi and Daulat ka Chaat at Lucknow. And to be served by one of the oldest hands there is heaven itself, like a warm embrace on reaching home. 
(The writer is a career civil servant and a creator on Instagram.)