The Unique Joys and Challenges of Limited Time
Around March, I remember thinking for the first time that ten months is a cruel amount of time to spend in a place. Since this thought has greeted me, it has refused to leave. Perhaps it was the one temperate month of Delhi’s weather that created a desire to extend my stay, but I was suddenly able to see so clearly all the groundwork I was laying that would soon be uprooted. When I love, it comes deeply, and I often have foolish desires to make these temporary experiences last forever. This reflects the defining struggle of my adult years, revealing the two major parts of me that are constantly vying for my time. There is a part that yearns for adventure and new experiences, and there is a part that desires comfort and stability.
From the beginning of this Fellowship journey, I have had full knowledge of its fleeting nature. Having this fixed timeline made agreeing to move across the world feel less intimidating, but it now holds a certain melancholia while being in the heart of it. I could choose to stay in India after our graduation, but that would be a futile attempt to ignore the reality of this experience coming to an end. Even if I planted my feet in Delhi and refused to move, everything would continue to swirl around me.
Ten months is not a short amount of time. I have experienced a lifetime of happiness, luck, and hardships during this period. It has given me the space to explore new hobbies and build incredible friendships. Yet, I feel a hollowness when I think about the way I have failed to build a stable home throughout all of this. I’ve had major difficulties with roommates, I’ve moved, and I’ve spent a lot of time travelling out of Delhi – both for work and personal reasons. For so long, the side of me that craves adventure has been heavily fed, but it wasn’t until that cup was overflowing that I realized the part of me that craves consistency was desperate for my attention. When I think of where I have found stability over this past year, my mind fills the absence of my own physical space with the countless memories that have been created in my friend and co-fellow Cora’s apartment.
The Organic Creation of a Fellowship Home
I’ve never known Cora without this apartment. It’s a self-oriented thought since she has lived the majority of her life elsewhere, yet my primary mental picture of her places her in her top-floor Hauz Khas apartment. It is an objectively beautiful flat, but the physical space has blossomed into so much more as it has become an extension of Cora and all of her best characteristics. It is Cora’s welcoming, enthusiastic, and ever-positive energy that has filled it with love since day one and has continued to do so.
This is not some magical gift that befell upon her. It is an intentional act that allowed the apartment to flourish under her care. While I had set off for Hyderabad immediately after moving my luggage from our orientation hotel to my new apartment, Cora was spending that time laying the foundation to make her house more comfortable. While she was also travelling throughout December and February, her approach to this year always felt more rooted in the side of me that I was ignoring. A large part of my Fellowship can be remembered
as a whirlwind of bus trips and weekends waking up in new locations, but when I instead spent mornings at Cora’s apartment over the weekends in Delhi, it always gave me a sense of calm.
For the early days of the Fellowship, the original four Fellows who started off living in Delhi NCR spent a lot of time together. With Namrah and I living in Gurgaon, and Jonathan living in Jasola Vihar, Cora’s apartment in Hauz Khas sat right at the center. Although we were all building our own lives, this provided a central place in the city for us to collectively cope with struggles and marvel at our new experiences. Then, I spent most weekends taking the yellow line into Delhi and exploring famous sites, restaurants, and activities. In that way, Hauz Khas itself felt like a key to the city.
Throughout this Fellowship, almost every single member of the cohort has come to Delhi for one reason or another, and the majority have spent some amount of time at Cora’s apartment. I cannot imagine another physical location that is as central and consistent to all of us. During
orientation and midpoint, we were all together in the respective hotels, and the same will be true for the endpoint. There was a large, informal cohort trip to Goa where many of us gathered together; however, Cora’s apartment is an organic location that has sprouted up.
To have one apartment where so many of us have celebrated and laughed together feels like an immeasurable achievement. Whether Fellows were stopping by in the middle of the night amidst a connecting flight or staying for almost a week, it was a place where everyone could come together. To me, this made it feel like our home throughout the Fellowship. Even when it is now just the Delhi Fellows spending time there, the memories of Marcos showing his friend around the city or Sarah coming to visit family echo around and continue to fill the space with a love that could only be created through this mosaic effect.
Shared Moments in Community
The excitement surrounding Eid al-Fitr was an entirely unique and special experience during my ten months in Delhi. Purchasing new kurtas, getting mehndi done, and practicing proper greetings, there was an electric energy in the air. On the morning of the holiday, we woke looking forward to celebrating the day with Namrah’s family, who prepared a meal for us and the other Delhi Fellows. Askar, a Fellow currently living in Jharkhand, was in town and staying at Cora’s, and I had spent the night to segment the already long journey to Noida, where Namrah’s parents live. We had given ourselves a goal of leaving by 1 PM, and there was an overwhelming number of tasks to accomplish before heading out the door.
In the fervor of trying to check everything off that would allow us to get on the road as soon as possible, the three of us were scrambling around and tackling all necessary work as it came to our attention. Cora was hanging Askar’s clothes to dry, Askar was ironing my suit, and I was cleaning Cora’s kitchen. We were all so entirely focused on our tasks that it wasn’t until Cora announced that we were all doing each other’s chores that we all stopped to appreciate what a special moment we had unintentionally created. None of us had necessarily sought out to do a kind deed, we were just doing what needed to be done. That moment embodied the loving and supportive environment Cora’s apartment had come to represent.
When Everything Comes to an End
On a sweltering June day, Cora’s living room air conditioner was broken, and we decided to sit on her terrace, as there was no difference between the inside and outside temperatures. As we brought her green and orange woven stools that she had bought as we were beginning to establish our lives here, I looked at the sad piece of wood that called itself a bench, which was now relegated to a corner. Cora’s voice from November rang in my ear as she described a vision of her laying out a rug, placing the bench as a table, and making breakfast for all of us.
In a time as busy as the Fellowship, it is all too easy to let our imagined ideas accidentally slip away with the passage of time. Yet, Cora cultivated this exact experience. I thought about the pancakes Cora and Jonathan made for everyone and playing around with her camera that morning. Tenzin was visiting before going up to Dharamshala, and that weekend is bookmarked in my mind with her presence, marking a divergence from our normal company. We had spent that day at the Garden of Five Senses,
soaking in the weather before Delhi’s harsh winter would turn into a violent summer. We went on to have an impromptu picnic and get our tarot cards read, which was spring boarded by the comfort and support of Cora’s apartment.
There are so many goals that I have aimed to achieve during these ten months, and in the constant haze of activity, I sometimes forget how much has been accomplished. They may not have unfolded as I expected, but they have been achieved. When every day continues to be filled with new adventures and work to be done, it is a constant struggle to ensure my mind is keeping up with the rapid pace. There has been so much beauty and excitement over this time, and I have desperately grasped for moments to take it all in. Time in Cora’s apartment has given me these points of respite, where I feel comfortable taking pause. Together under that roof, we have complained and grown in righteous anger and celebrated each other’s joys and blown off steam when the weeks became too heavy.
When all is said and done, Cora will turn over the keys to the apartment to her landlord, and none of us will step foot in there again. For us, the door will close, and a year of memories will be forever stored inside. It will have served its purpose, having provided a sense of home during this inherently transient year. While I wish I could forever go to one location and find my friends laughing inside, I will continue to visit these memories for a lifetime.
