Le petit bonheur
[the small happiness]
I come from a tightly knit family, individualistic, joyful, lovers of lifelong learning and a deep understanding of living well through work, gratitude and the ethics instilled by IIT and dental school education.
This, along with my school where I’ve been since I was 3 years old, with its motto of Clarum Effficiunt Studia [studies maketh famous] has given me a bedrock of experiences and happiness to stand upon. I arrived at teenage, having chased a volcano [Eyjafjallajokull], fallen in love with ice cold winds, adored manatees, trekked the Druk Path in the Himalayas and learned that quiet was fulfilling as was the thrill of a ski slope.
I believed
I believed that the letter c was a crescent moon visiting me, fallen leaves rushing up like tiny tornadoes with gusts of breeze were rollercoasters for ants, earthworms and snails needed to be carried back to their moist, squelchy homes from pavements where they were lost, and postal stamps were doors in Alice’s Wonderland.
I spent hours playing with children, digging pools in sandpits, learning to play the piano and dancing Kathak, but I also spent days playing with sand filled little balloons, tracing my fingertips across Velcro strips, delighting in little kits that made volcanoes and slime, re reading my favourite tales, clanging pots, making landscapes with ice cubes floating in water filled buckets.
My Childhood
My childhood showed me there’s richness inside each one of us, different cultures around the world explored it differently.
I didn’t know it then, but I arrived at adulthood grasping the meaning of Namaste to a satisfying degree.
My grandparents on my mother’s side had rebuilt life from scratch, had known war and poverty, but their hugs had all the wealth I needed.
When I read the words, E Pluribus Unum [out of many, one] I felt they described my childhood.
In the sense of a tree. Holding roots spanning distances one couldn’t imagine; resisting being forgotten by breaking them out of pavements.