It has been snowing, without a pause, since last night.

And I have been trying to fit my dissertation within the limits of a ‘one page only’ application just as incessantly. Well, there has been some pause on my end, namely a night’s sleep, but the endeavor feels just as unremitting.

There is no clarity in sight, for either the damp and distraught sky or my mind. But it is a race to the finish. Can I finish the synopsis before it stops snowing?

I am competing with the sky – infinity, as it extends into the eternal and unknowable cosmos.

Soon, I will be howling at the full moon.

Yes, I am being melodramatic. And silly.

But indulge me.

A dissertation worth its name should be inflicted by drama.

It is only appropriate that I fight cosmos this snow draped, damp afternoon. And, test the limits of my human, rational, reasoning; defy destiny; scream at the haze above and abyss below; claim my existential realm, build and destroy, write and erase, think and rethink in defiance of whatever that invisible, infinite, eternal power is.

It is what we modern people do – compete with the cosmos.

And this is my modernist quest – this dissertation.

A thesis, a narrative that explains the world – empirically induced; conceptually deduced; reliably argued; authoritatively pursued. Beyond the doubt or force of even a slithering shadow of a snowflake.

A dissertation is, after all, a modernist battle cry: yes, I can; yes, I shall; yes, I will.

(And then, congratulations: yes, you have.

All this for one moment of validation? You insecure bastard child of mine: whispers the cosmos, as the snowflakes smile and slither past my window.)

Sail around the world? Yes.

Trace the shape of the world? Yes.

(Why is it round by the way? A cruel joke played by the cosmos in a sense: leaving us back where we started.)

Convince others of my narrative (by force or wit – and start the colonial-neo-colonial-imperial-neo-imperial-capitalist-neo-capitalist world system)? Yes.

I am doing what others have done, over and over and over again.

Not the hustling in abstractions part, though that too. Rather, the attempt to test the limits of my ability to think-prove-argue and conquer the world, via mind or matter – the modernist part.

It seems petty.

And silly.

Until I make it melodramatic – and find in my quest a modern valor; an ambition to reach the frontiers, trace the horizons, find new lands and open seas in between; shoot a rocket and get giddy over a fluttering cloth on a piece of a moon-rock; and tell stories of the journey (some call it social theory). Then this effort seems all right again – still silly but not petty; dramatic and grand in its self-involved abandon.

But abandonment is everywhere I turn to. The slow sway of the snowflake; the drift of the breeze; the meandering clouds without addresses; the awkward, jaunty waves of tree tops; even, the pit less neon street light.

So what is their abandonment and what is mine? Where do we meet and where do we leave?

Brooklyn sticks out its tongue – a block long series of rooftops stained by thick, sticky, black tar, painted with caring hands of weary landlords – to stop the wet snow in its track.

The mad, ethereal dance of snowflakes, falling with abandon, careless and dizzying, meets the roof top in silent sighs and rushes away to other business in puddles of water through the city streets. The city never stops, they say. Is it competing with the cosmos too? Heartbeat by heartbeat; snowflake-by-snowflake; water puddle over water puddle.

Where does it end?

When will it stop snowing?

And my dissertation?

Ah, that too.

I was looking for a specific book but my eyes wandered. Instead of picking up the book on methodology that I needed to read urgently I found myself leafing through Urdu poems. There you go again, Ms. PhD student: so easily distracted; so fickle. But the scandal does not end there. Bright winter sunshine rushes in through the window and I can almost hear the soft snow on the ground, from last night, melting away – gently melting in the sunny embrace. In the hushed silence of a New York apartment I read aloud Azmi to myself.

I look at the bookshelf again, and see the title: Argumentative Indian. Why do I find the same book on the bookshelf of every Indian friend who lives here in the U.S.? Is it a comment on my circle of friends? What does it say?

Is it meant to be a reminder of who we are, though we live so far away from home, every time our distracted eyes fall on dusty bookshelves? Is it a validation; or a yearning to break the silence of empty apartments and shrill deadlines with some hearty rambling? The endless adda over cigarettes, cha (not chai) and the occasional samosa and jalebi as I remember life to have once been?
I remember moving into the new house; the smell of clean walls and empty floors. My father installed a fancy key chain lock on the main door. Dada and I both observed it to be a rather excellent idea: open the door just that wee bit to satisfy your curiosity about who might be standing on the other side and yet, without commitment. The door was neither closed, nor open.

The key chain broke within two days of our moving into the new house. Just for the record, Dada and I had very little to do with its collapse. Actually, if I remember correctly, the base for the chain dislodged from the wall. And the door was never closed (during the day, and sometimes on forgetful nights). People streamed in and out, through the door, all day long: and adda carried on. It was no environment for children to grow up: Ma reminded us all. We had to study for examinations after all. Such distractions will not do. Only purposeful ones: music lesson twice a week, art courses over the weekend, walk to the library and film festivals when they are on.

Twenty-five years later I am still dealing with distractions. The key chain at our New York apartment is very strong, indeed. Nobody visits during the day; and hardly ever at night. But I am filled with memories of adda and guilty pleasure of reading: Aaena.

I guess Ma won after all.

And the secret desire to rebel, to contest, to ramble and revel in angst…?

Well, it is on the bookshelf now. The Argumentative Indian: on bookshelf after bookshelf of feisty Indian girls and their American apartments.

Though I must admit that beyond questions of becoming a cliché and wondering if one exists – truly – only in distracted, stolen moments, such consensus on reading material is rather disturbing. Sincerely, an argumentative Indian.

It’s back to the methodology book now.