Needs

Life can really throw surprises at you when you least expect them. One such surprise, rather a jolt, was when Siddharth, my husband told me that he was considering a job in Orissa! Well, it took a while for me to digest the fact that we might have to move to a city like Bhubaneswar in the far Eastern side of the country. Just as the information was sinking in, came another boom- ‘Not Bhubaneswar, it’s a tiny mining town called Barbil’. Following which I went blank, probably lost consciousness or something. After that there was just a buzz in my ears interspersed by words like ‘remote’, ‘naxalite’, ‘tribals’, ‘far away’ , buzzzzzz….

“I’m not coming, why do you always have to choose places like these, isn’t there anything here, is the job offer really worth it, I’m not coming, don’t go…” I rambled on as my initial reaction. “Relax” said Sid, “It’s just the initial discussions right now, it might not even happen”. Of course, heart of heart he really wanted it to happen. And as it turned out, it did happen.

Luckily Sid understood my hesitation to move, moreover, I feel he was scared to take me there as it was an unknown territory even for him. Eventually we decided that he goes there first, sees whether he himself likes the place, the job in the first place and then after a few months, I go there just to see the place and ’ if and only if’ I feel comfortable do I also shift there.

Things worked out as planned and here I am now living in a tiny, remote, mining town. Well it’s not such a bad place after all, the people are down to earth and hardworking, they are all here for their own reasons and to make a decent living. Of course it helped that my company retained me by offering a work from home option, which is a blessing really.

The one thing that I’m definitely going to take away from this place, is that we  actually need so little in order to survive. I’ve also realized that we humans are such good adaptors! This is my question to you city brats- Can you live without multiplexes? Without the KFCs and the Mc Donald’s of the world? You plan for a dinner outing, everyone starts raking their brains or surfing the internet for new places to go. Apparently ‘zomato.com’ receives 1,420,370 hits per day! But what if the place you stay has only 2 restaurants, 1 movie theater and no Pubs. What do you do then, you adjust. You made do with whatever’s available. I mean who needs cherry tomatoes, lettuce and bell peppers everyday. I remember these things weren’t even available when we were kids, yet the cucumber -onion –gajar salad gives you all that you need.

I can say I’ve come to realize the value of things we take for granted; that there is a world other than ours which is so different yet so lovely; that life can be interesting when you move from the known to the unknown. In short, I thank Sid for getting me to experience this world…