Negotiating Spaces

This post has been sitting in the waiting-room of my head for quite a while now! (Thanks Subbu!)

I'm writing this post at 6:30am. The only reason why I got up so early in the morning was that I need to finish an assignment by 7:30am. Unfortunately, my mind seems to be interested in other things and my stomach seems to be uninterested in the Tea I just drank, so I might as well play along. (Hope no professor sees this :P)

Fourth month into SAIACS, and back to complete health (thanks for all your prayers! TB has finally said good-bye) I am back in business! 4-5 hours of sleep everyday, and lots and lots of incomplete to-do lists in hand. I'm loving it! Though, interestingly, this was not the reason why I joined here in the first place! 

When I decided to join a Bible college, it was basically to take time off and learn about God and myself. To have a contemplative two years after which I should have figured out which direction I should be headed. So the fact that we get huge single-seater rooms, good food and excellent academic stimulation in this Bangalore periphery made me apply. Interestingly (though not surprisingly) things have been way different than planned.

This being the third campus I've lived in is more crammed than the first two. People literally piling on people. All sense of anonymity is lost. People would come to know how many times you've used the loo that week, and for some sadistic reason, will pass on the information! And though I have a single room, its prime location in the hostel makes it an ideal storage-space for all the day-scholars and a good hang-out for hostelites. This meaning, all sense of privacy is lost! And in the words of a dear professor of mine, we need to learn to just 'negotiate our spaces'. 

Though I'm ripping her phrase off her context, we've been playing with these words for quite sometime, and they have proved to be useful. The fact that we are packed like sardines in a can explains that we need to learn to negotiate our spaces of anonymity; basically trying not to tread on other's toes and sharpening our filtering systems (yeah, the ones that make sure we don't drop our guard let out important secrets). We also learn to negotiate spaces of priority. 'Is my academics more important? or is it that friend that needs my help?' 'Will I lose both rabbits if I chase them at the same time?' 'Or will I get both mangoes with the same stone?' We learn to negotiate spaces of self-images 'Should I care of what people think?' or 'Should I just learn to be myself?' It's interesting that after so many years in closed campuses, I find that I'm learning these things for the first time! With this lack of human 'space' in this huge sparsely populated campus, we have to learn to negotiate our spaces in order to live a sane life.