This is part 2 of my 2023 update. We pick up when I return to Delhi because of a conflict with our neighbors.
There had been issues with the neighbors for a while, though I had never gotten involved - there had never been reason to. But now with things getting worse, that was no longer the case.
I won’t go into the specifics, but for the next month I became sole negotiator and peacemaker in that situation. I was kind of up for it - I had just taught a bunch of non violent communication classes, I wanted to put my skills to the test. I wanted to see if I could walk into this very fraught situation and through words and will alone, make it all better. Hahaha. Hubris cometh, Devansh, before the fall.
There were a few things I hadn’t anticipated. The first and most difficult was the schedule - I’d start getting calls and texts at about 10 am when workmen arrived. Between different sets of people, these conversations would often go on till people went home around 7 pm, exactly when my work in the US started. I’d then work until 3 or 4 am, and after only a few hours of sleep, would be awoken again.
I also hadn’t bargained for being held responsible for every wrong by both sides. Any acts of seeming bad faith became my responsibility to justify. I dreaded each call or text - every ding could be the start of some new situation, requiring yet more of my time, my patience, my forbearance.
Hearing the fear, anger, and suspicion was emotionally exhausting. Trying to reach past it and arrive at a place of reason was emotionally exhausting. There would be moments of clarity and reason, but it took so little to snap people back to their entrenched positions.
There were fun parts too though - playing moisture detective for one. A shared wall was being damaged by water whose source defied all investigation. At some point we just became very curious about where the water was coming from, and the undertones of blame and accusations vanished from the conversation. We examined blueprints, called special plumbers, bought specific tools, turned off pipes and drained tanks, in the spirit of investigation and curiosity. We never did find the source of the water though.
While we couldn’t solve everything, one issue, one person, one conciliatory act at a time, things began to settle. Most thorny issues were resolved, trust rebuilt, and projects started moving. We went back to a low simmer, and life moved on.
It’s taken me months to write about this part of the year. I’ve written and deleted hundreds of words, conflicted about what level of detail to go into publicly.
But I didn’t want to skip over it completely, because resolving this conflict has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, one of the things of which I’m most proud. All those days and nights have led to peace. And without me, I think it would’ve ended very differently.
By the end of March things were largely calm, and on the 30th of March, a day after my very uneventful birthday, I flew to Thailand for a trip I’d been looking forward to for months.
That’s all for part 2. Part 3 coming hopefully soon!
<3
Devansh