Random Rant: The nightmare that goes by 'adulting'

This has been lying in my drafts for a month now, and I decided to spruce it up and send it out into the world.

Disclaimer: As I have said many times in the past, I am aware that I am quite privileged and that my problems are very first world ones. Yet, I choose to write about this for two reasons: Writing is my first and best coping mechanism, and it helps me deal with the several frustrations of adulthood that make me feel powerless. Second, it is a true and holistic picture of my life. To much of the outside world, my descriptors are superficial labels- student, wife, daughter. But to my Reader, I will be nothing but honest. I want you to know my eternal struggle to do justice to all of these roles, to see the constant juggling that sometimes leaves me drained. I want you to know that whatever you are going through, you're not alone.

Close to midnight on a Sunday, you find me here, typing this out feverishly. What happened, you ask? I'm dying to tell you. Well, it started out innocuously enough, like any other Sunday. We dealt with a number of chores like laundry, cleaning, changing sheets, getting groceries, other random things that ate up almost half a day. Finally, we were done. By then, it was afternoon, and my husband and I were both tired and wanted to go right back to bed. 

Luckily for him, he was free to nap and headed off to bed. Yours truly, however, had a class, so I trudged to my room and collapsed into the chair. There went another 3 hours of my day, and when I was done it was close to 5. We had guests coming over around 6, so I quickly freshened up, and tried to procure some snacks for them. They turned up promptly at 6, and we chatted for a few minutes and showed them around the house. Since it was starting to get dark, we turned on the lights. And that's when it started. The lights went out. Initially, we didn't worry. Power cuts were common in summer, but the backup power always kicked in within 10 minutes. This time it didn't, and puzzling over it, we looked outside to realize that ours was the only apartment plunged in darkness. We called up the electrician, and he promised to look into it soon.

We didn't have a candle or torch at home, so we sat awkwardly with our phone flashlights turned on, mortified that this had to happen when we had people visiting. With their help, we somehow managed to make coffee and served the snacks we had. By this point I had started to fret. The electrician had been probing for close to 45 minutes, but couldn't find the problem. Our guests decided to leave, and thus ended that part of it. However, we still had no electricity, and this was worrying considering the week ahead. My husband had to work, and I had classes, meetings and deadlines. We could not survive without WiFi, especially because we had very poor cell coverage and couldn't even use mobile data. Not to mention the vegetables and other perishables in the fridge, which I already imagined rotting away given the summer.

After two hours of probing, the electrician told us that anytime he turned on the mains, something caused it to trip off, and he would have to do a lot more work to isolate what was causing it. He also said that an external vendor was to blame, and that we would have to call him to come and inspect on the morrow. We pleaded with him to turn on at least the lighting circuit for the bedroom, the fridge and a power socket for the router. That much thankfully worked, and he left at 9.30. Exhausted by then, we had dinner, proceeded to make the required phone calls for the vendor to visit us the next day, and headed to bed. Within 15 minutes of turning on the fan, the power went out again. Back came the electrician, and it took him another couple of hours to get us back to where we were. By this time it was midnight, and we were too petrified to even turn on the fan for fear of losing connectivity. 

Morning dawned, and my first thought was 'hopefully this gets fixed today'. We started off our workdays with cold showers, after setting up daisy chains of extension cords from the one working socket. Half a day went by with no interruption, and then the external vendor turned up. Within half an hour of debug, he proclaimed that there was nothing wrong with his side of things and that the apartment electricians were incompetent. Then why do we not have electricity yet? we asked him. I can get it back, he said, and like a conjurer, in fifteen minutes he reconnected everything, and we confirmed that power was back by turning on a few switches. I was for some reason not amazed by his wizardry, but instead regarded it with skepticism. I also knew that it would be very difficult to get anything fixed a second time, given that the internal electricians and vendor kept blaming each other and passing the buck. So I decided that I needed more tangible proof that things were well and truly fixed, and this needed a stress test. I went ahead and turned on every single light, fan and geyser in the house, and see if power still remained on. Guess what? It tripped off. Now the entire flock of electricians looked at me in dismay, because this meant they needed to do more work at isolating the faulty component. Neither was I overjoyed, because I had a class in half an hour and my husband a meeting, and thanks to the wonderful bug I had uncovered, we were left with no power yet again.

Off they went to debug, and we after figuring out the signal strength map of the entire apartment, found the one spot where our phones actually had a reasonably good signal, and setup hotspots to connect to. I couldn't concentrate during the class, and I kept wondering how many days this would take to fix, and how much of an impact it would have on my work. I kept drifting in and out both due to sketchy internet and worry, and breathed a sigh of relief that the class was recorded, and I could watch it later. After class, we followed up on the progress, and realized that they had no idea what was the issue. By then, our laptops and phones died, and we sat down quietly, almost giving up hope. Three hours later, well into the evening, it got fixed. Turned out there was a faulty MCB in the building wiring outside our apartment. We would have never found it out had out you not turned on all the lights Ma'am, they now grinned at me. I thought to myself: I have had more experience with sporadic bugs than you can imagine. Twenty four hours after, things were once again normal. We sighed in relief and called it a day.

A week later, in the peak of summer, my husband turned on the AC in his room in the middle of a meeting. Within a few minutes, it started dripping water. Alarmed, he excused himself, and quickly placed a bucket underneath to catch the water. He went back to his call, and now there was the loud and steady sound of a drop making its perilous and sudden descent from the AC vent to the bottom of the bucket. The sound persisted, and my husband excused himself a second time, now to place a cloth over the bucket to muffle the sound. Shortly after this incident, unaware, I turned on the AC, and it instantly rained on my head, catching me completely by surprise. The AC service guy came in after a couple of days, and said that it would take a complete check-up, service and replacement of whatever parts had failed. Husband and I commiserated over the state of affairs, and decided that neither of us had the time or energy to supervise yet another repair ordeal. No technicians were called, and the bucket with the cloth still remains in his room. I have resorted to taking shelter under the fan. We have stopped trying to trade in chaos for harmony. We have made peace with the fact that something will always need fixing, and that it has to wait until our schedules are free enough.

 A week later, my parents and grandpa were due for their second dose of vaccination. I booked them an appointment in the same center that they got their first dose at, and they set off first thing in the morning in a cab. I had my fingers crossed, because I knew how difficult it was for my Mom to take my 92 year old grandpa, who struggled with climbing stairs or even getting into a cab. I also felt guilty about not helping out, but it was a working day for me, and I couldn't go with them. I was working when I got the first call from my upset mother: They have no supply of vaccine A here. Apparently they ran out two weeks ago, and now they're only giving vaccine B. I have come all this way for nothing. Is there anywhere else we can go? I quickly made a bunch of phone calls to various hospitals in the vicinity, but to no avail. Finally, my mother found one hospital where they had the required vaccine and were administering it. She told me that both my Dad and Grandpa were annoyed with her and that she was struggling to coax them to go to another hospital. I felt helpless, and I texted my Dad hoping to convince him. Barely twenty minutes later, I got another anguished call from my Mom: We tried booking two cabs, and both of them cancelled for some reason. Now your Dad is angry and refuses to book another. I have brought your grandpa from the wheelchair, and we have now been standing on the road for fifteen minutes. I don't think he will be able to stand much longer, his legs are quivering. Can you please book us another cab quickly?

I tried to figure out where exactly they were, and managed to book another cab and talk to the driver. But he was a good distance away, and watching the tiny dot on the map move was frustrating. I kept assuring my Mom that the cab would be there any minute. After multiple calls to the cab driver and my Mom to coordinate, they were finally in the cab. I could now focus on work. I couldn't have been more wrong. Soon, my Mom called me again, with a different problem. Here, they are refusing to vaccinate us because our names don't show up in their portal as vaccinated for the first dose. I have no idea why this is happening. No matter where we go, they will not vaccinate us because the portal isn't showing the first dose itself.

I felt like tearing my hair out. Isn't the vaccination card good enough? What about the vaccination certificate I downloaded and sent you? 

I already showed all of that. They're saying they can't see it at their end, so nothing can be done.

Why did even a simple thing like this come with so many problems? Time was ticking away, and my morning was near gone, with nothing to show for it but frustration. I had a meeting in 30 minutes, and I just couldn't context switch. I broke down and wept for a good fifteen minutes. I felt the weight of my mother's struggles, the pressure of my own unfinished work and sheer helplessness at the situation. After another fifteen minutes, I put my phone on silent and went into work mode. After the meeting, I called my Mom and checked. She said that the issue had been resolved and they had all been vaccinated. I felt relieved and weary all at once. I gobbled up lunch, took a short nap, and then got back to work, this time uninterrupted.

There have been a long slew of such incidents, Reader. So many days where I think I have agency over my schedule, but things get in the way and I feel completely powerless. I have been trying to deal with all of it without completely losing it. Sometimes, I succeed. Sometimes, I don't. I miss the days when I had an uncomplicated life, one with much less responsibilities. I am trying to gradually grow into this life, to prioritize much more effectively, and to only accept interruptions that absolutely need my attention right away. I am still learning, and I have a long way to go. Thank you for listening to my rant so patiently, Reader. I hope you learn something from it.