Nanduzki

I sit at my desk and look at the computer screen to check if she’s online. She is. As the voice messenger connects, I look for my ‘questions list’. She answers with a cheerful “Hello!” We exchange friendly banter before she asks, “I hope this is not going to be too personal…?” “Don’t worry”, I reply. “So, Nandita Jain…let’s start.”

Nandita talks about her childhood, being an academic prodigy, and how she decided to become an animator over a spacewoman. She remembers literally throwing all other options out of the window (read ‘throwing application forms out of a car window when no one was looking’), after she decided to apply for the National Institute of Design (NID).

“The best thing about NID is how it opens you up; you get exposure of all kinds. You lose your inhibitions, you know what I mean?” However, she also accepts the fact that being in NID has made her somewhat selfish. “I tend to think first about my work, and then about everything else. My folks are the people I’ve been most unfair with I guess…” At this point, the voice messenger hits a technical snag, and we reschedule for the next day.

*******

Nandita messages me on MSN and apologizes for being late. Her chat name reads ‘Nanduzki’. It’s two in the morning, so we do the interview via typing. I ask her about family, and more specifically her parents. She seems to open up more; perhaps it’s the ‘magic of the written word’.

“Basically they’ve been the best always, open to a lot of things which most parents wouldn’t agree to…like having a boyfriend in school. Then the time I shaved my head.” She pauses, and then adds, “I wonder sometimes what it must be like for a parent to have a kid like me. I mean the amount of patience and strength each of them have is wonderful.”

“Nowadays, we have a lot of ideology clashes; their view of the world is quite different from mine. Maybe they don’t agree with most of my decisions, but I do think they trust me. I always go by my gut instincts. I want to live life through my own experiences, you know what I mean? I have my own mistakes to make…”

“Have you ever let them down; like a major let down?” I ask. “Yup, when my Mum found out I was smoking, she was very upset. I got a major thing about ‘Where did we go wrong?’ and ‘Is this what we get in return?’

When I ask her how she felt about, she replies, “Oh, I felt sick to the core. I felt like I had betrayed them.”

When I ask her about the future, she says that she doesn’t want to make empty promises. “My parents want me to come and stay with them; and right now I have no idea where life is going to take me…but I do want to be with my folks, and take care of them when they’re old. That’s about it.”

“So basically you’re looking for a kind of compromise; a balance?” I ask her. “Ma keeps telling me that I’m no island; I shouldn’t shut everything else out and think only about work. But I believe this is the best time I can actually concentrate on building a foundation for the future, you know…”

“It’s not that I don’t talk to them, or that I don’t care. Well I guess it happens sometimes, but I don’t take them for granted. Their happiness lies in mine, and vice versa. So somewhere both parties have to reach a compromise, without hurting each other. Thank God my folks are cool with a lot of things I do…” she concludes.

At this point I’m quite satisfied with my subject, and extremely sleepy. “Any more questions?” she asks. “Yes, what’s with the name? Nanduzki?” I ask in return. “Oh, ha-ha…I like the Russian dancer, you know, Nijinski? I’m his namesake…Nanduzki! Ha-ha.”

“Ok, one last question. If you had to describe this interview in one word, what would it be?” “Hmmm. Introspective. Yeah, I’d say very introspective.”

“Fair enough”, I say to myself, as we exchange goodbyes and I sign out.

Note: This time the assignment was "a piece based on an interview". I hope I did justice to what you said, Ms. Nanduzki Vodkadrinkova!