A gratitude-filled farewell
Updated On: 05 December, 2025 07:42 AM IST | Mumbai | Rosalyn D`mello
As I bid goodbye to you, dear reader, I joyfully surrender a textual body that thrived over nearly 10 years to the dictates of fate in the hope that it may either ferment or take root
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A still from the critically acclaimed comedy-drama series ‘The Bear’
Quick Read
For many years, I mistook delay for procrastination. This impacted how I interpreted the set of behaviours that are central to my creativity. For instance, when I had a deadline coming up for a commissioned story, the spontaneous and sudden need to clean my entire apartment seemed like an inconvenience. Why was I insisting on wasting time? Until, at some point, I accepted that the act of cleaning was linked to my brain’s thinking process. By de-cluttering my living space, I was creating room for my thoughts to wander freely, to stumble upon ideas, to arrive at precision, to hone my sentences. I learned that writing isn’t always about strapping oneself to a chair and desk; it is entangled with living and involves the kind of maintenance that is synonymous with housekeeping. I wasn’t procrastinating by going for a walk. I was fuelling the neural connections between hand, head, and heart so that the words could drip more easily from my tongue. Embracing the distinction between delay and procrastination has helped me feel more attuned to my practice as both a creator and a receiver of art. I eventually understood that I had to learn to lean into the feeling of being ‘ready’ in order to enable the miracle — because art making is transcendence.
For months, I’ve lived in the limbo of unknowing. I last left the cast of The Bear on the cliffhanger of season three. I felt alone in my deep appreciation for the entire season. The general critical and popular consensus was that the season felt frustrating for viewers because there was so little plot advancement. It was a cinematic equivalent of the same day and mood repeating itself, even though it looked different, or the menu changed constantly, as did many other variables in the form of milestones, like birth, death, or separation. I couldn’t relate to most reviewers’ critique of the show because to me, it felt like every second echoed a perfect synthesis between form and content. Some episodes felt like bravely standalone character sketches. There were moments of utter beauty, when someone cooked a meal out of love, not to prove anything to anyone. Do you see, dear reader, how hard I am trying to talk about this show without offering too many spoilers, in case you feel inclined to watch it too? I felt a certain kind of ecstasy watching the show because of how layered the narrative is, how cinematically engrossing it is, and how attuned it is to its characters’ internal worlds. For all these reasons, I felt both keen and afraid to watch season four, which was released earlier this year. I wanted to feel ready to receive it, and I continue to watch it as if it were a delicate and elaborate 10-course meal — pausing to digest each episode, returning to a flavour, deconstructing its structure.
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