Dancing with Chaos

'Yava, Yava', meaning "come, come" is how Pitya welcomed me with zeal and enthusiasm every-time I reached home (our bachelors' apartment). Of course, on most of the days though he reached home late at night.

As a dance apprentice in those days, his typical day started by 11 am. First, commute to the office through Mumbai traffic, then a whole day spent on several activities that take place in a dance academy from managing costumes, props, studio to practising dance. This went on almost for the whole day and till late at night. Then again, there was a commute back home. There weren't weekly holidays for Pitya. I never saw him taking sick leaves. No public holidays, no bank holidays and no other holidays of festivals. Every day a working day.

Every night on reaching home, however late it was, he meticulously wrote the expenses of the day and kept the receipts/ tickets intact to be submitted to the academy. A few hours of sleep and again the chaos of the next day begins. I never saw Pitya complaining about his workload or crib about the time spent on work. He had no time to gossip about his colleagues at work. On any day, he was eager to join us all at home for fun, party or enjoying a movie on TV while multitasking with his ironing. Most of us had a holiday on weekend, yet when asked if he too will join us for a Friday late-night party, he always said, "lagech!" meaning, "yes, I am in, immediately!".

There was an order in what Pitya did. The engine was always on track, without brakes and despite the chaos around, he managed to dance with the chaos. The second law of thermodynamics states, “as one goes forward in time, the net entropy (degree of disorder) of an isolated or closed system will always increase (or at least stay the same).” In simple words, entropy is a measure of disorder and affects all aspects of our daily life. Everything we start with energy, entropy is the dispersion of that energy, all the systems dissolve into chaos.

What Pitya did was, with his love for the craft of dancing and his relentless temperament to work towards his goals he kept fueling the engine. He ensured to pour in energy into the systems built by him. There was no dirt of zeal. Thus even at the end of an 'exhaustive' day if he was expected to work on a new dance step or prep for the next day's class, he would always be ready, 'lagech'.