it was conference season in delhi. I had set myself three difficult tasks: initiate conversation with three specific people, each much older and more senior than me, each a somewhat awkward conversation, one a purely professional "are you aware of my existence" that might be a future tap for a recommendation, the second a very personal "how are you" after the loss of a spouse that I don't know why I kept feeling persuaded to ask because the person left behind is genuinely very nice, and the third a somewhat acknowledgement of my tangled feelings of awe, intimidation, attraction. I am proud I kinda did all three, not very suavely, with very few words (and more body language), but with outcomes that would pass a binary assessment. I feel strangely and simultaneously light and satiated. today, unlike all other evenings post professional/social meetings, I don't think I will be regaling him with post-analytic tales of every wrong word or sentence I blabbered...