I’m currently locked out of my bathroom.

The locksmith is an hour or so away, familiar with where I live and what he needs to do, because he solved the same problem yesterday. It’s early morning so my black coffee must do as an anti-bacterial mouthwash for now.

Nothing like a sloppy start to life in a new city.

After spending almost a year meandering around Maharashtra, Pune seems like a city with the right balance — just the right amount of hustle and bustle, and cheaper than the other urban behemoths.

It should be my home for now. Or for a while. Hopefully for a long time. And that is important because ever since I decided to quit New York and Corporate America some four years ago, there has never been this amount of certainty about staying put in one city.

The last few years have been full of restarts. Life was condensed into a large enough suitcase, and then it was time to hop around the globe, one continent at a time. That suitcase was the only physical constant.

Even though these restarts took place in different parts of the world, the pattern of adaptation was similar —  find an apartment, make sure it has good internet, find a place to play football and find the courage to make new friends so you don’t feel alone and miserable.

And then, just when there is an inkling of rhythm and comfort, it is time to pack that suitcase up again and move. This happened so often that towards the end I stopped fully unpacking my suitcase. Why bother.

But amidst all this uprooting, I found constant opportunities to purge and cleanse. Starting afresh in a new country meant that I had a clean slate of sorts. I tried to weed out parts of me that I was not proud of while doubling down on those that reaped better relationships, stronger morals and less self-loathe.

I also got a chance to take the best from each culture and hold on to it, even if it seemed strange to the next country. Exposure to a wide range of people and thoughts gave me a level of tolerance and open-mindedness that no book or institute can provide.

But, enough of that.

Real change takes time and commitment. While frolicking around the world is a glamorous luxury I have been fortunate to have, it’s at best only a decent education and at worst, a hedonistic treadmill treading towards perceived, epicurean superiority.

It’s in depth that there is real purpose, real love, real contentment. And for that, it’s important to find stillness — of the mind, of the body, of space.

It’s important to build comfort and familiarity around you so that you can face discomfort that lies at a much deeper level. A level that we are either blind to or that we like to run away from. True purpose lies right there, in that deep-rooted discomfort, where change yearns to be found.

That’s where I’m trying to go.

India, Pune, Aundh is where I will start sowing those seeds, where I’ll unpack my suitcase and put it away until dust can finally find a home on it. Where I hope to stay for as long as it takes to drive the change I wish to see in the systemic injustice that drowns a large proportion of our world.

And I am so friggin’ fortunate to get a chance to do this.

This past year, I have inched closer and closer to figuring out what I want to do. My social enterprise, Ashaya, has started to take shape. I have found a co-founding Chief Scientist to support me in making waste more valuable. The impact ecosystem I have landed into and embraced here in India has been nothing short of encouraging and resourceful. I have reconnected with family that almost competes to shower me with their love and support. I finally have a city and a place that I don’t already have plans to leave from.

So much has happened but I still feel like everything is moving so slowly. I know that the fastest way to make progress is to take your time, but Anish, hurry up already. That’s a constant dilemma I need to continue getting better at handling.

It’s now been a few weeks since I restarted life in Pune. In those few weeks, I have hunted for apartments, found one, moved in, celebrated Diwali in a different town, come back to the new apartment and become best buddies with the security guard downstairs.

I cannot stomach how nice and how large my new apartment is. Will I find the right set of friends? The right internet? The right football league? How long will it take?

Even though I am a seasoned life restart-er, this final restart seems harder than others. Maybe because I’m sick of starting over and over again. Or maybe because this one is for the long haul.

Meanwhile, I am still locked out of my bathroom. The locksmith was supposed to be here a while ago.

I’ll have to call him again.