There were events to organize, people to meet, things to be discussed, things to be re-discussed, and, as is usually the case, a few things that were never on the agenda at all.
Somewhere in the middle of this whirlwind of activity, I found myself having some of the most delightful conversations - the completely unplanned kind.
“Ma’am, are you free to talk for a couple of minutes?” — that kind!
A child would walk up to me with a question. Someone would stop me in the corridor. A conversation would begin over something as ordinary as an event, a book, a classroom incident - and before I knew it, we would be off on a completely different tangent.
And, I loved it. Because, good conversations have become something of a luxury.
Not because we don't have people to talk to. Quite the contrary. We have more ways of communicating than ever before. We can message, call, video call, comment, react, forward and respond - sometimes all at the same time.
But, a conversation is something else.
It meanders. It pauses. It takes a little detour. It sometimes goes completely off the beaten track. And occasionally, it gets gloriously lost.
And, sometimes, that is precisely the point.
Some of my recent conversations with children reminded me of this. Children have a wonderfully inconvenient way of talking. They don't always follow a logical sequence. They can begin with a serious question, take an unexpected turn, tell you something completely unrelated, and then return to the original question as though nothing happened.
There is no agenda. And thankfully, no PowerPoint Presentation.
Perhaps, that is why talking to them can be so refreshing.
They ask questions adults have learnt not to ask. They say things without wrapping them in layers of diplomacy. They can be curious about the most ordinary things and completely fascinated by something we would probably dismiss as insignificant.
They have a way of cutting straight to the heart of things. Somewhere in these conversations, I found myself laughing more. Listening more. Remembering more.
At times, I even felt younger than I am. Not in the physical sense, of course - I am not about to start running around the campus pretending to be one of the students!
But there is something about a good conversation that makes age rather irrelevant.
For a few minutes, there is no adult and child, no teacher and student, no difference in age or experience. There are simply two people exchanging thoughts — one discovering something, the other rediscovering it. Perhaps that is one of the quiet gifts of working with young people.
They don't merely remind us of what we once knew. Sometimes, they introduce us to ways of looking at things that we had simply stopped noticing.
A question from a child can make you reconsider something you had taken for granted. A passing remark can stay with you for the rest of the day. A completely unexpected observation can make you laugh long after the child has disappeared around the corner.
Isn't that what a good conversation is supposed to do?
Leave a little something behind.
We often say that we don't have time for conversations. I don't quite agree.
Perhaps we don't need more time. Perhaps we simply need to make more room for it.
Room to sit for another five minutes.
Room to listen instead of rushing to respond.
Room for a conversation that has no particular destination.
Because not everything in life has to be productive.
Some things can simply be pleasurable.
A “Can I ask you something?” that becomes twenty minutes.
A quick exchange in a corridor that unexpectedly makes your day.
A casual “Ma’am, one small doubt…” that opens the door to a completely unexpected conversation. These are not interruptions. Perhaps, these are the little threads that hold our days together. And, there is something wonderfully old-fashioned about them.
In a world where so much of our communication is carefully typed, edited, scheduled and sent, there is still something magical about simply talking.
No carefully chosen emoji. No typing indicator. No “Seen at 7:42 p.m.”
Just two people - present, curious and listening.
And, perhaps we should stop being so quick to move on from these moments.
The next time a child says, “Can I tell you something?”
Stay.
The next time someone stops by when you are halfway through something, perhaps don't immediately look at the clock.
And, the next time a conversation takes an unexpected turn, let it.
Follow the thread. Take the detour. See where it leads.
Because you never know what you might discover along the way.
After all, some of the best conversations in life are the ones we never planned to have.
And sometimes, the conversations that seem to have no point at all turn out to be the ones that stay with us the longest.
