Piece by Piece, we build a masterpiece

As a child, I was fascinated by games which require one to put all the pieces together and create something. Jigsaws, legos, building blocks….you name it and I’ve played with it. It all started because I used to bite my nails a lot, so my parents wanted to give me something that could keep my hands occupied. My nails are still the nightmare of any manicurist, but this led to a love for puzzles and games.

I’ve spent many hours in my childhood building Lego worlds or working on Jigsaw puzzles. When I had a fight with my sister, my ultimate revenge was to hide  just one piece of the Jigsaw she would be working on and deprive her of the satisfaction of a complete Jigsaw puzzle (Yes I know, I can be mean!). As the years progressed, Newton’s laws of gravity, Pythagoras’ triangles and then, Manoharan’s interpretation of the Indian Income Tax took up so much of my time that I forgot about this interest. Until some time ago, when a Japanese colleague moved into my office.

When he was setting his desk up, he began to put up some figurines of famous monuments (The Eiffel tower, Tokyo Tower, Sydney Opera house). On examining them more closely, I realised they were actually made up of nano blocks. So I asked him and he told me he had got them as his DIY project. He would get the nano block sets for each one (similar to miniature legos) and make them himself. I was amazed and told him about my childhood lego and jigsaw fascination. So he gave me the Sagrada familia (A famous church in Spain) nano block set and offered to let me make it. I was thrilled!

That very weekend, I sat down and began to work on it with tremendous enthusiasm. I put on some music and opened the set. The blocks spilled open and uh oh…they were tiny. I should have realised…they arent called nano blocks for nothing. I picked them up and examined them closely. They looked alike at a distance, but they were actually different pieces. I looked at the instruction manual and it was in Japanese. I realised this wasn’t going to be as easy as I had originally thought. However, on turning the page, I saw some step by step illustrations. Ok…some start. And then I began.

It was incredibly tough. I had to dismantle my work five times at different stages and restart. My fingers were big and clumsy and the pieces kept slipping through. The hours went by. The playlist on my laptop had stopped a long time ago and I hadn’t even realised. I guess this must have been the longest time I have ever been away from my phone inspite of having full network connectivity. But I kept at it. Finally, seven hours later, I completed it. Was I proud or what.

The next day, I went and kept it on my colleague’s desk. “Great! How did it go?’, he asked. “Oh lord, it was exhausting but exhilarating.  I had to tear the Sagrada Familia down five times before I could finally complete it!” I chirped happily. To which of course, Top Cat commented in his usual dry fashion, “Oh wow, we have Godzilla in our midst. She can tear down monuments!”

I took a picture of that and look at it each time I have a task I don’t want to do or think I can't complete. I have realised that if we attack it, little by little, with all our heart, whatever be the task, we can do it and do it well. After all, even Rome wasn’t built in a day!