Big girls don’t cry

Posted on 09. Jun, 2010 by Leela Raina in India

The smell of your skin lingers on me now
You’re probably on your flight back to your hometown
I need some shelter of my own protection baby

Bangkok last year

Be with myself in center, clarity, peace, serenity

After a long tough day one always needs a long way back home, listening to the favourite bollywood songs and noticing the flowers on your way back. With songs comes the associations and memories of people and different stages of ones life. You fondly remember those sweet nothings in school, dancing like wild late into the night and the light jazz that eeps you hooked to your work.

None the less you need that special place, where you can run to every now and then which brings you back to your centre gives you clarity and peace.

The path that I’m walking, I must go alone
I must take the baby steps till I’m full grown
Fairy tales don’t always have a happy ending,  do they?
And I for seek the dark ahead, if I stay

College is over, girl you need to step into the real world. Everything is no longer given to you readymade on a platter. But you learn by making your own mistakes , this gradual process is filled with hurdles, doubt , questioning, self analysing and searching for purpose.  Coupled with all this is the most important feature that is the UNCERTAINTY and CONTINUATION of life no matter what.

Just imagine how Yvo might be feeling considering that he has been so close to the process and Secretaria , where he has built relationships and bonds for his life. I can imagine things being like a family , with the same people negotiators and observers you meeting on and on again. Its all about people management and that what Yvo did best. He understood and put himself in everyone’s  shoes and practiced conflict resolution.

Letting go is never easy and saying goodbye is the worst part of every relationship but what has to be dine must be. Some part ways on really bad. Whats important that at the Farewell we highlight the person for what he has been and how he has maken a difference , unfortunately I did not see any of this in Christiana’s ( the new exec secretary of UNFCCC) speech. Over that in her over motherly tone she used the show and tell mechanism to make Yvo follow her instructions like a baby to understand why he;d been presented with shoes which have UNFCCC 2006-10 written over it.

The plenary jam packed had fcr once a deafening silence and waited in anticipation for Yvo to speak. In his signature style he was funny and incorporated his punch lines to keep the mood animated but somewhere behind those word and laughs was a sense of heaviness , sadness of leaving.

Most of us might be thinking if we would be in his shoes we would have been relieved to be out of the process but nonetheless you always come back home to your family and the UNFCCC had become his family.

Like a little school mate in the school yard
We’ll play Jacks and UNO cards
I’ll be your best friend  And you’ll be mine, valentine
Yes, you can hold my hand if you want to ,Cause I want to hold yours, too
We’ll be playmates and lovers ,and share our secret worlds

Yvo in his personal farewell to us gave a reflection of the many relationships he has made over the course of his tenure. You have weirdly become integrated into the ecosystem something like what was shown in the movie Avatar. More than Yvo’s coordination its the feats he has achieved in getting to an actual consensus building exercise to get a roadmap, action plan , protocol and an accord in place. He says in his speech:

I have had the honour of working for you and with you to achieve this. In some cases our relationship has lasted for almost four years; in others it is closer to 14. Philip Gwage, Harald Dovland, Bernaditas Muller, Bill Hare, Mohammad Al Sabban, Richard Kinley and Michael Zammit Cutajar are just a few of the many that have sought, in those 14 years or more, to find a way forward that reconciles the seemingly irreconcilable…

It will be hard to fill the void Yvo has left for us. The only thing in our hands to accept and welcome in the new executive secretary and wishes she only fills Yvo’s spot. But I guess one has to move on and that too for the better,in Yvos’ words- The Copenhagen conference did not entirely deliver what anyone hadexpected or hoped for. There is a multitude of reasons for this. But, as Professor Al Sabban said only yesterday, we have experienced disappointments before and have
advanced in spite of them.

I hope you know, I hope you know ,That this has nothing to do with you
It’s personal, myself and I ,We got some straightening out to do
And I’m gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket
But I’ve gotta get a move on with my life ,It’s time to be a big girl now
And big girls don’t cry ,don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry

You have been a true inspiration, the tracker team salutes you and wishes you the very best for your  future.