Don't fall for the completion trap

Does our insidious 'completion culture' - from construction projects to Netflix series - rob us of the joy of perpetual anticipation? Nothing pops this question as physically as the news that on Friday, after 144 yrs of scaffolding, cranes and tourists craning their necks, the Antoni Gaudi-designed Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona is finally 'complete'. The announcement comes with the solemnity of a coda, as if the great cathedral has been tucked into bed with its last lullaby. But finishing projects is wrong. Completion is a dangerous drug that makes people think, 'Done!' And before you know it, they'll have nothing to do but to plot a coup.

Gaudi began his masterpiece in 1882, the same year Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote Vande Mataram - and finished it. Both works were meant to stir souls, not to be filed under 'done'. Luckily, the poem recently got a shot at being 'incomplete'. But the Sagrada was meant to be a perpetual work-in-progress, an architectural cliffhanger. With the final piece of the central tower laid in place, now what? Completion means closure, when what we really crave is the ongoing drama of incompletion. But hang on. A south-facing facade of the church is yet to be constructed and will take about a decade. Phew. We can still longingly wait for that achhe din, instead of telling ourselves, 'Oh, we're here?'