As I stand at the threshold of moving in to another era of my life, I truly feel like the child who grew up with loving parents and an equally lovely extended family. I say extended as I was lucky to have both my family and friends with me till I could develop to be the individual I am today.
Looking back in to the past is equally difficult, as looking in to the future is. While your future is full of dreams, the past is a pack of nightmares. It’s unnerving to know that as you look back you see mistakes, harsh judgements, grudges, petty misunderstandings and quarrels that hold nothing but a sense of incompleteness in you. But returning in time also is a pleasurable feeling as it gives you a glimpse of fun, joy, no inhibitions, laughter and above all a sense of freedom.
The day has been a myriad of colours and at times orange, with a soft wind blowing that keeps the freshness of retreating monsoon alive in my heart. As I sit down to pen down my memories, I suddenly have this urge to have a steaming cup of tea. Tea- one three letter word and it reminds me of that ‘cutting chai’ typical of Mumbai, in the lane behind college, where I found a lot of solace and some nice tea too. I know this might sound unlike, but be it summer or winter or for that matter the best part of monsoon, the chai wala was always a better bet for me, instead of the juice centre just at the turning of the footpath. Guess sandwich across the road, at the ‘katta’ was another loved feature of growing up.
Before I venture in to the details of my post teen years, I feel a comment on my foundation years is necessary at this juncture. School, for each one of us is new home where we learn everything about the world around us. Make friends for lifetime, who remind you of every small mistake you did and praise you for every achievement!
It’s been a decade since I left school and moved forward towards my life’s goals (don’t know yet what they are) yet I return to school days again, as each time I think back, I resurface with a treasure of memories untold.
Moving on, my college days were real eye openers. Each day was different and each person I met is an experience I could speak of. Some just happened to pass through,whom I fondly call acquaintances and some who refused to pass through and stayed put - friends!!
Friends laugh, cheer, judge, criticize, share dreams and sorrow or plain listen when you need an ear or lend a shoulder when you need to cry. Sometimes they are just there without any rhyme or reason!
My adult years, (yeah, I did vote once to prove I was allowed!) were the ones that taught me all the subjects that were an additional aspect of me choosing a social science school for my postgraduate programme. I learned the meaning of friendship, albeit with a liberal dose of self interest, miscommunication, drama, histrionics, subtle undercurrents, groupism, politics, one-upmanship but above all trust! Of all the mentioned, trust was always a little scarce. In fact as a friend once mentioned, “Trust deficit” happens always and is a main factor in making us misjudge and conceive notions that may not even exist.
Well it is true to a certain extent, that as we grow older we tend to get cynical about things around us, especially if they break the ideal mould we have formed in our minds. But I feel we live only once and it needs to be led with a healthy mix of joys and woes, fun and drama, but above all with the heart to forgive and forget! As I go down the memory lane to those years at college, be it silly ego issues or mass bunking or for that matter that great festival we launched and is now nowhere to be seen, but of which I am proud of or long list of tests and presentations for which preparation happened just the night before, I experience a sense of belonging to an era and group of people who like me went through almost all these emotions yet maybe never got around putting a name to it or actually talking about it.
All those who shared the same era, with me, am sure would agree, that try as much, we cannot reach that pinnacle of bonding that we had during college days. Be it the simple gesture of sharing lunch boxes (though we were hungry always through our 100 min long law lectures), or assignments, test answers, the great ideas to make a mountain of a molehill, ‘healthy’ rivalry among groups (OMG that was so much prevalent, I used to wonder at times if I was in classroom or the parliament) and of course our dear professors and their problems.
Today we do bond, but we have other issues which are always at the back of our minds, and in the rat race we are in to (we are rats whether we win or lose) we seldom get an opportunity to sit back and have a carefree attitude towards life. Most of us have become cautious, in a way it is good that we have started taking responsibility of our actions, but somewhere along the line we have lost track of our dreams, aspirations (this applies to only those who had dreams and are currently doing different things) and creativity which flowed like the Brahmaputra during college days and is now like the Mithi overflowing only during monsoon.
I had certainly not envisaged my future (i.e. my present... I was only 20 then) to be the way it is today. My dreams and aspirations are far over the horizon, but I hope to reach there one day and when I do look back, will be able to see that a difference was made. Here I am standing at the threshold of moving in to another era of my life, lucky for me life has given another chance to make fresh choices. It’s true we can’t start afresh by changing the beginning but we can always make the ending different.
