Life and its lessons...

    

  

It has been three years already since I left home since I decided to choose a life for myself. Every time I think of my life, I cannot bring myself to think of anything but the number of changes my life has gone through. Time and again I contemplate on how far I have been successful in my endeavours. And when I think of my achievements, the first endeavour I can think of is how I was able to survive living away from home. I didn’t take care of myself like my mum would have. But then, to an extent, I did take the responsibility for myself.

  When I had decided to make a life for myself, I never thought of the consequences that I would have to face. Life was difficult. Of course. But during the course of time, I learnt to cope up with the issues that had become a part of my life. And I knew that I had to come out of these issues to become what I wanted to.

   During the first year of my stay away from home, things seemed easy, though most of the people claim to have a difficult beginning. It was the other way round for me.

I still remember the day when my brother and I had come to this new city to enrol me in the college I had shortlisted. I remember how I had accepted to live in a little dollhouse-sized room with seven unknown people. I accepted to compromise because, at that time, nothing was more important to me than getting enrolled in the college. I was absolutely ready to accept every option that came on my path. Though after seeing the hostel room my mum was completely against my staying in the tiny room.

   I saw tears in my mum’s eyes when my dad and she had come to drop me off. It wasn’t as though she was leaving me for good but then sleeping every night without having a check on me was heart-wrenching for her. My dad was a kind of a person who never used to give me permission to even stay over at a friend’s place when I used to live at home. The same person had let me establish my own path. He has changed as well with time.He had shown so much trust in me.

  So much love and encouragement had filled me with confidence. With each step I took, my confidence would escalate. My goals were very clear. I had learnt to compromise with the situations and put to the fullest of my efforts.

   A person meets so many people in life. It’s not important that all the people he meets reflect his character and nature. Every person is born with a different identity. One cannot expect the other person to be like himself.

   

This was a mistake I made. I met a number of people and expected them to be my reflection. I expected them to please my behaviour. But that couldn’t be the case. I was being a hypocrite.

When I was a kid I used to think that all the parents’ of my classmates would look like my parents. It was quite an immature thought. And as time passed this thought did change and I realized that that couldn’t be the case. Little did I know that the idea was still deep-seated in my mind. Just that it now had new dimensions.

 I kept meeting people and losing them as well. I had made myself understand that life had to go on no matter if someone stayed or not. People I met hurt me a lot. But I never gave a thought that maybe I was hurting them as well because of my ideology.

  

As time is passing by, I’m still learning to understand things in a better way. I’m learning to see the world in varied perspectives. I’m learning to experience life through the ideas of other people. I don’t wish to limit myself to a set of ideas that my mind conceives.  

  

I was many times complimented by a friend that I was never judgemental. But when I think of it now, I believe I’ve judged people so many times and I hadn’t even realized it. These three years have given me so much. They’ve given me wisdom, courage, confidence and knowledge. I don’t wish to waste all that I’ve acquired. I wish to learn more until my thirst for wisdom hasn’t been quenched. I wish to actually understand people better and to accept them the way they are.

     

            Before I judge someone else and they leave too…

Discerning the meaning of life...

 It was the day when our juniors had given us the farewell party. In a few days, we were to leave school.  Almost all the girls from my class were teary-eyed. Some guys hid their tears after all guys weren't supposed to cry. I held my best friend's hand and promised her I would never leave her side, come what may. She promised the same. Days passed, we finished our board exams, enrolled in different junior colleges. Distance increased. Conversations appeared to cease. Ego in the guise of self-respect had begun to interrupt. I tried my best to stay in touch with her. But it seemed as though she had found better friends. All that remained was a set of memories that weren't worth remembering. That was when I realized, I had wasted the most valuable time of my life on people who had never really cared.

Every night when I get ready to finally shut my phone and get some sleep, a few things flash before my eyes. These things or rather incidents weren't something that I was unaware of. These were the images of those incidents that had occurred to me. 

These images force me to contemplate on how my life has changed through the years that have passed. I feel I've been the same for a long time. And then I think of those people with whom I had shared the incidents of my life. 

That's when I realize, most of them weren't a part of my life anymore. Then I think of why these people must've left. Now there was a time when making the important people in my life happy was the only aspiration of my life. Never had I ever come across people who would give importance to me the way I gave to some of the people. And then another thing struck me.
All that time during which I was busy prioritizing other people, I had shut myself from reality. I had shut myself from the people who actually cared for me. I had taken these people who really cared for granted just like how I was taken for granted. 
Discerning the perspectives of life can turn out to be labyrinthine most of the times. But our efforts to decipher life and its various shades should never pause. 

I have always believed that whatever occurs in a person's life has some or the other meaning. A meaning that is deep-seated. 

So whenever I think of those people who are a part of my life, I prepare to make myself accept that someday they would be gone as well. 

We had come into this universe alone. We had come to fulfil a purpose. All the people we meet are like the levels in a game. To win a game you need to cross the levels and to find your purpose in life you need to come across a number of people who will help you find your purpose. Like in a video game we have hurdles. We also have boosters that make us efficient to overcome the hurdles. Similarly, we have all kinds of people around us. Some are hurdles and some are proponents.

The memories of my childhood.

I still remember when on one of the eves of Children’s Day, I had asked my neighbour why she was going to college in uniform. After all, it was children’s day and she should be celebrating like I was about to celebrate at school (I was only 10 back then). She laughed a little and said, “I ain't-a kid anymore”. It was kind of funny to me. Back then I was under the impression that whoever was still studying and living with parents was a child. It seems funny when I think of my immaturity now. I sometimes wonder, wasn’t back then, everything very simple? We could find happiness in the smallest of things and cry to the loudest when things weren’t going well.  As we grow up we fake smile for things that we aren’t okay with and bury our heads into the pillows during the darkest of the nights to compensate with the compromises we make. Maybe that’s why they say a child’s heart is the purest because there’s nothing that a child hides. Or probably there’s nothing that the child thinks worth hiding.

I think of all this when I see the various writing pages putting up themes for writing about childhood within a limit of words. And clearly there cannot be any word limit for describing an extremely important part of our lives.

I was this little bundle of cuteness back then when I was kid (I know I’m self-obsessed). All I ever wanted was attention. I wouldn’t mingle with people but then I wanted them to talk to me, pamper me. I would cry for the stupidest of reasons and make a scene. And probably for that and for being very grumpy, apart from my parents and a few people here and there nobody really pampered me.

“Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14^th November 1889. He loved to be around children and hence his birthday is also called as children’s day”. These were the lines from my English essay about Jawaharlal Nehru that I was taught in 3^rd or 4^th grade at school. No other fact about the personality had settled in my mind so well other than the lines above. After studying this I would wait for children’s day eagerly. It was only on this day when we could actually wear colourful clothes and go to school just to play. “All play and no studies” would be the motto for the day at school. Unlike today when this is an everyday motto at college.

As years passed by nothing really changed at school when children’s day came. Be it in grade 5 or 10 we would still wait for the day and celebrate. Though our methods of celebrations changed, we did not.

I still remember, it was in my 10^th grade and we weren’t celebrating children’s day in the usual colourful clothes way. The school was getting ready for its annual Sports Day meet. The rehearsals were going on and those who weren’t participating stayed in the class. That wasn’t the usual rule but then it was children’s day and we could do anything we wished.  So, we were in the class playing with a football (we were playing” catch the ball” with a football). And out of nowhere my “always busy” crush enters the classroom and begins to play with us. Like it happens in the movies I began to blush but tried to hide it and act as though his presence didn’t affect me. This happened for a while and the noise we created made our principal come to our room. Our classrooms had projectors and watching us play with the huge ball, our principal warned us of damaging it, chided us for a few minutes and left and with her, my crush left as well. The principal’s chiding didn’t affect me as much as my crush’s leaving did.

That was the last year we celebrated children’s day and after that year I learnt why my neighbour had told that she was no more a kid. I realized that after graduating from school no one expects you to act like a kid and hence you have to start living like a grown up.

Over the years that have passed I’ve realized that we might age and grow old but then reminisce those days and wanting to go back into that time remains.  Talking of childhood can be such a joyful thing to do. The memories revitalize us and bring lots and lots of laughter to those we tell our stories too.

My stories of childhood aren’t really special or funny in any way but then they’re the priceless possessions I have. Everyone’s childhood is special to them and then it should be special because that’s the only phase we wish we could go back to but then even the most genuine and strongest prayers shall not take us there. 

Time waits for none. Indeed....

I look around myself and find that there are so many things that are not there, things that were an absolute part of my life earlier.  These might be trivial to some but to me, the change of certain things led me to think of the changes that occurred in my life.

My brother and I were talking about random things, and we didn’t know how but we started talking about the PCO’s and STD booths and the coin box telephones. While speaking of these old-school methods of communication, a few of my life’s incidents related to these modes of communication flash before my eyes. I remember how my aunt who had once visited us from Mumbai would ask me to accompany her to the telephone booth because during those days we didn’t have Jio and STD calls could be quite expensive. Whats App was still not founded. Now, this makes me think of how lives can change when something new is introduced.

This was only a thing that lost its importance and we didn’t even realize that. I wonder how sometimes we completely overlook the changes that occur in our lives.

“I got an offer for a job daddy”, I almost sing and tell my dad. “They want me to attend the interview dad”, I tell him a while later. He appears happy. His expression is a mix of happiness, worry and confusion.

Before I leave for the hostel, he asks me if I will be going for the interview. I reply in the affirmative. He stares at me and I try to decipher the meaning behind his stare. He answers before I try to force my head to crack an answer. “Be careful”, he says.  I nod and leave.

“Be careful”. These might be two very simple understandable words to everyone, but to me, they were too precious to be forgotten. My dad has always been a person who never speaks out the deepest of his concerns or worries. He always leaves it to us to understand. I couldn’t assure him with words that I would be fine but then, I’m sure he understood. This change in my dad is something I shall always remember.

Little later I begin to think of the opportunity that I had just got. “Wow”, I think to myself. I had actually got an offer to work.” I would start to earn in a little time.” These were the thoughts that did their rounds in my mind. And then suddenly I’m struck with another thought.

“Didn’t I just pass out from school yesterday?” I was a final year grad student I tell myself. Time goes so fast, doesn’t it? I had always thought of how I had wanted to live my life but I never had expected that I’d be able to achieve my dreams. Call me a pessimist or an under confident person, but this was how it was.

"Time and tide wait for none." "Time shall fly and you won’t even know." These are some of the phrases that all of us have grown up listening to. We never trust these to be true until we actually realize them ourselves.

Even now when I think of all the things that have changed in my life, be it in my day-to-day life or my personal life, I think how a person changes according to the changes that occur.

Whenever my phone keeps asking me to update the applications on it, it makes me wonder if it is time to update my life my life as well.

If I could  wish for something magical I wish I could just stop time even if it was just for a moment, if I could freeze the changes from occurring, if I could cancel the update requests like I do on my phone. Life would have become a little easy and a little more interesting. Wouldn’t it?

You are who you are......

"Why do people change?", my friend once asked me with all the innocence that she could gather.  It's the rule of the nature I told her. Unconvinced, she dodged the topic not wanting to speak of it anymore. Obviously, it was evident, she was affected by that change. Change was hard to accept. Wasn't it?

I have never really had a good set of friends. You could say that I've always been fallacious in choosing the right people to be a part of my life. I still remember I had a friend whose changed behaviour irked me a lot. I was a kind of girl who would be very loving and gentle to even those people who clearly didn't care. So, I went to her, sulked for a little while and when I noticed that she hardly cared, I asked her directly as to what had been the cause of her abnormal behaviour towards me. "It's not me, it's you", she said and walked out on me. For a few days, I wondered if it was really me. 

 Today when I think of that incident, I get hit by realization, that indeed it was me who had changed. I had taken a stand for myself, to not let anyone take me for granted. This enlightening realization further helped me to decipher that we live in this society with a number of identities. We keep adjusting our attitudes according to the nature of the person who befriends us. This constant switching between identities so as to be a part of someone else's life results in losing the true identity of the self and also in a loss of temper and a strong desire of wanting to change and to not be taken for granted. 

Switching from being one person to another within a moment can surely be enervating. So much of a deal to please someone to stay in your life? Is that really worthy of that person?

To answer that we need to throw a few questions at ourselves. Why do we have to take the efforts of pleasing people? Do we fear being isolated? Of course, isolation is the worst kind of a situation that nobody would want to be in. But the question is, is there absolutely no one on the globe who would accept you as who you are and not want you to switch from one identity to another just to be accepted. 

  No one's born with the same features, same fate and same attitude. The reason behind any kind of behaviour can be justified. And if there is a need to correct the behaviour, it can be done, by a friend who really cares and who can accept you for who you truly are. 

In the constant efforts of wanting to be accepted, we often forget the identity we were born with and the purpose for which we were born. The thought of being accepted becomes the only concern for one's life. 

I was travelling a few days back. The distance was hardly 200km. Within the 4 hours of my bus journey, I saw so many shades of nature change from place to place. In a generation, where the climate cannot be trusted, to trust a person is indeed a thoughtful task.

   I'm not judging anyone when I say that no one's worth being trusted. But then at the end of the day, it's you who shall stay with yourself until your last breath.