2 Years

Is what you always do usually right? How many times have your innermost beliefs and desires clashed with the short-term decisions you take? Mine did…

I wanted to get out of my hometown. Away from the usual drags of life carried over with constant bickering of a small town you live in. And I wanted to escape from home. Must be sounding horrible written so blandly, but I did. I wanted a taste of independence, to make my own decisions about my life.

For my non-Indian readers, staying in your home-town means staying with your parents, in the same house, and if you don’t, you’re not filial, you’re a rebel, you’re a black sheep. But I wanted to be free, to be on my own for a while. After all, in a few years down the line,  in a couple years and that will bind me down forever after.

I wanted to live a reckless life, be free, and the only escape I saw was a job outside of my home-town. An escape from my family, from my state, an insight to the wonderful exciting life the wonderful 'others’ get to live…

But then, I entered my post-graduation college. It was in my same home-town, but with a residential campus, which meant stay at home, but away from home. Two years of independence, a chance to prove that when left alone, I could still take care of myself, and not get killed! And along with these two years, came the realization that whatever I had thought about me the last 22 years was so totally wrong…

Being alone defined what you mean to yourself, what others who stay on campus mean to you and most importantly, what you mean to them. It gave me a chance to look at my life in different perspective, asked me about how difficult it was to know your parents were ill and you couldn’t be there to stay with them in the hospital. I saw batch-mates flying home to be with parents who had suffered heart attacks, crying secretly in their rooms because they missed family and friends back home.

And yet, we were a family away from family. It is interesting to see how some people you hardly know will stand by you at 3AM when they know you need support and a shoulder to cry on. Amazing to see how persons you thought were closest to snap the phone shut at 10 in the morning, despite knowing how much you need them.

It allows you to be yourself and analyze how others react to the real you, and to experiment with yourself and watch the same people forget the previous image of you and accept the totally new one. A simple act such as a straightening of your hair can give you a make-over. Persons you ignore being nice to you can make you regret your earlier harshness to them. So many of us stay so close on such a small campus, and yet, how many of the 120 people I have lived with the last 2 years do I really know? One, or maybe 2 of them..?

Nah, not even one of them! For each day brings forth a new face, each night sheds a new mask. There are some things which happened which I will never forget, and some actions for which I will be eternally grateful, and there are some incidents I wish I could forget, and some actions I can never forgive. And interestingly, all of the same person.

Yeah, I still wanna escape, but it wasn’t my family I wanted to escape from, it was escape from myself. Being a foreign-returned teenager, trying to adjust and please an entire extended family you hardly know and keen on making friends with pure strangers from your class you’ve never met before, and famous for being from ‘outside’, and not for who you are… The predefined slot you’re placed in just because people think they know you when they don’t have the slightest idea what you actually are…

Isn’t this something all of us crave to escape from? I was keen on getting out of here as of November, desperate to get a job which would fly me away from the stifling place I live in presently. But now, I’ve almost accepted a job right here, in my home-town, hardly 15minutes away from my home. And I’ll be living with my parents, glad to take care of them, to be in their company.

Sure, I still want to go out, but now, it is to travel, and if I ever crave escape, it will be from personal demons I will now be able to handle…