I have been away for long. I had so many reasons to come back I just couldn't choose one. Amongst my many hopes for this year, was one to chronicle my times now for the various futures to come. But the life I am familiar with is largely of grand plans that waste paper and great ideas that occur when I am too lazy to pen them down.
But there is a change creeping through the languid years. Maybe it is the normal curve of growing up...I don't know...I've never been here. And that I guess is the best part about it.
As a kid I had no epiphanies of becoming a particular professional. I am studying medicine now, but it does not wholesomely consume me. There is an effort I have to garner to sit myself down and pay attention to its language. I definitely don't mind it. I value the opportunity I have and look forward to the daunting challenges. But this I don't count in my rites of passage. I would have had some thing to do anyhow.
I hated the entire period of childhood. All I wished for was to grow up. That was all I was looking to do once I 'grew up'. I had no date and time for it. I didn't know what to read or where to go to learn 'growing up'. All I knew was that some day I would be confident, content and immaculately independant. Then, I guess I grew up.
So now I am a pile of all the pieces that make me. Like, when this year began I cleaned my hostel-room cupboard after a year and half. I got everything it held in a heap on my bed. And then I began wishing I hadn't done it at all. (I am such a good candidate for mid-life crises, I've already been through them twice!). Then, one deep breath and coffee later, I got to sorting.
I realised how I have bit by bit added dimensions to my being in 3 years of moving out of home and kidhood. Like the clothes I have bought over the period for purely experimental reasons-let's try if this suits my style or if I suit it's-I have shopped in areas that specialized in self-development. I dindn't know what I was looking for, hell, I didn't know I was looking! But I bought loads and paid costs for every thing.
The lack of amazement at not missing home.
The realization of numbed pain and the increased awareness its agony bore.
Falling in love and then not being so sure about it.
The FountainHead and 'YES!!!' exploding in my mind.
Realizing the futility of fear of judgement and freaking out at the ginormous size of the stupidity monster.
Speaking Marathi and not knowing how to react when a leprosy-ridden patient tells me that good things happen to good people.
Forgiving my parents and re-casting them as fellow human beings that are living by trying to make the best of what comes along.
Losing friends that never were.
Ideas of lone lunches and death.
Achievement and her coterie of friends and foes.
Accusations and the will to not defend.
Running to leap but wanting a last veiw many times over.
All these lie spread before me to be labeled, boxed together and placed neatly in shelves.
Deep breaths and coffee?
