Memories.......
With all the tales of the impending doomsday and the world ending at a poof of a wind by the end of this month, perhaps a recount of the tales in the life of a someone is worth penning down! Oh but, I'd rather say "typing down", its 2012 dude!!!
As they say "Life is a journey"....Well it has been, one heck of a voyage through 20 years of gentle meanders,exciting cascades, exuberant waves,and turbulent whirlpools!! But today when I look back at all those moments, they all add up to that precious book - "My Life" and each of them are just indispensable!
My life had started on the eve on 29th January,1992 in a city which people call Durgapur, but I call "Home". My oldest memories are of me playing with dad, he feigning to be my husband and eating all the grass and tree leaves I had "supposedly" cooked and all the mud sweets that I had "baked"! ( I "was" an amazing cook back then..somehow forgot the art as I grew up :P) And I would always make mom the "mother-in-law" in the picture who was to supply us "real food" when we got tired of the entire play! Also I would sing along with ma whenever she hummed the tunes of amazing songs in the kitchen. My mother, I would say, was a complete trickster! The clever lady used to fool me into doing things that would completely exhaust me and make me fall asleep so that I would allow her to complete the household chores - things like drawing on the entire floor of the house (ma used to say that was my slate!) with those bundles of coloured chalks that she has saved till today! I remember drawing on the entire floor, sometimes aided by my dad (my playmate and best friend in all my naughty deeds!), sometimes drawing all over mom and dad's face when they were sleeping (with powder :P) and .......Just too many things popping up in my head now...but to cut it short, ya my parents were my best buddies and through all those days (actually even today!)!!
Then, like all other kids, I got into school (well there's quite some history behind it, but I'll save that for the next doomsday :P). My first day in school put me into utter astonishment - Gosh! there are so many little beings like me all around but why are they crying?? (I had never been to Montessori before). I remember a kind old sister giving us chocolates and finally even before the bewilderment of seeing so many creatures of my type together at the same time could get over, we were handed off to our parents! I remember my mom being happy that I had not cried (though I never understood why we were supposed to cry in the first place) and that I had not eaten the chocolate without telling her! And then she had pointed to a little girl (some senior) with a register in hand and had said "good girls get to become the monitor and then they get to carry the register." I remember how I had admired that girl - an embodiment of discipline - like the fairies I had heard about! The very next day, was proper school - school uniform, tiffin box, water bottle, name tag pinned to the new shirt - and Oh yea - I was "get set ready" in everything new to have a new adventure - School!! As I was leaving the house with dad, I remember ma saying "Be a good girl, listen to your teacher. And dont suck your fingers - you are not a baby anymore, you are a responsible school girl now!!And remember, we love you so much!"...And that day when I got back home from school - my mom dad had 3 reasons to celebrate for -
1. My teacher had seemingly told dad (who waited outside the school gate for the entire 4hours of my school the 1st day!) that I never cried and was perfectly obedient and had even written all the alphabets correctly! (Their biggest happiness was the fact I had managed to stay away from them for 4 hours for the 1st time in my life!)
2. I had been appointed as the class monitor
3. I had left my perpetual habit of sucking my entire hand! (I never did this after my 1st day of school, to the astonishments of my parents who had been desperately trying before that day to get me to leave the habit but in vain!)
Thus began school life.......
My nursery class passed by with me wondering why we were still doing the alphabets (my mother was not good at playing games. So she had fooled me into believing that study was a game! So before I had entered school, I knew to read fairy tale books, could right 10 lined "essays" and do some addition)!! With each passing year, school became my life - the music classes, the teachers, the studies and my friends! I would not claim to have many friends from school now, but ya, I am to blame for it. MY love for discipline and sincerity and morals was just so much (which no longer exists ,haha :P) that I lectured all those naughty girls in my class just too much for them to bear with me! To add to that, monitoring the class every year had made me feel like a teacher, responsible for the welfare of my class (I would not let my classmates play dumbcharade in free periods, I Hitlered them into playing quiz!!) - naturally as we grew up, the "happening girls" of the school started to despise me! I dont blame them, when I now look back to what a Hitler I was back then, I cant help laughing!! But yes, this school also gifted me the very few people whom I can turn to anytime I need - very few, but the real gold - best friends!!!
But hey, was school really so boring?Hell Noooo!! It was a mammoth series of events - gruelling competitions, picnics, dances, dramas, fights, enemies, friends - a heck of a time!! Christmas was my favourite time of the school year and I can never forget how we fought for a better decorated classroom (I even remember a girl in the other section hurling a stone at me in the recess time so that I couldn't make the straw Bethlehem we were making in our class!! haha !! Kids!!)...Those golden days of utter innocence can never come back!! I'll always cherish them but hey, life never worsened after school either! With the School Captainship (that was some fun too - campaigns, speech as though I was Antony! Hahah!!) in the 10th and then getting a wonderful farewell and leaving my alma mater that crowned me on the last day as Carmel Queen, hey I have nothing to repent about! I HAVE LIVED school!! Every single inch of it - learnt, enjoyed, faltered and most importantly grew up!!! And they shall always be "etched in the sands of time"..........
High School - new school, new missions, new people, in short - "exposed to the BIG BAD WORLD" as our English teacher said! Those 2 years just went fleeting past, so much in the mind, so much to achieve, so much to strive for, so much to learn (I still have those piles of FIITJEE books and ARIHANT books stacked at home - just 2 many memories with them to discard!) - every second that counts and realizing the meaning of "competition" for the first time!! And also - "decisions". My parents wanted me to be a doctor, I was good at biology to be honest. But I was scared of blood and people in pain....And I loved maths,physics and chemistry!! My parents realized and it was "Engineering it is"!! Funnily, I did not even know what the full form of IIT was in my 11th!! It was my chemistry tutor who pulled me into his "prospect IIT batch" and then started the journey....Bunking school for tutions and self study, confusions (there was no coaching house in my city so figuring out the right tutor was a very challenging and important task!) , books and books and books - that was pretty much my high school (and trust me , may be it was THE best part of my life till now!!)!! But high school also gave me some really beautiful moments in my minds book....I met some of the best people I have known till today there! And yes, it also made me realize that there is another species called "boys" (my previous school was a girls school) , some of whom were a little psychotic (the ones that punched each other with maggi stuffed in their mouths at recess over a lost football match), some superbraniacs (the geeks), some "WEIRD" (the ones that "paid attention:, haha!!) and the Normal ones (the studygroup and friends)!....
And then BaaaAAAMMM, I landed onto College!!IIT Kharagpur ( not a branch I was looking for to be honest, but I'd still say I had made the right choice)!! And man, thats where I saw "India" !! Myriad of species - people speaking in Telegu, Tamil, Marathi, Bhojpuri,Punjabi, different dialects of hindi and even bengali as a matter of fact!! And for the first time in my life, I was scared!! I didn't seem to like anything there - the subjects, the people, the department, the seniors, the food , the "compulsory" night outs, parties with disco lights (the very idea scared me back then!) and to add to that - my batchies!!! I got into a cocoon and lived in my own world, thanks to the amazing people who supported me in those days....thats how my 1st year passed. But I wouldn't say it was not memorable. Those days of "me and my world" has given me some of the most beautiful moments in my life and helped me realize myself - that I don't need to be a robotic disciplinarian and that its sometimes okay to just let go, to do what you want to do!! And honestly, I wouldn't have been the me of today had it not been for those special people who got me out through those days - the patience, the time and the care they bestowed upon me!!
Next came my 2nd year - a more confident me, ready to take on the world!! And I met a wonderful person -> my room-mate who hated the fan as much as I loved it, loved veg as much as I detested it, absolutely clueless about fashion (even I am no good at it, but she was a total disaster!) , a habitual late-latif - but the person who I would not trade with for anything in this world!!! Together we became the partners in crime - and God knows how much adventure we had!! And slowly, I realized my batchies were not so bad really! I understood each one of them and accepted them for what they are....yes, I did make a few mistakes, but I definitely got the best people on this campus as my friends!! Their silly PJs, crushes, "love for statistics or Tamil songs or meat" and their "Top Secrets" will forever be my best memories from this campus!! Again there are the others - the amazing seniors, the nerdy beauties, and people with "weird spects", people without spects (u hardly find a handful of them in IIT somehow :P), artistic people, non-artistic people, photographers, ambitious people and the Studds - a complete spectrum of the rainbow, each different, but special and yes, definitely Extraordinarily TALENTED!!
Well...3rd year is like - "BUSY" and we have just so much in our heads and so much we wana do...so - " Dear God, the Mayans fell short of stones to inscribe their calender, please understand....Dont bring the doomsday on us..please!!"
Life brings to us just so many things - moments we wana keep living, moments we wana run away from, wishing you had a second chance at something, staying confused forever about certain decisions you had made, wondering if they really got you happiness or you lost more in that process, moments of bliss, love - hatred - friendship- sorrow! There has been so many times I had wished the world would end, like one lonely being unable to voice all the pain, wondering if my decisions were right.....but now when I look back, hey...they all were an integral part of my life! They have made me, who I am. I may have won, I have lost,I may have made mistakes - but thats life!! I have been hurt, I have also......but they have all made me a "fuller being" just like both the tenderness of the dew and the coldness of the dawn are needed for the bud to blossom! I am discovering life and I shall, in my own way....with my people and those some "unforgettable cherished lived moments"in my mind....."Let Doomsday Stay at Bay... I still have to go a long way........"
With all the tales of the impending doomsday and the world ending at a poof of a wind by the end of this month, perhaps a recount of the tales in the life of a someone is worth penning down! Oh but, I'd rather say "typing down", its 2012 dude!!!As they say "Life is a journey"....Well it has been, one heck of a voyage through 20 years of gentle meanders,exciting cascades, exuberant waves,and turbulent whirlpools!! But today when I look back at all those moments, they all add up to that precious book - "My Life" and each of them are just indispensable!
My life had started on the eve on 29th January,1992 in a city which people call Durgapur, but I call "Home". My oldest memories are of me playing with dad, he feigning to be my husband and eating all the grass and tree leaves I had "supposedly" cooked and all the mud sweets that I had "baked"! ( I "was" an amazing cook back then..somehow forgot the art as I grew up :P) And I would always make mom the "mother-in-law" in the picture who was to supply us "real food" when we got tired of the entire play! Also I would sing along with ma whenever she hummed the tunes of amazing songs in the kitchen. My mother, I would say, was a complete trickster! The clever lady used to fool me into doing things that would completely exhaust me and make me fall asleep so that I would allow her to complete the household chores - things like drawing on the entire floor of the house (ma used to say that was my slate!) with those bundles of coloured chalks that she has saved till today! I remember drawing on the entire floor, sometimes aided by my dad (my playmate and best friend in all my naughty deeds!), sometimes drawing all over mom and dad's face when they were sleeping (with powder :P) and .......Just too many things popping up in my head now...but to cut it short, ya my parents were my best buddies and through all those days (actually even today!)!!
Then, like all other kids, I got into school (well there's quite some history behind it, but I'll save that for the next doomsday :P). My first day in school put me into utter astonishment - Gosh! there are so many little beings like me all around but why are they crying?? (I had never been to Montessori before). I remember a kind old sister giving us chocolates and finally even before the bewilderment of seeing so many creatures of my type together at the same time could get over, we were handed off to our parents! I remember my mom being happy that I had not cried (though I never understood why we were supposed to cry in the first place) and that I had not eaten the chocolate without telling her! And then she had pointed to a little girl (some senior) with a register in hand and had said "good girls get to become the monitor and then they get to carry the register." I remember how I had admired that girl - an embodiment of discipline - like the fairies I had heard about! The very next day, was proper school - school uniform, tiffin box, water bottle, name tag pinned to the new shirt - and Oh yea - I was "get set ready" in everything new to have a new adventure - School!! As I was leaving the house with dad, I remember ma saying "Be a good girl, listen to your teacher. And dont suck your fingers - you are not a baby anymore, you are a responsible school girl now!!And remember, we love you so much!"...And that day when I got back home from school - my mom dad had 3 reasons to celebrate for -
1. My teacher had seemingly told dad (who waited outside the school gate for the entire 4hours of my school the 1st day!) that I never cried and was perfectly obedient and had even written all the alphabets correctly! (Their biggest happiness was the fact I had managed to stay away from them for 4 hours for the 1st time in my life!)
2. I had been appointed as the class monitor
3. I had left my perpetual habit of sucking my entire hand! (I never did this after my 1st day of school, to the astonishments of my parents who had been desperately trying before that day to get me to leave the habit but in vain!)
Thus began school life.......
My nursery class passed by with me wondering why we were still doing the alphabets (my mother was not good at playing games. So she had fooled me into believing that study was a game! So before I had entered school, I knew to read fairy tale books, could right 10 lined "essays" and do some addition)!! With each passing year, school became my life - the music classes, the teachers, the studies and my friends! I would not claim to have many friends from school now, but ya, I am to blame for it. MY love for discipline and sincerity and morals was just so much (which no longer exists ,haha :P) that I lectured all those naughty girls in my class just too much for them to bear with me! To add to that, monitoring the class every year had made me feel like a teacher, responsible for the welfare of my class (I would not let my classmates play dumbcharade in free periods, I Hitlered them into playing quiz!!) - naturally as we grew up, the "happening girls" of the school started to despise me! I dont blame them, when I now look back to what a Hitler I was back then, I cant help laughing!! But yes, this school also gifted me the very few people whom I can turn to anytime I need - very few, but the real gold - best friends!!!
But hey, was school really so boring?Hell Noooo!! It was a mammoth series of events - gruelling competitions, picnics, dances, dramas, fights, enemies, friends - a heck of a time!! Christmas was my favourite time of the school year and I can never forget how we fought for a better decorated classroom (I even remember a girl in the other section hurling a stone at me in the recess time so that I couldn't make the straw Bethlehem we were making in our class!! haha !! Kids!!)...Those golden days of utter innocence can never come back!! I'll always cherish them but hey, life never worsened after school either! With the School Captainship (that was some fun too - campaigns, speech as though I was Antony! Hahah!!) in the 10th and then getting a wonderful farewell and leaving my alma mater that crowned me on the last day as Carmel Queen, hey I have nothing to repent about! I HAVE LIVED school!! Every single inch of it - learnt, enjoyed, faltered and most importantly grew up!!! And they shall always be "etched in the sands of time"..........
High School - new school, new missions, new people, in short - "exposed to the BIG BAD WORLD" as our English teacher said! Those 2 years just went fleeting past, so much in the mind, so much to achieve, so much to strive for, so much to learn (I still have those piles of FIITJEE books and ARIHANT books stacked at home - just 2 many memories with them to discard!) - every second that counts and realizing the meaning of "competition" for the first time!! And also - "decisions". My parents wanted me to be a doctor, I was good at biology to be honest. But I was scared of blood and people in pain....And I loved maths,physics and chemistry!! My parents realized and it was "Engineering it is"!! Funnily, I did not even know what the full form of IIT was in my 11th!! It was my chemistry tutor who pulled me into his "prospect IIT batch" and then started the journey....Bunking school for tutions and self study, confusions (there was no coaching house in my city so figuring out the right tutor was a very challenging and important task!) , books and books and books - that was pretty much my high school (and trust me , may be it was THE best part of my life till now!!)!! But high school also gave me some really beautiful moments in my minds book....I met some of the best people I have known till today there! And yes, it also made me realize that there is another species called "boys" (my previous school was a girls school) , some of whom were a little psychotic (the ones that punched each other with maggi stuffed in their mouths at recess over a lost football match), some superbraniacs (the geeks), some "WEIRD" (the ones that "paid attention:, haha!!) and the Normal ones (the studygroup and friends)!....
And then BaaaAAAMMM, I landed onto College!!IIT Kharagpur ( not a branch I was looking for to be honest, but I'd still say I had made the right choice)!! And man, thats where I saw "India" !! Myriad of species - people speaking in Telegu, Tamil, Marathi, Bhojpuri,Punjabi, different dialects of hindi and even bengali as a matter of fact!! And for the first time in my life, I was scared!! I didn't seem to like anything there - the subjects, the people, the department, the seniors, the food , the "compulsory" night outs, parties with disco lights (the very idea scared me back then!) and to add to that - my batchies!!! I got into a cocoon and lived in my own world, thanks to the amazing people who supported me in those days....thats how my 1st year passed. But I wouldn't say it was not memorable. Those days of "me and my world" has given me some of the most beautiful moments in my life and helped me realize myself - that I don't need to be a robotic disciplinarian and that its sometimes okay to just let go, to do what you want to do!! And honestly, I wouldn't have been the me of today had it not been for those special people who got me out through those days - the patience, the time and the care they bestowed upon me!!
Next came my 2nd year - a more confident me, ready to take on the world!! And I met a wonderful person -> my room-mate who hated the fan as much as I loved it, loved veg as much as I detested it, absolutely clueless about fashion (even I am no good at it, but she was a total disaster!) , a habitual late-latif - but the person who I would not trade with for anything in this world!!! Together we became the partners in crime - and God knows how much adventure we had!! And slowly, I realized my batchies were not so bad really! I understood each one of them and accepted them for what they are....yes, I did make a few mistakes, but I definitely got the best people on this campus as my friends!! Their silly PJs, crushes, "love for statistics or Tamil songs or meat" and their "Top Secrets" will forever be my best memories from this campus!! Again there are the others - the amazing seniors, the nerdy beauties, and people with "weird spects", people without spects (u hardly find a handful of them in IIT somehow :P), artistic people, non-artistic people, photographers, ambitious people and the Studds - a complete spectrum of the rainbow, each different, but special and yes, definitely Extraordinarily TALENTED!!
Life brings to us just so many things - moments we wana keep living, moments we wana run away from, wishing you had a second chance at something, staying confused forever about certain decisions you had made, wondering if they really got you happiness or you lost more in that process, moments of bliss, love - hatred - friendship- sorrow! There has been so many times I had wished the world would end, like one lonely being unable to voice all the pain, wondering if my decisions were right.....but now when I look back, hey...they all were an integral part of my life! They have made me, who I am. I may have won, I have lost,I may have made mistakes - but thats life!! I have been hurt, I have also......but they have all made me a "fuller being" just like both the tenderness of the dew and the coldness of the dawn are needed for the bud to blossom! I am discovering life and I shall, in my own way....with my people and those some "unforgettable cherished lived moments"in my mind....."Let Doomsday Stay at Bay... I still have to go a long way........"
