#StartANewLife

I was a month short of turning nine when the deputy head mistress looked into my victorious academic history and spoke to my mum about granting me a double promotion. Needless to say my family was elated but the felicity took an age to win over my heart. I was that kid for whom everything had to go the way it went for the others. Chronologically. Linearly. In an ascending array.
“What will I say to people about last year? Everybody did fourth grade, everybody knows the fourth grade text books except me.”
My mother tried explaining to me about how everybody thought I knew so much more than the other kids from my batch and that I already know the fourth grade texts.
But how could that be? I never read those. I resigned. Stayed by myself because there was nothing I could do. My folks were so pleased with me that they spoke about it to everybody much to my embarrassment.
“Ma, what if I fail fifth grade?” I tried my luck. I asked guests and an older kid left me with food for thought.
“Why will you fail? Have you ever failed till date?”
“No, ma. Arti said every class is difficult and it is about how hard we study. What if I don’t study hard?”
“Why won’t you study hard?”
“I will study hard. But what if the studies are harder?”
I was getting on her nerves. What more could she say to ease my worries when she had worries of her own – life in a new country, the schools, the culture, the teaching patterns, the syllabus?
“But I don’t want to study fifth grade, I will only do it next year. After fourth.”
Father intervened and I had no choice. Bam.

Till early 2014, self pride kept me engulfed in its webs. I was the youngest in class, started post graduating at twenty. Somehow, it boosted my ego as well. I thought I was as wise as my class mates who were in their mid twenties. But who knew? Who would have cared to listen if told that wisdom comes with experience and not with degrees or age?

Days passed, misconceptions brooded, troubles copulated, ambitions altered at will. In short, life was fornicating with itself. And I dropped out of college.

The year that was saved finally slipped off my fingers like a wiggly goldfish. The trapping webs of self pride loosened. Array yaar drama chodo dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na gat ka!

So, in conclusion, I have stories of blunder. And stories of heartbreaks. But the thing with these stories is that they are not special. This is the point. Nothing that ever happened with me is special. Heart aches of all kinds – romantic, familial, platonic, social – are the most common conditions there are. Everybody goes through them. And this – the hour of crisis – is when you realize, that there is still hope, and a speck of strength to pull you up because you’re not close to your death bed yet. And the best part about beginning is that you can begin whenever and wherever!

This post is written for the IndiBlogger’s “Start a New Life” happy hour activity. And I am thinking again.
These past few days have been crazy busy in to the peak season of submissions. And all I could think was “assignment assignment”.

I am back, readers, back in to the fray – consensually. Same college, same course. But this time, with more paid wisdom in the form of the Oxford course in creative writing and unpaid wisdom in the form of all that life has taught me. These are not my happiest days. but my heart is content with my situation in life.