This article was published in the 2015 issue of The Chemical Society Magazine, Miranda House, Delhi.
5th April,2015. An awfully quiet evening that had often stirred the vivid emotions of all kinds. And with all the worries beginning to crowd my mind every now and then it becomes increasingly difficult to remember the past happy college life that I had already lived and of which I had only a month and a half left to live. In the rat race of life how it becomes incredibly difficult to actually focus on the optimistic glories of the present in order to just grab a space for the far tuned future! In the rat race of life how we lose every memory of the reasons of why we are in a place that we are, and tend to lament over all the not achieved ruthless goals that seem divine only for few moments in our life cycle!
Is it worth living this way?
Maybe we forget to appreciate what we already have, what we already have had. Maybe people and society influence us too much to think in a way we were never tuned to think when we first started the whole process of learning. Learning was always a two way process in childhood. When a father taught the child how to spell a word, the child taught the father an incredible way to teach and be patient till the very end. And here we are now, when all we need to get is a bit ahead in life than others, in no matter what way we achieve that. Achieving has become the soul goal of life and the theory behind the result bears no resemblance to the traditional ways of achieving excellence.
The first day of college was a day that started in a laboratory. My life away from home had had its first chance of tasting adventure in its own way.A life away from parents, a life away from the chitter chatter of typical Bengali families who had nothing other than ‘career options in life for their wards’ as a topic of discussion on their hit-list, a life away from my calm city of Durgapur which was often flooded with storm of fly ash every now and then driving us crazy. It was a life worth getting. Here was a new city I got to explore. A new set of dreadfully dressed classmates among whom I was the only wretched person found in baggy tshirts and a pair of dirty jeans. I did miss my school friends, but who didn’t? Acceptance had become the mulmantra of life. But it was not bad. The lovely landscape of the college premises coupled with the ‘dressing factor’ in everyone made it a charming place all over! Classes were too regular to start with, because over the years I had got a pretty different image of life in college at least from what I used to hear about, often from my seniors in colleges of Kolkata! Heaven bless them! And heaven bless our incredible state of West Bengal! However I kept missing my language, my home, my culture, bangla songs and everything. That was when I thought of joining the Music Society of Miranda, Geetanjali. I went for the auditions only to realize there was rat race even there. People had to pass three stages of auditions to sing!
Incredible, isn’t it?
Here there were people who had nurtured their voice and grammar of music since adolescence and were humming and tuning their flawless strands of notes on every bench. Initially I had to search for a bench to sit, because it seemed I had nothing to stand for. I was someone who wanted to join the club just because I missed home, and the culture of music at home. I had no training in classical music to start of. And my degrees in Rabindrasangeet had left me in no condition to compete with such fine skills in the audition room. Somehow that day I managed to pass the first round. The next stage I passed with lower chances of passing, and then I got kicked off at the third round quite obviously. I lost my chance.
It was then that I started writing in class. With a little encouragement from my English teacher, Dr. Gupta, I flourished. He asked me to write everyday. He asked me to vent out everything to him in the form of essays. I took to writing. Every now and then I came up with a new topic to write. Those were the glorious days of my college life when every English class seemed to be the only time I breathed. One fine day I gave him the notebook I used to write in. After reading it through and pointing out flaws here and there, he invited me to the English department staff room and asked me to join the Literary Society of Miranda House. And then my old streaks of fear bubbled up in me, the fear of passing tests to join some society. I let him know about the suppressed phobia in me to join any society in college. He and his friend then suggested me to join and go to every workshop that took place no matter what. So here I joined the society surreptitiously. I attended some workshops just for the mere idea of learning. He was the only person in my entire college life who helped me learning, who encouraged me to learn. He pointed out to me, that learning is not always about passing tests. It is the zeal within one’s soul that helped.
When I came back the next semester, Dr. Gupta was gone to some other college. Apparently his colleagues were not very happy with him, he vented out later in his texts to me. I had lost another person who could help me out figuring things out in my life. I gave up writing. I took to camera.Taking photographs and capturing moments became my new passion. I gave up my hope of joining societies. I did things for my ownself. Classes and labs got kept me more busy than ususal. Dr. Gupta kept inviting me to join him to different music concerts all over Delhi, and I started declining them one by one. My schedule left me with no leisure time for my passion. It was hard out there in the society to pass tests in fields I was interested in. And it was hard to get appreciation in a field I was assigned to.So then my last attempt was to write something that would stay in the college maybe for some years, in the papers. I managed to pass the test of impressing the editors in charge of the college Editorial Board and joined the Editorial Board. I got my article published in the college magazine about the #Hokkolorob protest that the people of Bangla launched against the Jadavpur University assault.
I had spent the whole time in the college missing my state, my people, my culture. And now when I was few days away from leaving Delhi, I realized how much I have gained from everything that I went through. How much I would miss this city. How much I would miss the independence I enjoyed. The energy to brush off my knees every time I failed and stand up to fight again, the courage to travel at night all by myself on a rickshaw to roam the streets and click the nightlife of Delhi, the carefree shrug that I give when I have got no supporters for me, the boldness to live by myself ! Delhi gave me everything!
