When I was 8 and didn’t know I’d grow up to be the 20-year-old damsel-in-distress I am today, I thought the world was about to end the day I lost the pink hand shower from my Barbie’s Turkish bathhouse set. I still haven’t found it (dammit!), but I found out that no matter how screwed you think you are, there’s always room for getting more screwed (pun intended). That’s only one of the many lessons they teach you in college.
If we all have to go through that one time in our lives when the aggregate chaos of schemes within and around us exceeds the amount of vacuum inside Michael Kelso’s skull, then I’m glad to declare that my time has come. It’s hard to fight for something you don’t give two hoots about. Like fiddling with the knobs on a Cathode Ray Oscilloscope, pretending to figure out its working, when all you want to do is to smash open the screen showing your reflection against an evil green sinusoidal wave and go rhyme the dangling verses inside your head. Or rummaging through the stack of notes the night before an exam and cramming like your ass is on fire, when you wish you could just flush the papers down the toilet and be able to finish reading Anna Karenina at last.
Two years from now I’d be an “Electronics and Communications Engineer” and I couldn’t care less about it. There are different ways of fucking up your life; I decided to go to the wrong college. I let my dad choose for me instead of defending my dreams. And yes I’ll have the green stuff at the end of it, but money is not everything, especially if there’s no fire in your belly when you wake up in the morning.
Back in high-school when things were simpler, when the boys wished they could snap the bra straps showing through the lucent white school uniform while the girls discussed stiletto heels and strawberry lip glosses, I was clear about my purpose of existence. I knew I would write for a living and read myself to death, but then I got lost. I got lost when Dad talked about “struggling-writers” and “practicality in life”. That’s when my castle in Spain collapsed. I don’t totally regret what he did to me, but right now I keep wanting to rush through this time in life where my CGPA is secured at the cost of my biggest dreams, where charade, infidelity and marijuana are in similar hopeless abundance and it’s as if Murphy’s Law applies to everything I do. And sometimes I look back at the girl in Welma glasses, carrying around the weight of orthopaedic shoes with half a dozen guys teasing “polio!!” behind her back and wonder how none of that made high- school any less of fun than what it was for me…maybe because someone’s popularity didn’t depend upon their latest crush or the brands in their wardrobe.
I don’t like the changes I’ve undergone since then – ethically, not aesthetically and I wish one day I grow up to be a more mature and sensitive person, someone I could admire for being able to stand up for what she truly believes in.
If there’s anything I have learnt from all this, then it’s that we must be excited about whatever we do (or not do it at all) however big or small, because that’s the only way to be really happy. And one of the central themes in the gala of life is to be happy – freakin’ happy.
If we all have to go through that one time in our lives when the aggregate chaos of schemes within and around us exceeds the amount of vacuum inside Michael Kelso’s skull, then I’m glad to declare that my time has come. It’s hard to fight for something you don’t give two hoots about. Like fiddling with the knobs on a Cathode Ray Oscilloscope, pretending to figure out its working, when all you want to do is to smash open the screen showing your reflection against an evil green sinusoidal wave and go rhyme the dangling verses inside your head. Or rummaging through the stack of notes the night before an exam and cramming like your ass is on fire, when you wish you could just flush the papers down the toilet and be able to finish reading Anna Karenina at last.
Two years from now I’d be an “Electronics and Communications Engineer” and I couldn’t care less about it. There are different ways of fucking up your life; I decided to go to the wrong college. I let my dad choose for me instead of defending my dreams. And yes I’ll have the green stuff at the end of it, but money is not everything, especially if there’s no fire in your belly when you wake up in the morning.
Back in high-school when things were simpler, when the boys wished they could snap the bra straps showing through the lucent white school uniform while the girls discussed stiletto heels and strawberry lip glosses, I was clear about my purpose of existence. I knew I would write for a living and read myself to death, but then I got lost. I got lost when Dad talked about “struggling-writers” and “practicality in life”. That’s when my castle in Spain collapsed. I don’t totally regret what he did to me, but right now I keep wanting to rush through this time in life where my CGPA is secured at the cost of my biggest dreams, where charade, infidelity and marijuana are in similar hopeless abundance and it’s as if Murphy’s Law applies to everything I do. And sometimes I look back at the girl in Welma glasses, carrying around the weight of orthopaedic shoes with half a dozen guys teasing “polio!!” behind her back and wonder how none of that made high- school any less of fun than what it was for me…maybe because someone’s popularity didn’t depend upon their latest crush or the brands in their wardrobe.
I don’t like the changes I’ve undergone since then – ethically, not aesthetically and I wish one day I grow up to be a more mature and sensitive person, someone I could admire for being able to stand up for what she truly believes in.
If there’s anything I have learnt from all this, then it’s that we must be excited about whatever we do (or not do it at all) however big or small, because that’s the only way to be really happy. And one of the central themes in the gala of life is to be happy – freakin’ happy.

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