AN EPIPHANY

There was a time, when we all were together, under the same roof, breathing the same air, sharing the same room and listening to the same teacher droning on and on about some complex calculus theory day after day. To us it was all rubbish, meaningless and trivial.

We might have shared the same roof, room and even the same bench but never the same feelings. We were all different in every humanly way possible. There wasn’t one shred of similarity that bound us together. To tell the truth, we were never bound together, at least not in a way which justified the literal meaning of the word bound.

We fought with each other, yelled at each other, held grudges for so long that by the end of it we forgot why we have been holding them for so long. There were people who hated each other with a passion beyond anybody’s wildest imagination and there were couples who loved or at least pretended to love each other beyond the aforementioned imagination. While on one hand somebody would be doing everything in their power to gain some trust , on the other hand some one would be nursing a bad betrayal. While there were people who craved for attention like oxygen, and did get plenty in return, others avoided it like the plague. We were just some forty odd kids, put together by some misjudgment of the heavens. Forty dangerous specimens, devil’s own limited edition. But amidst all our differences, we were all similar in some bizarre way that leaves me completely baffled even now. Its like we were puppets, each one unique and different from other, but danced to the same tunes just like others. The problem though was, we never learnt to dance to any other tune.

For almost a year now, I have been wondering why I don’t fit in in my college. And I did come up with plenty of reasons, each one sounding more unlikely than before. Later I learnt that its not just me, but all of US feel that way. Not even people who waited a year to get into the course and college of their choice could manage to blend in well with the crowd. Each of them has a different reason, but the bottom line is – “College is fun, but school was better”.

It wasn’t until one cloudy afternoon, in conversation with one such person did I come up with my epiphany. It goes something like this...

“It does not matter if you like your college or not, you like your course or detest it. It doesn’t matter if you have waited one or two or even five years to go to the college of your choice and pursue your dream course. What matters is that in your college, inside your classroom, sharing the same roof, breathing the same air, listening to the droning of the teacher will never be them. And unless it is them, you are never going to fit in anywhere you go.”

You never understand the value of something until you lose it, and once you have lost you’ll never get it back. At that time we never knew what we would be missing when we would move out of our safe little haven called school. Or may be we did, but really cared less about it. But now after having tasted the world outside our haven, or rather heaven, I would trade anything to go back.

Promises of “Friends for ever” and “Keep in touch until pigs fly” sound pretty absurd to me, when all I want is to be a part of their memories as someone who would be missed, be it in a good or bad way, until the very end of their life as they would be missed by me.