MISCELLANY

Friendship, love, break-up, bonding, jealousy, anxiety, anger, heartbreak, impatience- one goes through all of these when they are my age. I did too. I will be turning 20 this year. In the last few years I have experienced a lot of new things, new feelings, new situations and new responsibilities. And I did learn a lot. I have learnt to never regret anything, I have learnt to accept everything and everyone the way they are, I have learnt to love someone without expectations and most importantly, I have learnt to be truthful. By being truthful I mean being truthful to oneself. There are situations in life where we console ourselves by lying-by not accepting the truth. When we don’t want the world to know something about us, we make ourselves believe that it never existed. As I said earlier, we just need to accept things the way they are.

Following here, I will be telling you four short stories. Four Stories which will be reflecting four most important part of ones life, especially when they are 19- Love, Family, Career, and Relationship.

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LOVE:

College had recently begun. Omi was not a very popular face in the class. Simple and quite, Omi preferred keeping it low and was quite happy with his bunch of close friends.

Vishal was one among the most famous guys in the college, well known especially for his sense of humor, where sense of humor meant bullying and insulting people publicly.

October 22^nd was destined to be a life changing day for Omi and many others. 

The lecture had just gotten over, and Vishal, like others, was also leaving along with his group of friends when he saw a diary below a desk. It was Omi’s diary, which he by mistake had left in his desk and forgotten about. Without any hesitations Vishal took out the diary, opened it and started reading it.

Omi had a passport size photo of Shashank, his college friend, whom he was in love with for a while now. Omi was not open about his sexual orientation, but had mentioned about it in his diary, which was now in the hands of Vishal, who was apparently reading it aloud to the whole class now. Shashank was dating a girl called Ahana, both of whom were present in the class when Vishal was reading Omi’s diary. Shashank, along with everyone in the class was surprised and shocked after all they heard and started laughing, this excluded Shashank and Ahana, who were now the butt of the joke. Vishal and company had started commenting and pulling out jokes at Shashank and Ahana, gravelled by which both of them left the room.

Omi soon realised he had left his diary in his desk and came back running, only to see all his classmates laughing. Stream of comments and laughter riots were bombarding on Omi. By then, Omi had realized that his diary had spoken a lot in his absence.

“Yes I love him. Do you have a problem?” Omi shouted. 

“Not us, but surely someone else!” came back a reply from the crowd, following a stream of laughter.

It had taken real guts for Omi to finally come out of his shell and accept himself the way he was. Though embarrassing and hurtful in the beginning, his real world was awaiting for him.  

FAMILY:

After that big laughter riot with Omi and his love interest, Vishal, along with his friends, was returning back home. They were in a local train when one of Vishal’s friends got into an argument with another guy within a group of friends, which soon turned out to be a violent fight. Running down to support his friend, Vishal saw Devesh, who was one amongst the other group. Devesh was Vishal’s neighbor, whom he never got along with. Though the public in the train moved all the guys apart and stopped the fighting, the war of words never ended.

“You bloody bastard, your father was not satisfied with one marriage that he has been sleeping around with other women in town. What the hell are you talking about?"

Devesh’s comment shattered Vishal like a rock being throne at a castle of glass in air. His defences came down. He was broken.

Vishal’s father had been in love with a girl during his college days. When things did not work out between the two families, they both separated and Vishal’s father married Vishal’s mother. Things were fine until he got to know that his college love bore a child now, and was unmarried. From then his father had been inclined to his other family, and everyone knew about them. Both of Vishal’s parents decided not to get divorced just because of Vishal and his future, and pretended everything to be alright.  

Vishal returned home with a torn tee shirt, threw his bag and banged his bedroom door. Vishal’s mother, worried, kept knocking and shouting on his door, when after five minutes, the door opened.

“Why are you both doing this? For me? Do you think I’m unaware of whatever is happening in our family since the past fourteen years?” came out Vishal, wiping his eyes.

“For how long do I fake mom, that everything is fine with me and my family to you and the world?” he continued.

“I’m tired, I’m dead tired” sitting down in his bed, crying, Vishal said, “Aren’t you both?”

Seeing and hearing Vishal say all this, Vishal’s mother broke down too, “Vishal, whatever I have been going through all these years is for you..”

“For me? How do you think you faking around with your ‘husband’, who has no interest in you or our family whatsoever, going to make me feel better?” interrupting her, Vishal said.

Vishal got up, came to his mother, held her arms and said, “Mom, please, please get rid of this meaningless relationship. I would prefer myself to be called the son of a divorcee that the son of a married mistress.”

CAREER:

Close your eyes, rewind backwards, and think of the geekiest person you know (for all those who are called geeks, please dial to the most honest friend in your friends list and ask them to describe you. P.S.- if you don’t have one, it's 8879344552).

Devesh was one of those spectacled nerds who topped his batch in every academic exam possible. 

Devesh was now in one of the top medical colleges of India.

All that what happened in the train with Vishal and his group of friends was just an after-effect of all what had happened back his home some hours back.

Both of Devesh’s parents were renowned doctors in the town, so they expected their only son to continue the legacy. But the future had its own plans.

Just on the same day, Devesh’s parents received a letter, addressed to Devesh, from one of the leading magazine company in the country.  The letter stated that they had liked the work of Devesh and had offered him to join their company as an intern for two months.

Devesh had been very much interested in writing from childhood and had received appreciations in forms of awards and certificates all his school life. He had this habit of sitting and writing whenever he took some break from the preparations for the medical entrance tests, and kept them all inside an envelope in his bag, so that his parents would not know about it.

The interesting part of the whole story was that Devesh had never sent any of his articles to any magazine company. It so happened that, Ahana, who was a passionate photographer, had mistakenly sent his parcel of writing samples, when she had to send her parcel of photographs. Both Ahana and Devesh had no clue of anything that had happened.

“What is happening Devesh?” showing the letter from the magazine company, Devesh’s mother said.

“What happened?” said Devesh clueless.

“What is all this? Where is all your concentration these days?” now opening the letter and showing it, Devesh’s mother said.

Devesh took the letter from his mother, read it and replied, shocked, “I never sent anything mom, this might have by mistakenly come here”

All Devesh’s efforts to convince his mother that he never sent the articles did not seem to be working. The conversation soon turned into an argument. Devesh’s dad also entered the scene, and now both his parents were pouncing on him with words.

And finally, Devesh shouted, “What is wrong with you? I am telling you that I did not send anything to any magazine company. Why is it so hard to believe it?”

“When have I not followed all the ‘instructions’ you both have been giving me all these years? I am doing Medicals today right? Because you wanted me to?” and he continued.

Devesh’s dad interrupted, “So you were never interested in medicals? You are doing this because we wanted you to?”

“No. I was never interested in Medicals” Devesh announced, “All my life, I have only done things which you have wanted me to do. I could never even own a dream of mine.”

Wiping his tears, Devesh said, “But you know what, now I am going to quit. I am going to take up this internship.”

After all the hustle-bustle, Devesh quit his Medical college and joined the magazine as an intern, still being clueless of how his articles reached the company.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Ahana Chetri, one of the bombshells of her college, was an aspiring photographer. Ahana had already been depressed that she never received any reply from the magazine she had been dreaming to work for, and then the whole Omi-Shashank love story had added fuel to this burning pyre.

Ahana was never in love with Shashank truly; on the contrary Shashank was very much into her. They had been dating for over six months now. Ahana anyway had wanted to break-up with Shashank, Omi had just become the header now.

Ahana and Shashank had been hollering at each other, when Omi came running.

“Listen shashank, I’m really sorry, I never meant to hurt you or bother you anyway. It was just that stupid Vishal..” huffing and puffing Omi said.

“Vishal what? Unzipped your gay love story?” Ahana interrupted.

Omi tried too hard to convince both of them, and especially Ahana at that moment, but things had now gone out of hands.

“Shut up! Just shut up! Of all people at least you don’t have to give me lessons on love. Be truthful to yourself and others and accept the fact that Shashank never meant anything in your life, forget about loving him.” Omi lost his temper, “Why do you even pretend to do so?”

And this continued for a while too. Not that Omi had any hopes of getting Shashank, if he broke up with Ahana, he was just struggling to open Shashank's eyes.

“Okay fine! Yes, I do not love Shashank. I just liked him in the beginning but then all this relationship crap came in too fast. But it taught me that I could not be with him all my life, because of his over-possessiveness. I don’t love him, I don’t love anybody, and I can’t love anybody. Not now at least, I’m just not ready for this.” Said Ahana crying, and then she just walked away.

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Nothing in our lives stays permanent. And it should not be, wouldn't our lives, then, get boring?
When we are close to someone, we expect them to stay forever in our lives, which may not be always possible. If nothing else, there is death to take away everything in our lives, permanently.

When we are young, every problem seems like the end of the world. But the truth is that they are just the beginnings.

One day, four lives, four completely random people, and their lives changed drastically. One common thing in all the four stories is that, there is always that one thing within ourselves, which we keep hiding from the world and from ourselves, because we are afraid to accept it. Big changes in our lives happen within a flip of a coin.

It is always a completely unexpected and unrelated person who walks in and changes our lives upside down, be it Vishal in Omi’s life, Devesh in Vishal’s life, Ahana in Devesh’s life and Omi in Ahana’s life.

Life revolves around a circle, good things will happen to you subsequently; just what we need to have is patience.

And at 19, that is one most important thing I lack.