Hitting 23.

I start writing this (hopefully end it also) on the day of my twenty third birthday. Yes that's some realization that you have spent twenty three years on this planet, in this life and while there hopefully is still a long way to go, you also realize how far you have come. Twenty three is a weird age, you are still pretty young to be reckless, immature and without the burden of much responsibility. At the same time you are old enough to have to be careful, well planned and with the pressure of making something out of yourself.  It is a conundrum of you wanting to live free without any expectation or responsibility and to simply follow your heart but at the same time you know that to move forward with this myopic thinking would or could be hazardous. Most of all, at least for me this is an age of nostalgia. I have been reflecting on the life that I've lived and how much it has changed over the years. 

  Let's start from when I was about 10 years old. Life was simple back then, still in junior school there wasn't much pressure to study beyond doing my homework, the subjects were simple and fractions were my biggest problem.  The day after coming home from school was pretty simple.  Have lunch, sit with mom for a bit to discuss my day at school, which was a pretty short conversation on the lines of "it was good." I was not much of a talker, and still am not when it comes to serious stuff related to me  and I didn't have many friends in school apart from one or two and I was pretty happy with that. Post that conversations was an hour long session on my computer playing Need for Speed 2 or Cricket 98 Ashes tour. Then Pokemon at 5:00 and Beyblade at 5:30 (those were the days). But all of this was done just to pass the time so that it was six in the evening. This was my favorite part of the day for the best part of a decade or even a little more. Why? It meant to go out and play cricket in the colony. I don't remember enjoying anything more in my life to this date than those evening sessions in the park. The competitive spirit was something which had to be seen to be believed, for the next three hours, I was living life and I was living it to the fullest, even writing about it is giving me chills. I would give up anything to have those days back. Anything at all.

  Life moved on and then my teens arrived and so did middle school. Science became Chemistry, Biology and Physics and Social Studies became History, Geography and Civics. The routine was altered a little, so after my pretty much uneventful day at school and the same conversation with my mom the session on the computer was now playing FIFA as my love affair with football had started to brew. Post that instead of watching TV the time was spent studying or doing homework rather as the burden had increased a little. But as soon as the clock hit six everything had to be put aside and I picked up my bat, wickets and strode out of my house like Sir Donald Bradman going out to bat. Again for three hours life was lived and enjoyed the way it should be. The cricket season now though had an off time of about a month during finals as  a lot of my friends had started taking tuitions, or even if they had not they were the ones who believed that staying at home all day during exams was directly proportional to getting good grades. So apart from a couple of rebels like myself there was no one left. After coming home post cricket, I still managed to catch the repeat of Beyblade and Pokemon before Cartoon Network shut down for the night and the television became a desolate place of news.

  During the early years of my teens I had a huge collection of Pokemon cards and also of Beyblades. I spent a fortune on them, buying decks, beyblades, stadiums for beyblades etc. After Enid Blyton had enlightened my childhood with her magic, my reading somewhat fell by the wayside. This was the time when I consciously decided to pick that up again. From age thirteen to fifteen I was pretty much like any other boy of my age. Then the cracks and the gaps began to appear and they only became wider with time.

 By the time I was fifteen,  I had just entered grade nine and with that senior school was upon me.  I was in an all boys school and my female interaction was quite low. To be honest I had absolutely zero female friends at this time and I had never really had any prior to this also. There was an all girls school right across the road and by this time many boys of my class had started mingling with those girls, they had many friends from that school and even dated some of them. So everyday when we used to walk to our buses after school I could see a lot of my batchmates just chilling with their female friends. Not me though, my route from the school gate to the bus was pretty linear.

  As time progressed these friends of mine used to have plans with the girls to chill after school as well. Not me but, I never even had a choice as I was quite an introvert and going out of my to talk to a girl never came naturally to me, it still does not. I was occasionally envious of my friends in this respect, but never too much and never after I got home from school. Because even though I was midway through my teens now and puberty was hitting me, the thing that still gave me the most joy was my friends and the park, It could be badminton, football or cricket, It did not matter, just the feeling of living in that moment truly, forgetting everything else just wanting to win was liberating. Though I must admit, I was not that good at the first two sports, cricket was my forte even if I enjoyed football a lot more.

 So here I was a boy in class 9 in an all boys school, with no female friends and apart from one, at most two friends in class (and they also were not part of the "cool group" ) and even though I was cordial with many more it was nothing close to what I would call a friendship.  Furthermore, given that I was skinny as hell, it only invited one thing, bullying. I have no shame in admitting I was bullied quite a lot in school especially in class 9 and 10.  It was not ragging or anything just plain bullying. To be fair to my batchmates it was done with no ill will from their side and it was all just for fun, I myself indulged in it when they picked on someone else so I am not complaining at all. For all I know it made me tougher.

  Having said that, sometimes there are days when it just gets to you. When Monday to Friday everything that you do, every action, every word you say, every gesture you make, the way you walk, the way you run, the way you talk is overanalyzed and made fun of your confidence goes for a toss and mine did. I could not raise my voice against these people because literally everyone in class was physically stronger than me , even though I was taller than most. So even if someone just randomly keeps slapping your head or pushes you around, or insults you day in day out, the only option is to learn to deal with it and by that I don't mean to tolerate it but to find ways out of that situation. Once more to be fair what made it easier was I always knew most people did it with the intention of banter and on most days thats how I took it as well. There were a few though, who did particularly seem to be sadists but that was that.

Even though my confidence went for a six, I always put on a smiling face. I never hated school, infact I almost always looked forward to it. This was also the time when I lot of people around me started smoking, drinking and even smoking up but somehow I didn't get stuck into it, probably because of a lack of friends I had no one to do it with but more likely because I just was not interested. My life was reading, playing in the park and just being disconnected from anything else and I was the happiest in that state.  However no phase lasts forever and this also came to an end as soon as I entered class eleven a lot of things in and around me started to change, maybe puberty came around a little late because there were a lot of firsts in my life during this phase including but not limited to my first beard trim.

  As I entered class eleven my long drawn transformation from being an introvert to an extrovert begun. Firstly to be rid of subjects that I hated made the classroom a much more enjoyable place. Most importantly however, I made new friends. This was not a conscious effort by any means but it just happened so that I eased into conversations with other people. I made a set of friends who happened to be in the cool group but more importantly there were a lot of fun to hang with. My memories with them to this date have one thing in common, laughter, nonstop laughter. No matter what the situation or how serious we would just get through it laughing and with a lot of banter. For the first time in my life I started to have plans after school and moreover plans which lasted into the night which was quite a first for me. I remember in the beginning the outings used to be me having a milkshake and pizza at Route04, Khan Market while my friends used to be sipping on beer and hookah and some of them had a cigarette entwined in their fingers as well. Also its not like taking my case stopped now, but now it was done by people who were my friends and it was much more like friendly banter and these guys could take banter on themselves as well. Instead of my confidence declining now, it was coming back and that is why to this date these people are amongst my closest friend. I have a lot to thank them for, not least the way they gave me,  a child totally living in a shell of innocence and ignorance uptill now, a lot of needed exposure which helped me grow.

 One day somewhere around the middle of class eleven I saw a girl across the road near the girls school opposite ours and there was something that just ticked inside me that time and I just had to get to know her.  I knew her by face as she was a friend of my cousin's and eventually I got around to adding her on social media and that was definitely not my first female interaction but one of the first few. Eventually I did get to know her and made many more friends from that school during this time and I certainly enjoyed all these new friends that I had.

 However because I had almost zero female exposure before this, this influx of the same caught me totally off guard. I have to admit that for these one and a half years since I entered class eleven, I acted quite desperate and asked almost anyone out to date me. Eventually all these new friends that I made distanced themselves from me apart from one or two (of which one I never asked out to begin with and she is one of my closest friends till date), and looking back I don't even blame them.

  It is worth mentioning however that in the evening the park outings were now very seasonal. The summer vacations obviously were a big hit, with us playing everyday for three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. Then there was a totally barren season for a couple of months, before being back during the Diwali and then the winter break. Nothing has given me more joy in life and I don't think anything ever will ever again.

  Eventually I got a hold of my hormones and became a lot more tolerable as a person. By the time I entered class twelve I had even had  2-3 very short relationships, something which would seem totally unthinkable to the person I was just a year ago. It was a whirlwind year in which I transformed a lot, and for the better in many ways.  Now in class twelve, the outings with those friends were the same, just that I too had a beer mug in my hand and also the hookah. I maybe would have taken to the cigarette as well, but somehow that just didn't make sense to me ever. I am naturally a very awkward person around new people,  keeping shut most of the time. However, hanging with these people made me a lot more confident in public and I don't have as much of  a problem gelling with new people anymore.

  As school ended it was quite a journey I made as a person and I grew into someone I really liked. I have written many times about my college life before so I won't go into much detail here. I made some really great friends during my college years and some of whom I would say are friends for life. Just before college started I started dating the girl I saw across the road from my school back in eleventh grade and I dated her for a little more than four years, only to eventually break up. The relationship was very special to me at the time and it taught me a lot as did it give me a lot of happiness and joy. As person I am someone who when they love someone, they love with all their heart and soul or nothing at all. That and the fact that it was my first serious relationship and I was a little immature in this aspect because of that made me commit certain mistakes during the course of the relationship like being too immersed in it and doing everything I did because of that. All my happiness was dependent on the relationship and that was not a nice thing in retrospect. Fortunately or unfortunately the relationship did not last and we broke up after four long years. The break up taught me a lot more about myself than I expected it to though. I learned to do so many more things for myself that gave me a lot more happiness than I could have imagined and again I grew a lot as a person both during the relationship and probably a little more after it.

 Now as I turn twenty three I have a lot of things going for me. I work in a company that was recently voted India's second best to work in after Google. I like to think that I am good at my job and I do get appreciated from time to time. The company is really employee friendly as I get a lot of time for myself and the leave quota is to die for. Personally I am in a really stable place and happy with myself on many levels. I am a lot more assured of myself and a lot more at ease when meeting new people than I was, say three years ago. I no longer am a skinny person and have really worked on the way I look, as honestly I was real tired of getting pushed around for being too skinny. I have managed to maintain my reading and not let it fall by the wayside and neither have I given up on my writing. I am currently not involved with anyone romantically almost a year after my breakup. There were a few who showed real interest in me quite recently but I didn't reciprocate those feelings. There was one who I wouldn't say I liked, because I hardly knew her but someone who certainly I would have liked to get to know better and I tried to do the same but there my efforts were not reciprocated and that was that. But I still am really pleased with the place I am in on that front, being single has its own benefits and while I am not closed at all to the prospect of a relationship, it has to be the real thing and not something just the sake of it.

 At the same time there is a lot of feeling of uncertainty about the future. I am really comfortable in my job and there are hardly any complains on that front, but it doesn't seem like my calling. I honestly do not know what my calling is and that is something that gives me a lot of stress  from time to time. I have become a people's person over the years, nothing gives me more joy now than to just make others laugh and thus a job which involves me sitting behind a desk at all times doesn't seem really appealing. I love to travel, especially to drive around over really long distances, I love to entertain, writing is one thing that I really enjoy, but I still am not sure about my passion, my calling and I hope to find it soon and something tells me I will. Personally also I am not out looking for love but have not closed myself to its possibility and I don't think that will happen as I am a romantic at heart.

  Just to close out this piece, I know from where I have come, I have no idea where I am going but I am loving where I am for now and something inside me really tells me every time I doubt myself, that the good times are coming and when they do, I will be ready.