The Romance is Over

Being one of the first duos who leaves college makes an impact on your psyche. Its’ like too many YOUs pleading to stay. The cricket ground, the food joint & the empty roads want you to stay. You see your look alike at all the places doing what you used to do and dressed up as you would do, begging not to go. Each one needs to be persuaded that the time has come, the time we say Goodbye! Make them pack up coz from tomorrow we don't belong here. All of them have to be convinced or else if even one of them is left behind, they would keep haunting others like the spirit of an innocent man who got killed accidently or purposely. And thus you make sure that you have visited all the places before you leave.

The day began with getting up earlier than usual to soak as much of Trichy as you could even if it was the hottest part of the year. A sudden liking for the otherwise boring/bland breakfast develops and you make sure that you don’t miss it on the last day. Like a convict on a death row and also like a young kid going first time to the school, bathed and brushed, you walk in the direction of Mega Mess 1. The Idli on your plate says goodbye, the Chutni has water in its eyes, enough to make it watery. You read the newspaper for the one last time, not only because it fits into the convict on death row mould but also because its’ the only thing you read from cover to cover.

Next on the plate was something which nobody has an appetite for. Packing the whole world into a few bags and failing to do so, establishing the magnanimity of your world which refuses to fit in. Once again you think, why do we have to go but then bags do not pack themselves and you need to carry on. Not to mention, there are some things which will be left behind and carried as a baggage for a lifetime.

Finally the day comes which you had been backward counting for long. There is an ironical phenomenon attached to backward counting days. Not because its’ mathematical and by default the first thing you learnt. Its cricket-ical, and fast bowling at that, like reverse swing of the ball which makes your heart beat fast as you do not know which way it is going to turn out. Whichever way it is and however bad it was, the human psyche always loves inertia and the signs of resistance/ friction show up after a threshold is reached. You know you are going to give up and move, may be move-on as well but the frictional force increases as much as you speed up. This frictional force keeps us grounded, literally and figuratively.

People move out for better or away from worse but nobody can deny that an anxiety is always there about how it is going to be. The insecurity of being an outsider and losing it all in the new system makes us anxious. The reason and opportunity to try and become a better person and the amount of success it would garner occupies and engages the right half of our brain. Its’ ironical how we get so involved in shaping our new identities that we forget an era is coming to an end in reality. In the tug of war between Identity & Reality, Identity wins because it silently calibrates what we should portray ourselves to be and how much acceptance it would get.

   

While we move to become a part of a new arrangement, subconsciously we want everything to be the same, and not the same at the same time a la eating the cake and keeping it too! No matter what we are, the comfort of the notion that ‘I was somebody there’ makes us anxious and skeptical of being a nobody in the new environment even if being ‘somebody’ meant to be uninvited and a gate crasher to happening places. Why do we do this to ourselves or precisely I do it to myself, attaching myself so much that separating feels like imputation. The reason could be from really getting attached or the good-and-nice-act getting into the skin and then the nerves. To clear the smoke by soap-ing it out, the most likely explanation could be ‘The Michael psyche’ (the eternally expressionless and in-your-face character from Prison Break) is universal. First turn yourself in, and then try to break away, Of course with something/ someone. And why won’t it be, the things we want are always locked up. Thus, you have the entrance tests to get into a college, followed by an equally frustrating stay, culminating into the only thing you wanted, Job! . 

What keeps the story running for seasons (and in this case, blog) is that you put hurdles, keep them guessing, may be it will be a happy ending, maybe not. But one thing is sure the story is put to rest and they live happily ever after and nothing interesting happens. The actors go on to become a part of a different story and that is very plausible in reel life. But real life is not in parts and yet it is. Stories are brought to abrupt ending and people are supposed to move on.

With thoughts like these and many unread poetries I travel into the unknown because that life being life, you got to act human. You come; you see and fall in love, and then move on to the unknown with wish of coming back someday and finding everything the way you left.