Tap .. Tap.. Tap.. the water drips out of the tap.
I stare at it silently.
Tap.. Tap .. Tap… the water continues to drip out.
I stare at it. And then try to rotate the handle so that the noise drowns out.
Tap .. Tap.. Tap… the water persistently drips again.
I look at it and then feel an overwhelming anger . Why does it keep dripping even though I try so hard to make it stop ?!
Tap.. Tap.. Tap..
And that’s it, I lose it.
But just before I almost yell at that infuriating tap …a question comes to mind ..Why does that tap remind me of ME ?
Its been almost ten months since my last post and a lot has happened in the last one year. Professionally, I got acquainted with a possible career option and developed new areas of interest. Personally, I grew as a person as I gained some friends and lost so many more.
As a student in my third year studying Computer Science in a competitive institution, I feel that we learn about pressure very swiftly and early in life. I turned 22 yesterday, but mentally I feel 45. Ofcourse, physically I look 15, but thats a whole new different ball game 😛
Many questions force their way in the face of students our age today. Research or Job ? Natural Language Processing or Computational Biology ? Friendship or Love ? Fling or Long Distance ? GATE or GRE ?
If you were lucky to have answered one of these questions, dont worry these questions are like a tennis ball launcher, the moment you hit one you can see the other one coming right at you. As if having so many questions to answer and such less time at hand was not a problem, we are surrounded by people competing against us directly or indirectly.
When so many thoughts and emotions are a daily part of our life, we as humans become very much like a simple household tap. Usually it flows peacefully but when sediments build over time, this tap gets clogged and refuses to stop dripping. What is the best way to set our emotional tap free ?
Let it go. Let it OUT.
Some people eat a lot, gym a lot, listen to music… Writing in my opinion, is the best way to free myself from thoughts that plague me. The last year was one of the most influential years of my life. It was an emotional rollercoaster. I was always the bookish introverted girl who never went down to play with the other kids in the apartment. I had lived my entire life with my parents and done exactly what they asked and never experienced what living on my own might feel like. I might even say that even though I was 21, I was as immature as a 17 year old. But then I got the Indian Academy of Sciences Research Fellowship and…. Ropar happened.
Ropar in Punjab, is a beautiful serene place with a very pleasant temperature. I left my city home and landed alone in Punjab, faced with a rural beauty that I had never seen before. The roads were planned and the air was so fresh. I opened my eyes and I could not stop taking it all in. When I reached my Girls hostel on Campus, my first thought was disgust. Oh My God ! It was a barebone room with no AC and it was 42 degrees outside ! But soon as I looked around in the rural market where they wove my mattress, I realised this was going to be my home for the next two months. I walked into my room and started setting it up and I felt emotional, as this was the first time I was doing everything all alone. And unnaturally, I enjoyed it. Turns out Im obsessively neurotic about cleanliness, something that my room mates endlessly tease me about and something my mother just cannot believe. 😛
When I had gone to Ropar, I had done some barebone projects based on Natural Language Processing. In my college we called these projects research projects, but three weeks into my stay at IIT, Ropar I began to realise I had not even covered the R in Research. We worked all day and sometimes late into the night and I began to enjoy it. There’s something about being with like minded people, it brings joy to the most dull things. I still remember pushing my clothes in the washing machine as my roomate and I discussed the daily news. I remember kickboxing late at 8:30 PM and coming home drenched in sweat and freaking out over a cockroach in the bathroom 😛
I remember sitting in the middle of the lawn staring at constellations and playing with the early morning dew. There were no fancy shops to have fancy junk food. I had a lemon with cucumbers everyday in the mess. And when I was feeling excited, I would squeeze the lemon and make myself some cold lemon juice. Something about those birds singing in the morning as you drink your cinnamon flavoured “chai” makes the peace come out in you.
Punjab deeply changed me. I began to see the need for learning new things. I began to feel the need to spend time with ME. When I left for Ropar, I was hyper and emotional. I was concerned with petty fights. I had best friends back home in Bangalore, who I felt were drifting away from me. But when I came back from Punjab, somehow everything stopped mattering. I felt the need to be within myself and understand the chaos within me. And slowly the people who did not align with me faded away into their own hemispheres. Occasionally I felt rather alone, Why is it that I did not fit among the crowd, an annoying voice nagged me ? Why did he/she desert me ?
But the clouds cleared out and I found my silver lining. I had left Bangalore with a sense of inferiority, like I cannot be good enough to stand at par with my peers. But now I could sense in myself a growing sense of confidence. Since I felt alone, I fought to survive and with that I started to feel like I can be alone and I can be happy. Peer Pressure is a very much present phenomenon and the people who feel it intensely are most often the ones who value themselves very critically and want to achieve success.
“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”
If at any point of your life you feel that you have achieved all your goals and there is nobody around you that you would much rather be like, then you know its time to move. Ambition and Competition are requirements for success and we should tackle our competitions with the right spirit.
There would always be naysayers who mock your progress and say that you are no where as great as you see yourself as. But sometimes you have got to look beyond the stings. It is not possible to never feel hurt by what people say about you, but like chicken pox, it infects you, scars you and then you will hopefully never be infected by it again. The hardest part is to do something that nobody expects you to do. But, I believe If you feel that you are with the wrong person or with the wrong friends and you know this for sure in your heart, then you should take the choice and move ahead with the people you think suit you, no matter what your friends say. Life is too short to fill it with regrets and to always conform to the rules.
Sometimes we just have to take the risk. Its cheesy as hell but I believe the heart guides you better than bare rationale. The choice may be something scary like revealing your feelings towards someone or even trying an adventure sport. At this point the simplest way to make your choice is asking yourself this question : “Ten years from today, Am I going to look back and wonder.. What if ?”. If your answer is yes, then I think you should take that shot. Life is so complicated, its not worth it to burden ourselves with thoughts like “I wanted to do that but I didn’t as she told me not to/ I wonder what they would have said”. It simply does not matter. If they had to say it, they would say it someday anyway.
The questions will always keep coming at you. But today I learnt a valuable lession in Software Engineering Class :
“Adapting with the Change is far more preferable than creating a new plan”.
Plans will come and go, but its essential to be open to the change. Yeah, sometimes the change we try to accept in our life in often painful. Whether its ending a long term relationship, or moving to a completely new research interest...the rush that comes from winning the challenge is worth it. 🙂
The Politically Wrong Bong 