Summer, 2012
It was the year of the "Boards" and I was supposed to do the most cliché yet orgasmic (to Sharma Aunty) thing possible. Get a meek 95% and clear IIT-JEE. Now this is not how I braved Anu Aunty and shit. I actually wanted to become an Engineer. I always had a keen interest in programming, animation, website designing and the likes. Then Chemistry happened. Actually, Indian Education System happened. The cool kids were doing commerce and the rest of us were slaving off at IIT coaching. Mind you, our school didn't had the option of Arts stream because maybe like my parents they also believed that it was for the dumb kids.
After being sucked of every and any interest I had ever held in Science, I was forced to look for an escape. The simple harmonic motion of my bleak future was quite troubling and I decided I didn't want to be an engineer after all. It is amazing how this epiphany came to me right on the night before the IIT entrance exam. I explored my options that involved being a writer, an editor, lawyer, and of course being from the cow-belt there was the civil services. The first two arose from my love for books but were not respectable careers while lawyer because I had been told that I argued a lot. That is how I decided my career choices. Fuck Career counsellors when you have relatives.
I filled the entrance form for the National Law Universities half-heartedly in the last moment. My Dad had always spoken about St. Stephens and LSR which inspired me to do some research. And I ended up being at Delhi University doing B.A. B.A. is as good as taking the Arts stream in 11th standard for my parents. How they hid their faces in shame. I don't have answer to why B.A. yet. But I did vocalize my thoughts on "Why Delhi?" in the summer of 2014.
I was at home, lying next to my mother talking about things I couldn't talk to her a few years back. I told her how all I wanted was to get out of the house, leave the small town behind, broaden my horizons. I had no fucking idea about what I wanted to do with my life (because that's what your career was supposed to decide, your life) at that point of time or now. So I just took the easiest escape.
For those going to give boards or worried about the result. It doesn't matter. And I never did get that 95%. But when you realize nobody cares about your boards percentage, eventually you stop giving a fuck. You don't need to decide what you want to do with your life, life happens to you.
Coming to the petty things, I had a crush on this awkward 11th grader and it was getting too much for my teenage hormones to leave school without saying something. I didn't want a relationship, not that anyone ever showed any interest. But, I wasn't a cool kid and I genuinely believed that love and studies did not mix well. This conclusion was fuelled by the countless girls whom I saw losing interest in scoring well, the minute a guy texted them. I do realise that I was a judgemental prick when it came to relationships always. Only then, I judged the people and now I judge the idea of love and how it ruins people. Growing up on bollywood movies and romantic novels, I had grand ideas of love.
My vast sexual knowledge fuelled by American pie and the internet told me that love and lust were different things. It was only love when you didn't want to fuck them. I was a top ten ranker but so was I the girl in the class who explained stuff to you. I deciphered countless abuses and explained reproduction to curious girls. And this was all theory, as I said I was quite judgemental about practising. Though some nights my hands would slide to some dark places. Anyway I did end up writing an email to him, but he never replied. Probably because people barely checked their emails at that time.
The other issue was my growing awareness of the beauty of women around me. I just never realized why I stared at women and why the female form turned me on. I had some mental debates about lesbianism at the age of 14 because of a female friend who was kinda tom boyish. But they were discarded into the unconscious. Thanks to the idea of being normal was being straight.
