It's (Not) A Small World

In school, I used to feel quite important. It made sense to be preoccupied with all the small things in school- mid-terms, small functions, annual day, the prefectorial body and so on. But now, everything is about to change.

For starters, I might have to start taking trains. The oppressive smell of heated bodies stuffed in one compartment, the squeak and grind of the wheels racing on the track, the incessant rocking, the constant wait for some other passenger to empty his seat- it may all be a part of my morning routine for the four coming years, and I am not sure if I am looking forward to it. Gone are the days when I enjoyed the comfort of the school bus. 

I'll have to make new friends, something I'm not particularly good at. I'm going to a college, which in my mind appears as a place full of unknown faces and places. A place where nobody knows me. It would be like starting my life all over again without the comforting familiarity of people I grew up with. The idea of telling people "I'm Shreyonti" scares me, because when was the last time I really had to introduce myself to anybody?\


I know my old friends will eventually slip away from me. actually, even though it's been just a few short months, most of my friends have slipped away already. If I was ever hoping to take a part of school with me, I now don't know how I'll do it.


I'm learning new things, things that are impossible for school kids to know sometimes. For example, a kind lady on the train taught me that you have to call dibs on seats. If you've been waiting for a place to sit on a crowded train (if you must know, 'crowded' takes on a whole new meaning in Mumbai) for over an hour, nobody will give you their seat. But if you've been on the train for five minutes and alreayd made a deal with someone to give you their seat once they get off, you'll have a place to sit soon enough which actually means a lot. I'm also learning how long queues can be, how many people want to go to the college you want to go to, why adults always complain not having enough time to read and why working people always stay so tired. 

I guess the thing is that I'm learning that it's a big, big world, eith me being a tiny dot on it. I have lots to learn, lots to discover, and most of it is just going to be everyday stuff. All of a sudden, I'm not so important anymore. But I take comfort in what some peoplw who have long left school tell me. The younger adults tell me that at some point I'll realize school was an  entrapment and coming out of it is like being free. The older ones, the ones who already have spouses and kids and spouses, just smile when I try to tell them about this feeling of unimportance. They don't say much and nod and look at me like I'm just a child, which is annoying, but when I look at them, I think they're happy with their mundane lives wherein the highlight of the week is watching with their kids or something. I guess I'm slowly beginning to see that the world really is a very, very big place and my place in it isn't all that big, but I'm just going to have start finding things that make me feel like a bigger person. Things that make me feel...infinite. My writing, for example. When I write things and put them on the Internet, people read them and I feel important. And that feeling is all that counts....