Breeding Lucidity: April 2014

I wrote this around 2 years ago. I watched the movie "Queen" today and somehow it reminded me of this post. Reliving it through the blog as well!

When I was doing my graduation, I was given a nickname by a couple of my classmates. I was called ‘baby’. The events that led to my re-christening were a few movie invites which were turned down by me. Every invitation would elicit the following response from me: “I’ve to ask my folks.” I guess the only conclusion that people drew from the ‘no’ that followed this was that my parents did not allow me to go. I just wasn’t keen enough to push my case. There were times when I never even bothered to tell them about the invite. There was one particular classmate who hated me with a passion. It seems that her mother told her that she could go on a trip only if I was going too. And her mother hadn’t even met me. I did not do much over the course of my graduation to change my reputation. Hindi movies did not interest me much. My parents were still paying for everything and I couldn’t justify to myself the cost of a ticket for a movie I wasn’t myself too eager to watch. But then, I wasn’t having fun the conventional way. So that meant I wasn’t having fun at all. The idea lived on. During my Masters, I was with a less ‘happening’ crowd and our university campus was too far away from any civilisation. We had classes 6 days of the week from 10 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. It would take us a little more than an hour to reach the city and the curfew was at 7 pm. So that would mean enduring 2 hours of painfully tiring bus ride to walk around the city for 2 hrs. Not really a tempting proposition. These were the days before the laptop (for me at least). So it meant reading, writing, taking a walk around the beautiful campus, or just chatting with friends. Otherwise, the most wonderful option of all – sleeping or the worst of all – doing laundry (we did not have a washing machine in our hostel). I had my music for company and that made my day, every day. 2 years just went by in a hurry and no one had the time to really bother giving anybody a nickname. When I came to IIM, I figured I should at least give things a shot. This may lead you to believe that I went wild and did everything I thought I had missed out on. Well, then I have led you the wrong way. I just went for a couple of shopping trips only to realise that I will never be able to go shopping without a list or indulge in window shopping. I still did not venture out much. My scooter, which I have owned for 8 years, has run a little above 4000 kms. I thought I liked L^2. Not really. The songs suck. I cannot dance. And I am painfully shy and conscious to even try. I cannot stand smoke. And drinking is definitely not something that’s up my alley. A couple of sips of beer and I realised that it tastes like something that I can do without tasting ever again. Impromptu trips are fun if undertaken with people I’d enjoy going out with. For people with drastically different tastes and ideas of how to have fun, this can be a disastrous endeavour. In a lot of ways, I think I’ve done everything in my power, quite inadvertently, to hold on to my tag of being a “baby”. Just that when the context changed from a local Mangalorean college to the Indian Institute of Management, country’s top ranked B-school, the term changed to “goody two shoes”. I’ve been mocked (as a joke or otherwise; I wouldn’t really know) about how I do not go out and ‘live life’, and how I back out of plans, for having a self-imposed curfew of 9pm and such. I think ‘fun’ is a state of mind. I like travelling but I prefer doing it with a few select people. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am very picky when it comes to people I choose to travel with and because of that I end up traveling mostly with my family. I like writing, even random gibberish. I love music. I could listen to it 24x7. I was gifted an iPod by my Uncle when I was doing my Masters. Each time I went home I would charge it to the fullest. It took me 4 hrs to reach University from home (a train and a bus ride). The iPod battery would last 2 full journeys. This meant that I couldn’t listen to it while I was in my hostel since I did not have a system for charging it back to full power. So I turned to FM radio for my daily dose of music. It did not matter that they were playing Kannada songs, it was music. So you could lock me in a room with just music for company and trust me, I would be having ‘fun’! I love the company of like-minded people filled with intelligent humour or let’s not sound pretentious and go with ‘a sense of humour that I’d enjoy’ instead, and friendly non-controversial banter. I love listening to people who know much more than me and can speak about things with a passion that inspires me in return. I enjoy the solitude that comes with a sense of contentment and peace. I love talking to my family on the phone and updating them on everything, I mean everything, that I have been up to. I cannot lie to them. They are as much a part of my conscience as the little voice in my head. There are many things that I love that don’t require me to go to the far end of the city to achieve. I prefer ordering food in and eating with as much greed as I would like to display than sitting in a restaurant and eating neatly with a knife and a fork. These are a few things that I love doing. Maybe these don’t include the top 3 from your list. But I guess, we can all just agree to disagree on this one and have the times of our lives, separately.