Looking Back - Part 4

Looking back, I come across so many memories, some I wish had never happened. Some I want to last, but it won't as it happened a long time before and is over. People have changed and moved on. Some people have taken additional responsibilities like heading up their career path. So they have kind of moved away from me. The more I think about it, I find it hard to digest it. But If you love something or someone, you have to let it go when time comes. If any of the person who loves you takes a decision to move away from you, it means that the thing they are pursuing means a lot to them. You should never take it in wrong sense and just let them go as anything else will only spoil the relationship and push it to the worse. This I would learn in a hard way later in my life.

But I am not gonna talk about it right now or later too. I want to talk about my childhood, the time where I grew up abnormally for my age, both my height and my width. I was the largest kid in the class but ironically I was the smallest kid in my class. I was put into school, approximately two months earlier. It is hard, I could never remember a day in school in my LKG where I didn't cry. There was nothing that could stop me. But now after all these years, I want that school life back. Irony and more irony.

There was this time of the life, where I had transitioned from a small boy to a large kid and that was the worst time to move, but we had to and we moved to a new neighborhood. New neighborhood brought more challenges as I was moving away from my friends and my best friend in school just vanished without trace. I was in for a spin. But there was this effect which put even me in awe. I grew more aggressive. My parents put me into this Karate class in school and it only fueled my aggression more.

I got into pointless fights with the school bullies who used to harass me before 5th were in for a surprise as I showed resistance. I was growing up. But one more thing that was not with me at this time was shame. I used to go out into the streets in just my undies and it was normal for a little kid to do, but people used to give me a frown as I was a little too big for a kid. The people in my house knew this, but not all others. But it will not last for long as soon I got it and stopped the habit.

This was also the time I met my best friend whom I am in touch even today. He was a source of inspiration and I looked towards him as an role model for my non academic part of life. He was also my most loyal companion until I moved to college 6 years later. His name was half of my name, that is one of the reasons why I liked him. We sort of formed an alliance against an common bully and he was the first one I knew who opposed the other guy. I joined him in as an we started ignoring the other guy for like 2 years.

But at the end of the second year, without me being present, those two guys joined together citing our last two years in the school as the reason. I would also accept the reason later. But, we used to have so much fun together. His family used to be a caretaker of this big house in Fairlands. And the bungalow was empty and we used to play in that bungalow or just speak about our crushes and things. And used to have all the fun. This place was used by all the guys after we all got together. This place is no more and has been teared down to make way for a complex as it was in the main road. Sad as I was planning to buy it when I started to make money later.

The life got pretty much easier at the end of the boycott I should say. Now all of us boys had only one thing to dread about. That was farewell day. So we used to have so much fun. The thing about being the shy little kid for so many years is that all the teachers are so used to you being a shy kid that even when you do stuff that normal people do, people tend to single you out as being the good kid and pull you out of trouble. That was fun, doing everything but when the time for punishment came, I would be out of trouble. I used to do it to the agony of others quite a few times. Oh gullible people!!!

I could also state this period as a period of immense competition as some other people walked in who managed to score top of the class and I was pushed further down the rank ladder. But by this time, I had another reputation built up in my house as a conniving liar. Apparently, the reputation you build up at school does not hold true in house. Even after I switched out to the honesty mode, My mom refused to believe me for quite sometime. But I have to accept it as it is. I used to steal from my house, used to lie a lot, do things that I regret now for doing it. But, if there was one thing I learnt from this whole experience was that lying and stealing does not help. It is not even worth doing it. Some of these core principles I use as a foundation to what I am following today.

Never lie. Don't desire for what is not yours. Money that does not come as a result of hard work will never stay as you don't know the value of it. In the course of time, I found out if everybody followed these, the world will be a lot better place than what we see today.