Stepping out of the comforts of my home at the age of 15, I didn’t realize till then what making families meant till I arrived in Kota. Kota is infamous, people still keep asking me how I survived it and that was more than 10 years ago. I was 15, I was a kid, and I was away from my parents in an awfully competitive, black and white, depressing area where apparently you couldn’t make friends. You were bound to turn grey like the sky.
But this was the first time I really grew into myself. I was happy and I was confident and I was surrounded by incredibly helpful and passionate girls. Maybe I got lucky. I mean, till that point in life, I wasn’t lucky per se. I still remember around the fourth night the math questions were getting kind of difficult to solve and I was aghast, this had never happened before! I went to my neighbor girlfriend and she sat and explained everything to me, gave me tips about how to think about problems and find solutions and god, was I in awe. This was the first time I had ever asked for help and she was kind and helpful and remained so for the rest of the two years. I made friends with all the girls I was living with, we shared meals, we studied together, we would do movie marathons every Saturday because that was the only time off we would get, and I had the most incredible time. I also became close with one of the girls so much I would sleep by her whenever I was feeling down, and she was also my sounding board before I got into my first real relationship. I mean I can’t think about Kota with any bad memories, I probably didn’t have any.
Fast forward to my time in IIT Bombay, I just had a different air about me. I was 17, I was excruciatingly excited, I talked to everybody, I hung out with everybody, I loved being social, going to clubs, having fun. But since before this time everybody would tell me that I just had to get into an IIT and then it will be a breeze, I took the advice a little too seriously. I stopped studying altogether. And that’s how my group of friends would sit me down, make me study, explain things to me, spend hours from their own time to make sure I passed. I mean, I was the child in the group, they all took responsibility for me. And that is how you feel like you belong. I was surrounded by the smartest individuals of the country who were kind, decent and generous. Who gave and gave and loved me like their own. And I loved them. I think I began valuing friendships so much that even today I can only imagine them as my family. I broke up with my then boyfriend, and I was sad for three days, but how could I be sadder, I was so happy just being with my friends and exploring all these new things to do. I still meet friends from my undergrad and we reminisce about the times we spent at the 500 acre campus, just us, for us, about us. I got lucky, again.
I spent the next five years building into my community, being part of an incredible family. Boys came and went, but this stayed. I am still thankful to all my friends who stuck through the myriads of “situationships” I went through, heard me complain and fantasize and romanticize only to move on the next while they shook their heads at me but they never judged me and were in a way surprised with my nonchalance of it all. They did poke fun during my Valfi, but who cares, I haven’t yet watched the videos of it yet. When I met my boyfriend, it was also important to me that they liked him, it is an entirely different thing that anybody who has ever met my boyfriend hasn’t been moved by him on a very deep level. I got lucky again.
I moved to Gurgaon the day after I finished my thesis. I had quite a lot of fun during my induction where I would hang out with people from my college, but they had to move to Rajasthan and I was left by myself in Gurgaon with a bunch of people who were already friends for a long time. I felt like I was the new kid thrown into the 7th season of a show. It was difficult I guess, they weren’t particularly fond of my over the top extrovertness, or my snorts, or even my sense of humor. But a community takes care of you. So they did, so I was taken in by a kind, tall, and incredibly funny (into wordplay) guy who approached me with caution, and the rest is history. I spent the next 8 months in a hotel with 20 of them, worked okay, played my hardest. They became my confidants, the people I would eat with, watch movies with, and go on trips with. I got lucky for the third time. At this point, I wasn’t sure if I was lucky or what the hell was happening. I could barely keep up.
When covid happened, and I was working from home, this was a struggle. I didn’t know how to connect with my newly assigned team because in person I was shameless, I would approach anyone, I would sit with anyone and talk to them. But online, I wasn’t so sure what to do, when most of the work happened through messaging. Well, I was shameless, so I would pick up the phone and call people. The trick that I learnt during this time was that, since I would call for a work purpose which would take 30 seconds of conversation, I started sharing. I would share news, gossip, and I would always start with “you know what happened?” I thought it was incredibly funny how people would get curious and then do the exact same thing. I started making friends so that I would just get calls to talk without any purpose. I started blending in, working to the top, so much so that the site that I had never visited, every person over there knew me - either through the calls or my reputation. Because being social and proactive helped me work better, work more, and work with more people. These were also the people, who had now started blindly trusting me, saving me in tough situations and mentored me through my time in Cairn, for which I am grateful.
Post this when I went to IIMA, I was a bit heartbroken to leave a place that I was so happy in, but moving and moving on was something I had mastered over the years. So much so that in the last 12 years, I have not lived in a single place for more than a year. I love change, I love challenges, and I love finding new communities and friendships. So when I moved to IIMA, I was thoroughly excited about what lay next.
Since IIMA was just a year ago, the memories of it are more recent and I still giddy up thinking about them. And here too, I got incredibly lucky. I met my best friends and girlfriends that know everything about me. Nothing is too embarrassing, nothing is too crass to tell them. They have been my sounding boards for everything. Reading their testimonials in my yearbook still brings me so much joy about how they viewed me with so much love. To be honest, I know a lot of them used to be taken aback by the kind of views I held, how much importance I gave to freedom and independence, and how much of a “fuck it, let’s do it” attitude I had. I am sure I imparted some of my traits onto them, as much as they imparted kindness and graciousness onto me. Afterall, a person is all but an imprint of their community.
Now that I am in Dubai, living by myself, and also to those who don’t know, “unemployed”, I have a lot of time to reflect on my life. Which has been great by the way. I live in an epic studio in the most epic area of Downtown, with views to the Burj Khalifa, with plenty of resources to keep me in this stage for a couple of months. But I am more grateful to the community I have built and am building. I have close friends, who also hear my stories, sometimes judge me for being a bit ludicrous with my decisions, but who are incredibly supportive, who feed me, take care of me, let me sleep on their sofa, drink their alcohol and just let me be the black sheep (for the time being).
A friend recently described me as a cat. I thought the analogy was quite apt. Because for me, all these years, I just go and live in somebody’s house, or hostel room, or hotel room, and I just lay there. Waiting for the people to feed me, take care of me, let me sleep, come in and go as I please. Just like a cat, my presence is all there is.
I don’t usually know what lies ahead in my personal life. I can’t plan it like I kinda, sorta, plan or have planned my professional life. I am more of a trusting life where it takes me. I am only 27, I still enjoy having random conversations with random people, and making a friend out of them. This part of me never goes away and hopefully, as I grow older, I will still feel like the child of a community, surrounded by the deepest, sincerest friendships and love.
Comments