The swift mechanical swish of the metro running on a line right outside my window is warm yellow reassurance at night,like lights illuminating an empty corridor.A new city awaits to be explored,I have a whole new world to discover,every morning is the promise of adventure,every day a constantly changing challenge.
College,they say,is the most abstract experience there is..where each day might seem identical to the next,like a line of dominoes waiting to collapse into each other until you create something worthwhile with catharsis or have an absolute burnout,but each moment is like that intricacy of a painting,you didn't notice the first time you looked.Only when you look closer,carefully,your eyes fall on those little details that add the kind of meaning to the painting you never thought it could convey.
Be it a torrent of rain that sends you running back indoors,one afternoon,making you smile like a child with paper boats in a puddle or be it sitting on a stairway,sharing comfortable silences into the wee hours of morning,cuddling with the campus dog and taking naps in a hallway,your bag ,a makeshift pillow.Eating tang straight out of the packet and spending all your money on one too many bottles of beer and books,without realising it might mean being broke for the rest of the month and walking three kilometeres,trying to find your way back.Every little stroke of the brush has been put on canvas to add hue,colour,contrast or even just space,you might just take a little longer to realise why some strokes have been added.
In a month,I have come to realise how much the very foundations of my world can change,entirely.How the safe little snow globe I had crafted to be my universe,has frailer walls than I had ever imagined.The people I meet were certainly not the ones I thought I would,the tears I've cried under the covers,each morning for a home that I never thought I would miss so much,the bittersweet nostalgia for a city that adds so much to my identity than I ever realised,the songs I've been singing and the dancing I've been doing,all so new,yet so welcoming.Even the kites and birds,flying in a distance outside my window,the fronds of the palm moving gently with the breeze,seem strangely stunning and familiar.
The questions I've been asking myself,mostly rhetoric,but I'm beginning to realise,they don't all need answers,always.Some of them are better mysteries than hypotheses.
Somewhere along sitting next to a lotus pond,pondering and musing, while walking late night in soft drizzle,plopping myself into a circle of near strangers on a grassy slope,singing along to the chords of a guitar,I realise.I realise that there is little we can do about what we're fated to,how much ever we try,even if we romanticize monotony.
The grand scheme of things will spiral out and spiral in like these moments,these minute details on abstract painting of our lives.Seemingly designed for a purpose we don't quite understand,at first.It is indeed our attempt to try to add meaning that,to try taking control,to try directing the strokes on our paintings to make our masterpieces a little more personalised,our belief that we can exercise choice,free will is what counts.Although it might be just a mirage of what we want to call an odyssey of self-discovery,it just this belief that is the truest sense of freedom we'll have.Like sexuality,like love,like friendship,like wisdom and knowledge,themselves,freedom is fluid,although in earnest,it might never completely belong to us,alone.It is psychological and even if institutions like society seem to shackle it with norms,we try,despite knowing there is no escape.We try to build a niche where we don't want to race towards a finish line,to compete and make a mark,we just want to fall and falter,and discover and evolve.This very attempt at letting go and finding a place to be and walking without a destination,taking one day at a time,that liberates me.I'm learning to let my hair down,to let the breeze kiss it and walk barefoot,to feel the earth beneath my feet.These unknown streets and sky rise concrete structures of my dreams,and all the uncertainty of a new beginning,,the confusion and despair of figuring stuff out and those sublime interludes of mundane peace.A city,like I began,awaits to be discovered..perhaps,this constantly changing cosmopolitan is within me.
College,they say,is the most abstract experience there is..where each day might seem identical to the next,like a line of dominoes waiting to collapse into each other until you create something worthwhile with catharsis or have an absolute burnout,but each moment is like that intricacy of a painting,you didn't notice the first time you looked.Only when you look closer,carefully,your eyes fall on those little details that add the kind of meaning to the painting you never thought it could convey.
Be it a torrent of rain that sends you running back indoors,one afternoon,making you smile like a child with paper boats in a puddle or be it sitting on a stairway,sharing comfortable silences into the wee hours of morning,cuddling with the campus dog and taking naps in a hallway,your bag ,a makeshift pillow.Eating tang straight out of the packet and spending all your money on one too many bottles of beer and books,without realising it might mean being broke for the rest of the month and walking three kilometeres,trying to find your way back.Every little stroke of the brush has been put on canvas to add hue,colour,contrast or even just space,you might just take a little longer to realise why some strokes have been added.
In a month,I have come to realise how much the very foundations of my world can change,entirely.How the safe little snow globe I had crafted to be my universe,has frailer walls than I had ever imagined.The people I meet were certainly not the ones I thought I would,the tears I've cried under the covers,each morning for a home that I never thought I would miss so much,the bittersweet nostalgia for a city that adds so much to my identity than I ever realised,the songs I've been singing and the dancing I've been doing,all so new,yet so welcoming.Even the kites and birds,flying in a distance outside my window,the fronds of the palm moving gently with the breeze,seem strangely stunning and familiar.
The questions I've been asking myself,mostly rhetoric,but I'm beginning to realise,they don't all need answers,always.Some of them are better mysteries than hypotheses.
Somewhere along sitting next to a lotus pond,pondering and musing, while walking late night in soft drizzle,plopping myself into a circle of near strangers on a grassy slope,singing along to the chords of a guitar,I realise.I realise that there is little we can do about what we're fated to,how much ever we try,even if we romanticize monotony.
The grand scheme of things will spiral out and spiral in like these moments,these minute details on abstract painting of our lives.Seemingly designed for a purpose we don't quite understand,at first.It is indeed our attempt to try to add meaning that,to try taking control,to try directing the strokes on our paintings to make our masterpieces a little more personalised,our belief that we can exercise choice,free will is what counts.Although it might be just a mirage of what we want to call an odyssey of self-discovery,it just this belief that is the truest sense of freedom we'll have.Like sexuality,like love,like friendship,like wisdom and knowledge,themselves,freedom is fluid,although in earnest,it might never completely belong to us,alone.It is psychological and even if institutions like society seem to shackle it with norms,we try,despite knowing there is no escape.We try to build a niche where we don't want to race towards a finish line,to compete and make a mark,we just want to fall and falter,and discover and evolve.This very attempt at letting go and finding a place to be and walking without a destination,taking one day at a time,that liberates me.I'm learning to let my hair down,to let the breeze kiss it and walk barefoot,to feel the earth beneath my feet.These unknown streets and sky rise concrete structures of my dreams,and all the uncertainty of a new beginning,,the confusion and despair of figuring stuff out and those sublime interludes of mundane peace.A city,like I began,awaits to be discovered..perhaps,this constantly changing cosmopolitan is within me.
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