#throwback: 20-nothing

Yes, not surprisingly I have been miserable on the consistency front on this blog. Somehow that last post became too much of a favourite and I was terrified to top it off with something mediocre, boring, inconsequential. Basically, it resulted in my latest four month hiatus and usual excuses for my absence. Been the Achilles' heel to my writing as long as I can remember. Ah well. I am back now and isn't that what matters? :P

This piece is, in all honesty, a year old - almost to the day. I see a follow-up to this coming so thought it made sense to put up Chapter 1 first. Hopefully then it will drive me to put pen to paper (ahem, type on keyboard, that)? As of now, the next title is in my head with words of a vague introduction floating in space. Hopefully this post will push me to sit down and capture them? Somehow, I have a vivid image of chasing down words with a butterfly net... Anyway, I digress.

This is the piece - 20-nothing

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A babble of near incoherent voices hum behind me in a language I have come to recognize instantaneously. The words make sense, the tones are familiar and the voice is one I have grown accustomed to after many days of bitching, bonding and bawling. Laws and diagrams are floating over my head, being thrown from one BTech to another, in a hurried scuffle to beat Father Time looming in the distance. The fan above me is whirring rhythmically, in slow circles almost in a bored drone. What it must be like to be a fan, I wonder. Rather thankless job, I would imagine. The lights are at a rather inconvenient angle, forming slanted shadows over my shoulders, lurking just out of arms reach. The scene is mundane enough. Highlighters, pens, open notebooks, watches, keys and wires. I am surrounded by the life of a college student the night before an exam. A life I belong to, engage with, am engulfed by. Yet, right this minute, there is something is amiss. Something small, intangible, even ignorable. Yet, it exists.

My breathing is a just a little shallow. My heartbeat is just a little too fast. I am just covered with goose bumps. The rate of facebook notifications flowing in have just increased significantly. None of them are telling signs and no one would even notice. Yet, I know. I am engulfed by a wave of childish enthusiasm, juvenile excitement for what lies on the other side of the Cinderella hour.

A little red ‘1’ just popped up on my screen. An acquaintance from Singapore wishing me. My phone just vibrated. A friend apologizing for not being able to call. My parents sent me offline texts. One friend said he wanted to get me flowers and another mentioned my ‘orgasmic love’ for stationery. Suddenly, I feel like the two year old of almost two decades ago, staring at a carrot cake with icing in a strawberry summer dress, knife held jubilantly in hand and waiting for what lay on the other side of that slice.

I know. Two hours from now, I will not feel any older, any wiser or any prettier because of the day or the time. Two hours from now, calls may or may not flow in, from those who are supposedly meant to call. Two hours from now, I will be two hours closer to my last exam of the semester, something at the top of everyone’s mind, just as it should be. Yet, two hours from now, I would have crossed another boundary in my head, another milestone would lie behind me.

For the longest time, the oldest I could think of was 20. Grown-ups, adults, people who knew what they were doing, they all fell under the umbrella of 20-somethings. Blog posts and magazine articles that had lists of advice for them were brushed aside as being too far in the future to be paid attention to. Twenty-somethings were cousins in college, older siblings working, the people you aspired to be. She was the girl at the bus stand who looked like she could do as she pleased, phone in hand, ear phones plugged in, wearing a casual kurti with leggings. She looked confident, acted important and dressed appropriately. She was everything the awkward, gawky adolescent in me aspired to be.

Today, I am told I am at that threshold myself, a zebra-crossing with childhood behind me and adulthood on the other side. There is a solace in adolescence, a safety net in the teens, a carpet for soft landing that has suddenly been pulled out from under my feet.

Perhaps I am over-thinking this. Perhaps nothing will change after all and the zebra-crossing will be more of a ramp, a long drawn out process of gradual change. But right now, it is momentous. Seven years ago, a thirteen year old girl squealed at the prospect of joining the elite company of teenagers around the world, marking her official entry into the world of adolescence. Today, the girl is awaiting her exit from that company and the induction into the scary world of ‘young adults’. Yet, when I stare at the mirror, I see a seventeen year old staring back at me. Studying for boards, finding my grounding, shakily rising on my own feet. Nothing has changed. It couldn’t have.

As I get increasingly distracted, I promise myself I will come back to this. I will write about this till the words dry up, the brain clears up and I come to terms with what is happening. As of now, my shallow breathing and inexplicable excitement has a very simple explanation.  Beneath the sleep-deprived, aching, hostelite college student who is meant to figure out the answers to life and love lies a young girl; a girl enraptured by rainbows, cotton candy and warm hugs, craving for vathakuzhambu at home with Ma, wondering how she suddenly got all the way here. The girl in the mirror is scared. 20-nothing isn’t so far away after all. Shit.