The need arises everyday to DO something. Every morning that I wake up I am swamped by the same irritating need. It is this need that haunts you till you go to bed and you are just going to bed for this need has totally exhausted you.
Always searching- always a thousand questions, always a thousand accuses and complaints.
I need to find a job, need to start liking my course, need to be happy, need to find a place of my own. They are all very categorical and selfish needs but they completely blindside me at any given time of the day.
And its is not just me- but everyone around me. This need is like a bad cold. A rash that creeps up your neck and covers your cheeks and you are most swamped with the need to cover it so as others cannot see it.
The need to think that you are better than the rest- when you just might not be. The need to not be hurt, not to feel disoriented, not to feel broken.
The need shall undo me one day.
And even then it will remain.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Bye Bye Alma Mater
I saw a picture of my school a few days back on some girl’s album on facebook. And for the life of me I could not recognize it. Could not recognize the corridors, the chart boards or the classrooms. And could not recognize the girls. Well obviously for I am ages senior to them- but I could not recognize the ‘essence’ that me and my friends and to a great extent my sister and her friends had while we still wore those uniforms. I left school in 2002, my sister left school a few years later and though there seems to be the yawning gap between how school was for me and my sister- both of us, sitting right there in front of the computer screen- could not recognize the school where we spent 12 years of our lives.
The girls were like those incredibly hot, pretty and mindless women who act in chick flicks in Hollywood. Their hair is styled immaculately, the skirts are shorter and sneakers replace the boring old keds we wore. If anyone had seen my skirt when I was in school they would not have imagined that skirts could be any shorter- but yet- impossible is nothing these days. When you see these girls you know that when out of uniform they would give even Paris Hilton competition when they dolled up and posed for such glamorous pictures. I don’t have any glamorous pictures if I may add. Their multiple piercings and manicured nails makes me think of the times when senior prefects would ask us to take off ear rings that were big and frowned at my nails for they were pink. My sister exclaimed that we were never allowed to do all this in school- and I realized that she meant both of us. A three and a half year age gap now reduced to nothing. She and I were now the outsiders who had long stored our badges and monogrammed shirts away in our cupboards and no longer recognized the alma mater- at least the way it was now.
I sometimes wonder- would I want to be remembered by my school- if I ever become famous would they call me in to give a speech at some function or some reunion? And would I go?
I had left my school rather unceremoniously, rather hurriedly and in a matter of anger and disdain. But 7 years have gone by- what do I remember? The words of certain teachers saying that I was not really a person who could study? Or the lessons of a lifetime that I know I still have in me and I could pass onto my daughter (when I have one).
So typical it is- to reminisce about school and talk about the wonderful values it has instilled in me. Perfect for that speech if they call me after I am famous. But it is true. And to think that maybe another 7 years later these Paris Hilton’s that my sister and I laughed at would be talking the same way as we are. We grew up and maybe they will too. It is just that the world we grew up in was different- I had my first boyfriend in class 11, my sister had it in class 8 and these girls- well they could have started in class 5. You never know. We flouted rules in different ways despite being captains and prefects. They have their own rules. We dated St. James guys and St. Xavier’s boys – they have LMB swooning all over them. People who have been there know what I am talking about.
7 years have gone by. 7 bloody, long years.
The girls were like those incredibly hot, pretty and mindless women who act in chick flicks in Hollywood. Their hair is styled immaculately, the skirts are shorter and sneakers replace the boring old keds we wore. If anyone had seen my skirt when I was in school they would not have imagined that skirts could be any shorter- but yet- impossible is nothing these days. When you see these girls you know that when out of uniform they would give even Paris Hilton competition when they dolled up and posed for such glamorous pictures. I don’t have any glamorous pictures if I may add. Their multiple piercings and manicured nails makes me think of the times when senior prefects would ask us to take off ear rings that were big and frowned at my nails for they were pink. My sister exclaimed that we were never allowed to do all this in school- and I realized that she meant both of us. A three and a half year age gap now reduced to nothing. She and I were now the outsiders who had long stored our badges and monogrammed shirts away in our cupboards and no longer recognized the alma mater- at least the way it was now.
I sometimes wonder- would I want to be remembered by my school- if I ever become famous would they call me in to give a speech at some function or some reunion? And would I go?
I had left my school rather unceremoniously, rather hurriedly and in a matter of anger and disdain. But 7 years have gone by- what do I remember? The words of certain teachers saying that I was not really a person who could study? Or the lessons of a lifetime that I know I still have in me and I could pass onto my daughter (when I have one).
So typical it is- to reminisce about school and talk about the wonderful values it has instilled in me. Perfect for that speech if they call me after I am famous. But it is true. And to think that maybe another 7 years later these Paris Hilton’s that my sister and I laughed at would be talking the same way as we are. We grew up and maybe they will too. It is just that the world we grew up in was different- I had my first boyfriend in class 11, my sister had it in class 8 and these girls- well they could have started in class 5. You never know. We flouted rules in different ways despite being captains and prefects. They have their own rules. We dated St. James guys and St. Xavier’s boys – they have LMB swooning all over them. People who have been there know what I am talking about.
7 years have gone by. 7 bloody, long years.
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