Intern + First Solo Trip; The Transformation (first week)
My summer intern in a new city that felt like a distant future was now just days away from being a reality. That’s when I started manifesting it, instead of just thinking of it as a dream. I wondered how a new city would treat me, how it will change me and what my life would be like. This simple process of thinking it out got me excited for the new possibilities.
So, this journey was to embark my first ever solo trip starting with getting on a flight by myself for the first time. It wasn’t like I had never been on a flight, but being on my own came with a different emotion of freedom and independence, or to rather say dependence on only thyself.
The view was not a new one, but the land beneath, clustered with buildings and houses of different sizes, usually surrounded by trees and roads neatly demarcating the land into rectangles, dotted with vehicles going their own way. And the clouds that would cover the view from time to time, made it like meditation, when all your thoughts get cleared just like the view and what remains is a safe serene place for your thoughts to go wild with infinite possibilities to come.
I landed in Hyderabad with the sun setting too; a city I was excited to explore and with it parts of myself. I wanted everything to be so full of life and new that to begin with, I made a bet. I booked my PG well in advance because of vacancy issues and found one really close to my office, in a night life bustling area with all amenities in one place. The bet. It was that I booked a 3 sharing room, not with people I knew or other interns going with me, but entire strangers living there already. I calculated that it increased my chances at kindling a new friendship; ‘Ki dono me se ek toh dost ban hi jaayegi na”.
I had hotel accommodation for a week offered from office, but I knew it would be hard to live in a PG afterwards, so I let that option go. I came to the PG, as per my research it was the best in the area and looked just like the pictures, but one thing those pictures can’t justify is how it looks when people already live there, especially girls. It was a mess! I called my mom and she couldn’t stop laughing while I complained. She was like ‘aagaya swad’. Two days into it and the room felt more mine than the other roommates already living there was longer.
The bet I made turned out great. I am an software engineering intern, so a room with other fellow interns or people with same background wouldn’t come with the exposure I got with being surrounded by people pursuing different careers in life. The conversations have more color and variety to them. Every time you talk there is something new to know. We have completely different worlds of experiences to share with each other.
I made a friend in the shortest time ever. She knows the city like her own and guides me to places that I as a new person would not have discovered on google map. If I went to office without telling her, she calls to know my whereabouts. If I am late coming back, she calls me to know if I am okay. A friend to keep!
My office is in hi-tech city of Hyderabad, it is so well maintained and tidy that it feels foreign. Words won’t justify what I feel, so see for yourself; becoming a photographer by the day.
The area is called Mindspace, comes with lovely 1km walk with food options on both side. It has hotels, PGs, colleges, hospitals, stores and apartments all coupled together in a not so cohesive manner. But still the place is charming and the sky-walk is a cherry on the cake.
First week at work filled me with exuberance and passion, I felt missing in me for a while now. I felt the spark rekindling. People were warm and welcoming. It is a place where brilliant minds apply beautiful concepts to make something greater than themselves. I got the best team, more than I could ask for, with individuals of so many different characteristics and experience levels. They work effectively together, like different modules of a code work together to make a well functioning system.
Everyday at work feels like scuba diving, overwhelming at first but more and more real and doable with every passing day. I feel so productive and real after a soul crushing 3 weeks of college exams.
A girl said to me this is her dream job. I thought to myself that “You are living someone’s dream, make the most out of it”. I have the power to design and develop my life and future with my actions, like only I have the access to code my life. My ikigai comes from the project I got, I love it, it pushes me to learn things I already wanted to and comes with a perfect balance to develop financial skills.
Life a week ago feels like a dream now and just 4 days into the city accommodating to a new life feels like forever, like I had always meant to be here. To add, my lifestyle also got more disciplined with daily baths, a refreshing morning uber moto ride to work and an even more rejuvenating 20 min walk back home (yeah I got the best PG location wise too), great food and a working environment that is so peaceful that feeling of curiosity and learning just comes to you naturally. You just need to converse with any other employ and you get so many questions like wow you did this, how and all, that the conversation just makes time fly. Working at my desk, engaged in the work at hand, that time slips and I can just account for the zen.
Though I had explored Mindspace, throughout the week, the weekend came with my first chance at exploring “The Asli Hyderabad”. We made a group of six people interning in different companies; one thing in common being our college. Now, interacting with new people comes easy, its a big thing coming from me. Its like reading with a new book with a lovely story to explore.
We took a metro ride, mesmerized by the view of the city from it. Further taking an auto ride to “Golconda Fort”
Needless to say, like any other fort, this one transported me to another world, starting with claps at the entrance of it which echo in every direction if you stand at a particular tile. I enter a fort and I just start imaging the life of people who once dwelled it like a home. I caress my hands on the intricately designed walls, almost able to hear them whisper the stories of people long gone and forgotten. The fort was on a hill and at some distance transformed into a trek, with every inch of increasing elevation the view became beautiful, the whole city of Hyderabad lay as a map in front of my eyes, lit on a bright sunny-cloudy day.
The top of the fort trek made it all worthwhile. It resembled the view from the plane, you could just sit there all day and observe it change with people moving around, trees dancing with the wind, small vehicles zipping by on long roads. And to top it all the setting sun kissed me and the blowing wind just made the tiring trek up so enthralling and joyous.
The week ended with Sunday night, me calculating my expenses for the first time trying to handle them like a grown up, calculating how to reach a break even and invest what is left. Knowledge of transactional stuff and how money works is important to maneuver your way in life, but life has more to it. My roommate took me to the terrace, a 4th dimension in my mostly 3D life, I could see all the office buildings around, moonlight falling on me through clouds and distant lightning now and then. We lay there and we simply talked about life. At ease, with a feeling of fullness in my heart.
