An Epiphany
This time on my solo trip, I had 5 hours all to myself, in the middle of the night, on a bus with no extra lights provided for reading and stuff. My mobile battery was giving up as was my spirit that this trip is going to be any good. Suddenly, I had an epiphany, the moment I had been waiting for a long time. The whole month was spent in not understanding what was going wrong with my life. But this moment was it. I was happy with my work, I had built up a whole world in my village, I had reconnected back with friends after a long time, I just couldn’t pin anything that was going wrong and why was I so unstable.
The epiphany was loneliness, and how I had handled it before. Loneliness wasn’t strange to me. I grew up in a very conservative household, and my parents were working, my brother was four years old to me, most of my childhood I used to stay alone at my home. It was weird at home, with my parents, they are the best people that I know, but they did ruin my childhood a lot. My 4 years old brother got a restriction on TV, Cartoons, and spending too much of his time outside by the time he was in his 8th or 9th standard. But that also meant on me, a small child who was in his time to do all of that stuff. Honestly, I don’t remember a single cartoon series I had ever finished in my life, nor do I remember a single great game of cricket I ever played in my gully. On top of that, I spent five years of those miserable years learning a musical instrument which I hated(Tabla was so uncool! If you don’t believe me ask that again from any 10 years old kid! Try comparing it with guitar! It was early 2000s Bryan Adams, Green Day, Linkin Park duh!)
It was in the sixth standard that I met which was gonna be the love of my life for the next few years to come — books. I had obviously read books before, but they were different altogether. I was into encyclopedias and general knowledge books a lot. One fine day in my school life, a girl was caught reading a very grown-up stuff filled book. With which I instantly disconnected myself, also got involved into a lot of “gossips”(Yeah that was what gossip was I was in the sixth standard). That was also the day when I first held a grown-up book, I read what was written on its back cover, and got hooked on to it. The book was Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.
I went to my English Teacher told her to recommend a book for me. This was April of my sixth standard. Summer Vacations were just gonna startup. She recommended me to follow up on the Hardy Boys, she also gave me the address to the library in the town where she used to go. Weeks later I was in the first library of my life outside of the one in school. I had taken up a membership and I and my brother had decided that this would be our new hobby. What followed was a summer of romance with books. The first week I went to the library to take a hardy boy, the second week — Digital Fortress, by the end of the next two weeks, I was a Dan Brown fan. One of the only people in my family who was really happy with me and my brother’s new obsession was one of our cousins. In the following months he would have been shifted to a new city and dumped at our home, guess what — two boxes full of grown-up books, as now I knew what to call them novels.
The two years were my life best years, I was hooked onto books and never did I ever fell short of them. I didn’t care now of my restriction to go out much and play, I didn’t wanted to play now. I learned the music instrument furiously just so I could please my parents enough to let me buy as many books as I wanted. I was in love with books and I didn’t wanted anyone else. The following years, we got hooked up into the wonders of the law stories of John Grisham, the action-packed ones of Jefferey Archer (oh! The Kane and Abel Series), Robert Ludlum and his covert one series played special importance in my life. I and my brother sucked up to the books so bad we couldn’t live now without them, but apparently, he could.
By the end of my eighth standard, my brother had passed out of high school. He was a trained classical music singer, he found a bunch of his friends in his college and they made a band or something. This one-year was going to be the toughest in my life. With my brother had found his new found life, I was left alone at home. At school, I had these crazy friends and my friends had become my new family, but at home, there was no one. (Landline call rates were insane, I couldnt just talk all day with them). Also I had become this nerd at school, I would stick to my books, hardly play, even my friends were the studious bunch. This was a big deal to everyone at school, I was the different one, I was the one that went to the library and not to the playing fields. This was not normal at the small city I belong to, libraries were rare and people going into them were further rare.
I remember one time at school we were asked to build a story and bring it to the class the next day. While most of my classmates had stories of heroes and romance, my story had a spy working in the Amazons and uncovering a major international secret later succumbing to death by another spy agency. A story that was ten pages long in an activity that was to be concluded in two hundred words. By this time I was experimenting with my books, changing between Indian and International authors, mentally criticising and scrutinizing them, I do not want to sound arrogant, but I was reading and knew more about this than any other of the schoolmates of my age.
The result was constant criticism for me, at school I was the nerd, only helpful when they needed some help in English Literature. Most of my schoolmates who made fun of me later ended up being in college and writing quotes out of books on their social media pages, but they couldn’t appreciate me doing those years earlier. At home, the criticism took a new shape. I grew open about my dislike on the musical instrument I was learning. My Dad is a musician, he wanted to see both sons into music, and I was just not into it. My mom was a medical student once, she saw the hope in me because my brother was totally into music by then. She wanted me to be meritorious, I was a studious guy, but my interests lay elsewhere.
End of my ninth standard, My mom took a decision to cancel my subscription to the library.
My brother had moved out of the book-lover zone, music was his new love now. I discontinued learning tabla and my ignorance into the likings of what my parents wanted me to become resulted into this. That was the first time in my life I cried for two days straight, that library was all I had in my life. I didn’t had enough money to buy books at the speed of which I was finishing them. Keeping all my ego, self respect aside, I begged with all I had to give back the subscription, but according to everyone at my home — “this wasn’t what was required for the board examinations of the 10th standard”(The 10th standard has a nationalized exams for everyone). I was amongst the class toppers, students would come to me for help if they didn’t understand something, at home, I was begging to continue with my reading habits.
That phase passed, I read whatever I had, brought a few books and in a year of pressure to score good grades in school, I stopped the one thing that meant everything to me. To me, this was not just a hobby, it was my fight against loneliness. My books were my friends, I didn’t had to make up imaginary friends in my childhood because I already had them in my books, not just imaginary friends, but fantasy world, epic romantic storylines and a guide in my life. I didn’t travel much in my childhood, I wasn’t allowed on school trips much, but with books, I never felt bad. I knew about Sri Lanka, Austria, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, and the US. By the time I went into high school, and my brother got even busier in his life, I witnessed new stages of loneliness in my life. I had stopped even sharing stuff with my parents because if they didn’t know how important books were to me they would never understand me at all. I shut all my doors, became a super introvert and nerdier.
The big blow was IITJEE Preparations, which took 10–12 hours every day of dedication to study. Life was getting even worse, my brother had moved out to a new city, my parents were forcing down on my throat to be the best for this national exam for engineering. I did give my best, I gave all I had for it, this was so out of my zone and yet I read books which were heavier than what I weighed when I came into this planet. The only good thing that came out of the whole thing was that for the first time in my life I could spend time out of my home in a dreaded coaching institute. The institute was a jail, but I met some of the best people over there.
This was the time when a travel-related movie came out — Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. Travel was not the only thing that hit me from the movie. Yes I wanted to travel so bad, when you read a lot of books, you also know so much more about the world and you do want to see everything. But this movie hit me on so many different levels, why was I so bounded in my life to do anything. To read, to create, to travel, to breathe in freedom, I wanted all of that. That movie broke me down, I cried for four days and couldn’t sleep those four nights. I never even had a night out in my life, hell I never went for a birthday party of a friend in my life. And there were these four friends in the movie trekking in the Himalayas. I didn’t know people did that, even if I knew I kept that part of me that wanted that locked in a corner because I could never do such thing in my circumstance.
I was a different me now, I wanted everything back in my life, every fucking thing. I wanted to watch cartoons, movies, wanted to go out, have night outs and travel. You see I omitted out books in that sentence because that was the only thing I was actually allowed to do for a long while. The next four years of my college I did exactly that, went crazy, binge-watched every fucking show available, took trips to all the 20 waterfalls around my city with my friends, spent countless night outs with my friends, saw every third movie which came out. I did it all. All this while I couldn’t read, I had just lost the patience to do that. I could write poems, write blogs, but I just couldn’t finish up a book. I and my best friend in college, we took up the same membership in the same library, I missed every deadline to return the books, because I didn’t read any of them.
A few months back from now, just after college, I traveled to my heart’s desire, took multiple solo trips, did everything I was told not to do in my childhood.(Still can’t tolerate cartoon shows) and then I took up a job. Every intellectual that I met during this job which was also a fellowship, gave me some great recommendations for books, told me how much they were important. Every time I wanted to shout back — “I KNOW”. But I didn’t. Because It had been four years in which I had read hardly four-five books. I had lost touch with them, felt disconnected to them and couldn’t finish any of it.
Last night, however, I think I may not have reached a satisfactory level to everything else in my life, but maybe a bit of satisfaction. For the first time in six-seven years of my life, I missed a book on my travel. I missed the strange fantasy stories, the over the life characters, and the fun I had being a part of them. 6 years later when I had done everything in my life, I think I had an epiphany that I could finally be back with the one hobby that brought me out of loneliness the first time and that would bring me out of it once again. I think my struggle is over now.
