Time has this annoying habit of flying away with great pace
when we most need it to just stop and pause for a few moments. When I was very
young or little, I thought time never moved. It was hard to push a day away, especially
if my mom was having a night shift at work or if my sisters were not home. A
day, back then, used to last so long that I had to beg to God to make it come
to an end and let me grow up soon. I thought it was cool to be older; to be
considered more important, to express your opinions without being laughed at, to
go by bus all alone to the town and so much more. But alas! It took me ten long
years to be finally ten years old! And ever since then, I have no complaints. My
only problem has been that I just can’t keep up with the tempo of time and the
subsequent advancements.
This happens to me all the time. I would get enrolled in a
school, now college for that matter, start mingling with my fellow students,
find out who all comes under my ‘tolerable lot’ category, try to talk more with
them than with the rests, and yet maintain a respectful distance, find out the
best few who I can totally call my “friends” and then, all of a sudden, will
wake up wide-eyed to the appalling reality that I have got just a few,
countable more days to spend with them! That is how cruel time has been to me
for the past few years.
In a matter of a few days my final year will kick start. Though
I have been in that college for two years now, I still feel like a stranger. Well,
the place is pretty familiar; there are a few good familiar faces too. But I feel
like a stranger got lost in a familiar land. The campus, with all its flora and
fauna was always more than welcoming. It has a soothing ambience anyone would
fall in love with. The lake view ground is literally a heaven for someone like
me, who likes to stay away from the buzz. The aquariums and ponds and the odd
fishes it house are all evidently a part of my life today. But still I don’t
belong to that place. I have absorbed what it could give, but failed to give
back a piece of me to the place, I guess. Or maybe my college never really
wanted to have a part of me. The corridors I pass through every morning to get
to my class have always known my footsteps, but have been so indifferent. Even when
I sit in my classroom next to some of the best humans I’d ever meet, I am
almost invisible. There are times when I get confused as to things happening
around me. I feel like I am dreaming, that it is all some sort of hallucination;
college, class, friends, teachers, everything seems like a product of my
artistic illusion. But then when the exams are closer, I know it is not. The feeling
that everything happening around me is a misinterpreted perception of my
sensory experience is itself the concrete evidence of how I have blocked my
college life from entering that special zone of my heart; I am yet to accept it
as it is.
Hence, today I feel more in need of some extra time than
ever. Without actually knowing it, I have somehow begun to like “the college
life”. And the painful realization that I have only a year more left to explore
and experience it in the best way makes me sad and anxious. I hate myself for
not being able to embrace the changes as quickly as the situation demands. I am
afraid this year too will fly away, like all others have, and I will be left
behind without so many feathers in my cap, totally unprepared for the unknown
out there.
