Change

Well each one reading this blog right probably know the old cliched and trite phrase that "Nothing is constant in life but Change" but when each of us feel it in ourselves, it no longer seems as cliched as it used to.

Hmmm, to tell about how this summer has been quite a different experience cannot be simply be expressed by words but i will, earnestly, try to do so to the best of my abilities.

For one it was my first trip in a place all by myself, with ppl only to guide me and not lead me by hand to places i needed to go. Last summer despite having left home, i stayed in my roommate's house which served as good as my own home with her parents fawning over me as though i were their own daughter.

The first butterflies were created when I was to leave my parents in the visitor's area in the airport. I had not travelled by myself in a flight. As my luck would have it,(which, mind you, was too good for me to believe) the girl seated next to me in the flight happened to be a junior from my college who recognized me as "Hostel Rep". So the flight journey was very pleasant as we talked away our time. Once I reached Delhi, I had my second hurdle to cross... The language of Hindi... My knowledge of hindi is actually very weird, because i read and write hindi better than i can my own mother tongue, i can sing songs in it as well( probably not with cent percent lyrical accuracy but nonetheless) and understand as well when someone talks in Hindi but i can't talk!!! Here i was to meet this driver of my dad's friend who knew only hindi and was trying to say about some place that i didnot know about. Finally asked him in my broken hindi to wait at the entrance of a particular restaurant i saw and found him. BTW, with a lot of effort from my pg(paying guest-house) roommates and the aunty who owned the house my language started to pick up but still there's a long way to go i guess.

I live with a Kashmiri couple here who have two daughters, one in the US and the other here, with a lovely 6 month old grandson. It is one thing to hear about how difficult it is to handle babies, and it's another to watch. As cute as babies are to watch, they need a lot of pampering and time. I watched that the mother( who had incidentally resigned her job for this baby) had to tend to the baby even when she had fever herself and couldnt sleep even if it was 1 in the night till the baby slept. And one particular night, the baby caught a fever and cried thru the whole night.

I have heard a lot from my father saying how he spent nights trying to make me sleep as a baby and how during times of Diwali how much difficulty he'd have, shutting down every possible door and making everything silent because i was ever so sensitive, but seeing it up close and personal made a difference. I saw the effort and the effect, it had on the mother as well as the grandparents.

I could also see how much a mere fact of having a pg in their house with outside girls staying with them and the fact that one daughter lived close by made a difference to their lives and gave the parents something to do in their old age. Otherwise they'd be really bugged with life and pretty much getting into depression with no company and nothing to do as well. Apart from changes of life that i noticed, there's one particular incident i'd like to mention. During the beginning of my summer training, i used to .sincerely, put my mobile to silent, just like when i went to college, so as to not disturb anyone. One evening my roommate wanted to check her new caller tune and called from mine just to hear it when she noticed that it was on silent. She asked me as to why it was silent, and i replied that i forgot to change it back once i got back to the house. When she actually asked me "Why do you put it on silent in the office" only then it struck me that I was in a company not a college.

Another thing that i got introduced to and got used to, is the guiding to places by means of words without actual dropping me there the first time.(It had , i realised, always happened that the first day of going to any place i would actually be accompanied by someone and the next day onward i would manage) I realised how much of a child was still present in me to expect some such thing.

Yet another day my roommate had bought a new mobile all of a sudden and brought it to hostel. It was then it sank in that she earned money and she'd do anything with it as she pleased without asking anyone. It was yet another realisation dawned late. I had not till date bought any costly item ever without the consent of my parents and I just couldnt imagine of the day when i wouldnt do so. I have been thinking as to how such changes happen so rapidly and yet so tacitly, noone ever seems to see it as a big difference.

I hadn't, till date, seen the subtle lines that made a lot of distinct difference between the child and the adult. That transition hadn't happened for me earlier, i suppose, as I was permanently lovingly kept in the shadows of ppl i know.

It's a transition that most of us will be undergoing or probably have already undergone by now and probably this is the one that saps out all the "Childishness" out of us and equips us with what's required to enter the "Adult world".