A high school graduation like no other

As a young girl, I always envisioned the day of my high school graduation to be a somewhat grand, honorary ceremony. I had grown up imagining an electric atmosphere, a massive auditorium packed with thousands of people, giving the valedictorian speech, a flurry of colour and movement as caps are thrown into the air, graduates cheering and shouting as they revel in the freedom of the moment – something along the lines of what graduation was like in Hollywood movies. 

The actual event was a much more humble affair. 

As I walked down the familiar street, on the path I’d taken all those years to school, it was almost as though nothing had changed: the pookaramma’s veined and knotted hands moved swiftly as she expertly strung together strands of jasmine, there was the little pillayar kovil, deserted in the afternoon sun, except for one or two particularly determined devotees, Kumaran Stores was overflowing with a sea of schoolchildren in green and white buying themselves drinks. 

There was a splendid kolam drawn on the ground in front of the school gates. There were no caps and gowns, instead, the girls were draped in flowing cotton sarees, the boys in veshtis. We were handed eclairs as we make our way inside. We assembled before a small podium in the modest school auditorium, where we spent the next hour watching music and dance performances by the students, and listening to the principal's usual "motivating words" of the "importance of hard work and dedication" one last time.

A number of other school events have occurred in the time that has passed since then. We've all ventured out to different cities and countries in the pursuit of college degrees, but it's the shared experiences, the little things, that still bring us together.

We are all in possession of a series of class photographs in which nearly all the teachers are (terribly) photoshopped. Never once did we have a school picnic in which there was enough room for everyone on the bus (we would resort to sitting on each others' laps). Kumaran Stores, the local provisions shop students frequented for chips and soda after school, holds nostalgia for many (not for me, though – amma still sends me there all the time to buy a number of things, ranging from curd packets to incense sticks). The school uniform of green and white was much dreaded (the salwar sets are long gone now, having been turned into washcloths minutes after my last board exam). Finding safety pins every morning to secure the dupatta in place was a real battle. There are vague memories of the morning assemblies, held on the school grounds in the unforgiving Chennai heat. They would always result in someone or the other fainting, and yet, the principal's speeches would still go on and on, as though nothing significant had happened.

The funny thing is, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. These seemingly insignificant memories have woven themselves into the fabric of who we are. They are the threads that bind us, reminding us that our journey together, though filled with ups and downs, was uniquely ours, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

A summer evening's quiet reflection

It's incredibly overwhelming, terrifying almost, that I'm a rising sophomore, through with my first year of college. It's unsettling, as though something just isn't right, like someone was writing a book and chose to leave out significant chunks of the story for the reader to imagine what could have been. 

At eighteen years old, I can count my lifetimes' worth of achievements off my fingers. No, I am not the founder of three different tech startups, and no, I do not run an NGO that impacts thousands of lives, but I have finally succeeded in making a drinkable filter coffee, after multiple failed attempts. Of course it doesn't even mildly compare to the one appa makes, but at least it's a start. I am likely to invite controversy when I say this, but the trick is to eliminate the use of the coffee press altogether, and instead, pour hot water directly into the filter, close it, and wait for the decoction to emerge. Using the coffee press results in a muddy looking decoction that produces discolored, gray coffee with a disgusting sludgy texture. 

And on those days when, for some inexplicable reason, I am unable to make myself a cup of coffee, I now find comfort in sipping lemon ice tea, a refreshing drink I love for its simplicity. (Yes, I say this after a lifetime of hating tea drinkers for their choice of beverage). 

I've managed to find my way around the kitchen reasonably well, having whipped up lunch every Sunday for about a month: a decent veg biryani, (Please don't get started in the comments section. Of course it's biryani!) simple jeera rice and dal makhani (Life was easier when Jira was just a spice, if you know, you know), delicious chili gobi, and a miserable paneer biryani even the crows didn't deserve to eat. 

Finally getting braces (after years of procrastination on my parents' part) has made it a difficult task to eat even the simplest of foods, so my Sunday lunches have temporarily been put on hold, and instead of chaining myself to the kitchen, I've resorted to writing a blog post. I still find it difficult to comprehend that something as simple as a little wire round my teeth will correct the extreme misalignment and forward inclination I've grown up with. 

Apart from my tomfoolery in the kitchen, a small day trip to Mahabalipuram with family occurred, in which the car ride was far more entertaining than the actual tourist attractions. Accommodating eight peoples' music taste that spanned across two different languages and three generations was certainly challenging.

Coming to the point after all the unwarranted digression: if anything, moving out for college has proven to be a remarkable learning experience, be it dealing with mediocre food and housing, the nuances of community living, navigating through complex social situations, or balancing difficult coursework while also working an unpaid job. Going to a start-up university after a haphazard college decision has been a unique life experience that deserves a blog post of its own. 

I went into my freshman year of college ambitious, so ambitious that I might have even come across as naive. My aspirations were grand: to finish the sem with a 4.0, make the (non existent) dean's list, work a tech internship, get my name on a research paper, eventually graduate summa cum laude and land a spot in a top grad school, I wanted to have it all. 

And somewhere along the way, amidst the all the chaos, tears and inevitable burnout, I realized that I was being ambitious for all the wrong reasons, and by trying to mold myself to fit into the conventional definition of success, I was only setting myself up for a vicious cycle of failure, constantly feeling unhappy and overwhelmed. 

That brings us to the present moment, a quiet, breezy, summer evening, almost a solid year since I first moved out: very soon, I will pack my whole life back into a single suitcase and find myself at university, in the midst of it all. I am learning, albeit slowly, to be a little more forgiving of the fact that I am human. I am learning to identify burnout before it hits me headfirst like a speeding truck and I find it difficult to even get out of bed. I am letting go of several of my most deeply rooted belief systems, while also attempting to hold on to the one thing that I absolutely love about myself: being ambitious in my pursuit of knowledge. 

As I sit on my bedroom floor, making piles of things that I want to take with me, and tossing other things into a pile that I want to throw away or leave behind, wondering how I'm going to fit all of these things into a single suitcase, I can only go into yet another academic year embracing trust, and hope that it will all work out in the grand scheme of things.