Cupid never had a chance in their messy, parental-restricted love story
Karishma Jha, a twenty-one-year-old recent graduate with the world at her feet if only she chose to face it. Plagued with the worries of the future and yet healing from the scar...
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I was slumped at my window sill looking at the world outside, more likely the people. Schoolchildren went to school, office workers went to the office, dog owners walked their dogs, and toddlers with parents enjoyed the only good phase of life.
Everyone on the road seemed to have a place to go to. I did not. So I shifted my gaze into the windows of the opposite building. I got an eyeful of typical domestic life.
Mothers feeding their babies, people cooking in their kitchen, an old man watering his plants while someone enjoyed the morning sunshine while sipping their morning tea.
Did everyone have a purpose in their life, except for me?
Was I supposed to find this purpose? Or make one? Or something patronizing like that.
In all of my twenty-one years, I had chased one goal after another (read that as examinations)
Unit tests, summative assessment one, summative assessment two, boards, mid-semester exams, end-semester exams, practicals. My reward? Undergraduate degree in Bachelor of Science and an unhealthy addiction to stress.
Now what? Masters?
But how? Only I knew how I prevented a mental breakdown every day of my undergraduate. If it was not studies, then it was turncoat friends. If it was not friends, then it was the travel. Something or the other had me at my wits' end. I was glad to be out of that phase.
Then, if not higher studies, job? Okay.
But which job? Anything that interests you.
What did interest me? Will that interest me forever? What about the subjects I studied? Was I supposed to just abandon them?
And then came the privilege factor. The shame alone at the thought that I had the freedom to have these thoughts and do nothing about it was enough to make me open LinkedIn. And we were back to 'Now what?'
This rabbit hole was the only place I have been to in the past few months. And maybe this was where I was destined to be.
They said the future was bright. Mine was a dark, murky, sinkhole that I was being pushed into as the days passed by. Where was this great destiny people always talked about? Purpose of life. Yada, yada, yada.
If everyone was destined for something, then somebody must be destined for nothing.
What if that somebody was me?
What if all I was destined to do was see life pass by?
Would it be that bad? Some people needed to be there to watch life. Not all could live it. But people are not satisfied with that purpose. That is not a goal. It won't earn you money.
I moved away from the window as my mother yelled at me to take a bath.
My mind raced while I made smaller and smaller pieces of my aloo paratha. We were having breakfast.
