Growing up …in a small town…

You know you live in a small town. You know there exists a big world outside your small town and the temptations of the bigger fancier city tug incessantly at your innocent mind .You are keen to make it to that world and you try all in your might to reach there.

 But as you go about life, you do live up in a big,big way and make the best of your years in your pretty little haven.

And here are some trifle but memorable joys or bumps that unfurl as you grow up and that shape up your personality in a way nothing else can ....

1. You have ten uncles and twenty aunts staying in the neighborhood  You can park yourself in one in every twenty houses in the city, if need be. Flip side, you can never keep a secret from anyone, no matter how innovatively you try to. One of those uncles or aunts or “not-so-friendly” cousins / neighborhood urchins is bound to tell on you.

What this does to you in long term is make you more accountable and responsible , if only for fear of being caught !

2. If somebody asks you for directions to a place, you give it by the names of them famous people the whole town knows and put all the maps and GPSes to shame. For example, you say “Go a little ahead and the house next to XYZ’s house is what you are looking for “and not “Take first left and second right and you will reach your destination.“

You learn to be handy and helpful to others and have and provide alternatives in life for everything, if you miss the main bus!

3. You and your elder siblings go to the same school/college? Have fun, baby .You get hauled up every time you do not win the sports trophy like your sister does and also, every time your brother cooks up an interesting science project. It’s a totally different and unnoticeable thing that you excel in your academics and your co-curricular activities…you share common teachers and comparisons abound .

While it does seem to harm your childish self esteem, what it really does is prepare you to stand on your own amongst the crowd and create your own mark.

4. You like your brother’s friend. Kill -Joy! Your brother likes your friend’s sister!! Be nice to your brother if you want to live your life. In essence, let him live his life and he will not make yours hell-

Sibling bonding is a great thing –you realise later in life. 

5. Want to throw your parents a surprise party on their wedding anniversary? Need money from the savings account that you wrangled for yourself after cajoling and convincing your parents that you do not plan to elope with your existent or non-existent boyfriend using all that money? Well, think again .News travels faster than lightning in these parts and your dad gets a phone call from the bank manager even before you land your feet in the house!

Well, your parents always had a point in trying to discipline you , keep you under check and you later learn they were mostly right.

6. Driving around is easy.DL is not an issue. You can achieve so much more with that mobility in a day than you could in a week in a big city – early morning tuitions, afternoon college, late afternoon computer classes, evening out with friends, late night coffee in a lassi shop( What? small cities do not have coffee shops!!), a movie or bit of shopping in between and a lot of errands that you would have run for your mom ,spanning the entire length and breadth of the city - all in a day’s time .

What is it that big city morons keep complaining about “Parking woes “and “Traffic jams”? They happen on Jupiter, not on Mother Earth!

You realise that life is fast when you think fast and act fast .There is so much you can accomplish if you only let your body and mind be mobile and active. You also learn that the more you do , the more you miraculously get time and energy to do!

7. Oversped? Skipped the red light? So what? Your dad or your friend’s dad or atleast someone’s dad is a friend of the DC. If not DC, then atleast the SP .If not SP, then atleast the traffic police uncle?Ok, not really needed as you can easily wriggle your way out by pleading with the constable bhaiya to pardon you this time as you are just a wimpy kid with no pocket money to pay challans or fill in their pockets. You will behave well next time, you swear by God and by your dad’s influence!

On similar lines…missed the college admission deadline? Need some rules to be tweaked to accommodate your preferences? Well, it’s not always easy but then what use is that neighbourhood college principal for if not help you get a back door entry or a preferential treatment!

Above definitely make you thank your stars for your resources and also teach you how to create

your support system once you are out on your own.Resourcefulness is a lifeskill and you realise it early enough in life.

8. Your cousins from that big city nearby wear the trendiest of the clothes .You and your friends feel they dress quite funnily for your taste. The truth is that you are actually struggling to find decent styles for yourself in your small town fish-market.

But what are you, if not creative? Your cousins envy you because you paint your own Ts, tear your own denims and design your own dresses! Your small town does not offer the brands but who says you cannot buy label stickers and flash them on your own brand of clothes!

Again, you learn to innovate and create things efficiently and economically ( within the budgets of your pocket money!).You stay in vogue despite the odds and this shows for your resilience and determination!

9. A friend’s birthday and the gang wants to celebrate, sing, dance and hog on food. But your Neanderthal town’s cultural scene does not offer any discs and pubs. You either do not party – which is not your choice-Or you create your own party place – which is what you do. Fused lights & bulbs, assembled music systems, someone’s terrace, someone’s mom’s delicious cooking – all yours to jam with. Party the night on someone’s rooftop, as some silly singer said!

You are grown up and you think you can buy yourself some adult stuff (read: liquor and cigarettes) for the party above? Well, no luck there. You may be old enough but none of the store owners believe so .Even if they did, they would still tell your folks at home. So you happily stick to the fizzy colas and the finger foods!

Friends are for life and you retain the ones who were partners in crime when you started out in life! You also learn that you can go as far as you allow yourself to and that there is no such thing called as lack of resources!

  

10. Done with the partying and fooling around, if you do get serious about life and decide to make something of it, your small town does not really offer you much exposure or opportunity to realise your dreams. You think you know it all but then you stumble upon things once in a while that make you realise there is much more to the world than meets your eye. You either make peace with what is on offer and easily available or you stick to your deep rooted desires, kindle the fire and prepare yourself to go out and tackle the world stage.

Because you know you have limited opportunities and a lot at stake ( like your parents’ money and their faith), you develop a kind of seriousness of purpose and a spirit of competitiveness that arises only out of that undying desire to succeed against all odds and that helps you move forward and achieve your dreams and not rest until you have done that.

In nutshell, you learn to dream, to struggle, to achieve, to prove, to resist, to create, to innovate, to fight and last but not the least, to let the fire burn.And what you learn in this process of growing up is what stays with you throughout your life.

Help yourself …Make life easy!

Read this on a blog somewhere and cannot help but marvel at the powerful and wonderfully comforting message conveyed by these words.

We spend a lot of our time and effort in building relationships and harbouring expectations and invest equally, if not more, in bearing grudges and the weight of expectations gone wrong. While the former is a source of joy and essence of our existence, the latter sucks the life force out and makes one go through life as if it were a hellhole. However, considering what it takes to build one, it would only be commensurate to say that when a bond of love or friendship goes wrong, one goes through a plethora of emotions ranging from anger to denial to sadness and finally acceptance. And if there is one emotion that stays strongly and firmly put in mind and heart all through these phases, it is the desire to get an apology from the one who seems to have wronged you. An apology which is sincere…an apology which gives one the conviction of being right…an apology which acknowledges the hurt or the wrongdoing..and last but not the least, an apology which creates way for the hearts to be healed and bonds to be restored.

However, isn’t a sincere apology scarcest of the commodities on this earth? Not only does it require one to introspect and acknowledge that they are probably responsible for hurting someone, it also forces one to keep ego and false notions of self aside and humble down to a level where actions and words convey the sense of responsibility and need for forgiveness that one may be feeling,in a language that is understandable by the recipient.

 No wonder then, to apologise is one of the hardest things to do. But if there is anything that comes closer, it’s the ability to forgive and forget. A wronged and bruised soul finds it much easier to nurse the hurt, let it grow, wallow in anger and self pity and let the grudge settle permanently. Many times we lose out on all that someone has to offer us just because we are not able to let go of that one grudge, that one mistake that broke the trust and scathed the heart. The feeling of being wronged or victimized is so overwhelming that it impedes the process of rational thinking , comes in the way of acceptance of a person for what he or she is and not for what we want or expect  and prevents us from moving on and not letting the bad things outweigh the good ones. More often than not, it even leads to more destructive feelings of revenge and retribution as the only ways of nursing the anger and the pain broiling in the aftermath of a bad hand dealt by someone who mattered a lot at one time.

Because we lose so much when we choose to live with our grudges, an ability to forgive and forget is not something that we gift to others. It is, in fact, liberation of our own soul and a way of setting ourselves free from all that prevents us from being at peace. To forgive is always easy if there is an attempt by the perpetrator to assuage the hurt as it acts as a balm on the suffering and helps to boost one’s conviction of being wronged and therefore, deserving of another’s acknowledgement and repentance.Forgetting, however, is an altogether different thing and may or may not come by!

But considering that we stand to gain so much if we just decide to forgive and forget, why do we even need an apology to forgive? Does the fact that someone confess they hurt us really hasten up the process of forgiveness? Isn’t Forgiveness is a choice? A conscious decision..an action of our own will? To save ourselves from the bitterness of anger...to give ourselves the freedom from hurt..to let go and move on…a victory of positive over negative.. to cherish what could be than what prevents it …to create happy and peaceful  human bonds for ourselves …and last but not the least, to choose to live the way we want and not the way situations and other people force us into. This transition from expectations of an apology to a state where it no longer matters and where the heart is able to heal itself ,may not be easy to come by. However, once achieved, does it not seem to be the easiest way to live our lives through the maze of human relations, delicate expectations and myriad complex situations?Why then are we so loathe to take this path? Why there is always a lingering hope that one day someone would acknowledge and come back and tell us how they regret things went wrong?Should we not just learn to rationalise with our own heart and mind and create a wall which lets no one hurt us in a way that we keep looking for a balm?

I don't know how much sense it makes to the world in general but to me,it does feel like one of the best gift we can give to ourselves if we just learn to let go..to rid ourselves of the weight of this big expectation of an apology ...and to accept an apology even when there is none!