(published "The Friday Suppliment" 2001)
So I sit: totally bored.
What a day to have! The rain pouring outside, no electricity and to add the icing -I'm depressed.
I've just spoken with one of my friends. Well I'd actually called to raise my spirits but now it seems like I'd called the wrong person.
Nothing actually in what he said depressed me though. I should actually be happy for him. He's going abroad to the land of opportunities, the
At first I was happy for him after all he was my best friend.
Everyone dreams of going abroad for further studies specially after completing ones Higher Secondary. I'd never been an exception and neither had he been one, except he hadn't much faith in himself. But with some reasoning and after attending some seminars I'd finally convinced him to have faith in himself. Due to some reasons though I couldn't apply but he'd gone through hell choosing the proper university, applying and planning everything. I give him credit for all that. But now after talking to him, thinking about it I find that I am not quite as happy now as I was just a few minutes before when I was listening to his excited voice stammering and telling me- ' Kno…know what! I'm going abroad.' Both of us were really happy then.
I'm unhappy not because I, who initiated the whole studying abroad prospect and that I am not going but my friend (who was like an innocent bystander) is going. No. The green faced jealousy has definitely not reared its head within me. It's something different and its what most of us fear – loneliness.
Now I am faced with the terrible truth and it makes me feel glum. I'm sad, not because of my friend's good news, but because most of my good buddies are already on their way abroad. All had plans to go abroad specially after completing their I.Sc. and now all of us are going away in separate directions not knowing when we shall meet again. It's like this pre-planned drama in which the God manipulates us to meet then separate-preparing us for further such separations in the future. No grudges what-so-ever with the Lord though. But it's just that feeling of loneliness that will not go away. In fact which will go on ever increasing specially after I see all my buddies leave Home-Sweet-Home, one by one. The truth I face is that we're separating and I'm not so fond of separation.
I look at my mother watching me and I myself am surprised when I tell her - 'we don't know what we've got until we lose it.'
And she adds with that grace-of-age voice-" It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives."
I kiss my mom for this and now wait. Wait.…wait….and wait…. for a new chapter to begin. A new chapter that I didn't know existed.
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