On Turning 25: Work In Progress.

I turned 25 a little over a week ago. Which is the age for the new midlife crisis, by the way. Funnily enough, I am not very thrilled about it. I might have crossed yet another milestone with the most important people by my side, but the fact that I am turning older is catching up with me. I know 25 is not too old. A writer I know was telling me that turning 30 is far worse. But I am not anticipating the worst yet.

When I was 17, I badly wanted to turn 18. I wanted to belong to the adults club, be eligible to vote and to make my choices. But being my parents' kid, I now realize that making choices and doing things at my accord is still a luxury that I am never receiving. Even at 25.

I thought it was just me, who wanted to do everything, just everything before I turned a certain age. The obsession with remaining young and being able to do myriad things simultaneously isn't something that is mine alone. A lot of us believe that youth is the elixir of our lives. We talk about our college days with a spark in our eyes, nonetheless with a twinge of regret in our voice. "Oh, I wish I did a lot more than what I did when I was in college!" "Everything amazing in my life happened only when I was in my final semester." "I should have fallen in love when I was a teenager." "Life was so easier at 18." These are some of the most common things I hear my friends uttering. Like I already said, mid-life crisis is the new quarter-life crisis. My mother keeps saying that I was a six-year-old child when she was twenty-five and that she had bigger responsibilities in life - like managing a menace of a kid, and taking care of the entire household. (Thank God that our generation has exponentially transformed. We make our lives first before being a part of others lives.) I do not want to dwell on it much, actually, but the previous generations were neither obsessed with remaining young nor were they wary of responsibilities. They, in fact, wanted to grow old pretty fast. Being young, or let me put it this way, being recklessly young is a charming phase of our lives. It is probably one of the fewest phases of life where we are taken care of yet have the freedom to get away with most of our faults claiming that we are still young. Such are the conundrums of life!

The other impediment of growing older is that you begin to count your achievements. On a regular day, I am quite complacent with where I am, though I dream high and push myself a little more each day. But during my birthday, I freak out. I fill my head with inane thoughts. Always wondering if I am enough. If I am going to make it big someday. If I am ever going to see all the places I want to, be more and do more. I guess, after 25, your birthdays are pretty much a reality checker for you.

This birthday has been slightly different. It has not just given me a list of things to accomplish, it has done a lot more. It reminded me that I do not have to rush and fall flat in a hurry. I can walk firmly, enjoying the breeze and the bougainvillea trees around me. That I can stop and stare at the things that catch my gaze, and that I can surely spend my time reading more to grasp the splendour of words and Literature in a more pronounced manner. That I can keep moving forward as long as I am going somewhere. And more importantly, that I am a work in progress and there is a long way to go. Lots of miles to walk. Lots of stories to tell. Lots of lives to live.

Being 25 made me recognize that I'm just a work in progress!

Home: A Short Story

As the plane took off, I kept staring down at the country I was leaving behind. Momentarily or forever.

"I am going home," I murmured in disbelief. How long has it been? A good fifteen years?

Home. India. Home. Hyderabad.

The very thought of home made me wince. It brought back all the unpleasant memories of my childhood, the awful moments spent anticipating the worst to come, evenings spent aimlessly along the Necklace road, the lonely youth, and all the days spent with books and copious amounts of coffee.

I found home in a continent far away from home. I found home in a place called Pasadena which was familiar only on a map fifteen years ago. I found family in a place I never thought I would end up in. The unforeseen circumstances life puts us in.

On a rather sunny day, when I was taking a stroll back from a friend's place, I received a call from my cousin bearing the news of my father's death. I was to go back to Hyderabad, he said. I am the only son, he convinced. And, I am the final fragment of the family that was left, he warned.

I sit back and think of all the dreadful moments I have spent with my father. I cannot forget the fact that he loathed my mother all her life - harassing and abusing her, making her life a hell to live in. I was no exception to the terrible treatment. I received my share. Everyday. Every evening. I recollect all the moments I spent envying my friends who had fathers who went cycling and made paper boats along with them, read stories to them in the night, and had dinners with them. I was deprived of the tiniest joys and festivities. 

I loved my mother dearly. I recollect the days she would come to pick me up from school, wearing a cotton saree with vermillion on her forehead. As we walked from the school to home, her bangles emanated a joyous jingle. It was that sound that I missed the past fifteen years, the jingle that used to tiptoe into my room to check if I was asleep well in the nights, the jingle that surrounded me as she cleaned my room, fed me, and giggled with me.

I fish out my wallet and look at her picture. My mother. I murmur, fondly. 

As a reclusive teenager, I felt lost when my mother died. The pain was excruciating. My mother was the only person who understood me and stood by my side in the whole wide world, and I saw her burn and reduce into ashes in front of my eyes. I still remember the way my father behaved on that day and my abhorrence for him increased to a whole new level and that was the moment I realized I had to leave India and look out for myself.

A new country. Different people. Cultural difference. Demanding course structures. And the pain of losing my mother.

The past fifteen years passed on as quickly as a whirlwind without a thought of my father. I have studied, travelled, met interesting people, travelled a little more, fell in love, got my heart broken, got on with my life, and made decent amount of money. My house is a mantel of memories that brought me an immense amount of joy yet there was something that gave me restless nights.

Was it the forgotten bond with my father? Or the home that I left behind more than a decade ago? Was it the responsibility that I left behind selfishly? I never figured it out all these years, but may be, it was the guilt of leaving my father - a punishment that was too severe.

I have maintained no forms of communication with him, and I wondered how he led the final stages of his life. Surely, the surly old man would have reformed! He would have repented for all the mistakes he has done. I will learn everything about the last fifteen years tomorrow. I will make up for all the time. I said it to myself, more or less out of guilt.

But as I lean back trying to get some sleep, I knew there will always be a part of me that will hate my father.