A Year Older, A Year Wiser #3

I am sitting at my over embellished desk staring at the picture that I so adore, sipping tea. Sipping tea has been the highlight of the day these days, well, not exactly sipping tea, but trying various teas has been. I am so bored and useless that all I look forward to a day is sipping tea. From Hibiscus to white, I am trying all of them one by one. Some I liked, some just tasted like warm water! So, todays sachet was titled blue youth! Ironical, since I am taking tiny steps away from the youth. Anyways, yeah, blue youth was good. A herbal infusion of.. oh let it be. I know no one is interested. Today, not even me!

 

So yeah, the tea is good and I am typing this laboriously, laboriously I say because I am not even the mood of typing, or to say talking. But I am bored and I want to talk too. Yeah, see how messed up this is. All day long people have been texting/calling and so far I have only wanted two of them to talk to me. Rest are just making small talks, weirding it out over awkward questions that come up when you realize that you have started talking only on birthdays, or the other half of the people are just doing it for the sake out of doing it, you know since you wish them, they wish you too, types.

 

So yeah, I am typing and talking into the oblivious and thinking too. What exactly I am thinking? I wish I could point at this. What to do with my life? Whether to pick up this damned phone that has been wringing since eternity or what to eat if my stomach grumbles. I sip that tea instead.

 

What possible good can thinking bring anyway. I have been worried all through, if I’ll pass, if a job is going to work out, if everything else is finally going to find some calm. Thinking did no good. Working towards it did no good too. Things aren’t working out. They just aren’t. 2019 was supposed to be better. At least I thought so. But thinking and pondering isn’t helpful, and yet I think. You’d think I might learn from my mistakes.

 

Learnt or not, I improved things too. I mean I don’t think ahead now, or I only think as ahead as the next minute, or at the max the next hour. I mean if I have to get a pizza then I need an hour, because the pizza guy is going to tell me when I order, that they are sorry but it is going to take more than half an hour to deliver due to the overflowing amount of money in their chains pockets.

 

But anyways, I am thinking so much that all the pending chores come to mind. I have to do this, send this, check that, get that done, deliver this, write that, read this, print that! I let a sigh pass and decide I will start with that document to be printed. But for that I will have to go to our office. I twist and scrunch my nose, the thought itself cringes me. I hate going out of my room these days, let alone, my home. Not that our office is too far away, but I abhor the idea.

 

However, I know I have to get it done. I mean at least I have to get this much done today. Rest can be figured our tomorrow. Still, I go out of my room and look at my brother. He gives me the all-knowing smile; telling me don’t even ask me to do anything now. I sigh for the millionth time today.

 

I gather all my things, keys, purse, pen drives, phone which I don’t want right now but take any way, and go out. The after rain wind slaps my face mocking me, asking how long do you think you could stay away from me. I make a face; I guess all I am best at is doing that.

 

I start my scooty. As usual it plays with me and doesn’t want to start. But I know it, and it boosts up, right at the third attempt. I give it a speed of 60 and want to rush out of the parking lot. Common sense takes better of me. I slow down.

 

My office printer isn’t working, my dad says do it outside, and while you are at it….. a list of chores come my way. I forget my things and start on that. After an hour I am done, and back at office. He asks me if I got my copy of print?

 

Huh? What print?

 

I go back and get a copy of what I wanted. There is someone standing behind me, a woman, little older than me. She tries to make conversation. I don’t want to talk to her. But she pesters. And I just can’t be rude. I have tried it. I am bad at it. “So the results are out ha?” she peers over my saved document.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Did you clear it?”

 

She probably has already seen my marks, percentage and my percentile. Yet she is asking, I don’t want to talk, especially not about this. So I won’t repeat it here. I didn’t fail. But needless to say that I am not intelligent enough has been proved.  I wonder again. I wander again. What exactly happens to those who are mediocre? I mean the extremely intelligent people are focused right from the start and fly right after high school. The dumb are sure that they are not brilliant, and settle soon. Which leaves me with people like myself- the middle benchers, trying to fit in, sometimes so much interested in knowing, sometimes wanting to learn, sometimes wanting to make something of them, sometimes confused, sometimes focused, and sometimes just lost.

 

Now, it might be my fault that I haven’t been so focused since ever, but now what! I am another year old today and yet nowhere near where I can vouch and say that I am trying to do something. Don’t tell me I am not old. Yeah, yeah, I know I am not old. But I am not 20 and only out of school. I have been told repeatedly that I don’t look my age, while that may be so good to hear, but the reality is everyone else my age now knows what they are meant to do while I am still unsure of what and how exactly am I suppose to be doing anything.

 

I suck! I know I am so wrong in comparing myself to others, but I can’t help it. I mean there has to be something in my life, which for once, does not; cannot; must not go wrong. I mean for once it can happen right! I am not afraid of failures, I am not. Only, I am afraid that time is running out and I literally have no idea where to go from here. And as these thoughts run through my mind, I am handed over a copy of my lame future. The woman smiles at me. May be next time? Yeah, I say and run.

 

I run to my scooty and rush it. For the first time it starts at one go and I speed through. I calm down. And stop racing like the maniacs who are following me. Not again! What do these guys actually have in their minds? Do they have so much time and money to simply run around the city and follow some deranged woman!

 

I am just not in the mood to take this shit; I just am not! I speed through the busy streets and mix but they are right behind me in no time. I change lanes and rush towards the only place I know. The police station. I am not going to go there literally. But I know they are going to stop following me because they aren’t wearing the helmet, and there has to be a checking post on that lane.

 

They leave!

 

I leave!

 

I am irritated. But since I am already around the place, I think I might drive through that place. It’s a calm place. Trees, sun, after rain winds. I haven’t visited this place in a long time, a very long time. And the whiff of the place brings nostalgia. This place is good. Why did I stop coming here again? I used to visit this place so often, almost every time I came to this part of the city. What happened again?

 

Anyways, I am speeding through. I am slowing down. The roads are dead empty. There is literally no one. The sun is peeking through the trees. The flowers are thrown about. It is good. There is a little calm. The chaos inside my mind isn’t cured, but its soothed for a while.

 

There is a lump in my throat as I am steering around. But I have to go. I mean I do wish I’d stay here and keep staring at sun till I can, I wish I didn’t have things to worry about. But the sun is leaving too, and I know I have to go. So I go.

 

And as soon as I leave the trees, the city overpowers me, all those people who cross roads as if they don’t care for their lives, all those bike riders who think that riding a Royal Enfield gives them power to zigzag and trouble others, the other drivers who ride a long lost bike flaunt themselves too and get on my nerves. All the thoughts, all the problems, every little detail since the last year come racing towards me. It’s been a little difficult. I can’t say it’s too much. But I’d rather it be a little easy. Despite everything I was hoping 2019 to be a teeny bit better. So far, no luck!

 

As I ponder over my luck, my phone beeps. It buzzes. I avoid. It vibrates. I still avoid. I avoid it for full 5 minutes and then I pick up. It’s a friend. A good friend. I can’t, just can’t avoid him. But I already talked to him in the morning. Wait; did I say something in the groggy, sleepy state that I shouldn’t have said? But just the first words are a deceit. It’s his roommate. He knows me too. I mean he is the friend that you bear with because of the other friends that you hang out. We don’t talk these days. We didn’t even talk when we lived in the same city. But here he is calling me from my friends’ number, and I have picked up and stopped speaking after hello.

 

“Why didn’t you call me from your number?”

 

“Just..”

 

I know the answer. I mean the last two calls that he has made me this year was because he wanted a favor out of me. Not that I am keeping a tab. You’d see how hypocritical this sounds. But I only remember the number of calls he has made me, is because, that are the total number of calls he has made to my number in his entire life.

 

So what does he want now?

 

“Yeah, so listen, who this Hamlet was, and can you elaborate what this means?”

 

‘I am driving. Can we talk later?”

 

“Umm, actually I am going to an acting class you know, and wanted to know this before that. And you see everyone knows me there, (he is a novice anchor) it’s a matter of image now.”

 

Dead silence!

 

I really don’t want to discuss the idea of being or not being, standing in the middle of the road. In simpler words I am in no mood of helping. But I feel disgusted at myself. And so I bring myself to a halt at the corner, where a few vehicles are parked and begin the task of explaining Hamlet and his dilemma to a man, who, by the end asked me “wow you know what a protagonist is.” (I thought only people who went to acting classes were taught who a protagonist is.)

 

“What did you think I was some dumb person?” (Who cannot make anything of their lives)

 

“No, No, I didn’t mean that.” He wants to know about a Gertrude speech too. Well, Macbeth? Can you tell me about any other plays?”

 

“Look, I am not at home right now, we can talk later. Sorry. Bye.”

 

I want to go back for a last look at sun peeking through, but he has gone. The moon has started shimmering, and the after office traffic is peeking up. I go towards home.

 

As I enter home, there is some heated discussion going on. See, my results aren’t the only problem these days. It all started since 2018, and it has been all stretched through. It needs to give me a breather now. It really does. Anyways, as everyone says that we need to stick up to everything that life throws at us- like I have a choice; I stick up. Meaning, I go to my room.

 

The only thing that’s bringing me to be wiser is kept on my desk. I smile, or at least pretend to. The books are winking at me. Another set of savior, while I constantly avoid reality!

 

Now, seriously the books are making me wiser or should I start naming my birthday posts- “A year older, a year dumber!”