My friend Mubashir is my mirror. Nobody has ever analysed my life and its decisions in such depth as this guy has, and nobody has pushed me to think about it so much either. I was forced to think what part of me is really intrinsic and what part of me is just me trying to create a different me. It has therefore been a truly fascinating term, one that was happy and reflective at the same time.
I try to imagine that back in December, had someone told me that by May I would enter one of the most pleasant phases of my life, I would have laughed. Deep scars had just be re-opened, and my confidence lay at an all-time low. It is when man falls in his own eyes that the light at the end of the tunnel seems like an illusion, a consolation to a broken soul. But, in impatience, if one tries to put the weight of mountains on feeble shoulders, those shoulders will crack. I now feel lucky to have found the ground under my feet, to have found the hand with a healing touch, and in the process found myself. I now know that there is always hope; and as long as one keeps the head high, one gets there.
The entire year has been one of exploration, and that was the point of leaving an overbearing identity to come here and start from scratch again. To run, to fall, to try and get up, to limp, and finally to take flight - that was what I was excited about, and that is where I have finally come. I sit in my room, writing this post, with several empty bottles of wine and cans of red bull lying in front of me, a little pink flower in a soda bottle, A heap of washed clothes that need ironing. The shelves emptied of books resembling a battle field. A pressure cooker with dal and a vessel of pulao. This experience at Oxford has helped me explore bits of me that I didn't know existed.
One night, as I walked back with Mubashir, I took a stroll down memory lane to the Subhashish of Class VIII - the one who worked very hard, and yet didn't perform very well academically. I reminisced about the Subhashish of Class XI who went to quiz after quiz, and never won any of them, but kept going back because he believed that he began a journey with someone and didn't want to let her down. The one who began to memorise every word of the dictionary because he wanted to speak better English. The one who begged the 'powers that be' at school to give him the opportunity to excel. The one who stayed alone for a year, without television or internet, because that was the price that was asked of him. My life took a very dramatic turn on May 22, 2009 - and it is very hard for me to remember life before that. Everything since then has been dramatic, like a movie. I have felt so blessed, as if this was the accumulated karma of all those years. The point is not that there was an upward trajectory, but that there existed something before that. Something that was perhaps more mellow, and something I might have tended to look down upon. But something that is as integral a part of my as everything since then. Something that shapes who I am. I found a new respect for my past.
And that night, while talking about those days before May 22, I rediscovered the joy of failure. Because I remembered that the success I had seen of late just didn't compare with the years and years of failures I had seen before that. And I felt the fear of failure melting away. Things came to a head during the examinations, as the stress levels began to rise. But I found myself much better equipped to deal with it. The fear of failure, of course, will never completely go away. But I have finally begun to internalise how this is all a part of what I am, of what the human experience is about. If I could have come from that little room in DSOI, Dhaula Kuan, to this little room on Rose Lane, Oxford, then I can do that again. Failure will set me back, but failure will give me the tools to build something new.
But failures exist everywhere. Mubashir, my dearest friend, is as blunt and honest as they come, and one day he proclaimed 'Subhashish, you have succeeded at everything in life except love.' I often pass that spot where, back in December, the fear of another failure in love had crippled me. I played the tape of failure in my mind constantly. I made myself believe that I was incapable of this thing called love. Maybe I am. But what I do know now is that I do much better in life without that additional pressure. I learnt to value what I did right. That I did not let bitterness fill my life; that I continued to care, continued to love. That the spirit of sacrifice wasn't gone. That I had made myself immune to public ridicule because I knew that my heart was in the right place. Because I believed, and continue to believe, that at the end of all this, there will be redemption. When the weight of my actions will finally be balanced by the truth that I loved, and loved unconditionally. That one night, several months later, I could stand with my head held high and profess my love once again. And yet know that the love was noxious; that it was never meant to be. And then, for the first time in life, leave it behind and move on to something new. This, of course, isn't love as I once knew it, but it is something so refreshingly different that it makes me feel really happy within every single time. Things may, and probably will, go wrong. But there's no fear any more. In fact, there's a dead end waiting for me round the corner, but there's both hope that this isn't a dead end, and strength that even if it is, life will carry on.
Through all of this, I am grateful for the kindness I have been showered with. For all the times my friends have been annoyed with me; because that is when I have had the opportunity to stop and reflect. For my friends back home who have supported me so much over the last year; for all their encouragement and their love. For those who tell me what they like about me, and what they dislike. For those who tell me how I can be a better person. I had forgotten that life is a never-ending adventure. It took me a few hard knows to remember. And now I wait, with baited breaths, for the next adventure to begin. So I can run, fall and get up once again.
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