Looking forward to a bright PAST...

I remember the old days. When I used to be in school. I used to wake up every morning. Run towards the bus hurriedly. Eager to meet my friends and have a fun day ahead. Having to go through the same discipline everyday. Having to appears for exams every year. And year after that. The way we used to wait for the recess bell to go and we would run towards the school grounds ... not to eat because of hunger but to finish it off and have a great game of absolutely anything. I remember mostly it would be football. With a cricket ball for a football. I used to be goalkeeper. Not that I was specifically good at that. But I was too lazy perhaps and not self-confidant enough that I could tackle the ball. Moreover I had to finish off all the tiffins of my friends...The time when we had regular assemblies every morning and we had toy stand for half an hour or so. Listening to speeches or poems or plays by students on some particular values. I used to write poems back then. I still have them. I sometimes still write them.
Yes. I do remember the old days when I was young and did not think about a job. When I did not think about a girlfriend. The time when friends and fun was enough for me.

The problem started when it all ended one day. I finished high school and went to college. I couldn’t make out why people were crying about leaving school. I thought they should be happy to leave school and be free from all rules and all terms and conditions. I was wrong. I felt that the night I cried remembering school and all its prefect order day after day.
The problem started when I wanted it all back.

I finished my diploma and graduated only to be worried about how to get into the next level of education. I got into a good college. And then all alone there again I began to miss my diploma college. The place where I had been for three years. The place where I knew people and the place where people knew me. I remembered I first day I had walked into that diploma college. All new faces..just like the first day at school. And the times when we sat on the college terrace. When we used to enjoy the cold coffee at the 'coffee shop' that was nothing but a small makeshift shop. My little parties to myself when I went to the canteen alone and rewarded myself with noodles and shakes. Just for the sake of it.

The problem started when I joined the new college. My engineering college. I had thought it would be better as this college was far better than my previous one with more people and better facilities. I was wrong. The place was better all right but I was all alone. I didn’t know what to do and where to go in the intervals. The problem started when I wanted my diploma college back.

I remember begging my mom to get me back to my previous college. The next day I met someone I hadn’t met in a long time. My school buddies. I found heaven in my college that day. I started adapting to my new place with their help. I had my lunch with them and I hung out with them. Within the semester I had every boy in the class be my friend. And almost every girl. I enjoyed thereafter. We bunked lectures, we attended lectures too. We had fun outside and inside class. We had huge parties at hotels and restaurants for birthday celebrations. Not anymore with our families. Not with mom cooking delicacies for all of them. But we celebrated with money. It was our parent’s money but we did not seem to notice that. We enjoyed picnics at various places in and out of the city. We had the best times of our lives. As Bryan Adams put it " ... those were the best days of my life".

The problem started when we graduated. I joined my job. I was looking forward to this day since I had joined engineering college. I thought this is what I always wanted. This is what I am meant to do. I thought this is and would be my life forever. I was wrong. I got to to sit in an AC office all right. I started earning money too. There was still something missing. Friends. The problem started when I wanted it all back.

I remember calling up friends and they calling me I remember how slowly I floated away from all of them and how deep I began to drown into the work quicksand. I stopped calling people worrying about the phone bills now. I stopped looking out the window of my bus, as I had to sleep since I had to work the previous night. I had new friends by then. Graduates like me who had joined the company. We had all become good friends. We used to attend training together. We used to hangout more as we had money to spend and we were away from our families. There was no stopping we.

The problem started when we finished training and got transferred to different place or projects. I thought this was good and this is what we have been training for. I was wrong yet again. I was stressed with work and tired of sitting in one place in front of the computer all day long. The problem started when I wanted my training days back.

Today I am still working. It’s been a year now since I had joined my company. And I looked at the wallpaper on my home pc. I saw my friends from college all around me. The snap was taken at one the birthday parties. I saw them all and felt them looking back at me. I was in the picture standing in the center ... mainly because of my height. I saw myself smiling back at me and taking me back to the place where the snap was taken. In a moment, I wanted all that back again.

That is when I realized the true problem. We are so used to our past lives that we waste our present thinking about it and we tend to ignore the future. It dawned upon me that as I go thru life after very new step forward I would be looking towards my past rather than the future. The true problem lies not in remembering the past but wanting it back. I had felt so close to something in the past that I failed to see that I had come a long way ahead and that I am no more near that something. I knew I had to let go.
So right now I have decided that no more shall I look back and cry over the past. I will look straight ahead. And as I walk forward towards the sunset I will remember to once in a while turn around and smile... at a bright and shiny past and then face forward and look towards a brighter and shinier future...