I’m Different and I can’t help it..

It’s August 15th, The Day Of Independence to my mother land and nothing makes people realize the culture and heritage of India unless they listen to A.R.Rahman’s song. Days are moving so fast, every week flies by just like that.

It’s been a week since we’ve all been divided into separate teams and alloted our own cabins. And just like others predicted, we’ve become a little busy with our places. Whether we have work or not, we dont tend to move to other places and roam around as I normally would. But the unity between us haven’t changed a bit. We still have lunch together no matter how busy we are and I believe it’ll stay this way as long as we are all here.

Last Sunday, my parents had come to see me and they were shocked to see how my hostel room looked. My mom exclaimed how I am able to live in a place like this, and all I could say was that ‘I got used to it’. My mom couldnt even stand this place for 20minutes and so we hurriedly packed all my stuff to be taken back home. My mom had bought me a lot of sweets and munchies to eat, and forced me to eat atleast some of it. But ‘The Over-Confident Me’ told my mom that my friends are so caring towards me, they’ll keep some for me after they eat and that I’ll eat later when I come back. After getting quite a bit of scolding after a long time, I happily moved out to a first class room at Hotel City Tower, at Central but already started to miss my friends. As I always realized, it became clear even hell can be fun with friends and heaven can be boring without them. My mom wanted to goto the Marina Beach so badly but we couldn’t find time to go there. I bought a Rough-N-Tough looking FastTrack watch with my own salary just so my mom wouldn’t let me wear cool bracelets like Chetna does. My old buddies would make fun of me for getting a watch worth 3 Grands, but hey, I still say that the watch is just for seeing the time; But now, it’s not about the time it shows, it’s about how it looks. After my parents departed back to Coimbatore in the afternoon, I came to my hostel at around 3pm. Just when I entered the room, Vishnu was in a hurry to move out to meet his teammates. My mom called me and shouted to have those sweets atleast now, but the funny thing — the sweet boxes were totally empty but the time I opened them just like my mom predicted. Although my mom was slightly depressed to hear the bad news, I was very happy on all seeing all this. I told my mom it’s just a part of hostel life and I had to learn to live it. Since no one was there in my room to give company for me, I started to feel lonely again. I took my clothes to the laundry machine downstairs, and luckily Sunel gave me company for the rest of the day. We washed the clothes, went to his unbelievely clean room and played a lot of video games after a long time. By the evening, Sri had come to our room and we headed out to the beach and spent some time eating sandwiches and ice creams — and oh, dont forget the mind-tingling Appy Fizz, that made me go crazy on the streets.
The next day we spent the whole day watching movies and going out to the beach once again.

Today, we planned go to T.Nagar for shopping for Vishnu along with friends. Ishwarya and Chetna had been calling us a lot of times to get up early and head to Adyar to join with them. So, I got up very early as usual and the sudden arrival of Dharani after his short trip to Tirupathi, was a surprise. Inspite of knowing that he is very tired, I urged him and Vishnu to get up fast and get ready to move out soon. After 15mins of torturing them, they finally woke up and got ready by 8.30. We had our breakfasts and started to Adyar at around 9AM. We reached Adyar at around 9.20AM and surprised to see Abhi in the bus stop, who was happily talking with her friend over the phone and she wasn’t aware of us standing behind her for nearly 20mins.

After sometime, Chetna and Ishwarya called Vishnu to know where we were, but accidently he disclosed our location by telling them we are in foreshore, followed by asking that we cant find them in Adyar :D. After sometime, we met them on the other side of the road, after they crossed the street halfway to call us.

We got bus to T.Nagar and just after we got down, the girls went to the Shoe Store to buy footwear. This was the first time I’m going shopping with girls and I realized how time consuming it could be. But still, it was very very fun even though the other boys got a little frustrated as the day moved on. We roamed the most crowded and busiest street in Chennai in the burning sun in search of various tshirts and accessories. We bought Kulfis in the Aavin Milk Store and had lots of fun playing. Vishnu had left us and went on his own since he didnt have time and so me, Sri and Dharani sticked with Chetna and Abhi as we continued the shopping spree. Ishwarya had left us in the middle and so she had to miss the lunch with us :-( . Since we all were out of money in pockets, we were searching the streets for finding a low class restaurant to get some food for lunch. We found the ‘Madurai’s Sri Muniyandi Vilas’, ( used to be one of the best low class restaurants in Madurai ) and headed inside to dig in. Although the environment was uncomfortable, we had a swell time while having our lunch. Inspite of eating a lot, the bill came out so low which gave us a good surprise. We finally finished the shopping and we were ready to move back home but the streets were fully packed with people with no place to breathe easily. In order to move through the crowd swiftly, we formed a Human Train with Sri as the engine, followed by Me-Chetna-Dharani-Vishnu-Abhi and defined ‘fun’ to everyone around there, by piercing through the pack, like running away from the paparazzi. After the successful escape, we got our buses and moved to our hostels bidding goodbye to all and irritating Chetna for fun that we are going to the Besant Nagar Beach. At around 6AM, we once again went to the Marina Beach to relax ourselves.

One thing is clear : Unlike my college days, it’s not only me who is different here. Everyone has their own different stories and different backgrounds. Everyone around me has their own unsolved problems, some even hate their jobs just because it’s not their passion to work here. Everyday I grow up mentally than the previous day in some way or the other, learning a lot of new stuff to behave and interact. I may not be so important to the people around me here, I may not be helpful, I may be kiddish, I may be crazy, I may be a human robot who does things mechanically, May be the one who doesn’t know what words to segregate when speaking with girls just because I treat everyone as the same friends despite their gender, Maybe the one who doesn’t know how to say fun things sound fun, instead uttering them the way they look serious. Despite the lot of attempts of trying to change myself, I fail several times and I love it. Having an iMac infront of me, with Steve Jobs as the wallpaper, I’m optimistic that I can make a difference real soon. I’m really thankful to those who speak negative of me, and thereby making me sternly beleive Steve’s quote, “People who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do”.