My challenges with my personality -1
When was last time you came across a situation, you said déjà vu. You said this is not new but why am I struggling to deal with it.
Everyone has a core personality and traits related to it. It takes a lifetime and sometime even that is less to change/modify/shift your core personality.
When I was in my hometown, we have people all around us. I had my mother and 2 other siblings living with me and loads of friends to play with. We were sharing house with one other relative of ours who were 3 people. I had people around me in abundance. When I was in school, there also I had no dearth of friends to share lunch or to play with.
First time in 1991, when I was 9, we moved house and came to a house in a new locality. Locality of comparatively well off people. We were a bottom middle class. I had friends from my school but could never make friends in the vicinity I was living. I lived there for 6 years and hardly had any friend.
In 1997, when I moved to Kanpur to pursue further studies, my brother was pursuing his CA. He would keep doors of his room closed as he needed to study and I’d be all by myself. Only a transistor radio and that too in those old days no 24 hour FM. It’d be useful for just few hours a day when Vividh Bharti had some music broadcasting programs. I was even needed to take permission from my brother to switch on the radio. One of my brother’s friend would occasionally come to study with him and he was an extrovert. I’d enjoy whenever he’d come and wished he came more often. I had just come from my home town and was home sick a lot and needed someone to talk. My brother, though he was away from home for his studies for already few years but never tried to understand what I was going through. Again, this was a new place, a new city. I was low on my self esteem and confidence. It took me a while to get adjusted to this place but again I could never make friends somehow. Parents would not want their kids to be with me. They thought what they can learn from a person coming from a small town or I may have some bad habits which I may pass.
College in Kanpur was worst in my whole academic career. Again here I’d find myself out of the place. Though many of them would come on bicycles but mine was the most ordinary one. Of course I felt inferior. Most of them were born and brought up in Kanpur and I’d not fit into them. I talked with one fella, who also came from a small town but all those acquaintances dropped as soon as I left the college. Sometimes these folks from my class, would ask me like a city person asks, how a village looks like and what an usual day means… quite like movies in 80s in Bollywood. There was no one with whom I could share what I was going through. I’d mostly confine myself to studies, watching cricket at other’s place (as we had no TV). Many times I’d sit silently at home as I’d not have permission to either call anyone or to go anyone’s house. I suffered.
Next stop Lucknow. I was lucky to be in Lucknow in this college with people who came from all parts of UP. There were folks from Ballia, Ghazipur, Bareilly, Raebareli, Nainital, Kanpur etc. This was not a place of privileged so it was an easy atmosphere here in the class and in the college compared to Kanpur. I made friends, some for long. Those 3 years I didn’t suffer. Whenever I needed someone to talk I had. Whenever I needed someone to share a meal I had. 3 years quickly passed by.
I’ll take this forward in next article as well. Thanks for your continued feedback.
