at 19, still growing up

"have u ever noticed nething small....something discerning...n found the happiness in discovering a reality u were never conscious of?"

We had been making light conversation till not so long ago. To say that the question threw me off would be an understatement of sorts. Not because I didn’t have an answer to it, but more because I had a ready long answer and it is rarely (if ever!) I come across a person willing to talk about such things as a part of a conversation. If I try to raise a topic like this with my friends I’m either met with blank stares or an expression that clearly says, “Kritika, u have finally lost it”. K

At that point I gave as coherent an answer as I could manage though probably knowing my skills as putting forth a view without seeming like im gonna bite someone’s head off, I wonder if he understood. J but I did wonder about it later at night. My answer… a conversation between my mother and my maid

For the most part of my life I’ve lived in a world which has noone but me in it. All my actions, reactions, ideas, notions and thoughts for the major part of my life at least have been an answer to how a particular thing, incident, act or people affect me.
Though I’m ashamed to admit it, I have never been able to imagine how life must be as Mr. A or B or whatever. Even on the rare occasions I did, it seemed like such a tedious task that I gave up within the next 10 seconds.

Till not so long ago, everyone’s life seemed to exist till the extent that it was connected with me— my friends, cousins, relatives or house help. And a visit to their houses would amaze me and to a certain extent disillusion me—their everyday activities, their relationship with their parents, how they carried themselves around and small things like how they maintained their things. Their smallest of actions, everything used to be so different from what I had always imagined or felt it to be! But being around 11-12 years I was hardly able to pinpoint as to how or why did I form such different notions and ideas and why was I always so disappointed in people that they didn’t come upto them.

Over the years I’ve grown and started to believe that I understand people better now—can interpret their reactions, can make out from their expression how genuinely they mean what they say and blah blah. To summarize, I’ve started toi understand people (if not the world!) a bit better.

But then again, that was till about a month ago when I realized that my thinking is still self centred and small in perspective.

What triggered it? Well a conversation between my mother and my new maid while I happened to be lolling around… she was asking her about her life in her native place—her family, studies, work, life in general. Listening to her answer made me feel that for all my lately acquired worldly wise notions, I still havnt stepped out of my world of surrealism, naiveté, self complacency, whichever way u want to put it.


For the life of me I couldn’t imagine how could anyone live a life so different— so completely unlike the life that I live!

After having read this long an entry I’m sure you must be wondering what about this incident did make me happy? Well…to overcome this feeling of belonging to a different universe, I offered to teach her as a way to help her as well as myself. And no matter how stupid it may sound, it made me feel happy. J