SRP(SEARCH, RECIEVE, PRESENT)

Okay, so the much talked about SRP (Social Responsibility Project) time has arrived! Everyone's heading towards the city of their choice, many of them (like me) choosing their hometowns and some choosing other cities in the hope of a new experiences and some fun. Groups of people moving, tearful adieus exchanged, lots of luggage, lots of talk about what to do, sound familiar? Yeah, it takes me back to when I came here! Can't forget the look on my face just as I saw my mother and brother leaving after a brief look of the campus. I felt like the Darsheel Safary of Taare Zameen Par!! That one month I was in my shell all the time, hardly feeling like talking to someone. There was this thing of having the opportunity to start things all over again, but it seemed like a rather uphill task. It took me a month, a month of feeling somewhat isolated and unwanted, of crying silently at times to realise what a pain the a** I was being! Actually, it's just that I took a longer time to open up but once I did, just like a certain Mr. Bond, the world is not enough for me!!!

It has been AN experience, it really has been!! I see myself evolve everyday and am amazed at times as to why wasn't I moving at this pace before? Okay, I haven't become Mr. Popular Phadkar but still, I have a group of people I can claim to be good friends and that's the way I always wanted it. I have never wanted to be a part of monstrous groups, wanting to be in the limelight all the time. I keep fluctuating between my moments of fame and shame! And let me tell you, you hardly need big things in life to make you feel famous! You might not even have an inkling of a fan but according to me, if you have had moments where your thoughts have been wholeheartedly supported, a laugh and smile shared here and there, a moment or two in the day which you ruled, that does the trick for me!! You have to learn to relish moments in a day first, forget moments in life! Yes, clichéd, I hear you but no, it is true! You can't believe how much small things happening in one single day, from the moment you get up to the moment you sleep can affect you as a person. You can see things about other people, about yourself, about situations in a whole new way and then your perspective towards them changes. A very sensible friend of mine once told me this amazingly true fact about the brain. She said that once your brain considers a conflict that you have been deliberating upon since a significant period of time and struggling to find a solution to, it pushes itself into relieving you of that problem. And it does so rather quickly, and after that moment of solution, when the brain sorts out things for you, no other similar situation at any point in the future can affect you anyhow. You develop a permanent shield against the situation and the emotions it evokes. You are invincible to it. It is you and not other people that make your choices for you from then on. So true!!

There are times when I look at the face in the mirror which faces me and I can't help but smile and wink at that face which looks back! I see it in those eyes, I see it in that glow, I know I am going ahead, not backwards, not sideways. Sometimes we don't see much eye-to-eye but its okay. Who doesn't flounder on the way? And why shouldn't one? You must hear this song called "Let Go" by Frau Frau! One line in the song says, 'There is beauty in breakdown'. Couldn't be truer or anymore beautiful! There indeed is beauty in breakdown! So do let go off the shield you wield over your emotions once in a while!! Cry hard if you are hurt, laugh like you are dying tomorrow, express love, whether to your beloved (if you happen to be lucky enough to have one!) or even to your friend who meets you every morning with a smile on his/her face, calls out your name in a hundred different and stupid ways, hurts you unintentionally but also puts the broadest smile of pride and contention on your face the moment before you are about to retire for the day. And you don't even need to do this every day! But every once in a while, do let the ones who make your life special know how much you treasure it, think for the moment, and lastly don't forget that YOU make your life special in the biggest way because you own it, you give it a name, your name. So don't forget to love yourself and look in that mirror and wink at that face with pride, its one beautiful face!!!