Quite obviously, I don't remember much about my childhood, except for a strange sense of detachment which I compensated by trying to make sense of pretty much whatever I saw around me. You may call it an overdose of inquisitiveness but I would say it was more of using my mind to take me to places which would cure the loneliness. I always somehow just knew that I was going to be my own best friend in my make-believe world. I don't think things have changed much since then, I'm still the same, trying to make sense of things, trying to figure out the order amid the disorder. The patterns keep coming back like the old rehashed jokes told by ageing contestants in comedy shows on TV these days.
My childhood is something that I am indebted to-I was exposed to a whole lot of good books, good music and raised in an atmosphere where intellect and intelligence highly sought after. The seeds were thus planted and I kept germinating them as I grew older.
I may come across as an adolescent at times-reckless and shallow, but that is only in the eyes of people who're judging me without actually knowing me. I remember reading the Gita back in high school and it changed my perspective on life and spirituality considerably. I am still an atheist, but yes, I have acquired the right to be so, because atheism isn't a fad for me like most others, I have read the Qu'uran and the Gita and trust me, both books, when you strip them down to the bone, talk about the same thing. But anyway, my views on religion are for another post.
Ever since I read the Gita, there were two particular shloks that I just knew that I had to keep with me at all times like a talisman, so I got them tattooed across my back, like protective incantations but as usual, the outside world perceived it to be a show-they cheapened the purpose by thinking of it as self-ornamentation. Again, this too fell just into the pattern. When I was younger, kids in school respected me but hated me at the same time for always managing to fare well overall and thus be the blue-eyed girl among the teachers. They called me names behind my back but shared their tiffin with me everyday during recess. I know for a fact that in the future too, no matter what I do or say, maybe in my workplace or maybe in college itself, I will receive a lot of flak. But somehow it doesn't bother me anymore. A vaccination injects the germs into your body so that your body can develop defense mechanisms to fight it off, my brain too, has developed immunity to certain such social viruses and I am no longer afraid.
My mind would bother me a lot as I was growing up. The constant and the nagging feeling of not really belonging with the people of my age depressed the hell out of me. I constantly felt like an outsider amid the girls and boys of my age who kept themselves or rather keep themselves engulfed in mindless activities and trivialize their lives by constantly thinking and talking about either other people or insignificant things, thus wasting their ability to think and do something constructive with it-a power that only humans, among all other living beings possess.
But time is the greatest teacher there ever is, it taught me to let go of all my reservations and all my apprehensions and just do my own thing, feel what I want to feel and think what I want to think-without some external factor influencing them.
They say you have to be reborn 7 times before you can achieve the ultimate enlightenment-nibbana and break free from the cycle of life and death. According to Buddhist scriptures, if you're a woman, then nirvana is not for you, the best you can hope and "pray" for is to be reborn as a man in your next birth and then complete the cycle. But you know what, I'm not going to fall for crap like that. For me, this is the ultimate life that I am living and when I die, my soul dies with me and it's not going to come back. Also, what is nirvana but a state of mind? Don't get me wrong when I say that, I don't mean that one can attain salvation by resorting to psychotropic drugs. But I believe that nirvana is very much achievable, you just have to set your mind to it and focus.
I know I will find my salvation someday, in this life that too.
The pattern shall be broken.
