The Past And The Present

It was one of those days when I had nothing to do and my mind just lingered between the past and the present. It surprised me how I and the people around me have changed so much in the past couple of years. When I was in school, I would look up to all the college going guys and wonder how different and cooler they were when compared to me and when in college I would look at all the people who were working and would think to myself how sophisticated they were. Now when I look at any school or college going person, I can’t help but wonder how I smoothly transitioned through these years of my life without realizing the changes each phase brought in me.

When I was in school I learnt how to play different kinds of game more than the subjects they taught in the classrooms. Popularity was directly proportional to your grades and the feeling towards the opposite sex was that of sheer hatred considering how different they were from us. It would be a feat to show the report card to the parents and get their signatures. I still remember pleading with my sister to show the report card to my parents because I was so afraid to face them directly. It was that phase when you hardly bother about your appearance and whether or not you are following the latest trends.

As years go by you finally start paying a lot of attention to looks. The guy whom you hated in primary school is not so bad after all. You are no more the topper and your grades have become quite average. You are tired of the uniforms, you want to wear something cooler and you envy the college goers for that. The one thing on your mind is to clear your boards and get into a really cool college and have fun. It’s a sudden leash of freedom in college, you would prefer to eat in the canteen than pack lunch from home. It’s a great feeling when the most popular guy in college smiles at you and you are dying to tell it to everyone around. You no longer want to be uneducated in fashion and you very much care about your looks. Popularity is directly proportional to your personality and studies are just one of the things you are in college for.

This is the time when you start realizing that you need a hike in your pocket money as you are frequenting the canteen, movie theatres, coffee shops, malls and the money just doesn’t seem to stay. When you approach your parents with this problem, all you get to hear are rants about how your grades have dropped, about the company of “Spoilt” friends and an ultimatum that the pocket money will be raised only on conditions of securing better grades. What’s worse is the fact that you very well know you won’t do too well in your next exams and you are going to hear the very same dialogue again and this truth sucks big time. You begin to wonder how life would be once you get a well paying job. All the money is at your disposal and you get to decide what you want to do with it.

In the last year of college, we are all striving hard to pass the placement interviews more than passing the semester exams. We wonder how we are going to look in formal attire and how cool it would be to make money. Our thoughts are more inclined towards the freedom that work will give us. When we finally report to work, we are so excited that we don’t even realize that the good ol’ college days are gone and a new phase has started in our life which is not going to be half as fun as our college days. It’s only a matter of time before you realize that you can’t bunk your office like the way you would in college and not meeting the required standards will land you in great trouble unlike college where you could carry forward your subjects. Days become monotonous unlike the days in college where every day was something to look forward to. “Bunk classes when you are bored” was a common dialogue then and now it’s a privilege if you get weekends free for yourself.

Those were the days when we had all the time to do what we wanted but didn’t have the money for it and these are the days when we have all the money but no time. When I think of this, I shudder, I do not want my life to just go by, I want to enjoy each and every moment of it. When my mind wanders to the past, I always end up smiling thinking of the good times and also the times when I screwed up and I’m pretty sure today will be a past ten years from now and I want to smile again.