Taking stock

I had been planning to write a taking stock blog since my first semester here ended. But somehow every time I sat down to write, I asked myself, what's the big deal ? And I decided it was no big deal, that I am in the US doing a PhD, and have lived a span of time, with my body and mind intact. A lot of my friends and my college mates have done that and even better. But it keeps coming back to me, and so I think I should take stock for once and be over with my bursts of self-congratulatory phases.

Ok so what's the big deal ? I trekked half way across the globe, landed in a unnervingly new world, went through an excruciating phase of personal and professional readjustment and did great!! So ? Anyone could have done that. No really, it's not a big deal for me, but it is a huge huge, to the point of being humongous, deal for my parents. They can still not stop gushing about their daughter studying in foren, that too on scholarship. I must add that, I have the envious distinction of being the only one in the family to have achieved that. People who had told my electrician father to not 'invest' in a girl who is after all 'paraya dhan' are, to my extreme satisfaction biting the lowliest, filthiest, scummiest dust. I like my parents rubbing my scintillating success all over their poker faces (talk about being forgiving).

Coming back to reality, my life is really not that great, I live in an exhorbitantly priced and exceptionally crappy apartment (it's cheap but still expensive for the craphole that it is), my work leaves me on most days wanting to commit suicide, my future is totally insecure (well, as long as I am a grad student I shall be employed but what after that ?), and I shall just not start about my personal life (refer to older blogs)... But, who needs to know all that ? Sometimes I sit alone in my room and reflect about my home. It was not much bigger than where I live now. I try to see it sometimes on google earth. (can't see, they cant zoom that much) and I feel it is so so far. It is so far that it almost instantly becomes a big deal. Those are the times when I want to write this blog.

Back home, there are still people who dont believe that I am in the US. To my neighbours and aquaintances, it is still something unachievable (though I would again say, its no big deal, as far as I remember, it just took me some 600 $ and a 30 hr crappy flight in economy class to get here). So stories about my sudden disappearance are rife. Some people say that my parents married me off secretly, others believe that I ran off with someone, and the not so green eyed ones, concede that I am in the US on an 'onsite' assignment for my job. So ya, when I get into their minds and see myself, it is a big deal.

Then sometimes I close my eyes, and try to see myself in that little 'mohalla' I grew up in. My life can make for a very slumdog movie. The only difference is I am not a 'chaiwala' and I did not make it to Crorepati. My parents still live in that mohalla. The imperial education they gave me and my brother, even though they could not afford it, has left them impoverished and in huge debts. Now the debts are mine, and I feel great about it. And that is another reason, why it is a big deal. In reality however, I am still just a student, I haven't yet arrived in life, the success that I crown myself with, I haven't yet achieved. I am in a lot of debt and even if I pay it in dollars, it just does not seem to get over any time soon.

Some times when I wait all alone for the bus outside my lab, in the darkness, I am almost eerily reminded of those oh-so-frequent summer nights of power cuts, when we used to study in a lantern light on our rooftop, with the lusty cool breeze of mid summer, trying its best to put out our lantern. And then when the oil (we literally burnt the midnight oil) would be all used up, I would lie flat on my back and watch the stars. As I stand under the street light at the bus stop, wondering what is the probability of me getting raped, murdered or mugged before the bus arrives, it looks so much like the lantern light, the stars glimmering, the insects creaking, the wind blowing in my hair. I feel a huge urge to stand in the middle of the lonely, winding, stretching, empty road and see as far as I could. Wonder what I want to see, maybe the opposite end of the globe, maybe my home, maybe a girl studying geography in the glimmering light of a lantern. And then I know, for that girl, I am a big deal.