The thought of going back home in India is what helped me sail through the highs (far fewer than the lows) and lows of the semester. After the last exam which made me wonder if I was in the right frame of mind when I decided to pursue MS, I went to work to make sure everything was in order before leaving. I was rather astonished when the lady who sits near me at the office gave me a tight hug, posed for a photo with me and asked me to show my mother who I work with. She made my day! I returned home to a delicious lunch prepared by my roommate and friends. It is rather interesting how tasty food helps relieve misery to a large extent. Packing seems to be the least exciting part of travelling, especially on the day before the journey. As soon as I finished packing, I took off to a friend’s place and stayed there talking a lot late into the night and probably boring everybody I met there. I was entrusted with the task of delivering a package to a friend’s family in Bangalore and also to get something for everybody from home. When I woke up in the wee hours of morning, tiptoeing to finish my last minute packing, I realized that I will not be meeting one of my roommates when I come back, as she graduated and got a job. Again, a gentle reminder that life is not going to be the same and not all the people we meet and spend time with are going to be around all the time.
The first thing I did on getting off at the airport was to pull a luggage trolley from the stack. How much ever hard I try, it would not move and then I turned to see that I had to pay $5 for a trolley! I went in making a mental note to not do the same mistake when I return from India. The flight from LA to Hong Kong and then to Bangalore seemed to have too many students from USC. I was wondering why the flight to LA did not take as much time as the one from there. We later concluded that they might be taking a different route over the Pacific. The 15 hour flight was the longest I have ever been on, and I was bewildered that they served only two meals. It is a test of patience and the art of holding oneself together without becoming claustrophobic. We devoured whatever vegetarian food we could find at the Hong Kong international airport, famished. The sheer size of the airport left us dazed. It was worth a thought that the price tags in Hong Kong dollars was pittance for us as we were coming from the US. At the same place a year ago while going away from home, I would not have dared to buy anything even if I was starving.
The announcements in Kannada on the flight made us feel we were closer home. I brazenly devoured the onion dosa that my mother had packed to the airport for me without even sparing a thought for my parents who I was seeing after a year. I met my friends in the next couple of days and paid a visit to my college, only to feel that nothing had changed. It appeared like I was away for a short while and was back to my routine now. To make me a little sad, we soon got our grades and as I expected, mine was bad. How I wish there comes a time when I do not have to explain myself to others! Why I did not do well in my exams, why I did not get good grades, so on and so forth. I often ponder over how after all these years, I still do not know how to ace exams. As I sat languishing about how this would affect my future prospects and how I need to brace myself for a tougher semester, a friend called from LA and made me feel a lot better alluding to the fact that ‘GPA is just a number which does not say anything about you’.
Driving all the way to my ‘ammath’ (mother’s house) in Kannur in Kerala from Bangalore is one back-breaking task that I am proud to have completed, though one of our neighbours driving right in front of us made it slightly easier for me. It was the first time I was there after my grandfather’s demise and it was oddly quiet.
I again drove to Palakkad in Kerala after a day’s rest. Driving in Kerala is a thrilling experience. The narrow roads, the hilly terrain and the other vehicles zooming past, teach us death defying tactics. As we entered the gates to my father’s house in Palakkad, I was feeling accomplished and that there are far worse things in life than getting bad grades. We were inching closer to the New Year and I already had a resolution in mind – not to let things which do not really matter bother me, give things time to unfold as they should while I worked towards getting better.
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