What Hyderabad Meant...

It rained today. My first rain since being back home again. I sit near the window with my laptop and a cup of tea watching the raindrops fall peevishly on the window pane. The hour is perfect for reminiscence.

Two years have passed by since I first packed my bags and left home to another place for the prospect of further education. Perhaps leaving home marks a definitive aspect in each of our lives, a sort of the ‘coming of age’ narrative, where you leave the nest to encounter the big bad world all on your own. It can be a transformative experience and in my opinion every girl/boy should experience it once in their life, the hostel life, the ‘other city/place’ thing which plays a vital role in the process of your becoming a man/woman. Hyderabad was that place for me, and the way I encountered the place, learned it bit by bit is so unlike any other place I have known or traveled to. It was the place where I grew up, learned a lot of things, to do on my own, about life, people, the good and the bad, and above everything else it taught me who I really am and how I wish to live my life. And hence I have a certain emotional attachment to this place like no other!

The University, or more importantly Hostel can be compared to the situation in William Golding’s Lord Of the Flies, where a bunch of adolescents, in this case young adults, run wild without the threat of adult supervision or the control of the ‘State’. This is the place where everything you have ever known is turned upside down, where night becomes day and day becomes night, literally. Authority is challenged, establishments are criticized and there is complete anarchy. This is the place where you encounter the postmodernists in large number. Every other person you meet or talk to is a postmodern individual who mocks at the established notions of morality, values, and social commitments. Do not get me wrong. I like the postmoderns for the sense of anarchy that they spread around which is necessary in some sense. It is just that I do not want to be ‘one of them’ completely. Postmodernity becomes a crucial element in one’s existence as a ‘free thinking’, free feeling individual in today’s campus scenario. It gives you the sense of being radical who attaches no meanings to any establishments in society, who vehemently attacks notions of ‘morality, values, truths’ as social constructs without any social or political commitments or convictions that could possibly uplift society as everything is after all ideologically suspect. We are all socially fragmented individuals and this is an inevitable human condition rather than as the result of a material reality. Let us smoke some weed and celebrate Osho and the epicurean ideals!

It is amidst this chaos that you begin your University life as the totally lost, utterly confused individual who has yet to figure these out and come to terms with what your position is, what your ideals are in relation to these.  But in all of this you discover life and you enjoy it tremendously. You meet people, witness so many different things, create friendships, read and write and question and in all of this you suddenly start evolving into the person you become. I realize two essential things; one that you ought to have certain convictions in life and an open mind. Second, the best things in life are always the most simplest. You begin to appreciate certain values in life and think that morality like some social institutions cannot be completely dispelled with. The friendships you create, the people you let into your life, the books you read, the movies you watch, the ideas that you entertain, everything has a decisive role in what you become as an individual. It is the University life that gifts you all these beautiful lessons that you are going to cherish all your life. It becomes the foundation of your very being. Hostel life is so much more than that, more than what words can convey. From all the humiliations, the quarrels, the fights, the dramas, the dreams and ambitions, the gossips and talks about everything under the sun, from movies to books, music, people, boys, celebrities, writers, friendship, life, love, everything you learn a lot about life. It is here that you create such beautiful relationships, those perfect strangers who become more than family to you and with whom you have shared all of this and more. The wisdom that you have imparted to each other.

My point is that life is truly the ultimate experience one can have if you have the courage for it, if you can open yourself to the winds of change that is going to swoop you into the journey called life. Embrace the new things that happen and yet stay true to yourself and the people who love you the most. Everything that happens in life is temporary. So enjoy it the most and learn from it. I am grateful for this life and everything that has ever happened. And I am grateful for Hyderabad for teaching me so much more!