I was packing for Delhi, looking up to the next 10 days of my life, to spend with my family. To spend Diwali with them, to come back to the city I say as my home. I was looking for something, peace maybe, or some answer to some question I have not asked myself yet. Maybe I am afraid if I shape my question in words, it will be too painful to know that I don’t have the answer. So, I am just drifting, looking to find an acceptable answer and then form the question on it. I find that satisfactory, or maybe I won’t when I reach there.
When I was in class 5th, we had a question in my social studies’ final exam for 5 marks, asking as to why we celebrate Diwali? I had learnt the answer by heart for the question, one of several highly probability questions. I answered a page full of description about all myths collectively known as Ramayana. I got 5 out of 5. I topped the class in all subjects. I was happy to do that and I thought that that was it. That was the purpose of life, to be at the top, to get as much as you can score, always knowing everything there is to know, to be better than everyone and get maximum marks, find an objective way to rate yourself above others, to be the best. Even I was not a good cricketer, not a good swimmer, not good at making female friends, I was at least good at the thing that makes one’s career, the grades, the scores, the smile on teachers’ face that makes you think you are doing good in life, that everything is in the right place. When I talked to the children not as good as me in class and they complained about the teachers not working hard on the class, at them not being very clear and being partial to some students, I used to comply with their thoughts and sentiments, but secretly I knew that they don’t know something that I know, they are not as clear headed as me and not good at learning things like they should be and they are subjective to good teaching than being a good learner. I was not rich and did not have any other resources of tutors at home, but I still was the best, better than the ones who had them. That was the feeling I cherished, the secret narcissism I could enjoy inside me, the private emotion of being brilliant and knowing that I would succeed in life for sure, even if they were not. That was my victory over the world and I won every year.
But then it changed. I am not sure if being in IIT contributed to it or not, but I grew very skeptic. I suspected religion, politics, and institutions and more fundamentally I suspected reason, motives, reactions and I grew scarier of the world around me. I was no longer confident of myself and I was amazed at how confident some of the people around me were. They were clear about what they were doing; why they were doing and they simply made me feel how the other students in school class would be feeling because of me. I always wondered how they were not skeptic of things I was afraid of and how they could manage everything without any doubts. Personally, I had a set of questions I ask myself before doing any action and I am never able to answer all of them, mostly because of some fundamental question unanswered. I wanted to ask these people about that question, as to what they found the answer as, but something inside me told me that I should find it myself and that kept me detached, bewildered, consumed, terrified. Having been beaten by time and impatience, I finally turned to some of them recently to ask them for some clue and they told me that the question in invalid. How can that be invalid? How can any question be invalid? If it does not apply to a context, there should be a reasonable explanation for the same. And who decides what reason is and if it good enough? The one who is explaining or the one being explained?
As I came to Delhi, I thought this is what I need, this is where I want to be, the capital, the best city in the country, the city with everything. I always fought with my colleagues arguing over which city is the best and I would always advocate for Delhi. Sometimes I find myself asking to myself if I am advocating for Delhi as a city or the Delhi as my home. I find this question is regretfully painful and highly conflicting. How would I face such a question without exploring the fabric of everything I have experienced here and how can I get it out of my head without answering it?
What is home? Is it where the family lives or is it the place you feel most comfortable? Is this the place where you find all answers? I think that should define the place, the place where you have no questions. It is the place where everything is a constant, with no variables, with nothing that is unknown. Does such a place exist? Is it possible to get this at your home? What if you don’t find it at your home? Does that not make it your home? Does it mean you are expecting too much of your home? Does that mean you are not a good person for you are insulting your own home that it is not good enough for you anymore? How do you stop this chain of thought, this insecurity and this thirst for answers?
This search for answers seems like a childish desire, the primitive part of you which you are enslaved to, but it is there and it will not go away no matter what you do. Some people have a child inside them who makes them crave for chocolates, some make them crave for some particular flavor of ice cream, some have the desire to travel, mine is to understand and find answers. Why I am like this is also a question unanswered!
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