The Lone Mushroom

As I sit in a comfortable air-conditioned room, 30 minutes before my class starts, the anxiety doesn’t leave me. I see women walking inside, one of them asks “Is this the creative writing course?”, I nod. And I wonder simultaneously, am I going to be the oldest in this class?.

Many walk-in, all women (well to be precise, girls) and all of them seem younger. “Second-year college” “Graduate” “Doing my post-graduation in sociology” and one of the ‘jokes’, so you are like a super senior. I feel awkward and message a friend “I hope the teacher is older than I am” and she types in a LOL and a soothing ‘Relax’.

As the room gets filled with younger people and I sit in the middle of all of them (literally) I start to think. I wish I had the sense to do this course earlier, and the understanding to pursue this at a younger age. I am still finding my professional feet. I feel like the lone mushroom I found on an adventurous trail in Barog. I can’t find anyone sailing my boat, which can be comforting. The conversations, inside and outside my head, are broken when my teacher walks in. She is older (thank god). I thank my stars she skipped the chirpy “Oh, let us introduce ourselves”.

In walks a boy, which makes even the teacher state the obvious “Oh, you are the only boy in this class” and I think, wait a minute! He is the lone mushroom. The ONLY boy in a class of 30. For the next 10 minutes, I stop listening to what the teacher has to say and go on a journey riding on my thoughts. All of us are the lone mushroom. We all feel lost and like an outsider some time or the other. For some, it is worse because people point that out to you not so eloquently. In that room, each and every person was an outsider in some way to this course. One has not read a book in her life, one runs a fashion label and has never written in life, one is studying business, one plays professional poker and so on. Everyone is an outsider in his or her own right.

The lone mushroom, though an outsider on the lush green trail, caught my fancy on that long trail. ‘Outsiders’ make for a beautiful part of the trail of life...

The old is gold...

Moving into a new place brings with it a lot of new things. For one, the entire house looks unfamiliar. From north Delhi, I moved to south. From paying a rent of Rs. 2500, I know pay Rs. 25,000 (it's no magic or Chawl, it was rent control). From having a choice between  two metro stations at a walking distance, I hop into an auto. From having the local “doodh wala” as my neighbor, I now have a spate of people around me, some of them with bad music tastes. From living in a 4 BHK, I now live in a 2 BHK. The list goes on and so can I, but for your benefit I will stop.

I settled in the new place quite comfortably because I was psyched to live with the love of my life. This place became home way too quickly and I wasn't guilty to let go of the place I had been living all my life (well almost).  We had also brought some of the white goods from my old place. Buying new things for two people did not make much sense back then. But today we purchased a new refrigerator and a washing machine. As I sat down, staring at the two refrigerators, I began to feel bereaved. I wasn't unhappy about the new one, but I was sad about letting the old one go. When certain things have been in your life for as long as you can remember, they somehow become  a part of all the moments that you have spent around them. At that moment, on my couch, I could only think of the good ones. The refrigerator is so old, the model is obsolete. The washing machine was an inconvenience and sounds like a drill machine. Yes, they are mere machines, but they have been a part of my life for so long, they ceased to be just machines. They were like a page in my book of life, one that I didn't feel like tearing off.

Why do we keep old birthday cards? Why do we smile looking at photographs from our childhood? An old letter perhaps? I have seen my mom save things that I have labeled as junk, only to realize now that they are invaluable, some of them to even others. They are invaluable because they remind us of the glory of the past and not many things can trigger that. There are moments in my past that I would want to let go, so it becomes easier to let go of the things that remind me of the same. But not my leaking refrigerator and the drill machine. You have been sold my friends, but you were there with me, in my good times and for the bad ones..