The Importance of Being Lost

My annual trips to India include a sojourn to Pune where I spent 10 very formative years of my life - the early two being life changing.  It is here that my parents, puzzled about what to do with my life as well as some sincere intentions to give me worldly education, sent me to board and educate myself at the nationally revered Fergusson College in Pune. I was all of 15 when I said goodbye to everything stable in my life - mom's food, dad being at my beck and call, friends and plays, the television, and my bed. I was the center of my universe as well as two other people who I served as the life purpose for. 

And now I was one of many many girls living up to the rules of an dictator like elderly couple who hated anything developed post 1985. Queuing up every night to receive a spatula full of lentil and rice and the much in demand buttermilk, I doubted my existence. I shared the room with two other girls who clearly despised my because of my always somber disposition.  Many nights were spent just crying silently into the pillow as I did not want to perceived as a sissy. I was sad and angry. I did not want to be there. It did not matter that it was one of the top colleges in India with illustrious alumni and staff. It did not matter to me that it was a privilege for a girl from a small town to be there. All I could focus on was how lost I was. Not knowing a soul in a new city may have its perks but it sure as hell as it perils. I had the company of loneliness pretty much all the time and dare someone say that it was a choice I made. 

So I walked. I walked the entire city. For months. Observing people, their modes of transport, the new language, the restaurant in the alley, the small bookshop at the corner - observation and curiosity soon became friends. With loneliness, observation and curiosity alongside, I started getting more comfortable with everyday life in a new city. As I walked, I thought about all the questions that I was only trying to bury deep till now, only for them to manifest as sadness and anger. Why did my parents send me here? What role do I have to play here? Do I need friends or am I enough? As I took the steps around the city, miraculously the answers started appearing in my mind. Not to lose the answers, I started journaling to keep a record. Thus started a deep and trusted relationship with reflection and exploration of life. With the comfort of knowing I can live alone, came a certain confidence that helped me make some great new friends, some of whom I still feel very connected to even though we don't talk very often. 

Every year when I return to the city, I try and make some time to walk the same streets alone. This year, I treaded across the large campus reliving the days-the triumphs and the struggles. The smell of the chemicals at the Chemistry lab and of the charred wires from the Electronics lab, the staircase like student desks, the green boards, the platform under the tree where I sat with my now husband, then a 15 year old casanova. 

I sipped on some Masala tea at the college canteen and thought about the 15 year old me walking around the campus with my big questions and the utter sense of being lost. After my time at Fergusson, I became comfortable with being lost. As if it is a process that I know I have to go through to come out on the other side, and yes, there is always an other side as life there had taught me.The two years at the boarding school had a life changing impact on my life. The gifts of reflection and journaling have been beloved companions. But the sense of knowing that I can be alone and be quite happy at that has kept me from being an emotional burden on any single person in my life since. And the miraculous knowledge that if there is a question, there is always an answer right within us - all it needs is the asking and the creation of quiet to be heard - I practiced that at 15 not knowing its ramification and all I can say to my 15 year old self is - thank you! I was angry at my parents for a long time for sending me to a far away place with no known soul but I can only thank them now  for giving me the greatest gift of my life - allowing me to be utterly and completely lost. 

I saw a young girl coming out of the girls' boarding house gate as I was approaching a taxi to go back home. She looked grim and her eyes were looking out far into the road but not really focusing on anything in particular. She walked in front of me, her shoulders were down and she seemed to have a lot on her mind.  She reminded me of the 15 year old me in more than a few ways. I wondered if she was feeling lost and I wished I could say something to her, something the same roads had taught me 15 years ago... that in her questions in the state of being lost, she will find answers that will live with her for the rest of her life. That being lost is really one of life's great privileges...