By Tinky Ningombam
The urge to be independent and live-alone kind of hit like a storm and it came to light in my graduate days. The 3 years after school is by far, the most important phase of adulthood, of what you eventually become. The cost of education has peaked so much that you keep a mental calculation of how much investment you owe back to your folks, just so that you would be able to do some justice to it. And life for a pseudo – Delhi-ite (sic) graduates, like us, takes interesting turns. Besides the small town hangover and the obvious taglines that you carry with you, you still find similar life-patterns.
The First year starts with naivity; you talk and dress simple, well comparatively simple. You come with much hope, whether you get selected in your dream college or not, you are not bothered much, just happy to be through. More people nowadays will get themselves some roommates or guardians, very few will opt to live alone and a lucky few will get to live the hostel life. You will struggle with the new lingos, the new weather, the new fast-paced life and yet it will be a considerably good experience unless you get homesick sooner than expected. You will be hounded by calls from parents who will make you more scared of getting mugged or getting raped. Their news on crime will actually make you more scared to get out of the room. But there’s no point to object, as long as they are sending you money. You will gradually get used to the food, and late night outs, though the checkpoints will still haunt you. Your first test of morality will happen when you are offered drinks at social meets, some will succumb, for some it wouldn’t be such as big deal while some will remain clean. Colleges will be interesting, either yours or someone else’ (whichever you plan to hang out in). You will suddenly find scary smart teachers and you will not be able to understand much of what they teach anyway because you will not be listening half of the time and will be busy on your phone which you are hide and scroll . You will see a few shopping malls, go to a few clubs, eat in a few fast-food chains and you will go home for your holidays and brag about everything, exaggerate a lot of them. You will get a new haircut, start to wear more expensive clothes and flaunt the latest pictures. Why? Because you can!
Second year round, this time, you become more street- smart, you know that you can actually save money and spend it on something more productive, like playing online games or branded clothes. You will realize that you do not need to tip every waiter; that not all expensive food joint taste good and that you can actually find cheaper rooms than the one you were living in. You will also stop looking lost , getting duped of money on the roads and will have started either dating or finding yourself something more cool to do like playing the guitar the whole night and waking up the next afternoon or constantly Xerox-ing others’ class notes. With time, you become more assertive, you suddenly start acting older, for instance, you start calling older people by name. This time is great more so because this is where you come to realize you cannot live with Mr. what’s-his-name, that you need your own “space” and that you are adult enough to be left alone “to do what you want”. This is probably when your first fights starts, most oftentimes with your friends. Your home-sickness will settle in.
The Third year comes in with depression or optimism, most times with bouts of both. You will suddenly meet different people from different places, people much richer than you, people who work harder than you, smarter than you, more people who can replace you. Your statements on your future plans will be followed by question marks. You become more loud defensive, start carrying a smug or just grow long hair, something of that sort. You suddenly start talking to people you never noticed before, you will spend more time arguing. When you happen to be back home, you suddenly feel some probing questions come out of the closet. Existential questions about self-identity, self-image, the purpose of life, abou, these years are spent almost in isolation, away from family. A completely new sense of independence, freedom and a different lifestyle greets young people every year. The worst thing happens when these youngsters do not have many friends or are introverts but yet they are sent away so that they grow “wiser”. If this is how we know we are sending our kids for studies, we should prepare them for what they will go through instead of going by things that we hear second-hand. Let’s remember that everyone has special needs. People need to realize simple things, such as, not keeping false expectations or peer pressure. Knowing that t the purpose of education, about how we are all pieces of the entire machinery.
ainting a picture of young life is important as I do this for the people who just count the 3 years as 3 class-years; because the above stories do not even manage to cover the amount of intellectual, spiritual and life transformations that happen to young graduate-hopefuls. These formative years of 3 make or break these students. I almost instinctively hate the word students because it pre-empts the closed definition of education that people have. For most adults of today just because someone else got good marks in astro-physics doesn’t mean your kid can do it too.
Most of the times, these young people suffer on their people skills, their learning skills and even their life – skills just because they come to experience everything new , right from the way they live everyday life. We take it for granted as part of the experience, as a sense of Recruitment Test to Life of sorts. A false expectation on people is the first thing that wastes our time and energy and more importantly, talent.
And sadly, the college days are not the only time that young people are misunderstood. School was not different either. It is customary for Manipuri parents to not have an open relationship with their kids as we see in other places. Most of them believe that children should be seen and not heard. We see an alternate culture as well, where most kids have now started to believe that parents should be seen and not heard. How much do we really make an effort to have a real conversation with our kids? Adding to that the first 15 years of the kid’s lives are spent either in school or in tuitions and no matter how much you try, you miss experiences that matters. And all you end up seeing are marks in the report cards by the end of term. Whether people want to play good music or loves theatre or just spend his time doodling, it does not matter. What is important is that they have to get their return on investment.
(Having received quite a few complimentary messages the columnist would like to share her addresses for any accolades, brickbats or name-calling. Tinky can be reached through: facebook.com, twitter.com/tnkiy, tinky.imphalfreepress@gmail.com )