They say something about
being bullied and character building. That high school is supposed to be the
best and worst times of your life, and that for anyone who’s just the least bit
different, it can be the seventh level of hell. It’s not as effective as I’m
sure it was meant to be.
For me, it was the darkest
chapter of my life story. If being bullied wasn’t bad enough, I also had to
survive the kind of friends who only talk to you in the confines of the
ominously yellow school bus. The kind of people who see you in the corridor and,
in the company of their friends, ignore you because oh my god wouldn’t that be social suicide. If there was one thing I
learned in my nine years of pure-Delhi schooling, it was this: even in the
midst of infamy and the meanest of company, when there is always an extra pair
of hands to pull you down, you gotta keep your head above the water. The drowning,
that’s what they want.
What’s their reason, you
ask? Well, in retrospect – once you’re all in college and beyond – no one is
gonna remember. But at the time, it’ll be the most important thing they do. You
can’t pass by without a sneer, an acidic jibe, a stifled giggle.
Of all the places to find
refuge, I found mine in the art room. There have been days when I used to spend
my entire day in there – not always painting, but mostly because it was that
haven. Where no one could judge me, because it was the one place where I was
actually good at/for something. In there, I wasn’t the school faggot or the
freak who couldn’t defend himself. I was the one with the kind of raw talent my
teacher was proud of. I’m not bragging – I now look at them as worthless, having
never pursued art beyond school – it’s just something I used to be told. I’m
not writing this to give a personal opinion on what happened to me, I don’t
wanna talk about how good I really was or how bad. The purpose of writing this
is just to let words flow, to tell stories as they happened.
And, quite frankly, I was as
bad with speaking words then as I am today. Give me pen and paper and I can
quote Shakespeare for you – get me drunk and I might just orate – but ask me to
talk about what’s going on in my life, or something that happened in the past,
anything, I got nothing. On a side note maybe that’s why I drink as much as I do,
because otherwise, I’d just have nothing to say. And most people I know don’t
really have the patience to read everything I write, much less the shy notes I’d
rather scribble and hand them; and there’s only so fast and grammatically
correct I can type on my phone!
But I digress.
So, as I quietly suffered
through school, I only had the creative route to let out my frustrations and
sadness. But you know what I realised, it really is the best character building
exercise – of course I’m not saying my seven years of the total nine is
something I wish upon someone – that anybody can ever go through. Because once
you’ve made it through, once all the bad is behind you and you’re done with
school, there’s no looking back. Because if you’ve survived school in a city
like New Delhi, the rest is but a breeze. You’re going to find people who can
accept you not despite your flaws, but because of them. It’s easy to give up,
it’s even easier to give in and be cynical – I’ve tried both – but you have to
keep your head up and keep swimming. Someone’s out to get you, face them. Tell them
to give you their best shot – even though it’s not that easy. I remember
telling people to bitch about me behind my back, have the decency to not say it
to my face. I’ll admit it, I wasn’t strong enough. Of course I then went on to
being a shade of cynical that’d frighten everybody I know today – remember the
part where I don’t share feelings? – and life was all about confrontations and
say-it-to-my-face’s. But you have to move past that, because being that guy is
worse than being the guy everyone made fun of. You wake up one day and find
that you’ve turned into what once was your worst nightmare, and the people who
loved how totally awesome you were in your blunt, cynical behaviour are now
gone. Because while you judged the world together, they judged you just as
severely. And you realise that you no longer recognise the person in the
mirror. You’re the perfect Delhi Dickhead and you deserve to wear that crown of
shame.
In that moment of being totally
alone, you find yourself – a part of you that’s waiting with cross-armed
foot-tapping impatience to be discovered.
And so, I’ve entered the next
phase of life. It doesn’t matter what class of society you come from – and don’t
tell yourself that we’re not in an 1800’s classist society – what you’ve been
through or what curveballs you’ve thrown yourself, what makes the difference is
how you choose to leave from it. I’m a better person for having gone through
hell in high school. I’m a better writer because I couldn’t find a confidant. I
was always on the outside of the camaraderie between friends and acquaintances,
and once I turned my back on that, I realised that there was another sun to
look at. And that sun, well there’s no need to fear the heat.
