Literary Diarrhoea

This post is not going to be a story.

Nor is it going to be an offspring of my imagination.

I am going to be totally honest, this one is about me, my life.

I feel it’s necessary, especially now; for I have a mission now, and one of the ways of realizing this is to be completely honest with others. A friend told me that day, that I wear masks, and it’s alright because we all do and it’s totally normal. I don’t think it’s normal. Masks are only good if you are a clown, or if it’s a Halloween party. Otherwise, masks help you slack and drift off from your identity. And that can only be bad. And in order to avoid myself from hiding behind my mask in the future, I’m using all of you to bear witness to my naked self; my thoughts on my past, my motivation in the present and my ambitions for the future.

One of the worst things to happen to me in recent years is the fact that I am extending my degree program by a year. A lot of people might find it difficult to admit this in the open, in fact I am writing this after much debate within myself too. There was a lot of hurt and disappointment in the eyes of my parents when I broke the news to them, and those who know me well will tell you that’s the last thing I want. My parents have always been my one true blessing, and to let them down merely by my lack of effort and ambition really dealt a blow, to both parties. Even then, they were loving enough not to show me much of their ill feeling. But I feel it, and I know it. The times when their friends ask them how long more for his son to graduate, I shudder as they stumble for a dignified answer. This bugs me a lot, more than I can describe.

See, I have been blessed with wonderful, fun and loyal friends. My university days will live long in my memory as the most glorious days of youth and excitement. But behind all those smiles and laughter was a silent curse of incompetence and lack of ambition. I have no right to blame my failure on my friends, but truth remains that failure is never apparent when all about you are cruising at the same gear. Having said that, I must say there were many friends who chose the better path, some even offering advice, but the youth of my age was very much an ally of ego and pride, of misguided confidence and mistaken priorities.

And then there were friends, in offering help and counsel kept telling me engineering is not my ‘thing’, that my field is that of art and creativity, of mass communications and public relations. I won’t do justice to them if I said they meant harm. Humans generally feel the need to belong, and in my failure they looked for other places for me to belong. And I did believe them, for a while. But a wise man once told me, that adaptability is the single most important quality for any living creature. I still remember him telling me, as the mighty dinosaurs failed to survive, the tiny amoeba lives today, since the start of evolution. Why is that so? Adaptability. And so, why can’t I adapt to life, why can’t I master my destiny, rather than just be pushed about and bullied by the thought and fear that this is not for me?

Often times I gave advice to my friends, to matters ranging from love to life, if they both be not one and the same. I preached love to be decorated bullshit, of human relationships to be based entirely on selfish motives and opportunistic pretense. And from those views, born out of my misguided observations, I attracted a band of followers who would nod and agree to the things that I say. Wisdom comes with a price, and in this case I was pronounced wise just because I was different. I spoke often times with my mind looking for lateral explanations, and in my wit and lip lived much of my celebrated fakeness and fondness to manipulation and deception. I look back now and I see a young man patching up the holes in his life with sands of bad memory and marking it with scars of past; all the while reminding himself, ‘I am right, I am right.’ But no, that was not me. My heart does not hate love; it yearns for it. Love is not just a term for a boy and a girl in relationship, It goes far beyond, where words with arms outstretched fail in vain to enfold.

I mentioned in the beginning, about my mission, my ambition. All this while I have lived behind masks, under the shade of incompetence in a world of lies. I stand now naked, for I have realized my potentials, and that which has been wasted. It is the most aching feeling, to look back and regret, and as much as I want to avoid brooding over the past, I can’t help but feel sorry for the man I was. I have been a boat, adrift this ocean, just adjusting to the weather, rocking along the waves, feeding off what was made available. And now suddenly, I have found a sail. And with this sail of ambition and a hell of a lot of faith, I am about to give myself a new direction. May the winds of fate come in torrents, and the waves of destiny crash on my boat from stern to bow, I shall direct my life to the shores of paradise.

I have only a handful of subjects left to finish my degree, and I expect myself to ace each one of them, for that’s the least I can offer my parents.

I have a long life ahead, and I expect myself to become an ambassador of love, to redefine all it’s splendour, and rediscover its beauty.

I have a winding road ahead, and I expect myself to always be the friend of Truth and ally of Peace, for there is no greater form of bravery than to defend the Truth and offer peace, having made peace with oneself.

Last but not least, I expect myself to rid myself of all the masks I used to wear in every different circumstance. A few may laugh, a handful may ridicule, but there is nothing more liberating than the choice of being your true self.

With that, I bid adieu, there won’t be any more stories in this blog. All this while, I have been living in another’s story, in the characters that I brought to life through imagination and consideration of what you might want to read. It is time now to write my own story, the way I want it to be read. Do bless me, and I love you all!

Yours,

Vijay Dorai