Looking back, looking ahead

As I sit here today, in the wrong side of my 20s, I think about where I thought I would be and where I actually am.

I did not ever think about exactly how life would be at 26, but there were some places I thought I would have been to, some milestones passed, some boxes checked. I had always assumed I would be married by this time, and I am not. I had thought I would somehow be serving my country in some way, now I don’t even pay taxes to her. I had thought I would live in Bombay only, now I almost don’t care about ever going back for good. I had thought I would be an active ex-student of my school, now I pass by sometimes without 5 minutes to enter the gates and look for familiar faces. I had thought I would have life figured out completely; I am now more thirsty than I have ever been. I thought that if I made a decent living, lived in Bombay, somehow had a job that contributes to making India better & was married to a good guy, my life would be perfect. But today I want so much more. Yes I want more than a ‘decent living’, but more importantly I want to live in many of the great cities of the world; yes I want to contribute to my country but much more fundamentally than by being a civil servant; I want to find happiness with someone special but even more, I want to find happiness within myself.

If a chemical reaction completely & irreversibly transforms the object, I wonder how many of those one goes through. And I realize how grey life my life would have been without them. Just like the innocence of a toddler’s eyes, the colour of the twilight sky, the feel of a summer breeze cannot be replicated by the most sophisticated of man’s interventions, I wonder if a life totally under my own control & direction could be ever as fulfilling as that which unfolds by itself. I feel no disturbance by the ever shifting sands of my own aspirations, how can one who belongs in a desert?

I have come a long way but have only just begun. I have many dreams for the future, but a stronger love for the here & now. I am far away but yet completely at home.

Standing on the threshold of tomorrow, I have never been more in the today.