Learning from the bygone era

A good number of us remember our college days as the most uncomplicated and free-spirited period of our lives. Back then life used to be pretty simple. There were no responsibilities, no tensions, no daily churning in offices and absolutely nothing to keep track of. We were masters of our lives and lived on our own terms - be it bunking classes, having night outs, growing long hair, partying almost every night, watching back to back movies or playing our a** out – there was nothing that could stop us from doing what we wanted to do. There was no money, no girls & no bikes (especially in the male dominated IITs & NITs) – it was frustrating and although all of us did moan about their absence, no one died. We all bitched about them, gave everybody else a middle finger, and moved on. And to feel even better, we took extreme sadistic pleasure in looting our best friends at the costliest restaurant in town, bullying the ‘boyfriends’, hooting at their ‘girlfriends’ and flashing our bicycles. Life was fun.

However, nobody had the above-mentioned realization while in college. It was business as usual at that time. Conditioned since childhood to compete with even a sick rodent, most of us entered the college through organized factories aka ‘Coachings’, with a single-minded focus of busting the balls of every known Einstein on earth. College life, however, acted like an infusion of marijuana into the competitive, boiling blood of most and calmed things down. After a few months into college, very few genuinely interested young men wanted to dedicate their life to anything remotely related to engineering. Most of us wanted to let things be the way they were and enjoy the fruits that were on offer – p**n, parties, movies, free internet, sports, PC games, chatting, zero bathing, more parties & more p**n. No worries. No responsibilities. No commitment.

Howsoever random life turned out to be for most of us in college; it gave us options, freedom & fearlessness to experiment with what we were meant to do in life. For those of us who had nothing to do with engineering, it was a perfect environment for indulging in multiple activities like designing, organizing, debating, playing, writing, publishing, speaking, filming, performing on stage etc. All this continued until our utopian world was jolted by the very first reality of life i.e. campus selections. People suddenly became afraid, cynical, risk-averse and skeptical. Something drastically changed for years to come.

After being in our jobs for almost 10-15 years, most of us are still searching for that perfect moment to come when we’ll try something else, something which will daily make us want to live a little more, sulk a bit less and breathe a lot calmly. The trick for ending this search is to go a couple of decades back, drag out that fearlessness & free spirit, re-learn what we loved the most and say ‘EUREKA’!!