As a kid, I wanted to become a doctor. Doctors were cool, kind and saved people. For me, that meant everything. My parents had a different view for me. You will be an engineer, they said. You will be a software engineer, they specified. There’s money in that. That’s the most important criteria, right? And becoming a doctor is such a lengthy process and so expensive!
My tenth grade and the two years that followed were the worst and most tortured years of my life. It was stultifying to say the least. All I remember now is darkness and chaos and a lot of voices exhorting me to perform magnificently and get into all the esteemed universities that would dictate the course of my life. The chant to excel was monotonous. The learning never went through to the part of me that was meant for it. Confined to peer pressure that prevailed, I subjected myself to the shame of not-reaching-expectations. I got into a decent college, nothing famous or fancy but decent enough to appease my parents. The next four years covered all feelings I was ever likely to feel. Confusion, fear, vexation, joy, anger, love, betrayl, sorrow. I covered it all. It definitely was a roller coaster ride and I discovered things about myself I didn’t know before. Primary of them was that I hated getting involved in arguments. I would do anything not to get into one including conceding to the point I’m against. Another revelation came when my girlfriend dumped me.
I was relatively intoxicated when it happened but I somehow remember it vividly. (or maybe it’s my imagination)
“You don’t have the drive,” she said.
She must have seen the confusion written on my face. She blushed a pretty pink.
“To succeed,” she clarified.
And that settled it. It explained many things to me, which at that time I didn’t want to look into.
I was in oblivion for a while. There’s nothing pot can’t solve.
I finally sobered up when the final semester set in. Peer pressure again. I had to get a job; apparently, to end the pestering of my relatives and acquaintances. There’s one thing my parents believed in—to have a ready answer to all questions that they would be likely asked about, which majorly concerned everything about me. Luckily, I got a job. The fruition of choosing my discipline as Computer Science.
I joined a mediocre company which excelled in mundane work. I was happy or was I? I don’t know. I had lost the ability to distinguish feelings by then. I was excited definitely. The pay was good. But was I happy? Is being excited the same thing as being happy? Can you be happy and excited or just excited and not particularly happy? I wouldn’t know. I often confuse the two. But I think they are different. They should be too. Maybe “excitement” is a kind of happiness. The shallow kind of it. But that’s the closest I’ve ever come to that feeling. Maybe happiness is overrated. Maybe. I wouldn’t know if I was feeling happy even if I was. I lost the ability. I’m emotionally devoid, emotionally bland. I don’t remember the last time I smiled. I don’t smile anymore. I don’t know how to. It shouldn’t be that difficult, I mean, it’s just curving your mouth upwards and sometimes showing your teeth. I do this while being photographed. If you smile, even if the smile is fake, it’s captured. Does it provide a sense of happiness when viewed later? I mean, my memory is failing already, when I see it years from now, would I see just the smile and not the occasion? Would I have considered myself happy? I wonder. I think pretenses give us the false sense of security and happiness which we crave so much. They are like placebos. They aren’t the real medicine but empty pretend medicine. And we believe they cure us and when the belief itself is the cure. Hmm. But wouldn’t there be a certain hollowness when what you are feeling isn’t the real thing, which makes its existence void since you know it isn’t real? I don’t know. I don’t really know anymore.
A few years after I started working, my parents called me one day to inform me that I was getting married. The questions started again and they wanted to be ready. As with most things in my life, I wasn’t given a choice. The alliance suited them and I got married.
The first month of my marriage was exciting. I wanted her and I didn’t know her. It was a beautiful combination. Ten years have passed since then. I know her now and my want is long dead. Like all the important things in my life, marital bliss eluded me. Not for the lacking of trying. However much I tried, I couldn’t live up to the image she set out for me. Nothing satisfied her and she ranted about everything.
I got her a diamond ring once for our fifth anniversary (Fifth or sixth? I’m not sure which). I wanted to surprise her and sort of compensate for the many times I forgot the occasion. The first thing she said was,
“It’s a bit too small, don’t you think?”
I don’t know how she does it but she always manages to turn any gratitude or nicety I feel towards her into resentment which would melt into indifference.
Fortunately, I begot a son barely a year after the wedding (my parents were ecstatic since I provided the answer without asking); it was my son who saved our marriage. Without him, we would have been two bitter people bickering at each other. Now, we are just two people who don’t mind one another. That’s probably a euphemism. If we were uninterested in one another, that would have been fine. We were disinterested, which made it unbearable. Thankfully, we had our routines to stick to, so our feelings or the lack thereof never created a major problem. We became inured.
The questions never stopped coming. Once they were about me, my life, and my future. Now they are about my son. There’s no escape. I was foolish to think giving into them would stop them. Giving in only makes them worse. There’s no end to this spiral. I’m tired now. If it was physical exhaustion it would have been alright but it’s the mental drudgery and it’s rotting me from the inside. I’ve become numb for so long. Even if I were to be allowed despite my obligations to pursue something I wanted to do, there’s a good chance, I might collapse at the sudden freedom of such pursuit.
Maybe in another time, in another world, I’d have found my voice. I’d have protested instead of giving in. I’d have become the cool doctor I’d always dreamt of. Maybe that side of paradise is a difficult life than this; maybe it’s appealing because it escapes me. But somehow I’m sure, as sure as when I say I-don’t-know that that side will not have the one thing that defined my life: regret.
Suma Mandalapu 