Voices

24th of this month, a nondescript pale green envelope with my name written on it arrived home. It's contents were much awaited and anticipated by the writer; his drivers license. It is the first acknowledgment of the writer's legal step into the adulthood. Now armed with a puny little plastic card and a truck load of courage, he  decided to drive around a bit and try not to hit anything. For my first drive, our driver uncle was sitting beside me, ready to pull the handbrakes if anything happened. Throughout the course of next few days I discovered my shortfalls were many; missing half pedal most of the time and rolling back, few judgmental errors, rather fuzzy idea about the size of the car and lack of awareness of road etiquette. I got scolded by a policeman and another driver who's front bumper was saved by driver uncle's timely intervention. The perks were also many. The feeling you have when you are smoothly sailing along the road, behind the wheel is something...

This morning during my aimless web wanderings I stumbled upon book review about a book on introversion in Goodreads. An hour later I was sifting through the brightly lit pages in my laptop. I could only read through the first chapter which dabbled a bit with definitions of introversion and extroversion and the cultural history of both so called 'personality types' in USA ( No comments !) I just now closed the book after feeling scared of knowing what the next few chapters would hold. I scored pretty high on the authors introvert test, so I know my group well enough. The author raised questions about whether is it really necessary to be outgoing, aggressive, to speak a lot and what do you do when you are with a room full of people and want to jump out of the fire exit. I was not unfamiliar with these, especially the last one. I remember giving up my opportunity to take a physics class for teacher's day in school even though I loved and sort of understood the topics given ...

I know I have not written much in a while and that is not because nothing interesting is happening in my life or because I'm too busy to write. I've been feeling blue and feared that if I write something these feelings might spill over to it. The realization that it doesn't matter, these words are my canvas which I can paint whatever shade of blue I want came only today. I had just typed a sentence saying how two new great things in my life had not gone the way I wanted before I realized that I was nitpicking. One of them, though quite tough had made me for the first time, stand on my own completely and take responsibility. It was (still is, as it is going on) a great learning experience , helping me generate knowledge on my own for the first time and believe me once you have had taste of it, you'll never stop. On the other foot, I learned how much essential people who assist you and mentor you are. The second thing also didn't turn out the way I wanted to and ...

You might have read about my previous brushes with vehicles, driving school and the RTO. This is where the curtains fall : the end or rather optimistically, the beginning. One week before my driving test I decided to go home for the weekend and visit my paternal grandparent's house. First morning I was greeted by incessant rain tapping the windows, damp air laden with smell of fresh soil. Don't ask me what smell of soil is :) It is supposed to be a very subtle and short lived smell that comes just after the first rains at the end of the summer. So in this damp and decidedly cold atmosphere I decided to learn swimming in one of the three ponds in the house which were all filled to the brim, often becoming one with land during the rains. Me and two of my cousins splashed around in the ice cold water for 2-3 hrs under my father's supervision and in the process managed to catch a severe cold. Nevertheless I learned how to stay afloat in water :D By the time I had to go...