THE TRANSITION

It is such a pleasure to be back to the world of blogging after so long! During the last few months, I have a number of jobs at hand to be completed one after the other; but at the same time, there is a phase of ‘transition’ going on in the sphere of my thoughts, emotions, imaginations and above all, my perception of the world around me. Thanks to my preparation for the TOEFL, I had to listen to a lecture on Psychology in which the professor was discussing that human beings can be broadly categorized as ‘thinker’s or ‘feeler’s; of course thinkers do feel and feelers do think, but one of the two processes is predominant. However, as of now, I find it difficult to decide where I should place myself, for they have been mixed up in such an inseparable fashion! Well, so let me share with you what I think as well as what I feel these days.

         

          After 4 years of life as engineering students, when a majority of my batch-mates left the campus as pass-out graduates, there was an unnoticed huge void created in the surroundings for me who decided to stay for one more year to complete the master’s degree. Now in the fifth year, when I attend the classes, cycle along the roads, eat in the mess, the scarcity of familiar faces becomes quite conspicuous. The few known ones staying for one more year were very aptly described as ‘oasis in a desert’ by one of my friends in her Facebook status a few days back. To me it seems as if I gradually settled to an equilibrium over the past 4 years and now all on a sudden I have been perturbed so heavily that I am striving to attain a new equilibrium, knowing very well that the old one no longer exists; or as if I have been subjected to a step change in the environment, the faster I reach the steady state, the better. But when we look at life as a whole, such perturbations or step changes are very frequent. In fact there may arrive numerous moments at which we will be devoid of the minimum comfort we require. So we all need to learn how to accept and tackle such hardships. Initially it is a painful task, but once we are used to it, the pain reduces, and there are people for whom the reduced pain turns into a source of enjoyment.

          I was once asked by one of my friends, “What is the ultimate thing that you want in life?” I could not give him any immediate answer, so he told me to give a thought to it, mentioning that it takes years for people to come to a conclusion in this regard. A few days back a similar question knocked my mind, “What is it that makes me the happiest?” I thought of several possible options this time, but then the difference between ‘happy’ and ‘happiest’ prevented me from choosing the best among them. However, I discovered a job which indeed makes me happy every time I do it irrespective of my mood and work-load, and that is to help people in need. I feel a sense of immense satisfaction whenever I am able to fulfill what somebody’s expectation with the very little knowledge and experience I have. The expectation may vary from an explanation of an academic topic to a gentle support in a personal matter; and I, incapable of providing an expert solution at least at this stage of life, feel contented even if I can lessen the burden off shoulder of the person at the other end. This is something that reminds me of an old saying in my mother tongue Bengali, which, when translated into English, sounds something like, “Everybody is there for everybody else, each one of us is there to serve others”. This is one of the fundamental responsibilities of an individual and also a key to an otherwise unattainable happiness.

          As a child, one of my favorite advertisements was that of ‘Complan’, in which a woman used to wonder how her son had grown up so soon when the latter used to carry her in a bicycle. The word ‘grown up’ seems very interesting as well as mysterious to me.  How do we realize that we have really ‘grown up’? It is not just the growth of limbs that count, growth is a process intimately associated with the mind. To view the interior of the mind, let us first recall the video of the song “Pal Bhar Ke Liye” in the 1970 film “Johny Mera Naam”. There we see a house with an astonishingly large number of windows and openings; the moment the heroine closes one of them, the hero peeps through the neighboring one. Our mind is just like a house with an infinite number of windows, the existence of many of which we are not aware of all the time. They are of widely different nature; some of them shiver when there is a cool breeze while some others do not bother to respond except for a devastating storm. When we are safe and protected in mother’s womb, all of them remain closed. As we are exposed to the heat and light of this world and then experience ups and downs, love and hatred, affection and rudeness, friendship and enmity, rewards and shocks, they open according to their nature. Whenever one of them opens, we feel as if we have ‘grown up’ - become wiser, more mature and more experienced.

          I agree that whatever I have said in the last paragraph is nothing more than an abstract way to visualize the mental growth. Let us take an example. As teenagers, we are the most sensitive to almost all sorts of static and dynamic forces in our surroundings. As we step into the early twenties, the sensitivity is accompanied by a subtle sense of rationality. As a consequence, this entire stage in our life becomes the period in which several windows open in a relatively short amount of time and hence there is a general transition: in academics - ‘from a student to a responsible student’ as commented by one of my professors, and overall – from a young boy or girl to a sensible and responsible human being.