School gets over at 2.35pm. It was 3.05pm when I angrily made my way to the phone booth having just borrowed 2 bucks from a friend. I called my mum expecting her to say the driver had left long back and that he should be there any minute. What she said was that she’d completely forgotten to send the car. This frustrated me more, because it meant that after having shouted myself hoarse at the juniors during dispersal duty and after having waited half an hour in the on-again off-again rain I now had to wait another 10 – 15 minutes for the car to reach me from my mum’s shop. In another 5 minutes the street was empty. Both the school gates had cleared and were now empty. Even the traffic, at which I had been looking so expectantly, cleared, with no sign of the car. This wasn’t the first time my car had been late, but this was the most late it had been. And just like on previous occasions I began to contemplate taking a cab. This was just a result of the anger because I had never traveled alone by public transport. I had taken cabs but with friends or cousins. And anyone who knows me can tell you how unlike me that sounded. Then I remembered a cousin once telling me that she’d had to walk to my mum’s shop from school because even though it was a fairly long walk, cabbies wouldn’t go that short a distance. Not being able to stand around waiting any longer, at about 3.15pm I began walking away from school. Before I had realized it or thought about what I was doing I began walking angrily away from school, in the direction that would take me to my mum’s shop. At the end of the sidewalk adjacent to my school building I took a moment to realize that after that there was no turning back, from that point onwards school uniform on or not I would be on the real streets of the city walking like any other pedestrian.
As I stomped my way across the muddy, puddle filled streets of Calcutta I felt the strangest mix of emotions. I was angry but at the same time proud of myself. I was walking briskly as a way to vent my anger and annoyance but I had plenty of time to realize that for the first time I was walking all alone and getting acquainted with a city in which I had lived the entire seventeen years of my life. I passed familiar building after building and took the route I had taken a zillion times before but always in a car, in a shell, protected. Today when I had broken that shell, broken free of that protection, albeit in a very small way, I felt liberated, and confident, and strong. It may be silly that I feel this way because I know many girls my age and younger than me who take public transport alone on a daily basis or who are used to walking to places but it was a seminal moment in my life (at least in my teenage life) and I was proud of myself. I am the kind of girl whose mother is afraid of letting her go away for college because she is unsure if I can make it on my own. Well guess what ma? I just did!
What I learnt from my little adventure today was that there may be a lot of things I have never done before but there is nothing that I can’t do provided I am determined ( or angry ) enough to try.
As I stomped my way across the muddy, puddle filled streets of Calcutta I felt the strangest mix of emotions. I was angry but at the same time proud of myself. I was walking briskly as a way to vent my anger and annoyance but I had plenty of time to realize that for the first time I was walking all alone and getting acquainted with a city in which I had lived the entire seventeen years of my life. I passed familiar building after building and took the route I had taken a zillion times before but always in a car, in a shell, protected. Today when I had broken that shell, broken free of that protection, albeit in a very small way, I felt liberated, and confident, and strong. It may be silly that I feel this way because I know many girls my age and younger than me who take public transport alone on a daily basis or who are used to walking to places but it was a seminal moment in my life (at least in my teenage life) and I was proud of myself. I am the kind of girl whose mother is afraid of letting her go away for college because she is unsure if I can make it on my own. Well guess what ma? I just did!
What I learnt from my little adventure today was that there may be a lot of things I have never done before but there is nothing that I can’t do provided I am determined ( or angry ) enough to try.
