The Ramblings Of A Young Mind

Who am I?

 One of the most far reaching questions ever. Adam asked it, when devil and his loved one tempted him with the apple(didn’t know till then that an apple could also be a temptation…..ugghh!!). And I ask it too, even today, even now. The question haunts me: In my thoughts. In my words and in my deeds too. Like A stalker with his victim in sight it has followed me all through….right from the time I learned to think straight.

SO WHO THE HELL AM I??

I searched far and wide. Deep and high.  And the answer dawned on my brain as I sat dreaming in the Maths class…. I jump up, bang my hand on the plank of wood in front of me (Oops!! Sorry!! It was just my desk….) and looks around jubilantly…… right into a pair of beetle-black eyes. Then a voice uttered: “GET OUT!!” Oops!! The teacher. Shit! Fuck the piece of inspiration and its awkward timing. Dragging my feet nosily (purposely of course!!) I make my way out. My head was bowed. But my heart thrummed with excitement. The hunt had reached its last chapter. Now all I had to do was to read the epilogue.

Transition: From the airy classroom, I walk into an altogether different world. Paradise, heaven,( Take your pick mate, do I look as if I care??) smote me full on the face as I emerged from the room. Loyola greeted me with its usual splendor. The sight of THE heaven that I have been seeing for the past seven years and one which never tires the eye ignited a warm glow in my heart( Sorry. I tend to go on like this. It is about Loyola after all, isn’t it… ). This was school. No. This IS home. The abode of 1763 souls(yup! Took the number!! ) who are groomed to take on the world. This is heaven indeed.

It was seven years back that I ventured into this tropical paradise. A puny youngster who was scared of school, teachers and even his own class mates. I remember the first day at school when a two-feet twenty pounds “giant” terrified me. Well, that was me. A cry baby. One who cried for his mother to take him home when she so unwittingly came to school. Soft-spoken and timid to the core.

But that was how things WERE. Not how things ARE. Time has evolved. And so have I. Years have passed since then and even as I stood outside gazing perplexed at the brightly(and recently) painted rail, I knew deep inside that some change had consumed me. It had always been there. I was just, you know, dumb enough not to acknowledge it.

 The puny youngster was engulfed, gagged and washed away in a wave of raw change.

In his place now is a changed person. A total stranger to the little young one of those past years.

The Abin Francis who ventured past the wrought iron gates one hot afternoon all those years back is not the Abin Francis of today. The world has changed. Loyola has changed. But it has taken its students along with it. For I am one of the thousands molded by Loyola. Like the many before me and the many after me, I am different. Unique to the point that what you see here, what you hear here, what you experience here, is not up for grabs anywhere else. Unique to the point of non-existence….

….As I stand there, I leg propped on the wall, reclining, feeling the cool breeze on face, into the periphery of my vision, a white clad figure walked in(guess who ):The Principal had come for me. Swearing profusely at anything and anybody I could think of, I spun around slowly to face disaster. But as I did so, the fucking realization dawned on me, once again, yet again displaying its lousy sense of timing, its total lack of consideration for me and its endless desire to dump me unceremoniously in crap holes….. But as one hand stretched out to my ear and a much revered(and equally feared!! ) voice questioned the teacher at length regarding the sudden stroke of inspiration that prompted her to so kindly exclude me from the class, my heart leaped joyously with triumph and these words blazed clearly in my mind, as if seared in the very fires of the purgatory:

I am Abin Francis and I………I am a Loyolite..