Have you ever had the feeling of being an outsider?
I prefer not to write introspective posts, not on my blog at least. I save them for my register, where I write agonized speeches, heart rending verses or bitchy spiels. In long hand, no less. It makes it more personal and helps me vent!
Oh boy, can I be a bitch or what?
Rest assured I am not going to inflict them upon you guys. No, it’s not out of consideration for you, but for me. I need you people.
And I am a firm believer in the age old adage
Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.
For the past few weeks, I have been living in “the winter of discontent” so to say. I feel like an outsider, so alone. It’s not a new feeling for me. I have always been the outsider. It started from my childhood, this feeling. As a kid, my father was posted in various far flung outreaches of the country. My first living memory has been of living in a Brahmin colony in Bangalore. Kids spoke Kannada, so did I. I tried my utmost to fit in. But then my skin gave me away. I wanted the nut brown skin of my fellow playmates, just to fit in.
Then we lived in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Guwahati, Manipur, … and I was the Punjabi kid in a foreign land. It possibly aggravated the feeling of being an outsider
When we came back for vacations or even when I joined Delhi Univ, I was the outsider. You see, in my urge to fit in, I had imbibed certain ways of thinking or attitudes that were foreign to the north Indians.
The image I have of myself is that of a person peeping in through the window at close knit groups of people sitting and talking.
This feeling really intensifies when I attend family functions where there are cliques. I kid you not, there really are cliques of people who grew up together while I did my own thing in the far flung outreaches of India.
Mostly it does not bother me. Living away imparted a certain individuality to my psyche which has served me fine. I am in tune with my own self, since I was the only constant factor in my life. But then, just sometimes, I do get this urge to belong … not be an outsider.
What triggered this, I haven’t a clue. Why I am inflicting this upon you, my dear reader, I haven’t a clue either.
Perhaps I am just feeling lonely.
I think I just need to go pick a fight, just to feel better.