It’s Saturday and I am back at railway station. I actually wanted to come to this station today. I find the same bench that I sat on last week empty and rush towards that seat. I don’t want anyone else to beat me to that bench. There are some kids playing some sort of game in front of me. My mind forces me to relive the memory of my childhood. I hear the gentle pushiness in its voice. “Let’s hear it.”
I spent whole of last week figuring out if this railway station was a guy or a girl. I have read somewhere that in languages like Japanese it’s easier to deduce the gender of the speaker by their choice of certain words. Well, in this case figuring out the gender of this station was out of the question. Coming out of my reverie I began narrating an incident from my childhood.
There was this game that we used to use to select teams for playing hide and seek. All the kids in the group were given a name of a fruit. An older child would call the name of the fruit and the kid with the name of that fruit would be a part of the team that played hide and seek. I was named okra and I was fine with that because I loved okra anyway. It took me sometime to realize that it was a trick played on me by the other kids to alienate me. As a little child it just hurt me that they didn’t consider me in that game, but as and by I got older, I understood that it was just the way things worked. In its own disorganized way, this world is extremely organized; organized into different groups. Everyone wants some kind of exclusivity and the only way to achieve that is to be a part of an exclusive group; a group of developed countries or third world countries or this type of countries or that type of countries. When it comes to school, all kids belong to their own cliques; popular kids or athletes or geeks or jerks or talented or just plain nerds or someone like me. I am the one who doesn’t belong to any of these cliques. It’s silly really, but in its own way it’s a highly evolved way of categorizing people. It’s the most convenient way of looking at things, by understanding the clique; you understand the people in that clique and define them in the most convenient way. You know, it’s like when a person says that I am from such and such a country, I get a basic profile of that person in my mind. I know it’s not right to be judgmental about people, still I guess it’s an instinct that we humans are born with; associating everything that we see, eat, drink and everyone we meet, hang out with, care for, live with - all belong to certain groups. You know it’s an age old battle between botanists about tomato being a fruit or a vegetable? I mean who cares if tomato is a fruit or a vegetable? How does it matter to which clique a kid belongs? I find that it’s a successful way of distancing one person from another and that’s what scares me the most. I heaved out a big sigh feeling emotionally drained after my monologue. It was quiet for a long time. Of course, it wasn’t quite forever.
“Everyone wants to be special. Everyone wants to be elite. Feeling like that is something that you don’t have to be ashamed of. In your family, your parents and relatives will treat you as a special kid; amongst your close friends, you are treated like a special person. But amongst a bigger group of people, this might be something that is hard to achieve for most of the people. So this big group gets broken into smaller groups and these groups into much smaller groups and this process goes on till one exclusive group is formed. In this group, everyone is great; everyone is special. It feels great to be noticed. I know that with all your complaints about being judgmental and getting hurt by being alienated, all you wanted was to belong isn’t it? Now that you found out that till date you haven’t found a group that you can call it as your own, are you going to quit? If you do, then it would be plain stupid. I cannot fully promise you that one day you will find the right people to hang out with, but I can promise you that you will definitely see a person’s admirable quality when you don’t associate them in any group of cliques. The preconceived notion about a group or a sect doesn’t allow you to see what’s actually they are made up of. I am sure, no, I am certain that there are few people in your class who can see something that they admire but they think that you are so different from them that maybe they could be wrong about you. So you see, it’s not only you who have issues with cliques and groups, but also people who belong to some cliques and groups face similar difficulties. Give them a chance; give yourself a chance. I am sure you will make some wonderful discovery about people you know. Now why don’t you run along and forget about going to the platform? I know you can find a better way of relaxing your rest of the weekend than talking to a non-existent entity.”
I really don’t want to leave this place. At least not right now. Like my mom used to say when I was a kid, playtime should always come to an end. I know I am going to be here next week.
Next Saturday: It's because I know that if I can be emotionally hurt by one person, then I can be healed by another.
Labels: Original fiction - Series
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