Fashion is about dressing according to what's fashionable. Style is more about being yourself.
Hi,
This is Karthika. I am different – I wear glasses and am easily the shortest in a group of people. Oh yes, I look different (always proud of my height). I just joined into a prestigious engineering college in Chennai. Yes, you guessed it right. I am second-grade, unfit to become a doctor. But wait. I didn’t get it all through luck. I got it through management seat. My parents have paid 1 lakh INR for the registration and first year fees, and every year, they need to pay 1 Lakh. That makes the worth of my degree 4 Lakhs other expenses excluded!
My cousin, Divya, entered into this college too. Same age, same year, same department, same class. Now, we don’t share a great relationship, and both side parents keep comparing us for every other thing. I wanted to keep away from her as much as possible all through my school days. But as fate would have it, I am locked up with her for four awful years.. four aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawful years!! I can’t imagine living four long years with her around my back. 4x245x8x60x60 seconds of my life had to be spent with her.
I often imagine my mom’s lamentations:
OMG!! Endlessly it’s going to be the same boring stuff. The very thought of it sends shivers down my spine
We are both day scholars. Luckily, I stay at Mandaiveli, and she at Ambattur. So, at least, we will be taking different route buses from college! At least a small respite for the tortured mind.
I am a very good dreamer with no clear goals. I myself hate for it to this very day. I dream of French. France! Paris! The Eiffel Tower, Nice, Cannes, oh, the list is endless..
I want to be as fluent in speaking French as the French people themselves. For what reason? Don’t ask me that. I love French beyond words and that is a craziness that rages within me day-in and day-out as an eternal flame. I want to learn French at any cost, no matter what. Incapable of pursuing my dream, I am one vain creature sitting with my Engineering Graphics drawing.
Bharati - my elder sister - was a topper all her life. She has graduated from the best medical college in Chennai.
My parents are extremely disciplined people. My dad is a professor of Statistics and my mom, Botany.
Almost, all my school days, I had been compared with my sister and rebuked openly by my parents and teachers alike:
“How could you be Bharati’s sister? She never got such horrible marks in all her life. What a shame to your sister’s name”,
And now I was getting all set to be snubbed alongside my cousin. Heights of irritation! Whenever was I going to be free of all this nonsense in all my life?
I wasn’t particularly a last ranker. I used to hit the first five ranks somehow. Now, the point is that, Bharati was one person, who, if given a chance between giving up first rank and her life, she would gladly choose the latter. Hence, compared to her, of course, I was “hopeless”.
Thus, I was understandably, the useless brat, born ‘out of place’ and raised without another choice.
Not to forget, my most inspiring mind did the trick most of the time saying, “Of course, you are worthless. Your parents don’t allow you to study French. You know for sure you are never ever going to study French again. Already you would have forgotten almost all the basics you learnt in the first level. It’s no use anymore. Go become a software engineer like everybody else. Like every Dick and Tom and Harry. No other way!”
I was sure if I ever died that way, I would be one of those unsatisfied spirits roaming around the earth, waiting to fulfill an unfulfilled desire(if one such concept truly exists). Oh how I wish it does!!
I am an amateur Chess player. I won a chess gold medal sometime way back in school. I enjoy playing the game, but for the fact that I know nothing more than which directions the pieces move.
The most horrible part of my life is its mundane, nothing changes at all, it’s the same yesterday, today and forever. Oh! I loathe it.
And, I love reading books. I read a lot of books, some interest me, many don’t. I am a fan of Agatha Christie. I sound old-fashioned, don’t I? I want to one day write a book that I would enjoy reading every day of my life. No, this book will not be written to make money, not to become a best-seller, but to be enjoyed by me, to be enjoyed by someone who enjoys my taste. For no one else. It’s definitely not for every Dick and Tom and Harry. It would be for someone special – for me!!
I dreamt of visiting France, the Champs-Élysées, the tour Eiffel, the Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, the Seine, the Bateaux Mouches, Luxembourg Gardens, Palais de Versailles, Marseilles, French Riviera…. Oh!! Dreams are divine!!