Confused

I'd written this around the middle of our second semester

There was some sort of frustration. However, a blast of air, rich with the scent of rotting tamarind, swept it away to some corner of the mind. The other things came into focus.

I was returning to the hostel, from mess, seated near the window of our IISER bus. The night was cool. The humid burden that was building up in the air since the past few days was finally shed this afternoon. The rain-washed earth gave off the most delicious fragrance. As an immediate aftermath I was high. I kept chattering, even while I was in the process of spreading my bacteria on the agar medium, or while I was preparing my molybdenum blue. I wasn’t yet tired. Till I remembered I had got work to do.

And work always consisted of much more stuff to do than the ‘real’ thing. I didn’t go much further from here.

Then I reflect, things were not so tough back home (Oh, how I miss home!) when I used to go to a school I loathed then. But I miss it now. All the memories whizz through the mind. I realise there was really no valid reason to hate school.

And then I came to this Institute, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research. I was very excited. I had seen the wonderful instruments around. I had seen the pictures in the ‘Kalpa’ magazine and some light-hearted printouts stuck up near the PhD experiment tables. Wow! I am going to become a scientist! And that too, a creative one, I thought. It will be wonderful working with these people I see around. And since this is a new institute, it is going to be us who are going to shape it. We will have so much scope! So much freedom, so much opportunity.

The first semester seems to have passed in the wink of an eye. Everything was new, everyone was enthusiastic. There seemed to be so much time and yet not enough. We always wanted to do something though we did not know what.

Why don’t I feel the same now? It is the second semester. I am beginning to feel homesick. Things around seems to have changed. And I do not know for how long this is going to remain. Some sort of boredom, some sort of emptiness has set in and I am still trying to fight my way through- this must not be an equilibrium.

I ask myself, why? A flood of thoughts respond at the same time and in the commotion my answer is lost. I ignore it and go on, trying to keep my mind occupied with neutral things, like science.

I see people around, lost in their work, not caring to reflect. I envy them. I wonder, did they ever have to face the confusion I feel at the moment. Or am I the only one confused?