By Pankti Dalal
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| brightstar210.deviantart.com/ |
At the tender age of
seventeen I am suddenly informed that I have to find myself a place, an
identity amongst this crowd. That is what I am afraid of. Not being good
enough, not smart enough, and not pretty enough. For most of my teenage life I
felt rebellious, rebellious to all the things society stood for. My faith in
humanity faded along with the smile on my face. My parents made me believe for
most of my childhood that the world around me was a comfortable one and that I
would find my niche in no time.
It’s been 17 years and yet
I don’t know where I belong. I share my niche with so many like-minded
young leaders that even Darwin agrees that my survival is impossible. The
differing opinions of people affect me and mould me so greatly, that suddenly
the line between appearance and reality is fainter than ever.
People tell me that
external beauty isn’t important and inner beauty is what matters. They lie. If
you are below average height, you are quite literally looked down upon. You
don’t need a flat stomach for someone to love you but you do need one for
someone to notice you. If you find books more interesting than people you
must be a nerd. And if you are friends with more than the necessary amount of
boys, then you must be a slut! The world judges you and you judge the world;
that’s how the game of life works.
This may sound like the
plot of typical teenage movie but unfortunately there is no happily ever after.
This is reality and the appearance of it is quite deceptive. Just when you
think you have figured it all out, it comes crashing right at you. You may
think you have fixed all the damage that could hamper your functioning, but the
solution is never a permanent one. I feel like running on top of the highest
cliff and screaming to the world, “Be more real, stop lying to me, stop hiding,
and just give it to me all at once.”
Just when I desperately
longed for actual reality, I realized that no one wants that. I don’t want to
step out into the streets of Delhi knowing that a woman was recently raped. I
don’t want to spoil my fancy dinner at Taj, thinking that it was earlier
targeted by terrorists. I don’t want to know that the world is ending in a few
days; it’s just been seventeen years and I have a long way to go.
Sometimes appearance is
good enough. Sometimes you need to believe that there is a perfect world even
though the reality may be quite different. You and I both need that delusional
optimism, and with it, I hope to find my place in the world. I may not be
good enough for the world, but I will be naive enough to shun aside my reality
and the moment this happens, I will know that I have carved out a place for
myself in this world.
