That went so?

Travelling in an Indian train is almost equivalent to rocking back and forth on a swing when you have no actual desire to fly. Although on a swing you are down in the dumps metaphorically, here amongst the leftover food waiting to be thrown on the tracks, empty plastic wrappers and water bottles, and the spit-out paan, you are literally down in the dumps. 

Even after an entire day and two power naps later, I'm a little woozy like after a roller coaster ride. A part of me also feels I smell a little but mother keeps insisting it's olfactory hallucination.

As I remove my laptop from my bag, a part of me recalls last night when I was readjusting the same bag, again and again, to use as a very uncomfortable pillow. Later giving up and just sitting to get the view of the undulating countryside even though it's abysmally visible rather than the starless sky that is quite depressing, honestly. 

The current view of my bedroom window is not magnificent either, the horizontal grills keep interfering in the line of vision but at least the stars are visible to an extent. Also, the headlights of the cars on the highway ahead can create an illusion of fireflies if you allow them. 

Even though this had been an arduous trip, the thought of reaching home almost caused aversion. Don't get me wrong, I was looking forward to meeting everyone. However, the idea of the revelation of my plans to my parents tightens the coil of anxiety and makes me want to rescind this entire trip. Yesterday seems like a century ago, and everything has been going well so far. Though in my internal dilemma, it just feels like the calm before the storm.  

The buzzing of my phone distracts me from my internal turmoil. I call from Ivy, a human who is a perfect combination of ludicrous and scrupulousness and currently the only capable person to save me from my contend. 

"OMG! look who is alive!" she shouts even before I can bring the phone to my ear.

Now is the best chance I'm ever going to get to trip Ivy after being the moronic victim to almost all her pranks. Also, Ivy is a distraction that I desperately need because, at the rate at which I've been thinking about everyone's response, I'm soon going to work myself into an anxiety attack.

"Hello?" I do my best imitation of my mom, "Ye kaun hai?"

Pretending to be someone else and embarrassing your overenthusiastic friend for being loud is not the best or most creative prank in the history of pranks, but it's alright for a beginner, right? Right.

"Namaste, aunty!" she sounds so mortified. I can almost imagine her tugging her hair and mentally cursing to herself in a way that she had done numerously before when she spoke the wrong thing or at the wrong time or person or all of the above, "Is Kiran there?"  

"You are speaking to her," I reply and release an involuntary chortle.

"Oh god!" she groans, "Why would you do that?! Do you know how embarrassed I was? You are the most insufferable, infuriating, poorest excuse of a friend I-"

"Is there a reason you called?" I cut her off because, as amusing as it was to trick Ivy, I cannot handle another trip down the memory lane, which she is eventually going to launch into of all the times she's chagrined. 

"Well, I haven't heard from you since yesterday," she huffs, "I wanted to know if you have talked to your parents yet."

"I'm trying to settle in and, you know, plan out what I'm going to say-" I start.

"Meaning playing every single possible scenario and outcome in your head and working out everything that can go wrong?" she asks rhetorically. 

It's almost indurating at times how well she knows me and my habits.

"No," Yes.

 "After being friends with me for more than two years, have you learnt nothing?" Here we go with the life mantra again, "worrying makes you suffer as many times as you think about it,"

I know that, god I do! It's not like I purposely work myself up every time for the smallest of tasks, but you can't understand what it feels when your inner coil tightens around you and constricts you from breathing or doing anything other than thinking about it. Though I can't tell this to Ivy, I know she'll try to understand, maybe even sympathise, but it will make her feel bad and will be more out of pity.  I have to stop thinking about it otherwise I will start crying out of frustration and no, just no. 

"First of all, you just quoted/twisted Newt Scamander's words,-" I say I my voice as level as it can be with a bit of smugness.

"Beside the point," she interrupts.

"Secondly, easier said than done." 

"Kiran, think of it this way, you are eventually going to tell them, right? No point and procrastinating and postponing it and making yourself suffer through it again and again. Also, what's the worst-case scenario here? It's not like they are going to disown you and never talk to you again. Maybe they'll be sour for a while, but then eventually everything will go back to normal."

That's the great thing about Ivy. Even though she does not understand the entire concept of anxiety, she won't give you faux assurance about disaffections. Even when you are stuck in bad situations, she distracts you and prolongs you from worrying so that you freak out at the right time. Mostly, acting maturely like an adult person.

"Yeah, okay. I'll do it tomorrow." I agree, "Anyway, what's up with you?"

"Well, my brother-dearest here ate all the crackers and left all the broken ones for me and WON'T HAND ME THE TV REMORT WHICH IS SERIOUSLY CUTTING MY CARTOON TIME!" she passive-aggressively shouts the second half to her brother, I guess.

Scratch whatever I said before, Ivy is a childish twit.

We talk for about an hour before I fall asleep while talking and hit my head on the grills of the window when she was talking about the latest show she started watching. She recommends I watch it, but I know I'll keep repeating the same series that I've watched hundreds of times before. I bid Ivy goodbye and circumvent a comfortable position (or as comfortable it can get) to fall asleep. The efficacy of nervousness is still present. However, in this no-man's-land between sleep and consciousness, the trepidation seems almost feigned. 

 When I wake up, it is because of the incessant clamour and chaos in my dream, the palpable drop in temperature due to the open window, and partially because of the overwrought feeling that I will miss my station when it strikes me that I'm already home. Even though I have more than three hours before everyone wakes up, I decide there no use in trying to fall asleep with the tumult within. Also, there is an agitated voice that keeps insisting me to think what if dropping out of college doesn't work out as I thought. I close the window and stand up. I try to stretch my limbs though they are so heavy and numb it creates an underwater illusion. 

 I switch on my phone and realise it's about to die and rush to my study table plug it in, grateful to have a working powerpoint, unlike yesterday that made me vary in using my phone because it will die and, I will be left with no means of communication. Though observing the exodus of passengers get in and out and perpetual railway tracks did a laudable job in keeping my thoughts of future acrimonious discussions at bay even though they adhere. Sadly, no such distractions are available today. 

With nothing much to do and for a space from the failure outcomes, I start reminiscing about my very first train rides along with my parents. We used to carry packets of crips and soda bottles, how I would always fight for the window seat and then question my mother about the crops of multiple farms. I also recall being paranoid whenever my father would get off at some station to buy something or to look around, and I would freak out and beg for him to come back so that he doesn't get left behind.

"Kiran?" my mother whispers, and I bang my knees on the corner of the table and feel an electric current pass through my entire leg.

"What are you doing up?" she opens the door wider, enters my room and turns on the light. 

I close my eyes effectively blinded by the brightness. 

"I need to talk to you and dad about something," I say, it's now or never.

"Oh, okay," she says, still squinting, "wait, let me go and pick your dad up."

"No, we can talk in the morning..." I trail off because she is already out of the room. Maybe it's just best to get over it, and if they disapprove we can all pretend it never happened like some nocturnal tomfoolery. 

"Kiran?" dad comes in and sits down, mom following close behind "what happened, sweetheart?" 

The nickname tugs my heartstrings, god.

"I wanted to talk to you about college." I want to disappear, maybe I should just tell them my test scores and call it a night. No, you are already here just spit it out.

"Yeah? Just know that we are very proud of you, and you are doing amazing, none of us has gone so far up until you," he says.

God really laying it all out here, arent you?

"It's just," I look at the bottom of the wall where it connets the floor and is not painted well, not the point right now kiran, focus! "I just think I'm not intellucatly challanged enough there now," Oh god, what if they flip out "And my software desiginging business has been picking up," don't look at them! "So I was planning to drop out of collage and persue it full time?" it comes out more like a question and I'm teriffied and throat is so dry, I feel like I'm going to throw up. 

I grab my water bottle, hands shaking and take a sip. Finally when I look at them father has a furrowed expression on his face and mother is staring into void.

Finally after what seems like an enternity, he speaks up.

"Okay."

Okay? Okay what? No this is a waste of time, no reminder how you paid my tution, no-

"You are a big girl, you are smart, you know what's good for you so I'm not going to hold you back" he says and pats my back. "Tell me more about the business in the morning tho" he says and leaves.

Well, that went .... well.