2022 was supposed to be my last year in high school and the start of my college life. After two years in the pandemic, immense hardships, and mental breakdowns, it was all about to come to a sweet end, but “supposed” is the third word I used and it didn’t end as sweetly as I thought it would.
2022 could be classified as annus horribilis for me. Annus horribilis for those who might not know is a Latin phrase for “horrible year” famously used by the now-dead Queen Elizabeth to define the infamous year of 1992 for the Royal Family. My horrible year might not have been as grandly messed up as Elizabeth’s but in terms of the small human I am, it was quite messed up on a large scale.
It all started in April when the decision for my applications to foreign universities came back to back. I still remember as clearly as a day how hard the process was for me. I come from a small town in India, here dreams are not meant to be grand they are meant to be seen in your “aukaat”. I being the alien inorganic human dreamt of the stars when my “aukaat” was not even the clouds.
It was incredibly difficult to understand each aspect of the applications without anyone’s help, to read through each aspect, look over the minute details and then finally sit down and fill out the application. An application of an Indian student dreaming to study abroad should have a lot of extraordinary additions to it, and I had few, or maybe even none. I couldn’t give SAT, the fee of $60 was too much payment for my family to handle. I couldn’t give IELTS or TOEFL too for the same reasons, my family’s economic status was not strong enough. I didn’t have IB education or AP classes, all of which count as better attributes to your application. I couldn’t pay the fees for the application and thus only applied to colleges that had fee waivers for application fees. I couldn’t pay for a CSS profile, something that allows you to have financial aid, and thus used waiver codes from colleges. I didn’t have teachers who could cope with these complicated processes so every piece of writing in the application was my own, from the questions to the letter of recommendation. Quite scandalous as one is strongly advised not to write their LOR, but this is the fate and reality of someone who dreams out of their “aukat” sitting in Bhubaneswar in Odisha, a city some of you reading might not even be aware of or cared about.
The worst of it all is that I dreamt of going abroad even though my family had no means of providing me with such a fancy education. It is somewhere my fault, even dreams have their limits. Beyond a limit, dreams become fantasies. This fantasy of mine was broken too fast as within a month all except one college ( NYU, thank you for accepting this messed up soul ) rejected my application. It did hurt a lot at that time, but I didn’t cry and make it too obvious to my parents who had warned me of falling too hard if I stepped outside my “aukaat”. Thinking back at it, it was all a waste honestly wasn’t it? It was a fantasy, a sheer fantasy that had no means or mere possibility of fulfillment.
Then came the hardest months of June and July as back to back came Class 12th Board results, JEE and NEET. It was bittersweet. I did well on my boards. I scored 94 percent in my CBSE AISSCE in the science stream with a 100 percent score in Biology. My parents rejoiced, though most of it was because I had done better in comparison to my mother’s friends and their kids and better than my school friends. I won’t blame her for comparing me constantly because the way it is coded into our brains we compare ourselves even at the slightest hint of competition. In today’s world of education where every corner you go into is a competitive hellhole, comparison and its consequences are the prices you pay. I can assure you even with 94 percent there were at least 16 people who told me that it would have been much better and wonderful to score 95 percent or above, a comment that I find baffling and funny.
My JEE and NEET went well, not as well as you may think and not as well as getting into a college I would like to study in but well enough to get into any decent engineering or medical college. As a science stream student, this would be a moment of stratospheric joy, but for me this meant nothing.
The only dream I was allowed to dream of in my “aukaat” was cracking the NEET and getting into an AIIMS medical college. This dream checked all the boxes: allowed an instant boost in societal reputation, fulfilled the expectations of family and relatives for an academically meritorious student like me, allowed my parents to send me to college without any financial burden, assured me job throughout life, assured paychecks as soon as I got out of college and living the “Indian dream”. A dream I failed at fulfilling.
A part of me thinks that the reason I couldn’t give my best at achieving this dream, something I did try for my abroad college application, is because the dream is not my own. The dream is someone else’s.
I don’t blame my parents for forcing me to study science or for forcing their expectations of being a doctor upon me, it is what almost every parent in India does. As I said in small-town India even dreams have limits. I could never dream about this, I don’t have it in me to do it. Many might feel but Sahil what’s better than this dream and that too when you are capable of doing it with just a bit of hard work? But what’s the point of studying something and then making a career in it that I eventually grow up to hate? The biggest hurt in this is not the fact that I didn’t get the autonomy of choice but rather that my parents seem to think that I am a failure, a disappointment to not be able to dream their dream.
I tried hard to somehow fulfill my dream. I tried hard to jump into places where I could shift to humanities, a field I adore, worship, and love and see myself doing something in the future, something that I genuinely like and something that aligns with my vision for myself. I remember talking to my friend just days before about how different and gloomy our lives have turned from what we had dreamt for ourselves, as she said, how”smoothly everyone programmed me”. You fail at something you are left with the hope to stand back up, when you are forced to do something that you know you would fail at doing that’s where hope crashes and descends into an abyss.
This is a lament, of broken dreams, of shattered hope.
Of the many tries I did, one was Ashoka University. One of India’s fanciest and most reputed private universities. A place where intellectuals and professors like Saikat Majumdar, Arunava Sinha, Madhavi Menon, Janice Pariat, and others whom I admire and have been in touch with teach. After maybe a month-long admission process, I was finally accepted. I was too happy, almost shaking that a way had opened for me to pursue what I dream of. The cost of it was where my hope was yet again shattered to pieces. Even after receiving a 100% scholarship on tuition fees and at least 56 emails, my fees wouldn’t go down from 8 lakhs for three years. I gathered all the hope I had carried in my heart and drowned it.
My father is the sole earning member of our family, with an annual income of around 4-4.5 lakhs. This sustains our family of five, including my grandparents both of whom need extra medical attention. My father works 7 days a week sometimes because he does not have an office or desk job. We also have a humongous bank loan whose burden sometimes seems too much. I couldn’t find the courage to even tell my parents about Ashoka let alone talk about money because how dare I dream of such absurdity? Even now they don’t know that I got in but canceled my acceptance before the fee payment.
By this time, it was September. I had given CUET, India’s new exam to even make the last field whose entrances were without gatekeeping of centralized exams to now have an examination-based entrance system. Nonetheless, I scored incredibly well. Maybe the months of failure culminated in this grand success. I scored an average of 95 percentile in all subjects, scoring 283/300 ( 99.9 percentile ) in the General Test and 195/200 ( 98 percentile ) in English. After a long wait, I applied to Delhi University.
My dream was just a step beyond, just one more leap and then it was all done. My parents had warned me yet again to dream in my “aukaat” but I held onto whatever last hope I had in my heart.
What follows is born out of a cesspool of emotional mess. This, though, is not a disclaimer or a warning that what follows is in any format messy or delusional, what follows is harshness, cutthroat truths, and my lived experience, the wounds of which I will bear for a while and whose scab will be a scathing memory.
What follows is also born out of anger. Anger was born out of a concoction of jealousy and the fear of screaming my lungs out only to get embarrassed by it. Anger piling up each day as I see LinkedIn posts about how incredibly hard everyone worked to get into Delhi University or how incredible it feels for them to start their college life, updates on “Education” about Miranda, LSR, Hansraj, SRCC, Venky, Ashoka, UPenn and everything else, motivational posts for those who failed and words of wisdom hiding the very broken system of education that India currently follows.
I got into Delhi University, that too in a subject I wanted in BA (hons) Journalism in Delhi College of Arts and Commerce ( DCAC ).
The first reaction I had was to run and hug my mother as I told her about my acceptance. I could finally pursue what I wanted, maybe not as much as I wanted political science but still worth it every bit. My parents and I called some of our close family members and informed them, all of whom replied with disbelief that I, a student who “should” pursue medicine, will now pursue humanities. The prelude to the riot was already playing and I was too happy to notice it.
My parents made me sit and told me that I couldn’t accept the seat and that they don’t want me to pursue humanities, but rather take a gap year and try again for medical. Their only reason was this. A concoction of society’s obsession with medical as a job and considering humanities as inferior. That was all they needed to dismiss my dream, extinguish all my hope.
The land beneath my feet slipped and I felt like falling into a vortex of destruction. I felt my body being torn apart, my heart racing, my ears popping and my hands turning cold. I hadn’t felt such pain. The pain grew into immense anger. Anger of a kind I had never felt. I ran into my room, slammed the door shut, and cried for hours. I felt a torrent of emotions: sadness as I wanted to just quit everything, stop my breath, and just vanish, anger as I wanted to throw my phone or break something into smithereens, hopelessness as I saw multiple messages of my friends getting into colleges but not me, despair as I thought how I now have been doomed to pursue something I don’t want.
The gap between the seat allotment and fee payment for confirmation of a seat at Delhi University is two days. I tried in many ways to persuade my parents, begged in ways I had never before, contemplated running away from home, and even maybe self-harm if I am unable to go to DU.
Days passed and with this, the deadline passed, and so did my last hope. The candle of hope I had lit to study what I wanted to, which was constantly faced with torrential winds and storms, finally breathed its last. Diwali came and went and all I felt was a harrowing sadness.
As I see multiple posts in my LinkedIn feed about universities, acceptances, hard work, willpower, and manifestation, what do I make of them? In my world of small-town India, dreams are dreamt with the scale of “aukaat”. Humanities don’t guarantee a job and even though I can hustle to get one, there is no way I can assure my mother of it. She has read multiple Quora posts on “Is XYZ degree from Delhi University worth it?” and she has formed her concrete answers. A humanities career doesn’t get the same societal praise that a doctor would get, most of which comes from how much money a doctor earns and how hard it is to become one. I can try and show my father examples of how many people he admires come from humanities education background but his ideology is caged by ages of what has been the norm.
The autonomy of choice in my education has never been mine. It has been influenced, swapped around, passed around, and locked by others to decide on. I am guilty of dreaming too big while being in a prison-bound by shackles. A jailbreak of dreams doesn’t happen for the likes of me. This story is not mine alone, this story is of many, this story that is not told.
As much as I want to congratulate everyone who got into universities and colleges this year and wants to feel happy as they enjoy their college lives, there is no vocabulary left inside of me to do so. One of my friends said that maybe this gap year would make me feel like medicine has been my calling, that maybe some higher power has decided on a medical career for me, and thus all of these setbacks. If this gap year was of my own accord, I would be glad to improve myself but when you are forced into taking a gap year just because your dream doesn’t align with what others dream for you, the hurt is of a different kind, the pain is extraterrestrial, no words can define it, no balm can heal it.
My grandfather was a great doctor. Such an incredible doctor that when he died, hundreds gathered in front of our ancestral village house to pay respect to him. The dream my parents dream of is for me to be the same as him. They have been successful at that, I am like him. When he died, the things I got from his room was an old diary with smudged ink. As I read I saw my grandfather as a man much different than what I had thought of him. My grandfather never wanted to do a “job” or to join a hospital as a doctor; he wanted his clinic and to serve the village people among whom he had grown up. This is the mid-1990s when a private clinic made almost nothing in a village. Society never allowed him to dream that. He was forced by finances and family to join a job and do one till his death. Broken down by how he could never pursue his dream or fulfill it, he spoke less and less each day. At around 60 and when I was the age that I could understand whatever he said, he stopped speaking to any of his family members at all. I don’t know how my grandfather sounds or what his voice was.
His wings were clipped, to the point that he accepted his fate and cut off his wings. The tragedy returns in me, history repeats itself. I have been forced on this path to pursue medicine now without any substitutes or alternatives, the only end of this road is an end that I know I would regret forever, a place in life I don’t want to be at.
My wings have been clipped, I am unable to fly. It is maybe finally time for me to cut off my wings voluntarily and let them wither away.