Parud: Sealed With A KISS...

Rudra's Past

Ten years back, I landed in the Kingdom all messed up and confused as to what is in stored for me in this country. I never wanted to go to a business school as literature was my main interest. I loved writing since I was a kid but as we say love dont really come true and therefore my business oriented father never liked my plans to continue writing and wanted me to take up business degree so that I can be a heiress of his business. It was not a very hard decision as I love my family more than anything so I thought its fine, writing can be my pass time hobby and I can pursue it later in future but can study more to take up the Ranawat's business. I belong to a well off business family rooted from Rajasthan but my grand father moved to Mumbai and establish himself in city. He made it really big there and left for my dad to expand. 

The thing which disturbed me more was living alone far from my family and friends for 5 to 6 years to complete my bachelors and then masters degree at the oxford university. I have never lived away from them and this was just very hard for me to do. A 17 years old boy sent all alone to live and study was not something I ever imagined doing but I was now in it and had to go through, if I wanted my parents to be happy and proud of me. 

First month at the college was the worst time of my life atleast I felt it back then. I was a very reserved kind of a guy so it was tough for me to make friends easily. I was living on my own in a sharing hostel room with a canadian roommate and it also didnt go very well with me as he was super talkative and late sleeper. I thought living alone would be easy as I dont have to share room with anyone just like in my home back in Mumbai and I dont have to listen to some annoying stuffs of my roommate. So i told dad and he arranged an apartment for me but that just back fired and I was feeling very lonely all the time. I tried to keep myself busy studying and writing whenever I got time but it still was not enough. 

Also to top it all by the end of first semester where we got our 1st group project I realized how bad I am with team works and speaking out to audience. I was a very introvert and quiet kind of guy who didnt have many friends even in India. I have had Aman since my childhood, my sister is very young as we are 8 years apart so even as a kid I only had Aman and then we became friends with Janvi in our high school as our fathers became business partners. I know her for like 3 years before coming to London and she keep calling and texting me every now and then. She has been really supportive and understanding with both me and Aman just like a true friend. It was always Aman with whom I use to do everything. 

So one day I had to present a project and talk about it in front of the whole class. I can never forget how nervous I got. Talking in front of all new faces, people looking at you intently and laughing at me from the back. I started shivering profusely and could barely speak something. Our professor understood my condition and after sometime asked me to go back but after the class got over my team mates came up to me and started accusing me for making a fool out of myself standing in front of everyone and how they got ashamed. Not just that a similar thing happened in another class and the common class mates started making fun and started calling me with names like kiddo, pussy cat, goofy, desi fool etc. I never knew what bullying would be like until I came to the college here and I cant describe you the feeling was. For a young boy like me, it was terrifying more so as I had no one to share my feelings with. No one could actually understand me from afar. I use to tell mom and dad at times what I was going through but they would just console me and ask me to boost up and be more confident which was mere talks and didnt help. But still I cant blame them as they could only do that, I mean atleast that's what they thought they could do is to just talk far away from another continent and think that I would become fine but saddly it didn't happen. 

All of this made it even hard for me to make new friends here. Everyone treated me bad and no one came close to me, I couldnt even form team to work in the project, friends was a different story all together. First semester got over some how and then Aman suggested me to take up some extra curriculum activity or like summer work in the break just so that I could know more about the place and get comfortable. Dad came to visit me 1st week of the vacation and it was kinda fine but over that one week he kept asking me about my studies and courses in which I got bad grades and that how I should improve myself now. He told me to work hard more and concentrate as this will only help me be a good business student. He took me to one of his conference for which he actually came London but all in all I felt good meeting dad after four months (something is better than nothing) .