I managed to fill in the rest somehow. However, it might have a serious tone to it from the last part owing to me being not a child anymore. So read on :
13 Yr: I found myself looking at the mirror more often than once each day and started to wonder if I was pretty or fat or ugly or thin. I loved listening to Backstreet boys, Spice girls and Westlife. I even used to collect posters of singers. It was also my last year in Bahrain, I cried when I left my school and moved to India.
14 Yr: Had a tough time coping with the education system, school, food, life and everything. I could never have imagined anything worse than this happening to me. I found the world to be not so much of a nice place like I imagined. Gibson laughed at my school uniform and my double braided hair ( it looked like a dog's ears for him). He told he’s going to join some better school but in 2 months time he joined my same school.
15 Yr: Life was getting more bearable, I was getting really close to my sister. I enjoyed being with my friends and bunking tuition. I cut my waist-long hair till my shoulders for the first time in my life. I also started talking in Tamil more fluently.
16 Yr: I wondered if I should go to Chennai for college after my boards. Everyone was going there and my brother was also calling me there. This was the part of my life where I fell in love with a person who I was going to be glued with for the rest of my life- yes my husband. The love-life looked all easy and filmy- the chocolates, the smiles, the hushed-up phone talks, the gifts.
17 Yr: I joined a college here because of Dan who wanted me to study with him. Even my close friend Ranjana joined me. I suffer immensely during my first year and ended up having an arrear, sleeping in class, firing from the lecturers but the next semester I get the hang of it. At this point of life I come to know about dark things in the world and wonder if all this could be really true.
18 Yr: I started sharing my sorrows with my sister and we bonded like anything. I go for occasional visits to Vellore for my mother’s treatment. In CMC Vellore I see the crowds of sick and handicapped and understand the value of good health God gave me. I started to wish the next 2 years would fly real fast so that I can finish college and go for work.
19 Yr: I got placed in TCS and I thought everything is going to be awesome in future. I knew there was only one more year left and I could finally do something I wanted too. My sister applied for a college in Chennai. I cried because I missed her a lot.
20 Yr: Tuticorin is all I could remember as I did my final year project here. I learnt to catch buses, get toasted under the merciless sun, share a bed with 5 girls, wait in queue to go to the loo and come exhausted home. Finally, all goes well and I become an engineer. I also missed my college life a little.
21 Yr: My better-half wanted us to get married so we struggled and suffered and we finally got hitched. I thought marriage was a bed of roses like in the big screen but soon I realized it wasn't exactly like that as it comes with a add-on package of ‘responsibility’. The first few months were the hardest but we made it through thick and thin.
22 Yr: I master the art of cooking with few incidents of burning my hand, cutting my hand, opening the pressure cooker with steam inside, salt-filled food, hot-oil creaming over me and burnt-food. I also start to hold fishes, chicken, meat without wanting to throw up. I also truly understood the pain of losing someone precious to my heart when my dad passed on.
23 Yr: Today, I am balancing life between family and work. I have the most remarkable husband who gives me so much freedom, a caring mother with her helping hand, awesome siblings who no matter what will stand by my side and generous-hearted friends who would do anything to see me happy. I understand now that the good people are not that good and the bad ones are really not that bad. I know that people can be the worst judges most of the time and the world can be cruel, but I also know that amidst all this I can truly learn to be happy and that somewhere down the lane I might be able to look back at all this and have a wonderful story to tell.
