My story so far part 2

The year is 2011. I'm distraught, we had to (sneakily) come back to Hyderabad.

Although all of our papers were always in place for some reason it felt a matter of shame to tell my 'friends' I wouldn't be returning back to school from summer vacation. So while everyone made plans for summer camps and whatnot, my family left everything behind to permanently shift back to Hyderabad.

At that point, I suppose it was a big change for everyone. Dad had spent most of 3 decades in the gulf with nothing to show for it. And mom had to huddle in Hyderabad with 4 kids in tow. My eldest brother was in OU still pursuing his engineering, the second one newly taking Admission into KV, while I along with my younger sister would take admission into Azra Public School. Azra was the nearest CBSE school to my home where we could choose to forgo Telugu as our second language because my sister and I knew thanks to our earlier experience, we wouldn't be able to study Telugu for the life of us.

I think there were these big shifts happening across GCC countries back then, although I'm not very well aware of the geopolitical scenario even now, every possible job that was held by an immigrant was being squeezed out for some reason. A part of me resented gulf for it. For kicking us out of our home. I learnt UAE national anthem before India's National anthem, believe it or not, as a perk of studying in schools with multiple ethnicities for a long time I remembered most of the Pakistani National anthem too!

Studying in Azra however was very challenging and at first kind of depressing too. I joined Azra in the middle of my 9th grade's first sem. Just in time for the CBSE registration. Thanks to that however I was no more a foreign candidate as far as the boards were concerned. For my parents that meant cheaper admission into Universities at degree and PG level.

For the first time, I realised the full extent of what segregation between genders meant. Although in Al Noor where I did my 7th and 8th there were entirely different buildings for the boys' and girls' sections. But in Azra, although boys and girls sat in the same class. We would often be divided by what we like to jokingly call the friend zone or also the gender gap. It would be all boys at the back and all girls at the front. Or we would be divided down in the middle with boys and girls to either side. 

As weird as it was to move from Abu Dhabi to Hyderabad it was weirder still to move from UAE to India. From being an NRI to an exNRI or just another Indian at that point I suppose. Azra didn't make any of those transitions easier either. Schooling is tough but high school was worse. Although I didn't face much bullying I had my fair share of troubles. Girl troubles, guy troubles, jealous ex troubles and even vengeful teacher woes.

And as u forgiving as 9th and 10th were without going into any details, intermediate was by far the darkest, and most miserable. Looking back I realise, we have factories that almost mass produce psychiatric illness and psycho-social disorders just from the junior college machinery in place. 16 to 18-hour study days. Concepts like backlogs,  supplementary exams, bridge courses, getting into coaching classes, being selected to be in the star batch and let's not forget most importantly the blood-sucking entrances.

Intermediate in and of itself was perhaps the worst 3 years of my life. 2013 to 2016. The darkest chapters in life. I learnt some of my biggest life lessons in those years and came face to face with some of life's biggest realities. A lot of which I might never write or speak about but I'm constantly aware of all the time.

I'm not sure when or how my life's story became a rant but life from after having left UAE in 2011 to finally completing my intermediate in 2016 is largely a blur. I've a lot to thank for and blame for these 5 years of my two and half decades of life to. Something very significant about it was a conversation between my psychiatrist and me.

I remember during the last session with my Psychiatrist back in late 2015, I had asked him saying that I want to ensure no one else goes through what I went through, and at the very least I want to be there for them if they need me. He had suggested I take up Psychology. As although I had already picked maths physics and chemistry in intermediate I could still enter the world of Mental Health through psychology if not psychiatry.

And while the exact words and sequences of a large number of events back then are blurred to me now, I can still eerily recollect the exact feelings I felt back then.