It was on a nostalgic summer afternoon, where the days are slow, the sunlight is almost white, and even the wind through the van’s window on the way back from school is hot, that I came to a realization.
I was depressed.
Granted, that is not what most parents want to hear from a their child in class four, but nevertheless, I had never been one to mince words – or as I thought at that time, the truth.
What was school? What was a job? What was life? Would I get into Heaven if I died? These are the kind of things a child will think if he has internet access and the knowledge that a laborer earns sixty rupees per day.
Touchscreen phones did not exist. High speed internet was a rarity, forget about stuff like WiFi or wireless 3G. The country wouldn’t even have 2G for years, and obtain 2.5G when the world shifted to 4G.
But I didn’t know that. All I knew was that nothing was fun anymore. Not food. Not music. Not games. Not religion. Not sports.
It really made one think, ‘What is life?’, and not in a cheesy way. An idiotic child might try to get to Heaven by hiring a sniper to shoot him while in Sajda, after all.
Or perhaps it wasn’t depression, but mere overthinking.
A happy school life. An exciting education. Or just something fun. I was even in one of the rare co-educational government schools throughout the country, but there was no excitement. Perhaps in other cultures, other languages, in playing games that allowed one to escape.
Or in staying up late after the discovery of stories. Of manga and anime. Internet games. Other people on the internet.
Was I just surrounded by people I did not get along with?
The idea was terrifying. Even those who don’t want to fit in at least wish they had the ability to do so. A rebellion without being a part of something in the first place, wasn’t that a rejection?
At that age, the thought of being someone useful didn’t cross my mind. If I wanted to be athletic, it wasn’t to help around the house but to run over buildings and swim across rivers.
If I wanted to make a lot of money, it was to move to some other country, or to build a car that could fly.
If I wanted to be intelligent, it was to lord myself over others stuck in the various rat races that exams, entrance tests, and relationships put them into.
Perhaps I just wanted to fall in love, but I considered love a mental deviation for the most part at that age.
Isn’t it kind of sad? I don’t think so.
But I wasn’t happy either. Was it puberty or calcium deficiency? A lack of iron?
I can’t tell. There wasn’t much to tell other than changing into uniforms, writing, reading, eating, sleeping. A routine broken by summer vacations.
Adults called it education. I called it depression.
Say, what was its meaning?
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