The beginning....

As I sit here... staring at my laptop screen, my mind races back to when I first went online... The excitement... the joy... the anxiousnss.... it all rushes back to me...

I was a die-hard fan of WWF and a bigger fan of The Rock... I would walk into a cyber cafe... and pay 100 rupees for an hour of surfing just one website... and that was the worldstling federation's website.... That was 10 years back... I was in my tenth grade... a teenager with dreams in my eyes... with ideas bout life in my head... with beliefs i identified with then...
That was me... the guy next door !!!

A lot has changed since then... dreams, beliefs, ideas, needs, wants... everything... seen a lot since then... done a lot since then... I wonder if it was destiny... i wonder if it was me... but here I am... With no faith in love... no faith in trust... running against time... part of the rat race that goes on all our lives... is this what i believed in ??? I knw i didnt... but stilll... i drag myself every morning n believe in today... believe in now... n move on...

Some times i wonder if i have seen it all.. if i have done it all... n just when i feel i have... life throws another one at me... n there I go again... i guess thats wat life is all about !!! While i write this, i go back in time... when i was 16... just out of school... excited about going to college... excited bout the freedom... excited bout living in mumbai... the city of dreams...

It was decided... i was gonna be an engineer in life... a Computer engineer... writing softwares.. changing the face of the IT industry in India which was at the all time high... like every other family, my family thought i was the brightest one around... that i was destined to be a genius... n here I am today... far from being an engineer... lol...

I am not an engineer... but i am trying to engineer my own life... I wonder if a college would have ever given me a B.tech or a B.E. in shaping life... and a license to do so...

I think about the day, when my mom along with my grandma came to drop me to the hostel.. i was dying to get into the hostel.. to start a new chapter in my life... thinkin bout how exciting it wud be to live all by myself... its been 9 long years nw... but those first few days are still etched deep in my head... the reunion with my school seniors... the protectiveness... the ragging whr i landed up ragging my own classmates... it was hilarious...

Then it was the b'day of a senior.. first time i drank... it wa a Romanov bottle.. looked like water... n my friends fooled me into believing that I am supposed to gulp it down neat... the Hindi films that i saw till then didnt help either... lol... n in the next half an hour... i had downed one bottle... my throat was burning... but i loved the feeling... i felt weightless... i wanted to fly... i dont know what i did or said after that... but i woke up next evening with the most terrible headache ever...

Someone asked me to have lime n water... someone suggested black coffee... someone suggested a shower n some suggested plain water... at the end of it... i had my dinner n went back to sleep...

That was the first time i felt like a man... and not a teenager... i felt free... and the next thing i knew was that i was drinking every 2nd day... i loved the feeling after i got drunk... i didnt want myself sober... so that was one belief and one idea broken...

i hated alcohol before i finished school... hated it so much that anyone who drank was hated as much by me... n there i was... getting drunk 3-4 times a week... i was transformed... but i never thought about it then... with everyone drinking around... it all felt so good... it all felt so right...

I was always rebelious by nature... so i guess it was just an extension of the same... whatever it was... it was right then... n thats all that ever mattered to me...

Well to be honest... thats all tht matters to me even now... i do what i feel is right... n that, calls for another round of drinks rite nw...

i'll see u all soon... until then... ciao....

cheers !!
The guy next door !!!