I have been called a lot of things by many people who love me and who hate me. Well I am not here to prove myself righteous coz I know there are many shades in my personality but among all the qualities I appreciate and wish to inculcate, I should say what I really really need is PATIENCE…lots and lots of it. I have like zero tolerance when it comes to waiting and I have suffered a great deal coz I just run out of this so called “patience” almost all the time. Be it waiting for my turn in my hostel mess, sneaking around my Supervisor’s office when she is having those long talks with her colleagues about God knows what, even the few seconds of Ad in Youtube before they show the video are just so hard to endure. May be I should take them as opportunities to work on my patience but I am telling you….I have been working it for so long without much result whatsoever.
Every Semester there is
Registration of every student of my university and you can imagine how
everyone is in hurry and the long queues in every counter. And we have to pay
for atleast 3 receipts for some stupid activities which we never participate
not to mention that the amount we pay keeps increasing every year and the
students pay without questioning even once as to where the money is going. Imagine
struggling in a queue that moves at a snail’s pace at 40 degrees, sweat
drenched, running around offices for signatures only to realize that there is a
tea break and you have to wait another half an hour for one damned signature
coz you cant do anything about it. Then there are Professors who torment you by
asking about your progress in the last semester and cornering you as though you
have done nothing except eat and sleep and gossip all this time. Somehow
dragging myself along throughout the entire campus, I registered myself and
legally became a student of the university….my patience tried many times, tired,
frustrated, my anger beyond bounds.
I guess my friends were
also feeling the same storm inside them as we were walking silently. Suddenly there
was this group of about 5/6 men who saw us and they started whispering among themselves
“Chinese” “Nepali” or something. They walked past us. I turned and shouted back
“Bheiya, hum log Chinese nahi hain. Aap log kya samajte hein humko? Aap log
kyun kuch nahi jante? Kaha se aaye ho? (Brother, we are not Chinese. What do
you think of us? Why are you so ignorant? Where have you come from?) All my
anger and frustrations took charge and I was spilling it over to them. Poor
men, they just turned around, smiled shyly, whispered something to each other
and walked away. And I should tell you I never felt so much better. I felt as
though I won a fight and smiled triumphantly at my friends and we all laughed. Other
days we might have just ignored it as it wasn’t the first time that they have
called us names but not when my patience is tried.
I have read somewhere
that you become impatient coz you are selfish enough NOT to realize that other
people’s priorities are also important. And I so don’t want to be this person
but sometimes it gets so difficult. Whatever it takes, I need to keep trying
coz I know all I need to do is wait….soon enough everything is gonna be just
perfect for me :)