by Nikhita. U, III B.Com. (Gen)
There are a hundred places I've been bored at. Especially the ones that should have had me fully occupied. Any place; you name it, I've been bored there. But somehow, the ‘in-between’ between two places—the travel, the supposedly gruelling two hours of my day has been tiring, but never boring.
Every afternoon, I get into the same auto rickshaw, bracing myself for countless heat waves, equipped with a scarf that barely allows me to breathe. Where I'm sitting, I'm exposed to concerning bouts of pollution, a hundred prying eyes and noise that stays long after it's gone, but somehow it's not the worst place to be.
I get in there with my phone at the ready, books downloaded and playlists set. But among the bizarre spellings on billboards, really cool graffiti, annoyingly overlapping posters on the walls, and my obsessive need to read everything that's written around me, the playlist gains my attention only when it's over.
In the rare times when I don't spot something I haven't already seen, my driver will distract me with questions as simple as how to pronounce something that's written on a bus, or will ask me to explain what it is exactly that I study in college, giving me an existential crisis.
Most times, all of the studying that has saved me these past few years has happened while travelling, and so have some major life decisions. My brain seems to take in a lot more when it hears incessant honking for absolutely no reason, than in my room, in the quiet with my mom's amazing coffee in hand. Regardless, it seems to have worked pretty well for me.
Sometimes I get to inadvertently overhear people's problems and other times I can't even hear my own thoughts. Sometimes random cute kids will wave at me and other times people I know will stare right at me without actually looking. Sometimes, on one of those really good days, I’ll smile to myself all the way home, and other times I’ll let a lot of my anger subside before I reach. One thing I've realized is that being nowhere in particular—being nobody to faces and voices that don't have access to how I'm feeling—is probably the most therapeutic experience I've had.
There is literally never a dull moment, what with the headlights blinding me and the chaos of people rushing home to silence all around me. There is always a speed bump to jerk me awake or a road cave-in that scares me into consciousness. It's tiring, not boring. Boredom is a lack of emotion or imagination, and I can't think of a time where I didn't feel like I was high on life while on the roads.
Maybe it's like they say (or don’t say), it doesn't matter where we're getting to or what we're leaving behind. Getting there will never feel old; getting there will always be one hell of a ride.