This world will never be a paradise.

I remember a moment in high school. It was late in the year, with final exams drawing near. I was in class 12 and it was time to say bye to school and friends and hi to college. But between it lay the exams, the most exciting and dreadful of all exams (for me).

*

I am a back bencher, and you know what kind of students stay in the back benches, normally those who are least interested in studies. But I always found in them good companionship, exciting stories and never a book worm.  With them you got to see a different side of life, a life where you were not worried sick about class tests and exams and anything relevant to the books.

I was one of the class toppers, but I envied those people, not because they didn't worry about exams and tests like I did, but because their life wasn't dependent on those pieces of paper like mine was.  Independent of what their result would be like in 12’s final, they would still be able to make a life for themselves, sustain themselves, do something and make a living. The only thing I knew how to do was to study. And if I failed there, I had nothing else to rely on. No matter that others said “the better the student you are the brighter your future”; I always found that the advantage lied with them.

*

The teachers had covered their syllabus and had given us a free period to revise on our own. And I was sitting among those guys and rendezvousing about life in junior high and high schools. Suddenly one stopped and looked at me and said “I am kind of worried about you”, astonished by such a remark out of nowhere, I asked why? Pointing at a girl on the other side of the room, he said, “she, I know her behaviors are risky sometimes, but she knows what this world is like, she has seen it for herself. You, I don’t believe you have seen anything other than your home and school, and even in school you have only seen the classroom. When you step out of here, you move away from home, from the security of your parents, your vulnerability increases. Do take care of yourself; you have seen nothing right now.”

Amazed by what he said, I began thinking how true it was. It was the absolute truth. I had seen only the best things about life. I looked at them and I realized, despite having listened to so many of their stories, I couldn't imagine their life outside that classroom.

I did make for this lack of knowledge on life by reading various books. And I know a lot now, empathy comes naturally to me, and I can take anyone’s shoes and cry their tears of sorrow and joy. I will say that I know how harsh life can be, how deceiving and cunning people can be, I know what it is to be a girl in a men’s world, or a beggar in a rich society. But even though they teach u a lot, u read it as a story and u retain it as a story. And though there is much I know I can only associate it to those people in the stories and not to the people around me.

When something I know about so well, hit me for real, when things I learnt in books became reality, I am all shaken up.
 And I remembered that moment in high school when he said that. How true he is, I have seen nothing still. And now fear has grabbed me from within. I remember that girl he pointed at, and I wonder how she coped with things.

I wish schools would give less importance to bookish knowledge and more to the knowledge of life, because there are so many of me who are unprepared for reality. We were taught that book was our priority, but life is not a book, and u cannot live it by the book. There is so much more that we need to see and realize. This world will never be a paradise.