Saturday, June 25, 2016

When I Fell in love with a town...

Vallabh Vidyanagar- A place where magic happens.

10th July,2012- When I first set my foot into this small town designed only for education, I never thought leaving it would be so emotional. Vallabh Vidyanagar-an educational hub just 6 kms outside Anand, the milk capital of India, is a place where dreams are seen and fulfilled. I have fulfilled most of my dreams here in 1440 days I have lived in this town. 

When I came here 4 years back, I was a lot different person. I was a silly teenager, who was full of arrogance and made blunders in abundance. Coming to this city was much less than he deserved is what he thought but the fact was he just got lucky to even be studying in such prestigious Institute Birla Vishvakarma Mahavidyalaya. Never a person to be homesick, I took to this city as easily as a fish takes to river. Just excited by this new degree of freedom, I would experience away from my home, I was one person who never wanted to be at home. I embraced that freedom and started living out the best 4 years of my life. 

This city slowly started working its magic and started molding me into a person who I am now. The first year I spent greatly in exploring the city and each day was an experience. In my second year, I saw the first dream. A dream to be in a top B-School of India for my masters. I started working for it and I never knew just the preparation for CAT and the experience of taking it would change me so much. For the first time in my life, I found myself serious for something that I wanted badly and was ready to walk till the very last mile till I achieved it. For the first time I had goosebumps just at the thought of being successful and had massive tremors when I saw the fear of failure. 

There were so many emotions that I have experienced for the first time in this city. With each day passing, I was evolving and was learning to be more responsible person. I learnt here that it is not bad to accept the blame myself when things go south instead of always looking for a reason to exonerate myself which I had always done in my past 18 years. That helped me in never being in the same messy circumstance twice as I had learnt to accept my fault and knew where I was going wrong. 

I made friends with people and had best of my time here . With each passing here, I was falling in love. Yes, I realized I was always in love. Not with a person, but this place. Falling in love with a place feels a lot like hunger, but also satisfaction. There is this constant desire for more; all you can think about is seeing more and embracing it. The adventure consumes you. Moving around and exploring will satiate you; creating an overall feeling of warmth and full-on glee, but only temporarily. Of course, once you fall in love, it becomes cyclic: you constantly desire more of it, and the more you take in, the deeper you fall and the more you will wish to see. I will tell you now: Vallabh Vidyanagar is addictive and these feelings do not go away.

I have seen students around waiting for a day or two off with bags packed so that they can rush to their home at the first opportunity available but me being me, always tried to find the reason to avoid going to my home. I always said "What is there at home? You already stayed there for 18 years. It is now your opportunity to be a man with an individual identity with no shadow of your parents or sibling loitering around you." I have stayed in this city even when no one else did. I have seen this town in each of its color and celebrated each of its festival here.

Today at my last night in this hostel, I see my whole 4 year journey being flashed in front of me. The first friend I made, the first outing, the first movie, the first night out, the first exam, the first success and the first failure. I have always been a person with commitment issues. Yes I commit too strongly at times making it difficult for me to move on. That is why it took me a month more to prepare myself mentally to leave this city. After my exams got over and all my friends left permanently, some the same day itself, some after a week, I stayed for a whole extra month here to just fill in each and every joy of being in this city.

Many have tarnished the image of this town as a town where students get spoiled and ruin their careers, but to me this town never offered any malice and in fact made my career. Coming here stands one of the best decision of my life. There are so many memories and so many experience here that I am so sure I will never find in any corner of the world. The music playing always in background when I felt attachment and endearment with someone and the feeling of being broken when a harsh reality sank in that sometimes no matter how hard you try and how much you strive, somethings are not meant to be and you can do nothing about it. I learned to accept that sometimes you are helpless and you just have to let that time pass without trying too hard and getting caught deeper in the vortex. I have learnt a lot apart from engineering in this 4 years and this town has offered me a lot. I will never be able to repay it back but I am sure of one thing, I came in this place as a childish boy who could throw tantrums if he couldn't get what he wanted but will be walking out of here in few hours as experienced man who knows to deal with this world.

I am leaving Vidyanagar but Vidyanagar will never leave me as it is part of me now. Adios magical place.!!!

6 comments:

  1. We also have the same feeling when we left vvn. But the fact is that each year of life is dedicated to specific city & persons. We have to accept that our decided years with vvn are over now.
    Yeah, it's true that this town give us many experience for the first time. We also have got frnds like brother. We even can't imagine the start of day without them in vvn & now we are apart.

    & Life goes on...✌

    ReplyDelete
  2. Same feeling a month back... Perfect description of a perfect place :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Whenever someone asks me where I have studied, the first word comes out is the name of city...VALLABH VIDYANAGAR...

    Because whatever we have learnt throughout our four years, is came from experiences and experiments performed in the city, not only from college.

    @Jill : Please let me know if you find any medicine to get rid of addiction to this city.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Already spent 10 days in Kolkata but still the nostalgia for VVN is just the same...There is no medicine as such..Sometimes I just go to a lonely corner to shed a tear or two to lighten my heart!!

      Delete