Rich yet poor

‘Get out of my class’ this is the common sentence that I often hear from my professors, they say it to me since I was the one who never used to obey them. It’s not like that I was too notorious like throwing chalk piece at them or writing bad words in toilets; it’s just because they hated me since I hated them. I never shared a good rapport with any of my college professors nor with any of my school teachers.

I was an above average student in school and just like any other kid I entered college with lots of ambitions and dreams running sky high (at that time my dreams were to study well, get good grades and get my life settled in an MNC) but when I entered my second year, I realized that I had something else to do with myself, I just can’t be good with Engineering books. Every day in college I would be thrown out or I would walk out gently from the class and that’s when I realized that you can learn lots of things sitting under a tree than sitting inside a classroom.

Being pissed off by a girl in your second year of college; while others were having their time of life with their loved ones made me really pissed off and that’s when I found my new LOVE- reading novels. I knew unlike girls; who would dump me if they found out I wasn't good enough, books would always stay with me. I used to sit under a tree and used to have romance with my LOVE. Most of my Engineering life passed by sitting under a tree reading my novels and looking at the people who used to do construction work in the college. I was so possessive that when someone used to sit under the tree where I used to sit; I used to scold them and make them move out of that place. I would say that, “It’s my fucking place and dare not to plant your ass here again” (I know it sounds stupid but I felt so connected to that place)

I occasionally used to speak with the construction people. Actually they used to come beside me and would start a conversation by asking me what I was doing there without being in class and why I always had a book in hand and so on. Initially I used to give them replies in a single word but after few months, I realized that now it’s them with whom I talk to.

I sit alone and read novels, write few short stories which no one would even try to read, write few poems thinking about the girl who dumped me, play some songs in ‘real piano’ app in my mobile. Two years of my college life went the exact same way, seldom I used to step into the class just to be thrown out.

Over these two years the construction work was almost over. One day Raja Anna (one of the construction worker, by the time I knew few of their names and have even become quite close to them) came to me and told that they would be leaving by tomorrow. I smiled at him without saying anything.

He stayed beside me and was trying to say something but he stayed mute. I stood up and told him to say what he wanted to.  He told, “Son, I have seen many young people like you in my life but haven’t seen a person like you. You always stay alone speaking with yourself, getting immersed in your own world. I have never seen you with other students. I don’t know why some of your professors keep scolding you though I always find you reading books. Being alone is a sin son, don’t make yourself a sinner. Sometimes, richness is not in the money but with the number of people you have made yours in this journey of life. I wish that you are not poor by the time you leave this college.”

I just could not see into his eyes. Though I persuaded myself that I was happy I knew deep inside my heart that I was all alone and I needed a hand to hold mine, I needed a shoulder to cry on but everytime I think of that I find myself all alone in the world. Indeed he was right I was poor, poor because; when I finished writing a short story it would be only me who read that and pat my own shoulder, when I complete writing a new poem it would be only me who would praise the cleaver usage of rhymes and puns. Maybe he had seen me laughing at my own jokes, patting my own back sometimes even crying and cheering myself up.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless but the poverty of being unloved, un-cared, unwanted kills many than hunger. Raja Anna never had three meals a day, wore torn cloths, and never had a bed to sleep but I can bet that he was not poor as I was.

Make sure by the end of your life, you don’t die poor. Live, Love and spread happiness.