Momma, who am I supposed to be?
I am Tom, 22 years old, a little lanky with pale face and with whitish-brown complexion and a short hair. Well, this is my introduction.
Today, here at my house I’m seeing at the summer clouds coming to me or to the season that’s starting soon, flying from the far away ocean, to my roof. Perhaps, it’s symbolizing a rainy season to start soon. I am on the roof as if I am to welcome the season, sitting on the chair and with a table umbrella above me and than nothing more above to that, yes nothing. There were dark clouds in the sky more or less about to cry. It was so that as if the sky’s been awaiting me to welcome those summer rains in disparity. But I am enjoying not that actual stuffs that I am talking about, but the actual matter is I am enjoying the despair within own self and the partners of that mono- sentiments and my loneliness were a bottle of grape wine, a wine glass and a pack of cigarette. Well, oops! I have forgotten to tell something to you that today I am having my 22nd birthday, and therefore I preferred to remain alone and think the purpose of my living with the vivid earthly materials to me so far as I am concerned to.
Seventeen years back, while in the summers of 1993 A.D., I was supposed to go to a school today, well I meant the same day seventeen years ago. My momma, she was dressing me up. New dress with black pants and white shirt, black shoes well polished- a brand new one ‘Caterpillar’ and with white stripped with black colors and a stripped ‘pink, blue and white’ colored tie.
“Of course, you looked like a prince, my son”- My momma cried in elation to make me happier than she was. Well, to be looked like a prince I too was very happy. Merry moments for me when I always got dressed for my school. And before leaving for school, on the gate of my apartment, I happen to ask a childish question to my momma, in fact this was supposed to be a question that I am unanswered till now though I know the importance of education,
Me: Momma, who am I supposed to be?
Momma: What do you mean by that, dear?
Me: Who am I supposed to be in the future, momma?
Momma: Err... Well, you gonna become the most successful man in the world for me and for all!
Me: Tha-an… is it necessary to go to the school, momma?
Momma: Of course! Son, you gonna get good grades, that leads you higher and even higher in the future and you gonna for sure be a successful man in the future, okay?
Me: Well, okay mom.
Momma: That’s like a good boy.
(The school bus comes and blows the horn)
Me: I am leaving mom, I love you…
Momma: Love you too, honey. Love you prince! Babye.
All right, even today I still remember my momma in the courtyard, waving me while I was about to go to the school for the first time of my life. I even remember the whole conversation we had near the gate while waiting for the school bus to arrive. And now too I am here sitting with the same question, well now this time with many and many more questions with the necessary judgments’ and compare those momma’s words in the today’s relevant future. I am trying perhaps to solve this question by myself because I am alone without my momma this time and yes this question seems much more difficult to me than the derivation a black hole in the sky while reading astronomy and the geology.
And again I recall the past memories, and try as many question to be answered by myself so far as possible. Well, I have my own sense and when I would have no answers of my own than perhaps the wine and the cigarette would help me. Perhaps, they seem to give me answers as per my state of mind right now.
Well, that day, I returned tired from the school. I threw bag on the sofa and untied the tie. Momma was there and as soon as the school bus horned for my presence, she started preparing me a toast with jam and milk and came to me. Than I started,
Momma: How was your day, dear?
Me: I don’t know. I missed you a lot, momma.
Momma: (She smiles at me to console my upset face). So, what did you learn?
Me: Really, momma those books were so tiresome to me. I am not gonna read any more and I am not gonna go to the school any more.
Momma: Hey, hey, prince what happened to you, what’s the matter?
Me: Yes…err… mom. Isn’t there anything to make me successful in the future?
Momma: Grades makes you successful, I want to see you, my son- you, in the skyscrapers’ of New York and in the Toronto. Don’t you ever think of it, my son?
Me: Well… let me think…err… yes of course mom! We’d better shift to the New York from here next week, than how about being both on the skyscrapers’ without grades?
Momma: Oh! You’d better not joke with me, buddy. That’s not the answer I was expecting from you.
Me: Well, momma, isn’t it a truth. I’ll learn to be rich and the wealthy person to become successful man in the future from right now onwards so why go to the school, read those big books and waste the time. In fact, the office time.
Momma: Office time? Woe… office time, it sounds ridiculous to any one if you spell that out, you’re too small and you don’t know any business.
Me: Well, than. You didn’t teach me any thing of that did you?
Momma: You gonna learn by yourself, while you go elder, son?
Me: How do I learn? Who’s gonna teach me and why can’t I learn the tactics right now onwards, why mom?
Momma: Listen dear, you have to go to the long way for that and if you go get good grades in the school, you’ll be able to admit in the Universities and than you gonna acquire the all things you need. Of course, you gonna make a lot of money and become a successful man in the future. You gonna secure your future by getting a highly paid bank cheques.
Me: So mom, what’s a University?
Momma: It’s a place, you know to learn the practices of life and without getting the university degrees anyone will give you a nice job and hence you can’t be a successful man in the future. You’ll become a shadow in front of the bulb.
Me: So, why don’t you teach me what practices of the life should I have to enjoy so that I would have my career groomed while being at home? Isn’t it fast and productive instead going to the school?
Momma: Oh! C’mon dear, why don’t you try to understand your mom? Try becoming a good boy rather asking me those silly questions.
Me: I want the answer momma; I am not going to the school any more without the answers and until and unless I am satisfied.
Momma: Shut up! Where the hell you go than? What you wanna do?
Me: Anywhere I like to, any where to make myself successful in the world. Let me be free momma, I will show you one day becoming successful without grades and without the schools.
Momma: I don’t let you free and you are going to school tomorrow, the following day and everyday. I want you playing with the books every time, making notes and all that. And at last, remind it “school’s the best temple of education and to become a person.” The school’s gonna make you successful from all sides.
Than I was compelled to go to the school, though at the times that came to me became so hard for me to cope. My freedom were by somewhat seized yet I never loosed to think what the business is and what was my ultimate target is because I always remembered my momma’s first answer,
“You gonna become the most successful man in the world for me and for all!”
And the last answer,
“The school’s gonna make you successful from all sides.”
Whenever, I used to reopen the topic, my momma used to give me chocolates and ask me, close the topic. Now I understand why people give chocolates to the children.
And as my momma wished me, I did really went to the school all day, even she made my sense like going to school even on the Christmas, how funny! I got good grades too, every time, and I even used to play the instruments of education. Every body believed that I succeeded to my studies and all that but what I actually feel is I am still dull in the practices of life because to what I had been expecting from my childhood. I had not even got a hint of it till this time. I don’t even know what is my momma doing to live alone and likely, what are my neighbors, uncles and all, doing to make themselves stand on their feet?
And in comparison I feel myself achieved nothing but only the grades, which to my perception doesn’t feed me without doing anything. Had I been so hard worker all throughout those many years I would have created some great ideas and some business to earn money and than to run life successfully and than further to become a successful person for my momma as she has always wished me being in the sky crappers of the New York and the Toronto. I would have chance to show my momma what I have done and where I am; really I swear I would fulfill my dreams but my momma compressed all my dreams, my intellects and my instincts’ in her basket and now I suppose those have already ruined and got rotten with the sentiments of the past childhood. I think the practices of life have not adopted my education or the valuable asset of the entire human civilization because I have not been able to use it in the practical behavior and consciences.
Rain drops began to touch my table umbrella and softly on the floor of my roof. I opened the cork of the wine bottle that was aside me lying in the basket to be opened by me as if it also wanted to see the open world, and enjoy the freedom. So why do I not let it enjoy its life and than I let it; and started pouring the wine slowly as if my life’s going on and on in the slow progression and as if I am supposed to die in desperation. The bubbles of the wine slowly disperse to become the wine itself and I think that is my hope which is slowly fading like those demised wine bubbles. And again gazing with my actions and recalling the same memoirs, I pick up a cigarette from the pack. A movement of progression from picking to the popping into the lips casts some slow hope in the life. Than accordingly, I start lighting up the lips of the cigarette and through which I find myself somewhat taking pleasure of the smokes passing to my lungs via my own lips. Again, I recall my childhood days in which I was so eager to hunt money without grades in schools and while at the college. Some thoughts of my mind, you know, would toll so absurd as I had a conversation with my momma, the very first day of my schooling; But yes I realize that I was the one who searched and deserved to know what money is and what the business entrepreneurship is and how it would work to make myself worthy? Well, more or less I found the answer while undergoing at the University level. Yet still I am dull in the practices of life.
Yes, I repeat though having top grades while at the school level and at the college and University, I think still I deserve nothing in the life of mine, I don’t even know why? One of my friend is a Captain in the airline crew, the other one is a banker, the other one is a account holder, the other one is an engineer, the other one just passed in the MBBS, and so and so. Yes, the education they got and I have got is not the separate as we are used to be taught by the same teacher and lectured in the same class, even the same desk. But the only thing is that, I have got higher grades and far more degrees than those my so called successful friends to my mom and yet I have to sit like this to welcome the tears of the sky on the roof which is even more pathetic than what it is heard and how do I express. I know how to apply the core of the words that I had been taught but the only thing is that my Theo- philosophies directs me to plan of my own from the very past, I suppose.
Wine sips continues on and on gradually and the pack of cigarette is nearly about to finish. I keep searching for the answer; looking at the wet sky. I feel as if my dreams got wiped away by the oozing of wet sky and my answers’ too gone away but yet my life doesn’t. Again, time’s always been a dictator to me so well my life has become as a maid of it, still so fragile, not properly woken up as I am given sleeping pills long time ago when I was about to awake and when my sentiments guided myself to open up the feathers, my momma became a vampire and gave me chocolates to which I call it a sleeping pills. And finally now I found my feathers well built there’s no idea, no prey to hunt, so skills without where to use doesn’t work.
Here I stayed to celebrate my twenty second birthday, and with full of mess, doubts and questions, as it is because I didn’t even choose to work for others because I am an educated person but what else to do makes a difference at this phase of life?
What else to do momma? I am an educated person; I got good grades both at school and at the college as you’ve wished. Really momma I need you now because at my childhood, you encouraged me not to learn doing business but to follow the trends. I miss you momma, I miss you a lot and I have missed you for the second time of my life. The first time I missed you at the very first day of my school life and the second is now when I have found lots of messy questions to be solved for which I am not aware of. Momma, do I need sleeping pills now because I have lots and lots of absurd questions to you?
I know momma you told me to learn harder and become the most successful person in the world so here I am with the asset of my life that is the education, but where to use up to become the most successful person in the world? Still on the earth I am in search of the answers all around, with the help of my best friends- wine and the cigarette. And as if those cigarette puffs that I exhale come out of my core of the lungs and start searching for the answer, dissolving in the air, perhaps those gonna make me a meaningful person in the world and than some what wine that I take in reach my veins and cells to encourage on searching for years and years to come.
“And therefore the mono-sentiments of a twenty two year guy guide him along the lane of roof as he has seen nothing accomplished in his life. He holds the de facto, yet his weapons’ silent without usage.”- I calculated this to myself and smiled in desperation. I every time remembered my momma ordering me to learn business, play with the educational tools, go to the school but she didn’t teach me what to do after that, I suppose, had I been left free, not given me chocolates, I would have chosen something to start of my own and specialize in that particular subject matter. I think, I have become some sort of “Jack of all trades but the master of none.”
So, momma ascending to the twenty second year of my life, after completing my school and college level with the most graded marks, I wanna ask you momma for the only last time, the only question that I used to ask while at the childhood, okay, so I repeat momma, but please don’t give me chocolates this time because I am in real trouble,
“Momma, who am I supposed to be in the future?”
