My First Blind Date AND the Metamorphosis

I heard about it when I reached Kanglung in class eleven. Not many of the PU fresher went for this most famous blind date in Sherubtse except for those who came from Yangchenphug Higher Secondary School. Coming right from the heart of Thimphu, the capital city of Bhutan, they were those who have wider eyes in everything they saw around them.

Timid and shy, Sherubtse’s fantasy and dreams of fluffy romance failed to set in my heart any butterflies except that I took away to dreaming a lot and my diary became my best friend. I wrote every small dream, every small event in my diary and I held it dearer to my heart than any person. Oh yes, there was that 83 stuff. Can you believe I was watching that Hindi movie “Dil to Pagal Hai” last night? And I had many romantic dreams. I felt myself getting carried away to those childhood dreams and the belief of a soul mate. I dreamt like that, though there was no particular person. 83 came into picture much later.

Then when I had completed my ISC, I had myself thrown crazy over the band Westlife. If I saw them on TV, I got up even if I were driven sick in bed. I downloaded thousand of their pictures, subscribed to every small links of theirs, bought every single album of theirs and sang their songs. But this soon faded as a teenager’s fantasy. And the girl really became a woman. Oh man, but didn’t they look awesome? When my brother came back from studies, he even brought me their music videos. And my brother’s friend’s girlfriend from Hongkong who studied in Australia sent me their posters. They took place on the walls in my room for a long time. I still have them, though I don’t get carried away like those old times.

I guess it was then that I learnt to talk with the tune of easy flirtations (but purely non-sexual.) When someone talked to you, you had to reply and I needed to learn that I wasn’t dumb. I remember how I still was a person who talked to myself than to others. When we first journeyed to India for our study, I was so engrossed in the novel and hardly took part in the jokes other friends laughed so heartily at. But yes, a person grows. A person learns. I won’t call that change; I would call that growing up. And I did grow up. I think I grew up faster then than I ever did before.

Yes, when we were in first year in VIT our senior girls organized a blind date. It was the Valentine’s Day. There were only handful of guys anyway and we would know each other. I didn’t know my date was Sangay, Nopkin, the CEO of this famous http://www.nopkin.com/, the site that really makes someone’s day everyday. You see, we found that we had very co-incidentally dressed up like twins. We wrote notes on the napkins as we waited for our lunch at Darling Residency. We then went for a movie…a Hindi movie, and I have this disadvantage: I don’t understand Hindi well. Even if there were some romantic conversations, I would have missed to understand any twitch. But the day did go well. I guess he even read some of my crazy writings. (I had my habit of keeping a journal even then and I still have this habit.)

It didn’t set any fire. Ah! Not even a frill of smoke started. But I guess I had had a beginning of a date. Don’t call me a backward person. I had my principles well laid in my mind and I held on it stronger than I believed in anyone’s preaching. And though there were times when people thought I had changed, I knew how closely I still had them intact inside myself. I then learnt that growing up is not so simple as a beautiful butterfly coming out of its pupa but a challenge that involves even your reputation at stake. But I also learnt that if you couldn’t love yourself and know that what you believed was true, you could so easily tumble over the cobblestones of others’ words – because there could be people who could so easily let you doubt yourself.

And yes, that was my first blind date. Am I not lucky to have been the CEO’s Valentine? And that was how I grew up.

Growing up isn’t about changing as people understand. It is about becoming a better you.