It was just another day in my life. Quite amazingly it was just another sunny day in chennai. And even though my name is Shruti and I am an eighteen year old ordinary teenager, at that moment I felt happy. It wasn't your oh-I-eighteen-so-I-can-do-anything kind of happiness. I was just plain happy.
I don't live with my mom because she left us when I was eight years old and went off with another guy to travel the world with her boyfriend. I live with my dad and he is a pretty ordinary bloke. He works in some law firm and is actually a corporate lawyer. We don't talk much. In fact we never talked much. Every summer I went to maternal grandmother's house because my dad said that they needed someone to deal with my "girl" issues but after my grandfather died (which was when I was thirteen) she moved in with us. Ever since it has been the three of us. Life went on and I went to school. Time seemed to pass by and before I knew I had graduated from school and was now going to college. The college, oh well, it's not ordinary.
Chapter Two
Now I don't know how landed up in this extraordinary college. After all I am just an ordinary eighteen year old but an year back I applied for a course in computer science and engineering in Yale and I ended up getting a seat there thanks to my near perfect SAT score and twelfth grade scores. My extra curricular were completely nil but being a namesake in the basketball team had its advantages even if it meant that I was a reserve and had played exactly twice in the four I had been on the team. I had been kept in the team only because they needed a reserve who wasn't exactly very dynamic and would just shut up and sit for most of the games. I filled their requirements quite nicely and that's why I had remained on the team. The other "activity" that I did was community service. It was not because I was a saintly person whose mission was to help the poor and the needy. It was because I had a grandmother who was a lot into social service. She would go to these events organised by the NGO that she was a part of and I had to inadvertently tag along everywhere. So you see, I ended up getting the seat in Yale quite by chance.
Anyways there has been a lot of preparation that has been going on for my "big leap". Grandma has been telling everyone who would listen to her that I was going to Yale. I am having to talk to relatives and cousins who up till date had never even asked if I was alive and now suddenly seemed to have memories of me when I was just born. But I never showed my emotions. Infact I bottled them up. The last time I had smiled was a long time ago, probably when mom was there and we were still a family. There were still hazy blurry images of that time that lingered in my memory. The time when dad found out about mom's relation, the shock and the time when mom left home. I still remembered phases or blurry memories of the past. Many times it felt as though the past was still an unfinished story and that I still had not got the plot right. It was bizarre for the lack of a better word.
I was really happy that I was leaving home. For the first time I was going to be on my own. That feeling, that feeling of freedom was truly the source of my happiness. No more teachers to scold around, no more stupid seniors to boss around, no more grandma to make me do the "correct" things and papa........well he never was around for me so there was nothing I had to run away from him for.