2017-2019: New Land, Old Patterns
Kerala welcomed me with torrential monsoon rains and a humidity that seemed to seep into my bones. After years in the UAE's arid embrace, the lushness of my ancestral land felt both foreign and vaguely familiar—like a childhood memory half-remembered.
CET College stood imposing and gray against the verdant landscape, its brutalist architecture a stark contrast to the flourishing greenery surrounding it. Mechanical engineering, my parents' pride, quickly became my burden. Complex equations and technical drawings blurred together as I struggled to find my footing in this new world.
My thoughts often drifted back to Sharjah—to Leela's laughter echoing in fluorescent-lit classrooms, to opportunities squandered by my silence. The weight of these regrets made focusing on thermodynamics and fluid mechanics nearly impossible.
By 2019, my academic record was a battlefield of failed exams and conditional passes. While my classmates secured internships and planned careers, I drifted through campus like a ghost, present but never fully engaged.
Then came Divya.
We met in the college library—both of us seeking quiet corners to escape the relentless noise of dormitory life. She was studying English literature, her books a colorful contrast to my monochrome engineering texts.
"You look like you could use a break," she said one evening, sliding a cup of chai across the table. Her directness startled me, but her smile was kind.
Unlike my previous infatuations, with Divya, things moved quickly. She was refreshingly straightforward, asking me to join her for a movie just days after we met. Our first date was at a small café near campus, where conversation flowed more easily than it ever had with Aisha or Leela.
"You're carrying something," she observed over coffee. "Something heavy."
I considered deflecting but found myself telling her everything—about Aisha's rejection, about Leela and my failure to act, about my struggles with engineering.
She listened without judgment, then said simply, "The past is a place of reference, not residence."
For a few months, Divya became my anchor in the stormy seas of college life. We studied together, explored Thiruvananthapuram's hidden corners, and shared pieces of ourselves I'd never dared reveal to anyone else.
Then came the message from Rahul that changed everything: Aisha got married last week. Arranged marriage to some doctor. Thought you should know.
The news shouldn't have affected me—Aisha was years in my past, a childhood crush long outgrown. Yet it struck with unexpected force, like a sudden illness. Not because I still wanted her, but because it marked the definitive end of a chapter I'd never properly closed.
2020: Collapse
The dominos fell quickly after that.
My continuing academic struggles led to mounting financial pressure. My parents, once so proud of their engineer son, now fielded uncomfortable questions from relatives about my extended studies.
Divya, initially supportive, grew distant as my mood darkened. Our conversations, once flowing rivers, became stagnant ponds of awkward silences and half-finished thoughts.
"I can't help someone who won't help himself," she finally said one rainy afternoon, her voice tinged with a mixture of frustration and sadness.
I later discovered through mutual friends that she'd been seeing someone else—a computer science student with a bright future and an even brighter smile. The betrayal stung, not because I'd loved her deeply, but because it confirmed what I'd always feared: I wasn't enough.
That year became a blur of missed classes, failed exams, and nights spent staring at ceiling fans spinning overhead in cheap rented rooms. Rock bottom, they call it. The place where there's nowhere left to fall.
2021-2023: Rebuilding
They say that when you hit bottom, the only way left is up. For me, up began with a simple acknowledgment: I had been chasing shadows—idealized versions of relationships I'd never actually had, dreams that belonged to my parents rather than myself.
With twenty-one arrears weighing down my transcript, I made a decision: finish what I started, but on my own terms. I approached my studies with renewed focus—not to become the engineer my parents envisioned, but to prove something to myself.
One by one, the arrears fell. Each passed exam became a brick in the foundation of something new—not just a degree, but self-respect.
By 2022, against all odds, I held that hard-won certificate in my hands. Not with distinction, not with honors, but with something perhaps more valuable: resilience.
The PG Diploma in specialized manufacturing technologies that followed wasn't chosen to please anyone but myself—a field I'd discovered genuine interest in during my struggle through the degree.
When the job offer came in 2023, it wasn't from a prestigious multinational or a Silicon Valley startup. It was from a modest but growing firm in Dubai—a chance to return to the sands that had witnessed my beginnings.
Epilogue
The flight from Kochi to Dubai feels like traversing not just oceans but years. Below me, the Arabian Sea glitters—the same waters that separate my two worlds, that have always separated who I was from who I could become.
As the plane begins its descent, I take out my wallet and remove the photograph I've carried all these years—four smiling teenagers outside a tuition center, unaware of the paths that would diverge from that shared moment.
I look at Aisha's face, then Leela's, then Divya's, which I'd added years later. Each one taught me something essential, though not what I'd expected to learn. Not how to love another person, but how to recognize myself.
The desert comes into view below—endless golden waves stretching to the horizon. There's a poetry to returning here, to completing the circle.
My phone buzzes with a message from my new employer: Welcome back. Looking forward to meeting you tomorrow.
Outside the airplane window, the towers of Dubai rise from the sand like dreams made concrete—impossible structures reaching toward the sky. They remind me that every foundation begins with a single grain, every journey with a single step.
I tuck the photograph back into my wallet. Not to carry the weight of the past, but to honor it as part of what built me. Then I turn my gaze forward, toward the shimmering horizon, toward whatever waits beyond it.
Some stories don't end with love found, but with something perhaps more valuable—self found. Mine, it seems, is one of them.
For now, at least. The future, like the desert, holds endless possibilities for transformation.
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