To swim around in unfamiliar waters is scary. Swimming around to the extent of getting used to it and further being indifferent to negative surprises is simply insane. Realizing this insanity and hoping that your home ground will soon be reached just leaves you as a bitter person, for, there is a limit to the number of emotions you can feel at a time. I have been drifting afloat in the avenues of nowhere for a while now. And this is a small note on taking the road ‘generally’ not taken.

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One year ago, in June 2009, I was a proud graduate. There is difference between the first fifteen or sixteen years of your academic life and the life that follows thereafter. The first phase showers you with so many counterparts that you forget you are an individual in the journey. You are just carried forward with the crowd. I had walked through the first phase with notable ease albeit insignificantly. I had reached the final stage of being with the crowd. I wore my hat and robe with much pride. A sense of gratification brewed in my mind as I marched up the flight of stairs to the auditorium where we were finally sent off. The convocation ceremony assured me that the first phase is done with what it came in my life for. It was until this point that I was with a group of commons. The same life of dry academics, same goal of getting done with it, same problems with assignments-teachers-management-institution and, almost the same solutions to escape. But from there on, your dear ones begin to drift apart. Their dreams, ambitions and priorities branch out and you are left alone. Some of them took up a job and paced away. Some went with higher studies in subjects that made little sense to me. Some treated it like it was the last facet of education and got married to begin a new life. I opted to take a break from academics; or so I thought. My plans to make preparations for the following year kept me worried. One year of a break was fine. But after that I had to continue studying. So I applied for postgraduate courses in various places, giving myself a year-long uncomfortable tag. I was a ‘candidate’.

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My choice of interest is not something that every third person opts as a career path. Wildlife biology and conservation science is not a common interest. No, I do not intend to brag about being different. Nor do I feel overly special for having rather unique interests. But I am most certainly not with the masses. This puts me in a trickier position. My paths ahead are not too many. My four year long dream, however, was to study wildlife and conservation at the National Centre for Biological Sciences- NCBS, Bangalore. But the chances were bleak. To get selected as one of the fifteen students who get to study in this postgraduate program would be a miracle. This brought my back-up options. University of Kent, University of Exeter and University of Reading. The million and one procedures to apply for each one was anything but exciting. The documents, letters, recommendations, certificates, scholarship applications, accommodations, so forth and such which. While corresponding with most foreign universities through mails, to top it all, you are addressed not with your name but with your candidate code. That just moves your identity further away from yourself. But going abroad also meant that I had to leave India. India- who’s wildlife has still held me tight in its awe.  Not that the procedure for admissions at NCBS itself was a cake-walk. It is a six month long procedure with entrance exams, submissions of documents and certificates, two rounds of interviews and the likes of it. Just another place where I am just another candidate.

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The worst part is that people around you care a little too much sometimes. There are constant questions about me whose answers I myself am unsure of. What exactly am I doing? What do I plan to do next? Is there any scope? Am I going out of India for sure? And some provide effortless superficial assurance that I will get through at NCBS. Not that they fake assurance, but, they simply aren’t aware of the competition. But the truth through all this madness remains the same. Like that itch that you feel at the wrong time and cannot scratch off. I am a candidate. And nothing more.

The feeling of being stranded in mid air and getting choked by uncertainty was getting the better of me. But sailing through all this, today, I sit with a letter of acceptance from NCBS. Dreams do realize. And now that I am out of it, I also realize that it was somewhat nice being a candidate. It meant I was nowhere. It also meant I was free. As a candidate I have seen one year of life the way in which I might never see it again. But now begins a new era. I sit with my seatbelt locked tight and feeling eager and enthused about the two year journey ahead. Life, here I come….

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