The Cocoon That Boarded the Train With Me
Sometimes the only way to change is a new city where nobody knows your old self.
The offer letter from TCS Chennai felt like a door opening. I was excited and sure this was where my life would begin. Then I boarded the train from Kurnool to Chennai Egmore and looked around.
There were close to 136 of us from the same college, all mass-recruited together, and about 50 more from the colleges nearby. I knew most of them. Many were common friends. Some had grown up in my neighbourhood.
That was when it struck me. I wasn't starting a new life. My old life was simply moving to a new address.
A whole life in one city
I spent every year of my life in Kurnool, through school at Montessori High School, then intermediate, then my BTech at GPREC. My friends from Montessori were mostly the same people as my friends at GPREC. Family, neighbours and classmates were all the same circle, and most of them still live there.
It was comfortable, like a cocoon. But a cocoon has a cost that you don't notice from the inside.
The image that follows you
When people have known you since school, they already have an opinion of who you are. You're the quiet one, or the funny one, or the one who's good at this and hopeless at that. That picture forms early and it hardens.
You can grow and you can change, but the people around you keep seeing the old image. Every conversation pulls you back toward it. After a while you start playing the part yourself, because that's easier than fighting it.
Sitting on that train, I realised Chennai wouldn't fix this. The same people, with the same opinions of me, were travelling to the same office. The cocoon had just relocated.
The radical decision
So I made a choice that surprised a lot of people. I decided to move far away, and alone, to Delhi for my MTech at IIIT Delhi.
The reason was simple. I wanted to rewrite myself.
That's far easier to do somewhere nobody knows your history. In a new place there's no file on you and no story about who you were in eighth standard. You walk in as a blank page.
People will still form an impression
People in the new place will form an image of you too. That never stops. The difference is that this time you get to shape it from the first day. You can show up as the person you've always wanted to be, and that's the person they meet.
If you're still in your cocoon
Comfort isn't a bad thing. But if you feel boxed in by an image that was formed long ago, it may not be you that needs fixing. You might just need new surroundings.
For me, the train to Chennai showed me the cocoon. The move to Delhi was how I got out of it.
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