Social Anxiety: Last Day
- This time I had no plans.
- I woke up early, took a bath before anyone, and brushed without a brush. Huh…
- With cups of tea, Aman and I left for Badi Mata Mandir for our final day event—an event similar to Volfest, with different stalls. I had the career counselling one. Weird, I know.
- We reached too early, so I thought of an adventure.
- “Why don’t we roam around until everyone arrives?” I proposed to Aman.
- “Yes, and I heard a river flowing nearby,” he agreed.
- Walking through a path of cactus along the edges, we reached the peak of a small mountain. I may be exaggerating.
- “Ok. But where is the river?” We both wondered while looking far away.
- Finding no way to go, we started going back and heard the sound of flowing water. It was the water flowing below us, hidden behind the bushes. There was no time to go closer, so we just clicked pics and went back.
- Everyone arrived
- It was time to eat another new dish, maybe dahi bhalla. This time, I showed no hesitation while eating, learning from the past days.
- Ok, now what? As I said earlier, I had no plans, and who would come to a stall with career counselling while others had stalls with Rubik’s Cube by Vikas, weight and height measurements by Ashish, and a VR experience by Surbhi. Surbhi, while having no real stall, won the kids with her VR headset.
- Among them, I just had the chart which we made overnight, with only text and no graphics. So I thought of…
- Flashback: 1st time at Volfest
- “You have to pick a chit and do whatever is written on it,” the stall keeper instructed.
- Jyoti picks up a chit.
- “Write something humorous in 3 words” was written on the chit.
- Hm… there were a few seconds of confusion.
- “Why don’t you write: ‘I gave up!’” I said.
- Maybe it wasn’t so humorous but—
- “Wow Ravi, nice presence of mind,” she said.
- Back to GramSutr
- So, I thought of not giving up. I borrowed, or you can say stole, some decorative flower ribbons, a few sets of colour strips, and a packet of crayons. A bunch of small girls were showing a glimpse of helping with decorations, so I recruited them. Mixing the colour strips and then picking four to five of them stacked together, I asked the girls to decorate the stall in a symmetrical way. Flower ribbons were stuck to our chart paper to finally demonstrate a bit of graphics.
- Ok. Decoration done. Now it’s time for activities. Instead of assuming the village kids were serious about their future, I assumed they would at least know what they want to become—and write it on a chart paper.
- “But what will happen after we write it here?” a random kid asked out of the crowd.
- “It will show dedication—that if you have written it, you will have to become it,” I said.
- It was just a break-the-ice kind of activity, but there was another one that answered how to become whatever you have written.
- “Say, how to become an IAS officer,” I instructed one of the kids.
- “How to become an IAS officer,” he repeated.
- Then came a comprehensive, Hindi-translated version of a step-by-step guide by ChatGPT.
- Now you would have guessed the 2nd activity. It was—don’t ask me, ask someone who knows, especially when there is nobody.
- The piece of chart paper on the top of the stall soon became a piece of art—full of “police” and “cricketers” mostly, and some “vlogger,” “teachers,” and even a “DM.”
- “See, a kid has also written to become DM,” I casually said to the actual DM of the village. He came to our stall after visiting others, and I was actually trying to recognise the real DM among those who kept surrounding him.
- Raghav was there to present the facts about existing schools with just primary education. Then the DM promised to build more schools in the village by next year. As soon as he said it, people started clapping, making other stalls confused that the DM was impressed with the career counselling stall.
- After watching Anshika cry because she was denied making blood donation videos, and Rishika too failing to convince people for consent for organ donation after death, there wasn’t anything interesting happening for a while. I was already in thoughts of differentiating Day 1 from the other days. I was trying to control myself, but Aditi kept provoking me whenever she found me among people—exploiting my social anxiety?
- It was already enough of control, so I asked her for her water bottle again, saying—
- “This is the only thing you do better,” I said as soon as she handed me her bottle.
- It was a fact that she always arranged her water bottle for me whenever I felt thirsty. Or not.
- We laughed for the last time.
- It was time to leave.
- Receiving the awards, certificates, giving excuses of office and return tickets, and thinking about people I couldn’t gain enough confidence to say goodbye to—we left.
- By “we,” I meant Ashish and me. Then my phone rang…
- “Hey, why have you guys left me behind!” said Rishika—the same Rishika who did not come with us because her name was mistakenly printed as Rishita on the ticket.
- I tried avoiding it but behaved like a normal guy, as she was not my enemy after all.
- All the way to Delhi, I was talking to Ashish.
- I talked about the emotions that occurred.
- I talked about the friends I may lose.
- I talked about how to deal with that—
- …social anxiety.