Off to Coimbatore for my farfetched dream

So it was a great opportunity to attend one of the SSB interviews. This was my second time. It was for the Indian Navy and I had not been able to find a reservation ticket to Coimbatore. Personally I feel everyone must atleast attend SSB once even if they are not actively interested.
It’s a totally different experience from other interviews, once you make the initial cut ,you stay back at the camp for all the rounds,as you might have already known from other posts SSB does test you holistically and you will be uncertain to self asses your progress,
I did make through the final cut in the previous one but it had an idiotic repercussion due to my hasty decision.
I can only say after attending four SSBs that the candidate must be true to the interviewers regarding their outlook ,no matter how brash your opinions might be..please do not keep a false show of your personality..the GTO, the gardener ..to the cook who is serving are enough to judge your persona in interacting with people.
I have seen many guys proving their potential stating their high respect to the motherland and a service to serve the nation is their utmost goal in life, getting rejected.
Treat it as an esteemed job and keep your current affairs up to date ..they mostly judge on leadership skills,stress management and people handling capabilities and the most important –logical integrity.

This is just about my journey to Coimbatore and how I managed to do it without a reserved ticket.

A month left to interview and no ticket, neither 3^rd AC or the sleeper class.
The day came , I had to start from Howrah ,Kolkata  and alight in Chennai, take an intercity to Coimbatore.

I had luggage as a backpack and a duffle bag, I was determined enough that I had to manage to go via general,bought a Rs.440 ticket to Chennai,boarded the train after waiting in a long queue.
Initially you might feel dirty as all of those boarders are labourers and I assure you if you face a similar situation do not wear anything to stand out of the crowd, be relatable to them, I knew I had to go through this hence I wore a soiled T and a jeans although your facial features/body language may have a different song.I could not manage a seat and kept standing near the toilet.
A policman came in ranting and cussing to ward off the guys and let his friend sit on the seat..half an hour and the labourers in the train started taunting the guy,he being lost the support of his police friend had to surrender his seat.
Its around 2 and half hours in the train and Kharagpur arrived when one of men sitting on the floor asked me about my jobs and whereabouts, I was getting easy with them and stated myself being electronic repair mechanic in Chennai.Since I was not knowing to play cards , it was difficult to get along only with chatting ,a middle aged man asked if I would be interested in being a hotel boy with handsome pay …and I declined to go forward, he was a construction worker  in Coimbatore ,it pays 800/day and quite better than the pay in Kolkata and it was similar reasoning among his other friends with some different profession.
after about an hour he asked his friends to adjust and make way for me to sit near the door of the coach,
at Bhubaneshwar boarded the TT who just caught a glimpse of me and started goading me to buy an upgrade ticket to the sleeper which would allow me to atleast stand in those coaches of that class..i was hesitant and didn’t go the first time but after a few small talks..i asked for the pass and left for the sleeper , it was a lot airy and ofcourse had much space.
Being late February it was not that hot and humid and I was using some seat space to sit and pass the journey..during night I slept on the floor between two seats..at around half past midnight came Vijayawada when I was approached by another ticket checker to upgrade me to 3^rd AC. I thought to myself and agreed as it was my first time to Navy SSB and it will be reimbursed, this time at around 1:20 am I got the bed of the storekeeper for the coach..and I was dubious as he was treating me very friendly and after some time asked for his tip. I left his bed and reacted not to pay him..then our discussions calmed and he arranged for a seat in the coach for which I paid him.
I did have all the bills of formal upgrades and the ticket which amounted to Rs. 1745,
I arrived at Chennai in early morning, I deliberately went to the makeshift stalls selling parathas fried in coconut oil and I didn’t repent.
Then had some Dosa and Mendu Wada to sit through the day and take the intercity to Coimbatore at noon.
This was a calm and cool journey in the AC seater, I was in my half and T, a local enaged me into chatting about his childhood in chennnai and his get together in Coimbatore.

On getting off at Coimbatore I was strolling around the station complex and seeing through the rates of different hotels  as I could not get the Railway dormitories, my interview was next day morning.
I compromised my stay with a pricey scrumptious meal and let myself stay in the waiting rooms and incidentally there I met many other candidates like me.


I was 23 then and I really wish I could go on similar tours more often with some friends ,a group of 3 is most enjoyable.

I missed my school group of 3 friends..I did make a lot of fine college friends but finding a mutually exclusive collectively exhaustive group of 3 wont be suited for them. College group is not that varied and exclusive.

Living with mood swings

Its common to face failures, rejections—multiple rejections and traumatizing experiences, but for some  those experiences put a rift in your behavior and brain coordination, disturbs your sleep cycle and play with hormonal balance in your brain.
I have presented a terse treatment to this topic and an overview of my experience with all the below mentioned phases.

Reasons::

Events having high impact on your emotional balance like breakups/losing loved ones/trauma

No event of escape that provide you pleasure/uplifts your status

Repetitive failure on different ventures.

Follows::

Self doubt/low esteem, associating to similar fated people and their deeds, comparing oneself.

Bounce Back::
Impulsive determination to prove self worth instantly and retaliatory feelings.

Symptoms:
Losing proper sleep cycle ,engaging in a intense work routine to achieve multiple goals and feeling confident/euphoric and lost intermittently.

If you have these symptoms do consult a psychiatrist and get mood swings stabilized until it aggravates to a PTSD,BPD related things.

It’s best to invest in hobbies and skills that will serve to pay you back and if your hobby requires a lot of people and teamwork then its more suited to relieve you from depression, you can do anything to make yourself happy, it may be something which you earlier found to be unethical/morally incorrect, but make sure you are not harming others or yourself, if you feel morals and karma would play their half ,its not going to happen.

Infact a light example is I have a friend whom I met in one of the interviews of central govt jobs,he used to wear “Tabeez” coming from a humble background and after serving there for five years he has left it…so you see he has developed his self confidence and it has to nothing with moral turpitude.

Sustenance:

Proper sleep and discipline with continuous medication as directed by doctor.

For my example I will be concise and objective

I was having high ambitions after grad like everybody and an idea of higher study was lurking but I wanted a job and then continue it , during my final year I fortunately got to the final round of an armed forces job ,the principal was generous and kind to me to let me know that I had 2/3 recommendations and one more would let me go for the medical stage.
At this time I was having a normal software job and this one was paying 3 folds, on the other side my girlfriend somewhat persuaded me not to go and assured that the software job was fine ..
And I being a euphoric lover was lured by her and showed no interest when the principal said about posting off land for at least 7 years.

Fast forward 4 months ,I faced the breakup for several reasons(if you have to split you will definitely find reasons), as a result I  had prolonged depression, then retaliatory feelings on her opinion during my selection in that job..
During this depressive phase I listened to some poetic songs by Lana del Rey which threw me into more sadness and melancholy, in that realm I would write some ecstatic poetic verses and would forward to my ex in the expectation she might feel back…
Those coordinated garbages served as fuel for her ranting mails which questioned my sanity and worth.
My friend Koushik came to rescue and asked me to regain my self respect and do some worthwhile self improvement.I started working out/learning skills but this was an inhumane routine for me,sleeping 6 hrs,go to office,gym,sprint,study.
Now after two weeks I suddenly felt a dip in ego,it crept deep and I lost my sleep thinking again of the wasted relation and the way she treated me on those.During this time I got another offer with a better pay and fine perks but a less attractive profile to which I did not nod.
Again a week after this feeling crept in me of loosing a better offer.. while I was going through all this I missed another chance of doing a post grad at a premier institute  which would have definitely resulted in much better pay.
This ignorance slipped me into more of that depression-elation cycle,the elation was related to me working out,studying long hours while not able to sleep and wandering in the room…
My burning desire to be better than my peers was not taking any path.
As a result I had taken numerous  hasty decisions and set illogical goals in the following months, on top of that my passport  wasn’t getting issued and I wasn’t able to apply to universities..Numerous failures and no way to venture to a definite path of immediate success..
I started eating less,saving more living like a miser,took a feature phone ,kept my smartphone at home  in the anticipation that I might not able to live a better life ..and these actions were completely baseless.

After 14 months I had my first manic phase of delusions which had some devastating effect on my family relations  and I was in denial after treatment as I could not accept that had happened to me.I was on Lithium and other high dose sedatives..
Not continuing it properly has taken its toll me and my family..I suffered the attack three more times and the final time the psychiatrist deliberately medicated me to let me forget some of my memories.

Now after four years since the first attack I am much stable and am on milder doses , I feel I am recovering.

Transitioning Sexuality

After graduation I was posted to Pune for my first job, this let me resume my connections with school friends in Mumbai,it has been around four years I was away in West Bengal  for my undergrad school.

A very close friend of mine Abhinav had started behaving in a peculiar manner …The time we went to the McD near CSMT , a finer way of haptics and an adorned way of walking.not particularly feminine..but yes he was crossing legs.,manicured nails supplementing a suave accent ..I just asked about his accent out of obvious curiosity and it was a normative justification relating to his exposure in PR and mass comm...(his grad)
I was really impressed by that, but just upto that!  I was quite insouciant on his other eccentricities , felt he just wants a distinction like every young guy/girl yearns in their youth.

Fast forward three years..with due changes to my job profile I shifted to Navi Mumbai..
was staying with parents and visited a friends’ get together. Keshav,Anubhav,Dhruv,Akshay and me..missing was Abhinav..small talk led to reveal more about him when Dhruv raised it in particular that there has been a phenomenal change in Abhi,Keshav put a move to jokingly say that he was turning queer..and that’s telltale.,it became the focus of discussion for the next hour on pondering how suddenly he had an epiphany like that?!

Two days later me and Keshav went to visit Abhi at his place..he was quite morphed to my expectation..he kept a long hair carefully done and tinted with highlights .shaped eyebrows and there was lying a makeup box beside his bed.

Dressed in T and a half  he was talking in a more polished accent,I wont condescend by saying effeminate.
After our friendly chitchat in between a call interrupted and got Abhi on it ..when his father came to us for a discussion and requested us to do something on our part to revert him although his parents accepted his current disposition.

Now personally I wont say talking to him in a public place was nettlesome or even inchoate but to my future wife a modicum of that confabulation might squelch my chances.
Upon talking to him he confided his preferences were transitioning  and he is more attracted to guys, kind of bisexual and he “crossdresses” in closet.

I find it okay to do whatever you want with your sexual preferences but a session for crossdressing and makeup is like dawdling..what does it add?

After that I didn’t put much into it but I used my free time reading on articles related to fluid sexualities and their cause,the thing that pricked me was the two forms of a species are designed like opposite charges so what might be the reason that it can be transitory?

Is it like inductors where poles can be magnetized?even it was considered a mental disorder a few decades back.
But many of us has experimented during adolescence which we don’t want to keep as a facet in our memory gem but a guilty pleasure.

I did my own thing.. I installed two popular gay dating apps PR and GnDr
put up a face pic and there you go.
Except the physical appearance details and your intro text..there are three positions
Top/Versatile/Bottom..its imperative what they mean and I don’t have to get them across you.
You have a sundry of subjects to choose from,a bit gauche initially but with use I came to know most are finding partners for FWB/ONS and very few for relationship,although  a relationship is like FWB once it breaks.

There were many like Abhi who CD’d and I mentioned in profile ,I would meet first casually in a public place then go forward.
Of all the guys I conversed with I found the “Top” guys are mostly not gays,they are finding an escape as they aren’t getting girls of their choice or to commit a taboo to satisfy their chauvinist ego, so naturally I didn’t go to meet those.

Of the guys who said bisexual mostly are not attracted emotionally to guys but only sexually.
I met the guys who were kind of straight acting as it was more comfortable for me, I don’t want to sound flippant but no grudge to effeminate ones.

Those were nice meetings only that I didn’t go forward to the second.
Now you may ask what was the content of your messages ..

Yes until the first meet it was normal query about hobbies and stuff and after that
I has to slip to sexting. Here is where some mentionable things happened ..you exchange pics (ofcourse nudes) and you come to know some of the guys who claim themselves ”bottom” are having some disorder mostly a micro-penis  and I find its their camouflage of being a gay bottom rather putting an effort to a futile marriage/relationship.
Certain people derived pleasure on  being humiliated for their shortcomings ,which I feel
as their despair has ossified to passively provide a submissive farrago of content.
I really felt sorry for them, its much more than an incompetent female.

Another kind was the gaudy guys with certain out of the herd fashion statement and attending every pride march with all those rainbow coloured things.
I had a pleasure of meeting such a persona, to me I really don’t want to be pejorative to be saying immatured but his preferences felt shallow like teenagers.
Why I said such is because I am called immatured on numerous occasions by my senior family members when I didn’t do things upon their expectations!
I found them mostly serving the PR and fashion industry.
Now sitting with this guy got uncomfortable when he asked me about wearing male lingeries and those skimpy sultry designs which he showed me…and its not only distinct to him but there’s a renowned designer “Marco Marco”.He even showed those rampwalks and those didn’t suit my aesthete.
So you see this is a different sect who are having this kind of lifestyle and my friend Abhi is becoming one of them..aka “transgenders”.

I drew this conclusion within a span of 3 months and deleted my associated profiles.

This is only based on the Mumbai crowd, most of them are having a promiscuous lifestyle.There are straight couples too in such lifestyle so there’s no need to ostracize and profile gay/bi guys.
Infact bi/lesbian girls are held trendy as its a fetish among most men.
I finally let this know to Keshav and Abhi’s father and asked Abhi openly about his outlook.He didn’t step back..he likes to be that way and his family has nothing but to accept.

While this community is quite arcane to most people,keeping social broadsides aside I do not doubt Abhi’s probity nor is this a perspicacious analysis of the same community.

My next article will be on coping up with impulsive stress and bipolar disorder