Senior Symposium # 12 - A Letter to a Friend

There goes the bell,
Now it's heaven or hell...

To a friend who never fails,

So long it has been, hasn't it? I admit I cannot imagine how you look right now. Such long years of separation have completely wiped out any remnant of the vivid pictures of faces and places I once possessed. I apologize for the straightforwardness of my confession.

The time has come for me to leave Woodstock. Yes indeed, half a decade has passed, and once again I find myself standing on an unstable edge, wondering what the purpose of my journey is. Woodstock is past, and Providence unveils to me another vista, a hazy and uncertain world of profuse brutality. I do not know what I will do in such world, where there are no people to shout me to sleep, to walk me to tedious chapels, to wear me the appropriate clothes, day by day. The procedure is long and tiring, and I often find myself revolting against the system, to enjoy a little freedom after each rebellion. But that does not mean I can exclude myself from the Woodstock procedure, because I am afraid of what is not it. Yes I am very afraid of being in such frightful freedom that will be bestowed upon me in the near future.

It seems quite formidable, doesn't it? You need to know that in spite of copious hardship, I will not step back. At this exact moment I feel within me a rising pride that is inexplicably sublime. More than ever I realize that personal responsibility as a student, an adult, a citizen, and a human. The future from here is tough, very tough, and it is about to wink me in the eye, dead. I do not think that ever again will I be able to taste the sweet innocence that lingers about the air here, in Mussoorie, an innocence that refreshes as it refills. In America people cannot feel it. They talk and hope it but cannot live it. They can only compare it to the miserable state in which they are forever entangled. I am about to enter this unfortunate world, and poised to make a difference, to create and preserve, to change and be changed. May your friendship be with me the whole way through because I know not where the light that is supposed to guide me lies.

That's enough for a correspondence, don't you think? Pray keep in touch. You are the only source of support and inspiration I ever have, and it will cost me a great deal of grief if I am deprived of this privilege. Till then, please remember me in your prayers.

With love,

A friend who dares to fail