One life, many worlds!

When I searched the word "world" in oxford dictionary, then I found that the word has a number of meanings. One meaning that we are all so familiar goes something like this "(the world) the earth with all its countries and peoples". Another meaning says " (one’s world) a person’s life and activities". It is the latter usage of the word "world" that inspired me to give the name of my blog "world of amitava".

We all live in a world of our own. We sleep, we eat, we drink, we work, we have fun -- all in our own world. We share part of the world with our friends, relatives and neighbours. Its a cosy world we all live in - knowingly or unknowingly - quite like the atmosphere that surrounds the earth. We move with the world around us, with its set of views, principles, knowledge. We accept other people's world when we find something common or interesting in their worlds. We have fun and make merry when the worlds match each other. That is why sometimes even two complete strangers can be seen talking for hours in a park or in an airport lounge. Their worlds have something in common. They have something they can talk about. But if the worlds are different, then even the closest of the blood-relationships cease to talk to each other. Its just that the cats and the dogs can’t dine from the same plate and even if you force them to, you don’t expect any conversation on the dinning table as they don’t understand each other's language - each lives in a different world of its own.

The most interesting part is, these worlds keep changing! Thats why, even after five-six or more years of successful marriage, people file for divorce. Their worlds have changed. Once their worlds shared lots of common things between them. Alas! Today they don’t speak each others languages.
I first got a feel of my world getting changed when I had to leave my first school, St. Joseph's Convent in standard four (the school allowed boys and girls to study together till standard four, from standard five only girls were allowed to study). I remember the last day in that memorable school, when I felt really sad that I had to leave the school, some of my best friends and teachers in the school, the environment. It was also the first realisation that life moves on. Since then I had stepped into many new worlds with butterflies in the stomach and stepped out with a heavy heart. There was my life in my next school. My world in my engineering college; my world when I joined the Indian IT firm TCS and was in Trivandrum for some months; my world when I stayed alone in Bangalore in the initial days of my job; my world when I was deputed to USA from TCS; my Cranfield world and the world I live now. Each world is different from the other. Each world had its own taste and flavour. Most importantly, in each of these new worlds, I have lived a new life.
A very good way of revisiting those "lost worlds" is to read the mails that were exchanged during those periods. The mails that I had written when I was about to join Cranfield is different from what I was writing when I was studying in Cranfield or the post-Cranfield period. The mails are the proofs that my views, thoughts, dreams have changed its shape and form. In short, I call, my world has changed. Like the transition from day to night, I slowly stepped out of the world I was living and entered a new one. About a year and a half back, when I was in Cranfield my world was class lectures, team meetings, assignments, job search, Fedden Flats; today my world is completely different. I do not live in the Cranfield world anymore. I am equally sure that today's world of mine will eventually fade into oblivion and I will step onto a new one some day.
My age is thirty one now. And within such a short time I have explored so many worlds and lived so many lives. As I have mentioned a couple of times in other blogs, the journey of my life gets more and more interesting, especially, when every couple of years I discover new worlds, meet new friends, have new ideas, learn new things!

Its the same for all of us. We hear of explorers discovering new worlds and how Columbus discovered India and the adventures and stories about it. But we fail to take note of the fact that each of us is explorer in his or her own right. We discover so many things in the world we live in and then one day we leave that world and start exploring some other worlds. We also go through the storms, the rough weather, the high waves, the uncertainty as we set out for the new exploration. Whether we like it or not, this journey of life will eventually come to an end one day for all of us. But in this one journey we can have so many small journeys, in one life we can live so many lives and in this one world ("the earth with all its countries and peoples") we can have so many worlds(of our own)!