Scrolling through 2016

I’m on my way back to the city after a 2 day staycation in sunny Leavenworth. There’s no network for the next 40 minutes which means I cannot doom scroll. It’s 3:38 pm. Had it been a working day, I’d have easily taken a nap. So the only two options for me are stare outside the window and succumb to my thoughts or put on my creative hat, hop on the “2026 is the new 2016” train, and take a trip down memory lane. I’m doing this purely out of FOMO. And because it’s fun looking at pictures from when I was 13 ✨

I wasn’t big on clicking pictures 10 years ago. I can’t remember if I had my own mobile phone or if I used my galaxy tablet to click pictures. Maybe I used my mother’s or my brother’s phone. Point being, there’s very few pictures we’re working with. But as I scroll through my slowly loading Google photos, I’m reminiscing about a few key moments from 2016.

2016 was when I finished grade 09 and started grade 10 aka the year I peaked academically. The first guy I had a crush on left our school, I mean, finished school because he was a grade above me. I was devastated. But I lived. 

2016 was the year I saw my first and only live cricket match. Wankhede Stadium. Mumbai Indians vs Royal Challengers Bangalore. Saw both Virat Kohili and Rohit Sharma live. That means, I’ve been a Rohit Sharma fan for about 10 years now! That also means I’ve been an MI fan for more than 10 years now. Crazy. 

2016 was also the year I tickled my creative bone in various ways - I tried baking a cake for the first time in a pressure cooker. Wasn’t the best, but was edible. I was deep into making exquisite decor pieces using just newspaper and glue. Like really good ones that my mom actually put up in our house. It was the year I wrote my first poem in English, for a school assignment. Read it today after a long time, and not gonna lie, I’m quite proud of myself. It has some very interesting rhymes. 

I scripted and recorded a very, very terrible advertisement for a made up multigrain bread brand, again, for a school assignment. I cringe so bad watching it back now. I also annoyed everyone with my B612 filter obsession. My dadi, chachi, mom, everyone. Honestly, those pictures are a vibe. 

All of this is January to November of 2016. Because somewhere in the middle of November, I stopped syncing pictures to my google cloud. The next picture I have is from 2018. So I probably will have little to no memories from 2017. 

Looking back, I’m realizing that 13 year old version of me had no idea what the 24 year old version of her was gonna be like. For starters, 13 year old me did not know where New York was on the map of the world, and 24 year old me can not stop talking and thinking and dreaming about New York, after living there for 2 years. I was adamant on becoming a school teacher at 13 because I believed being around kids meant you can deal with every low in your life. I’ve settled for being in tech at 24 because I believe I have to love the life that my job pays for, even if not the job itself. (doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for it)

The only piece of content I used to consume was Tarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashma. I had no clue there’s a whole other world of sitcoms out there that I’d discover and fall in love with. My world was within a 10 km radius I never knew I’d leave. And now I’m out and about exploring different cities every few months, and loving it. 

This is true even for me from 5 years ago. She too had no clue about most of these things. Which is why, when someone asks where do you see yourself in five years, I have no answer. I can’t and don’t want to predict my answer at some level. Because everything that has happened in the last five years has been spontaneous and unexpected. And I’ve loved every second of it. So I only hope the next five turn out to be the same. And the next 10. So that in 2034, when I’m skimming through 60000 pictures I now have of me at 24, I can say that I’ve loved the last 10 years of my life, yet again. 

~ Vee