Little Thing of the Month: Will Power
Photograph By: Tommy Woo
Combing hair is so overrated
She joked, "combing hair is so overrated." But that's no excuse for a bad picture. We should thank our photographers more who seize the moment which we can caption as throwback Thursday, flashback Friday and cherish for years to come. She had come to Germany in 2016. She told me to write that somewhere, she has a poor memory. It was the day she graduated from the 13th year of her German schooling, also known as Deutschabitur für internationale Studierende.
Flashback(s)
We have seen many graduation pictures. Or in other words, not-anymore-students throwing their academic caps high in the sky. But this wasn't quite same.
She had a backstory.
"I hardly looked at that certificate. Series of flashbacks had clouded up my mind."
Her favorite TV shows were How I Met Your Mother (for the lover inside her) and The Big Bang Theory (for the nerd she's always been). Much like that in reality, she had an amazing group of friends. But has there ever been a group like F.R.I.E.N.D.S in real?
"Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together. That was exactly our case. We were a group, I won't say a strong group because we aren't together anymore. But we were all very close. It was then we realized that we raised expectations we couldn't meet, and things began to fall apart. I guess love has to be limited," the girl explained.
"But not everyone is ready to face things falling apart. Some are just meant to be taken care of. And some others are just meant to take care and forget their own grieves. And that's how me and him fell for each other, by loving and taking care of each other- when things were falling apart."
On the last day of the school, the lad had mustered up his courage and asked her to be his girlfriend. She was so much in love. But does love ever happen at the right time? The results came out and she did not make it through the exam.
She admits, "It was the year I realized family means so much and knowing that distance hurts."
Somehow, she managed to fail her Physics exam at a very appropriate time, the moment she was in love. Consequences of not clearing the exam were simply to fly back home, away from her dreams and boyfriend, specifically, three thousand miles away. It also meant taking away all the pride her family had invested in her. She couldn't let an exam, merely a sheet of paper and this time a few words, affect her and the people who love her so much.
All she was told that an oral test is her one last shot.
Viva exams are the worst. It's more about testing one's confidence and conviction. She lacked exactly that. It's hard to imagine the pressure she had have dealt with. She clearly had the opportunity to prove everyone wrong this time. And, well she did. Maybe love wasn't something that made her vulnerable but became a driving force for her to work hard. She worked day and night only because she didn't want to go back and go away from the love she just found.
"The thing about Physics is once you start learning it, you start loving it." She calls Physics her favorite subject now.
On her graduation day, tears filled up her eyes. "It was the year I traveled alone carrying bags heavier than me. It was the year my best friend lost his mother and words failed me over the phone. It was the year I found someone who's more of a concoction of a teddy bear and Fawad Khan come alive. It was the year I got to know the popular plot why Katappa killed Baahubali. It was also the year I won a table tennis tournament among these twenty men from all around the world, and discovered that I really knew how to play the game. It was a gaze about so much more."
She was truly the queen of flashbacks.