I have always felt like I have been a stranger surrounded among people… have you?

Large crowds and me don’t go along very well… feels like I am lost and everyone is shouting to be heard and seen. The family reunions typically happening during Indian marriages, where the who’s who comes and the introductions which have no relevance the next minute or day to come, are the formalities where I have this experience as if I am a stranger in the room being introduced.

This feeling is the same in college classrooms, where every other person seems to be understanding every subject and topic, even asking questions and clearing their doubts, while I am tracking the movement of the chalk on the blackboard, discovering new patterns for myself—to stand out as a stranger in the room.

I always felt like I was struggling where everyone would party and I would be in the corner in my thought, gazing aimlessly, questioning the very fact as to why I was in that room.

Being a stranger is not strange for me… I know that I am a misfit among the normal people… and for the rest, I don’t count. This has got little to do with introspection or self-realisation but a mere observation of always being the last man standing in the room.

College got forwarded into conference rooms and meetings, where I felt most of them either did not study well in college or were in that position because of reasons better known to them than their capabilities. The challenge: I was the only person on this side of the table thinking like that, while the rest of them would conclude the meeting with nothing majorly achieved—yet agreeing to meet soon for the next update.

The world has not changed much from then to now, just that I have learned to mellow down my strangeness to be amongst the equals… yet the feeling of strangeness surfacing time and time again.

A tap on my shoulder from the person sitting next to me brought me back at the seminar, where I was invited as one of the speakers… on a topic least known by everyone. I reflected on the thought of the stranger in the room and felt that maybe I made my mark being a stranger, but I did ok. My strangeness was ok with me and I was not at odds with it. But more importantly, I had made a lot of friends in spite of me being me

My name was announced and claps followed. As I got to the dais and the microphone, the feeling of the stranger in the room came up. I saw the people sitting in the front row… found the one who was lost… looked at him… and started talking…

This time I was not the stranger… I had found the stranger in the room.