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I was driving my car around the Airport Complex for a long time searching for the ‘ EXIT’ sign until I found the sign board which was bold and clear. I took the “EXIT” gate with a sense of relief and drove out of the Airport Complex.
“EXIT” gates have generally inspired me. Many a time they provide a sense of relief, achievement and completion of a task. Be it dropping someone close to you at the Airport, picking up some close relative at the Railway station or even driving out of a mall after having brunch and watching a movie with the family on a lazy Sunday and exiting from the “EXIT” gate.
I recall as a school kid when the home bell rang I bolted out of the exit gate of the school with
sheer joy. As a college student I walked out of the exit gate with a sense of freedom when the home bell rang.
Later, when I joined employment, I felt a sense of relief when I drove through the exit gate of the office complex to reach home after a day’s hard work.
I remember, after a major accident a decade ago, and after a prolonged stay in the hospital, I was finally discharged and I moved out of the hospital’s EXIT gate with a sense of relief and joy of returning home.
I still recall 6 years ago, when we drove out of the hospital’s EXIT gate with my grandson, the bundle of joy, fully wrapped in a towel.
Exit gates sometimes hold high emotions of pain, disappointment and failures too. Recently, we all had a joyful family get-together after a long time. It was a painful sight as we bade farewell to each other at the end of the function and moved towards the exit gate.
The pain and the grief I faced when I took my mother’s dead body out of the EXIT gate of the hospital in Kolkata 15 years ago still lingers in my mind.
When I retired from the Bank, while I took those few final steps of my long banking career, and moved slowly towards the exit gate, I felt an overwhelming mixed feeling of sadness, relief and achievement of having served my great institution for nearly 40 years.
Now post retirement, as I walk inside my expansive residential complex, the exit gate sign at the main gate scares me as the symbolic sign of a permanent exit from the world. The earlier belief that I would re-enter the “ENTRY” gates is now replaced by a haunting fear of a
“NO ENTRY” sign.
V.Subramanian
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