NEW BEGINNING
After everything that happened, my engineering journey finally began.
I joined college almost a month late because I was waiting for my medical counselling results. I was still on the borderline and holding on to that last bit of hope that maybe, somehow, I would get a medical seat.
But eventually, I didn’t.
So I went to college.
By then, everyone had already been there for a month. They had met each other, made friends, found their groups, understood the campus, and settled into their routines.
And then there was me — the new person walking in after everyone else had already started.
1. Starting Over, Two Year Late
The person sitting next to me on my bench started talking to me, and eventually I found out that she had also taken a year off to prepare for NEET.
For the first time, I felt a little less alone.
Still, there was always something in the back of my mind.
I was supposed to be in my third year of college by then.
Instead, I was sitting in a first-year classroom.
That was one of the hardest things for me to accept.
But what hurt even more was studying alongside people who were two or three years younger than me.
Some people would casually call me “akka” — older sister.
They probably didn’t mean anything by it.
Maybe it was completely normal from their perspective.
But at that point in my life, even the smallest things could hurt me.
I would look at myself in the mirror and overthink everything.
“Do I actually look older than them?”
“Do I look out of place here?”
“Do I look strange compared to everyone else?”
I became extremely conscious of my age.
I kept comparing myself with the people around me.
But slowly, I started realizing that everyone has a different timeline.
I had lost two years according to the calendar.
But that didn’t mean I had lost the rest of my life.
2. Finding Myself Again
My first year of college was surprisingly smooth.
There wasn’t any huge transformation overnight.
I simply started living.
I attended classes, completed whatever work I had, spent time with friends, and enjoyed myself.
Whenever my past came back into my mind, I would think about making a comeback.
“What can I do now?”
“How can I become successful?”
“How can I prove myself?”
And then, after some time, I would return to normal life.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t constantly fighting against something.
Then something happened that I didn’t expect.
I got an opportunity to perform on stage.
It had been years since I had performed in front of an audience.
I sang “Yamunai Aatrile” from Thalapathi, a song by Ilaiyaraaja.
Standing on that stage and performing again gave me a feeling I hadn’t experienced in a very long time.
For those few minutes, I didn’t think about NEET.
I didn’t think about my lost years.
I didn’t think about what I was supposed to have become.
I was simply myself.
And people recognized me.
They appreciated my performance.
For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was finding myself again.
Then came my first hackathon.
I participated in a national-level hackathon, and my team managed to clear two rounds.
Then came the final selection.
Around 400 teams had participated.
My team, Infinity Loopers, was waiting in the auditorium while the finalists were being announced.
At that point, my friends and I had already convinced ourselves:
“We’re probably not going to get selected. Once they announce the results, let’s just go have lunch.”
Then suddenly, I heard our team name.
“Infinity Loopers — Finalist.”
For a few seconds, I couldn’t process it.
Out of around 400 teams, we were among the top 10 finalists.
It was my first hackathon.
We didn’t win the final prize.
But honestly, something much more important happened that day.
I started believing in myself again.
I started thinking:
“Maybe I can actually succeed in this field.”
“Maybe my life isn’t over.”
“Maybe I can build something here too.”
It wasn’t an accelerated start.
But it was a much-needed one.
3. The First Signs of a New Life
During my first year, I didn’t have a laptop.
So I made a decision to postpone my career-focused learning.
I told myself:
“I’ll get a laptop later. I’ll focus on everything else for now.”
Then my second year began.
I finally got my laptop.
I formed my own team.
I started learning seriously.
I began exploring my field — Artificial Intelligence and Data Science.
Slowly, I started building skills and understanding what I actually wanted to do.
Then I participated in another hackathon in Pondicherry, hosted at a prestigious institution.
This time, something unbelievable happened.
We won second prize.
And I received a cash prize of ₹2,500.
But the prize itself wasn’t the most important part.
For the first time, I had to convince my conservative family to let me travel to another city with my friends.
I had to ask for permission.
I had to explain everything.
I even cried while trying to convince them.
Eventually, they trusted me and allowed me to go.
Travelling to Pondicherry with my friends felt completely new.
I felt independent.
I felt capable.
I felt like I was finally experiencing life instead of constantly worrying about it.
And when I came back safely — with a prize in my hands — I could see something change in my parents too.
They had hope in me.
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Not because I had become a doctor.
Not because I had achieved the dream they had once imagined for me.
But because I had found something I was actually good at.
The following week, I travelled again with my friends to an event in Coimbatore, hosted at another prestigious institution.
I didn’t win anything there.
And surprisingly, I was okay with that.
I had travelled.
I had participated.
I had experienced something new.
I had travelled late at night with my friends.
And most importantly, my parents trusted me enough to let me go.
For the first time, I felt like my life was actually beginning.
I started writing this article soon after returning from Coimbatore.
4. People, Confidence, and the Person I Was Becoming
One thing I had learned from my past was to be careful about people.
I used to think that people could be cruel.
And some people are.
But college taught me something else:
Not everyone is bad.
My friends treated me warmly despite the age difference.
They appreciated things about me that I had almost forgotten about myself.
They complimented my drawings.
My singing.
My leadership.
My ideas.
The way I presented things confidently.
The way I participated.
Of course, there were also people who intentionally made jokes about my age.
But I slowly learned not to let every comment become a wound.
Maybe that is simply part of life.
You meet good people.
You meet difficult people.
You get appreciated.
You get mocked.
You win.
You lose.
And you keep going.
Even the people in my department started recognizing me.
My Head of the Department, faculty members, and seniors began to know me.
And that feeling was incredibly special.
Because for years, I had felt like I had lost the person I used to be.
Now, little by little, I was meeting her again.
Only this time, I was becoming someone new too.
5. I Don’t Need to Figure Out My Whole Life Today
The biggest lesson this new chapter has taught me is surprisingly simple:
Start living your life.
You don’t need to figure out your entire life at once.
You don’t need to create the perfect plan.
You don’t need to know exactly where you will be five or ten years from now.
You can plan.
You can work hard.
You can be disciplined.
But life may still take you somewhere completely different.
And that’s okay.
It is okay to cry.
It is okay to feel lost.
It is okay to change direction.
It is okay to stop forcing yourself to follow a plan that no longer makes sense.
Right now, I don’t need to figure everything out.
I just need to keep learning.
I need to discover what interests me.
I need to find what works for me.
And once I find something I genuinely enjoy, I can start working on it and eventually build a career around it.
I’m currently studying Artificial Intelligence and Data Science.
I’m building my skills.
I’m exploring my interests.
And I also have plans for my own startup.
Maybe this journey will succeed.
Maybe it won’t go exactly the way I imagine.
But this time, I’m not going to measure my entire life by one result.
I’m going to keep searching.
Keep learning.
Keep experimenting.
Keep building.
And keep moving.
If someone asked me today whether I would change something about my past, I honestly don’t know what I would change.
Maybe nothing.
Because every twist, every failure, every delay, and every painful experience has brought me to where I am now.
My life could probably be made into a movie.
There have been too many twists and turns.
Too many unexpected challenges.
Too many moments when I thought the story was over.
And somehow, there has always been another chapter.
So, for now, I have one phrase I keep coming back to:
“Paathukalam.”
We’ll see.
Whatever happens, we’ll see.
I want to share my journey — my studies, my startup, my failures, my experiments, my thoughts, and the things I learn along the way.
For a long time, I felt like I had no one to talk to about all these thoughts.
So maybe this is my way of opening that door.
I’m putting my thoughts out into the world.
Not because I have figured everything out.
But because I haven’t.
And maybe someone else who feels lost might read this and realize that they don’t have to have everything figured out either.
This is Dharshini Natarajan.
Still learning.
Still building.
Still searching.
Still becoming.
And I will continue unlocking this life, one chapter at a time.
