Is it normal to get this surreal feeling by seeing my male peers Instagram posts?
So yeah in Instagram, I saw stories of these 2 guys Dhanush and Yashuyesh who were in my college during my engineering undergraduate days. So I was curious what are they up to and saw their Instagram posts. So Dhanush was my classmate in college and he is basically from the smaller Karnataka City named Chitradurga in India but living in Bangalore now since our engineering days and he often called himself Kotigobba. I didn't know why he called himself but yeah I came to know that Kotigobba is a Kannada movie series and he is a huge fan of it so he calls himself Kotigobba sometimes haha. I am Bengali(I was one of the only Bengali in the college) from Siliguri in West Bengal so didn't know about it even though I am living in Bangalore since 2008 which is the capital city of Karnataka. Yashuyesh is a guy from the same year as me during engineering but he was pursuing Civil Engineering and i was pursuing Electronics Engineering so we werent classmates but he would sometimes call me Bengal tiger for fun. I wasn't really close with either Dhanush or Yashuyesh tho.
But I got this surreal feeling seeing their Instagram posts especially from 2023-2024. In 2022 we completed our engineering so yeah I am 25 and they are both in their mid 20s too. 2023 and 2024 were special years for me as I started my MBA in mid 2023 and entire 2024 too I had classes and it was a big change from my more isolating and why school and engineering years and also a more balanced gender ratio whereas engineering was definitely more male dominated environment. But I saw Dhanush's posts in 2023 in places like Adiyogi, Pyramic valley and other Karnataka places with only male friends and that made me realise how different life has become for me. In 2023 when he was visiting those places with his other Kannada speaking male friends, I was literally crushing on this woman Anshika in our campus and blushing and she even called me cute and sometimes initiating conversations with me. Dhanush's October 2023 post too felt so surreal as he was again in some Temple town with his male friends whereas my female friend Soniya who was Bengali too kept making plans to hangout with me during our Bengali festival Durga puja. In his early 2024 posts, he was in Pondicherry with his male friends again and its surreal how I was crushing on this another woman Akansha at the time and talking to her excited me so much.
Yashuyesh's posts did the same too especially when seeing his August 2023 posts and that's the month when Anshika called me cute. In August 2024, Yashuyesh went to this Hill station Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu State of India with huge of male friends only who were his civil and mechanical engineering friends. But what's surreal is in one particular night at August 2024, he and his friends were full enjoying in Kodaikanal and dancing around with Kannada songs and the next day for me was a completely different breakthrough as that's when I fully broken out of my shyness and my 3rd semester of MBA started and i started initiating conversations with women in campus and met this MBA junior Dimple who was soft spoken and cute and we talked and she felt so special at the time even though she eventually later on unfollowed me on Instagram and distanced herself from me but yeah it shows how different my life and Yashuyesh's life was. He was with the same friends from his engineering days in the trip whereas I met Dimple and other women in campus. But especially as life feels more stagnant now as I am recently done with MBA and job searching, the contrast feels uncomfortable too seeing their videos as life isn't as fun now for sure. Most interactions have been with strangers these days even though many are interesting cross cultural interactions with foreign women but many are one time interactions. It's been quite a long time since I had a proper steady peer environment so yeah it kinda feels uncomfortable seeing their posts and seeing how contrasting our lives were in 2023 to early 2025 and now suddenly I am not having many steady peer connections, a proper routine and no crushes and all.
But I got this surreal feeling seeing their Instagram posts especially from 2023-2024. In 2022 we completed our engineering so yeah I am 25 and they are both in their mid 20s too. 2023 and 2024 were special years for me as I started my MBA in mid 2023 and entire 2024 too I had classes and it was a big change from my more isolating and why school and engineering years and also a more balanced gender ratio whereas engineering was definitely more male dominated environment. But I saw Dhanush's posts in 2023 in places like Adiyogi, Pyramic valley and other Karnataka places with only male friends and that made me realise how different life has become for me. In 2023 when he was visiting those places with his other Kannada speaking male friends, I was literally crushing on this woman Anshika in our campus and blushing and she even called me cute and sometimes initiating conversations with me. Dhanush's October 2023 post too felt so surreal as he was again in some Temple town with his male friends whereas my female friend Soniya who was Bengali too kept making plans to hangout with me during our Bengali festival Durga puja. In his early 2024 posts, he was in Pondicherry with his male friends again and its surreal how I was crushing on this another woman Akansha at the time and talking to her excited me so much.
Yashuyesh's posts did the same too especially when seeing his August 2023 posts and that's the month when Anshika called me cute. In August 2024, Yashuyesh went to this Hill station Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu State of India with huge of male friends only who were his civil and mechanical engineering friends. But what's surreal is in one particular night at August 2024, he and his friends were full enjoying in Kodaikanal and dancing around with Kannada songs and the next day for me was a completely different breakthrough as that's when I fully broken out of my shyness and my 3rd semester of MBA started and i started initiating conversations with women in campus and met this MBA junior Dimple who was soft spoken and cute and we talked and she felt so special at the time even though she eventually later on unfollowed me on Instagram and distanced herself from me but yeah it shows how different my life and Yashuyesh's life was. He was with the same friends from his engineering days in the trip whereas I met Dimple and other women in campus. But especially as life feels more stagnant now as I am recently done with MBA and job searching, the contrast feels uncomfortable too seeing their videos as life isn't as fun now for sure. Most interactions have been with strangers these days even though many are interesting cross cultural interactions with foreign women but many are one time interactions. It's been quite a long time since I had a proper steady peer environment so yeah it kinda feels uncomfortable seeing their posts and seeing how contrasting our lives were in 2023 to early 2025 and now suddenly I am not having many steady peer connections, a proper routine and no crushes and all.
22-25, M