Convocation

The last thread binding me to my College days has tweaked. Convocation was my last excuse to go back through the hallowed gates, smell the fresh and youthful fragrance of the greeneries. Even as the day appraoched, I was more apprehensive than excited. No I did not bother too much about whether I would get my degree or not…that wasn’t really an issue. But somewhere in my heart a question kept fighting to grab my attention…”What next?”
Even as I got off the bus on the cold winter morning, there was a skip in my gait. I could have taken the cab. It would have saved time and also been more comfortable. But I wanted to do things the way I did them for 4 wonderous years. And as the cold December wind lashed at our faces, most of the passengers in the bus squinted and gritted their teeth in disgust. But to me it felt like heaven…so unlike the modest winters in Vizag from where I had arrived the day before, it felt like home…23 years of my life summed up into that chilly breeze in that hackneyed bus at that very moment! The University has hardly changed. Only the bank has been repainted (orange seems the weird favourite for all JU ites!)
We met. All of us. After 6 months. The best friends…the groups…the duos and the trios! They were all there! The geeks and the rockstars, the dudes and the duds! The wannabes and the carefrees. They were all there. And we hugged. And slapped each others’ backs. We shouted when we saw each other. We swore in joy. We called each other names that we hadn’t been refered to by for many months now. And we all felt the same. We had all gone back in time. We had all gone back to those days when we enjoyed the liberty to be who we really were…not any ambitious and diplomatic young man working his way up the corporate ladder. We all knew we were in a place where we had very little to hide…and where we felt safe…we were among friends.
We collected our degrees, we played cards, we revelled in Park Street. But all of that seems an unclear dream now. So much of it happened in a day. What remains is just a handful of emotions and sensations that keep coming back to my mind suddenly. Suddenly over an aromatic cup of coffee, suddenly looking at myself in the mirror when I wash my face, suddenly when I close my eyes at night, suddenly when I tie my old shoe laces and suddenly when I feel down.
All of us have memories of college. For some of us they are sweet. For some of us they are bitter. Some are simple…and some quite dramatic! In college we had friends…and we hated many of our classmates. We hated their guts…or we hated their ways. But still we miss them. We miss them because they are part of that perfect picture in our minds. Without them, that picture would not be real. They are what make that picture perfect.
When we parted that day, I knew that it was the last time I was going to meet many of them out of my own will. So I took one last look at them. The JU Chemical Engineering Batch of 2007-2011. It was one hell of a group. As we stepped up to collect our degrees, each of us felt it…felt that this was the end. To some of us, the position in the line was important…at what number were we called up to collect our degrees…our prestigious ranks in class. But for most of us ( the slightly level headed ones), it was a moment of flashback…a flashback of 4 years…4 years during which not even for an instant had we thought of this moment…this moment of the end!


PS- This post was written on the flight back to Vizag from Kolkata.

Me

I always wanted to travel the world. Not to famous places or anything of the sort. Just places. New places every now and then. Wake up in different beds…look out of different windows…look out to see different scenes and different people. I yearn to sit at back of the bus and gaze aimlessly out the window…a little squint in my eye…the sun smothering my face…and my 2 day stubble. I want to drive on an empty road. I don’t want to drive fast…just coast along…the morning breeze streaming through my hair. I want to listen to a hundred voices around me…speaking in a language of which I cannot make out a thing…I want to look for words they keep saying…and then cook up a meaning for each of them. I want to capture images of faces I don’t know…faces I shall never see again…capture them in my camera…gaze at them for emotions…try to figure them out. Sit myself at a roadside shop…where they serve steaming cups of tea…very sweet ones…like hot sherbet. And I want to drive in the countryside…where the sun never comes out from behind the clouds…and lush green meadows are dotted with little farmhouses with queer brown fences around them on which jackdaws stare at me as I sail by. And I want to stare at little kids on mountain tops in grey shorts and red sweaters, unwillingly dragging their satchels along, some wild mountain fruit clasped in their hands…their tiny little eyes gaping at me in curiousity. I want to run along the beach at the break of the dawn…to see where it ends…where all the big hotels give way to the tiny homes of the fishermen and then the lighthouse and then suddenly all the sand goes away and its only lashing waves and brave black rocks thrusting their chests out to take the beating. In the middle of the night I want to be sitting on the verandah of a tiny forest bungalow, with the lights gone out…only a candle in the dining room where the cook prepares country chicken in a fiery gravy on a winter night…and as I wait for him to serve the steaming rice, I want to hear the cricket’s trance and the occasional trumpet of the elephant and the otherwise silence of the mysterious jungle…I love what this world has to offer…all its nature…all its creatures…its human civilizations…I respect all of them…and I love to know all about them…