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…

Listen to me!

And we are fighting to be heard, to be listened to. Its all that we want. To have our own way. I am King and thus you must obey! That’s all we would love to shout out. Introvert? What introvert? There are no introverts. They have just given up. Nobody listens to them. So they stay shut. We are all the same…dying to be heard. Fighting to be heard! Stop you! I must speak now. I have said the same thing…last Friday when you were saying the same thing. I stopped you then as well! Why am I stopping you now then? Because you should hear me! No, its not an emergency or anything. No, I am not under any stress. But you must hear me out…listen to MY point. Your point? Yes of course its there…but I am right. You MUST listen to me. If you listen to me your thoughts will change…and you will think like me. Speak like me. But even then you must stop and let me speak. Please listen to me. No No NO! Even that’s not enough! You must agree with me. If you don’t like what I say then argue with me. You MUST argue! Its your right to argue. But then I am eventually right. Accept it. You MUST accept it! How can you not accept it? I am right. You have some logic to what you say but at the end of it, I am right. Yes you have to accept it. Please listen to me and just accept it. That ALL I want.

Clicks!!!

Scribblings from my heart

I want a home beside a railway track in the midst of a decidous forest. In the dizzy heat of the afternoon I want to hear the rattling from miles away. I want to see the birds scurrying away in the distance behind my greentop hillock. In the dark of the night I want to hear the moan of the siren piercing the cricket’ trance. I want to wait for the glaring light to pass over my drowsy face for a moment while the siren blasts away. It would be swell..

Tick tock tick tock

There’s a voice in my head that tells me to stop but there is this lady in red drives me on. She’s not some pretty lady, she is just a hallucination. She is no good for me, but she makes me feel good…and she keeps pulling me away from myself…from my innocent self…she draws me to her lair…her soft woollen carpets of acceptance and her fluffy pillows of denial. Monotony is such a bitch…flaunting her starched shirts and perfect creaseless cotton pants. Its getting to me really…blood pumping in my veins, thumping my head…walls…dead ends…I am a servant of fate am I? And staying shut is so much fun…let the lady guide you…she knows best….makes you feel good…not about yourself…just good. Good in a bad way…like said before…”I love you…like I hate you”! Everyday that 9 30 am run, those drowsy afternoons at the machine…and the stupid noddings. Why am I like this? That’s because I am scared…scared of losing this. I don’t want this…but they tell me there is nothing else to have! Claustrophobic little room with senseless minds and mosquitoes that squeeze the life out of my body…what is it that I was supposed to find here? It’s a road I have left behind in 3 months time. It’s a dusty road…and it doesn’t have any ladies in red…but something tells me, its where I should be.

On the go...

I am on a train right now, heading back from Dehradun Station to New Delhi after a weekend outing with my family to the “Queen of Hills” Mussourie. To my great surprise when I boarded the train, I found my compartment teeming with noisy school children. They are all about 10 or 12 years old at most. There are 25 of them and they are being accompanied by 5 teachers. 4 of them are garrulous ladies who have set up their own “kitty party”. One is a slightly aged man who is sitting beside me. He has the window seat and is enjoying the view outside. He seems a queer man. Dressed in a simple and somehow fading shirt, uncool jeans and mountain shoes, he was making quite a fuss about the railway authorities not providing the dairy creamer inside the sachet containing the sugar and tea bag. He uses a NOKIA E71 and is spending most of the time Googling stuff. Sometimes he is logging on to Facebook as well. The train is steaming through the green valleys of Dehradun. Suddenly he asks the three little girls in the seat just in front of him…” Can you tell me the name of the river we just passed?” He didn’t get any replies…the three little girls who were giggling all this while just looked at him with blank stares. In the seats just in front of them, the garrulous Lady Teachers were enquiring of the students whether any of them had a pain relief spray with them! “Didn’t I tell you about the river that we cross after Haridwar and before we reach Dehradun?”, Sir asked in a questioning manner. “ We have forgotten Sir”, the girls replied as sweetly as they could! “No matter, ask your teachers then…”

“What Sir? Why are you making them take our exams Sir?”, one of the fat ladies said combing her hair, evidently quite irritated with Sir’s suggestion. “ Son river, Sir”, another of the ladies said…” We also know our bit, Sir”, she said in a “Take that old man” tone! “Right! Very good Madam! That’s one ice cream for you when we get off!”, said our Sir.

“How do you know so much, Sir?” asked one of the little girls, “Well I like to read many books and travel my angel”, replied the old man with an air of knowledge. “Then you must have got lots of marks in your exams, Sir?” his little angel continued. “Huh! Marks? Who said anything about marks?”, exclaimed Sir. “ I just like to find out stuff…problem is that I never found them out at the right time…it was always after the exams and out of my own interest that I came to know all of this!” The little girl didn’t seem to understand and went back to playing with her hair.

A loud voice boomed the air right now! “STUDENTS!!! WHY ARE YOU MAKING SO MUCH NOISE. IT IS 6 PM. YOU WILL ALL HAVE TO GO TO SLEEP NOW!”. It’s the Headmistress. There is a hush in the air now. Haridwar is approaching. I am logging off for the while. We will all HAVE to go to sleep now!

Spankings!

You used to be so beautiful. So bold and so clean. So clear and unabated. And now its only fear that directs you. It’s all a maze for you now. Running hither thither only to be halted by shut doors with fear carved on them with a bleeding knife. And you have lost all of that sanctity. You are just another brick in the wall…guffawing and mesmerized by a trance that you despised in your past. Was it always meant to be like this? To be sucked unknowingly into this foolhardiness…to turn just like any other cog in the machine? And to top it off now you look down upon the people you admired before..you make up lies that you can tell your filthy self about those who float on red balloons and play with the cotton clouds. You say they are in a delusion! You say there is a time for everything… this isn’t the time for this! And you know its all lies… baseless lies fed to a disillusioned self! Its an addiction for you now…to pretend to be who you are not! What did you call them then? Phonies was it? Well look at the mirror…and welcome yourself to their world.