The gentle rocking of the train has been unable to accompany me to a timely sleep. Unfortunate as it might be, I find this the perfect time for some moaning. My obsession with the negative and more morbid aspects of our lives does not disappoint me as I can still hear a nagging voice in the back of my head cribbing about how the rhythmic movements of the train are making the writing of this hard for me. But then again, I’m too bored to try anything else… And a very long period of boredom back home looms near anyways…
“…I have been here long, too long, need to go out in the real world and not do stuff there.” - Pallavi
A train journey with people you don’t know might me a pretty unique experience according to some, but for me traveling with people you know a bit vaguely is mostly more enjoyable. A hapless myopic observer of the myriad colors of human life as I am, I often find this a rather refreshing exercise… And besides, my rather introvert-ish nature does not naturally allow me to catch a steady look at strangers, let alone strike a conversation… …
Today has been a rather funny Dr.Watson-like day for me. I observed what I had not observed before but only because I knew how and where to observe… Its like stealing a candy from the past, you know where it is kept, so half the guilty pleasure of finding the hidden treasure is lost …
But then again, maybe today was not about the small occurrences that keep on adding to the shades of grey to the shadow of the dream that we like to live. Today was one of the few days that had more of true black and white than the hues in between…
If you live in a particular room for the better part of 10 months of your life, you are bound to have some attachment towards it. I’m not pretending that I’m an exception, or claiming that I’m not… But as I vacated a room where everything from getting ragged to ragging batch-mates, banter to fights, sadness to ecstasy had framed and formed me, well… you get the point … It’s a part of you, like it or not, it has grown on you, and you while you will feel nostalgic about the days when this symbiotic creation of the craters of your mind was not there, you’ll live with it. And the funny thing is, while all of this happens right in front of you, you won’t even notice, and neither will others…
“These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. After long enough, you get so you depend on ’em. That’s institutionalized.” – Naina (Quoting ‘The Shawshank Redemption’)
Risking sounding like a very gen hypocritical bastard, I’ll say that the wheel turns …
And people move on …
And on …
I’m not the world’s most systematic guy ( as the shoe, handwash and laptop squashed into the same bag will testify ) Packing a trunk is not something I thought I’d be an ace at, but then again the torturous 3 hours of trying to stuff an year’s worth of ‘home’ into a trunk was tough…
“…And before you know it, you have to leave. What will you take away? Will you see your life flash before your eyes?
Home. Albeit for a little while.” - Bhat
So, shutting the lid ( baith eske upar …), unsuccessfully trying to wrap up a gigantic mattress into a puny plastic cover ( Mittal, Haraamkhor !!!) and carrying all of them along with a cycle from one hostel to another… (Chabi kidhar gayab kho gaya ????) That was more or less my part of the great Pilani shift …
But then the most memorable memories are often hardly the most enjoyable. Most of the times, the emotions attached to events like these transcend beyond the classification of the same. And the futile attempts made can just … confuse you ...
So what was the purity of emotions and situations that I was talking about? Abstract as this might sound I think it was pure only in its homogeneity, its unadulterated adulteration with varied proportions of elixir and poison, all bubbling up to give the wannabe tear drop that will never be… It will just sparkle at the corners of your eyes before disappearing in the flood of the activities and feelings that are a part of our shadowy existence…
As I stepped out of the cloak room after depositing all the stuff there, I looked back for one last time. The glint of the hundreds of steel trunks arranged in rows in the yellow bulbs of the common room somehow reminded me of coffins…
The tombs of one year’s worth of memories and dreams…
“Respect the Undead. Zombie Apocalypse isn’t far away.”- Sarada
You try to convince yourself that its not over. You’ll keep on repeating a couple of thousand of times the fact that after a few months you’ll be back here complaining of the tut tests in the mornings and enjoying club lachcha sessions in the evenings. You’ll try to convince yourself that this is the place that has graced the foremost position in your mental dartboard as you ripped it apart for anything and everything. But then it doesn’t really work…
“…The cup now contained the last remains of tea sedimented with dissolved sugar. I drank it more out of habit than desire, and it left an unpleasant aftertaste in my mouth. As the lights flickered out, I left wondering if it was the same tea from which I had the first sip.”- Gera
And all of a sudden that wannabe little drop at the corner of my eye begins to get more ambitious. In spite of my best efforts, it begins to take a route it has not taken in a long time …
“Happy holidays man!!!”
“Same to you man !!! I’ll miss you guys…”
“What the fuck man …You getting all senti and shit or what?”
“Fuck you man … Ob not … Just got some shit stuck in my eye …”
