Nostalgia

Today was an important day. All around me was a big crowd, smiling, laughing, chatting, hugging each other and what not. Not that I was all alone, standing in a corner, observing everyone. No; I was a part of that crowd, smiling, talking to them, nodding to whatever they were saying (it must be fitting well as no one frowned upon me). Still I was far away ... too far away … five years back, to be precise. I stepped out of the ground and started walking. Where was I going? No idea. But five minutes later, I found myself at my college gate. I couldn’t stop myself from stepping inside, not only the college but down the memory lane.

First day at the college, a no-one in the big crowd, unknown to everyone and everything around…

In next to no time, busy with classes, never-ending tests, scary semester exams…

Those hopeless practicals, where we would wait for the whole day for our doomed colourimeter to give us a reading which would fetch us a scowl and C grade from teacher…

Those pre-journal-submission-sessions in reading room, where we would compare our readings, manipulate them, paste chits on wrong information to hide mistakes and proudly submit our seemingly clean journal two days later than due date…

What about spending useless hours in library searching for an appropriate book to get appropriate notes for appropriate grades and end up missing the test itself?

Haven’t forgotten that adventurous semester where we all got screwed up for complaining against our HOD’s Ph.D student who unfortunately taught us Biochemistry. Wait! Did she teach us? Naah … Just told us to cram the stuff about to come in exam set by herself…

How about those interesting Killer-Killer sessions in the parking lot…

Or that historic class where we were taught about contraceptives and a girl innocently asks our encouraging teacher an innocent question – What is oral sex?

Participating in the annual function where we got more famous for our clash with the convener than our Holi dance…

Faking the patients for our internship just because we were too lazy to move our asses and still managing an O…

Celebrating Holi with friends, sadak naapna, footpath pe baith ke bheekh maangna, and having lunch with that breath-taking make-up on…

Chat and chat and chat till the peon comes and literally throws us out of the classes. So, what do we do? Sit on the staircase and dedicate songs for guys coming for evening classes…

Attending practical classes where we were told the importance of boy-friends in hostelites’ life by our teacher…

Bunking classes, missing tests, getting late for practicals, sleeping during the seminars…

Night stays on the pretext of studies, where we explored our wild sides…

Booze and fag and discussion sessions where we would discuss the meaning of our life, uselessness of our college, ineptness of our teachers, criticize our parents for their restrictions, instead of studying for the test next day…

Cooking practicals where rains would wickedly add water to our nasty recipes through the leaking roofs and wash out our already bleak grades…

And then came a time, jab humne grades, classes, notes, practicals ki moh-maya ko tyaag diya. After all we had grown up…

So many memories, so much time, so much fun … all came to an end today. Maybe it’s like that … life moves on … memories imprinted in mind … stealing a glance at them every now and then. Maybe I will get a chance to re-live them. Maybe …