Roughly, four years from now I had not imagined that parting from college would stir something inside me. With my facebook homepage brimming with sob stories, I only used to guffaw at the drama a few hours ago. This deluge of updates about all the fun people had or all the things they’d miss was something I’d dismiss with a high-pitched “Oh Please!” Because my affinity towards college or its people never fully bloomed from its embryonic state. Or so I think.
4 years flew like batting eyelids. The same routine every day. Catching already-packed public transport buses to College have taught me to forget being a “gentleman” sometimes and run for your life when you see one approaching, cutting sharply through a gamut of people of different shapes and sizes. Bus rides have been a melange of experiences. In summers you get to know what sweat actually smells like and you would even get a wet patch on yourself off someone else’s shirt because the buses are so stuffed. In winters it gets intolerable with all the windows shut and some old folk’s flatulence would make you realize how terribly unblocked your nose is despite the freezing cold. Such supremely sensitized olfactory functions, you begin to wonder.
The walk from the University gate to College would be my most favourite part of the day. With Music on and the 2 KMs daily would freshen me up. I’ve always wanted to be alone for walks but that’s something too much to ask for. I’d almost always have friends from my town who, like me, have been successful to catch a timely bus. And the probability of asking for my opinion on a preposterous discussion when the one song I’ve been waiting for for the previous 20 minutes would begin to play is crazily high and highly irritable.
I reach college and lectures begin. Those doses of sedatives! The only news my auditory system was desperate to hear would come from our Class Representative, our ace of spades! Last year the bunks we did outnumber the classes we rested our asses in. Such delight it used to be.
And to survive 2 years without a faculty and then having a laugh at how stupid that question papers have been set. Of the limited teachers we had, some would only qualify as apes. Most of them with only a flatulent attitude and no substance, Some others badly out of shape and almost all of them out of their minds. One who would shamelessly itch his crotch behind the dais thinking students don’t get to know about it. Some whom even the guards would mistake as students.
And to begin talking about the crowd.. I have witnessed so many Put-on-a-show kind of girls with an insanely wrong idea about confidence. So self-amused by all the guys who have ever approached them. Known umpteen holier-than-thou guys who all have the same bikes popular in Punjab also pronounced in a hilariously Punjabi way. “Bult”. Their egos back up their pompous walk and they assume that they are born with an innate right to ogle at all the girls that happen to be in their eye span. They are the self proclaimed Jack Of Hearts of the prettiest girl in the University.
College is where I learnt more than just topologies or polymorphism. Because that’s just vomiting what you mugged up 5 minutes before an exam, after your "reliable source" hints at the important topic which you had already planned to do early morning but had bartered away for a few extra winks instead. FYI, 16th marked the end of all the examinations of my engineering degree. which adds upto a nearly 90 Mid Semester Tests besides an End Semester Test for each of the 46 subjects I’ve studied.
Also my Birthday this 13th arrived packed in between two extremely useless exams and I’m glad it just went the way I wanted. Receiving calls from all the people who really care and not just from everyone in your Friends list bound to wish you because their Birthday alerts tell them to.
I missed some calls from loved ones because I dozed off before the clock struck 12. With my phone on silent! I’ve braved an array of colorful remarks on this front and have concluded that I indeed am an idiot. And waking up to 40 missed calls does give you a mini-heart-attack first but then you realize that it’s your birthday and these are the people who love you. Then your heart beams with joy. But I’m mad at some people I expected a call from. Or atleast a text message. So I have been practising some curses and waiting for a nicely written obituary anytime soon in the newspaper!
Anyway, college will always have a soft spot for me for the bunch of likeminded people I found. We’ve together gradated to great friends from being complete strangers. They bear with me despite my incessant meaningless chatter and smutty jokes and know that I am the last person they’d come to when in trouble! And still stick close. I’ve learnt a trillion things from all of them and also how to be there for them. Because in the end that’s what really counts.
They say, “You only prize a bird’s song when it perches on a distant bough.” My college is the bird here.
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