Cloud no. 9

I have been away from my institute for a little beyond 20 days now, and a few days ago it hit me that life will never be the same. I am sure that most of the students who have left the institute would be experiencing such a wave of emotions. The following is the first guest post on my blog, written by MGM, and dedicated to our wingmates, and the only hostel whose name started with the letter J.

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There are stories written with vibrant characters that say intelligent things and have distinctive characters and have brilliant chemistry between them. I was once a part of such a story. The problem with such stories, especially when you’re a part of them is that they must always come to an end. And so did this one. It inched and crawled to a slow inevitable end that gave us all the time to prepare and then at the end of it, took us by surprise anyway.

You spend your adolescent life with little or no knowledge of what you’re working for truly means. In my case, I discovered, all my expectations were but a tiny fraction of the sum of my experiences. It was an experience that built slowly like a rising tide into a lovely frenzy of time to waste. The time on my hands which was mine to waste turned into one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. An experience that was comprised of little routines and smiles and waves and puffs. An experience that will be cherished forever.

For it was in those little routines of waking up at 1 in the afternoon and foraging for food, of crushing ganja and rolling it in joints for my wingmates, of settling down on the corridor or the breezy roof and laughing at seemingly witty jokes with the tiny sounds of mobile phone music that I truly discovered the meaning of brotherhood.

I have always held on to the fact that there was no way you could stand in your boxer shorts next to a bunch of post-adolescent engineering students much like yourself and brush your teeth and not become close. But “close” doesn’t quite cover it. We knew every little detail about each other daily lives not unlike the way a lifetime of marriage teaches you about your wife or husband for that matter.

We knew the way the other person always forgot to switch off the lights before heading to bed, the way another groaned when we got a little too intimate (playfully so) for his comfort levels (levels that had been shattered long ago), the way some of us focused selflessly on the task at hand smiling occasionally with a witty retort, slaving under a stationary fan using expert fingers to produce joints for the rest of us who were relaxing in the breeze as we spoke and laughed. We knew when we were hit, when we should stop and what about us gave us class and placed us apart.

We were family.

And then the time to go came and went. Slowly one by one, we left the home that we had made over the last couple of years. In the days that led up to our departure, our doors were rarely closed and we were always the gracious hosts to hesitant and almost coy guests and outsiders. They always came and were never disappointed. The last few days passed all too quickly in a friendly soporific and calm lull filled with laughter, friends and music. The most exquisite detail about those days was that no matter how close we came to separation; we were never in any hurry. It was almost as if the sheer comfort of being in each others company didn’t allow us to think unpleasant thoughts.

But soon we left, one by one. And still we hung on to our merriment as thought the others had merely stepped out for a short stroll. I think we were too afraid to think of how it truly would be without each others company. Before I knew it, I was the last one left and thought it was for just one night, I could barely take it. I sang to myself and cried. And in a desperate attempt to leave a little bit of myself behind, left my posters on the wall. As I left, I noticed little details that I’d ignored from familiarity, the view from my room, the pattern of oil spots on my wall, the roof, the leaves, everything. And as I walked from locked door to locked door, I was filled with a sense of loss more profound than I’ve known for a long time; a sense of loss that was heightened by my awareness of its magnitude. I’d lost a big piece of my life and my family; and I knew it.

So, though I would love to recount details of my delicious and nostalgic story to you, dear reader, I can’t. Because as one of my seniors put it when he spoke about a very similar predicament, “Some stories are like colourful butterflies, pinning them down to a page only takes the life out of them.” I can only tell you that I was part of one such story. A story that will stay with all of us, it’s vibrant, independent, distinctive and entertaining characters, for the rest of our lives.