Just another day that’s what I expected it to be, nothing more. Got up late. Again. Thankfully one of the classes got cancelled. Not that it would have mattered much, but still !!
Afternoon was cool nothing much to do other than watch the slowly burning overgrown grass outside my balcony. Don’t know which moron’s idea it was.
That’s one more shortcoming of living in a state like Kerala, nobody wants to work. Who wants to carry the grass down & burn them?? You can do it here only. So what if the charcoal-ed grass flies all across the campus & poor fella’s like me can’t even open their balcony doors for days just to avoid the dust.
But something was missing all this while. I was missing my daily dose of tension. That’s something which you get here for free. Something to worry about, everyday. Checked my mail & there it was a mail from one of the assistant’s reminding me of yet another of my blunders. I am the only person left who is still not part of any group in the subject and the day for the group presentation is nearing. She had asked me to meet her but gosh by the time I checked my mail she was already gone for the day. One more blunder.
‘Jab Uparwala deta hai toh chappar phaar ke deta hai’
It kind of gels well with another of my fav lines: ‘Shit happens’ and today they seem to be working in concert.
6:45 in the evening & Sameer pings saying ‘pratik check ur mail’ ……it is kind of Deja tu experience (the feeling that I have seen you before © Happy) tomorrow we have a presentation so the case has to be solved & made into a PPT. And as usual he has broken the case into parts, to be solved & made into a ppt individually till we collate it JIT before the presentation.
Just another day was going on well, just as I had expected until someone pushed open my door and barged in.
‘ Sea Queen jaabi??’ Everyone’s celebrating it so why should we sit back. So what if we are away from our gf’s. Let's celebrate…!! Prosenjit said those words in exactly 3 seconds. I could see in his eyes it was the food of sea queen more than anything else which was alluring him. !!(I don’t blame him though coz I feel the same.)
Now that’s an offer which I have learnt not to decline in my past 8 months here. So we were out by 7:30. Though it was not our usual bong group, it was much smaller this time, only me, prosenjit & shiladitya (better known as soupda)
WHAaaawwW…!! Was the expression which had come out from my mouth the first time I entered the roof top of this sea-side restobar. And every time I enter this place I feel like saying it again. This place has a particular feel about it. An ambience, especially at night. It kind of soothes me and takes me away from all the crazy tensions of campus life.
Prosenjit’s cell kept ringing. It was the third time that he picked up the call & simply said ‘Same to you! I have a meeting going on now. So can’t talk. Will call after 12’
The place, as usual was quite filled up with our seniors and other batch mates. There are hardly any nice places to go in Kozhikode. We ordered our drinks and starters and lighted our cigs.
The topic of discussion shifted from the menu card to other things. CGPA, foreign exchange programme, electives, assignments, culture ….all came one by one and both soupda & prosenjit were deeply involved in it. I was silent, somehow the sound of the waves hitting the beach seemed more appealing to me. I would never care in a 100 lifetimes what CGPA I am getting as long as I keep on moving from one year to another, smoothly. Or for that matter going to Europe for a student exchange programme and increasing my bank loan by another couple of lacs.
There was a cool breeze blowing in from the sea and the combination of alcohol and the sweet air was having a calming effect on my nerves. After some rounds of drinks and a steak I got up on the parapet and jumped. I was falling down. I kept falling for some 10 seconds but I didn’t hit the ground. I was rising up again. And then soon I was flying. First I made a couple of circles over the restaurant & then proceeded towards the beach & then over the sea. I would have nearly reached the Arabian coast if only Prosenjit could have waited a while. But he was too eager to smoke and nearly shook me up …..Just for a cigarette! How mean can people get??
By around 11’O clock we decided to leave. For those of you who don’t live here. The roads here are really classy. I mean they are in much better condition than in most of the upper half of India. But they are really narrow & winding. You will hardly find a straight stretch of road which runs for more than a kilometer. There’s hardly any traffic at night except for the trucks. A bike ride now would have made the day for me. But all we had at our disposal was an auto.
I sat at one end of the backseat. Soupda kept complaining about his size not fitting in the middle. Don’t know whether he was complaining about his size or the auto’s size or us sandwiching him? Whatever it was I was not interested. I laid my head on the side wall & kept looking at the road ahead. I just wanted to go & crash on my bed. It was the kind of feel I used to have as a kid while coming back late at night from a party or some family get-together.
Somehow I feel the older or matured we get the more primal our tendencies become.
I am always a person of compulsions and very instinctive. But at that moment I don’t know where all my head & my thoughts kept banging & in which direction. I was having an uncanny feeling of bliss & solitude.
I remember saying once to someone on a related topic that these two years are the most vulnerable years, emotionally for most guys here. Little did I know then that I would so foolishly expose my own to her ?
How much more ironic can life get?
The auto ride lasted for some 35 minutes.
I came back to my room and started working on the unfinished case. It was around 2’O clock when I sent the PPT over to Rakesh to collate it.
At 3’ O clock Ankur multicasted that there is a test the next morning at 9 am.
Just another day had gone by perfectly fine!