There have been times when I came back to hostel from my home & the first thing I do in the morning would be to brush my teeth. But the reasons would be marginally more than habit, hygiene, & worries of increments in dental insurance premia. I would look at the sun in from the window adjoining the basin-mirrors in the hostel bathrooms, and think how the sun would have risen back home and wonder how I’d be home again one day.
Tonight the ball is in another court & it is not going to bounce back. A few hours from now, when the sun would rise, I wouldn’t be able to see it while brushing my teeth…because there is no window besides the wash-basin mirror out here. Times have changed. The reality is that I’m finally home now, and I’d never ever be back at my hostel again… :’(
Using Gujarati (which my friends have got sickeningly used to back at the hostel):
Badho adhaar chhe ena jati veLa na jova par,
Milan maathi nathi maLta mahobbatt na puravao...
(It all depends on the way they see on the parting-note,
The proofs of affection lie not in the times of reunions…)
I bade my last good-byes of various sorts when I got separated from my just-friends, more-than-friend-friends, hi5-friends & so on…
…one, quite silent, because we both knew what was in each others hearts.
…one, mockingly humorous, because our hometown is the same and we shall meet in a matter of days.
…one, where my friend hugged (or crushed?) me tight and we told how we both will miss each other big-time.
…one, just after I felt I had comforted & hugged her, wishing her better times in both the immediate and distant future.
…one, when he hugged me tight time & again, crying like a baby again and again and again and again and again and again.
…one, just a normal casual good-bye, wishing that she be able to squeeze the maximum amount of money out of ICFAI-Hyderabad (a dream come true).
…one, which accompanied me from my room to the main gate, found me conveyance, and kept on standing and waving till the horizons.
…one, highly surprising; when I was sitting in a 7-seater’s convertible rear, she seated in the front seat of a Toyota Qualis coming right behind me on the road & I realized just in time to recognize her and give a flying kiss, only to find her hiding her face in bashfulness.
…and then there were some friends, whom I didn’t feel the need to hug & wish good-bye, because deep down in my heart, I knew that come-what-may, these people will hunt me down from burning hell and give me a moment of heaven by gracing me with their mere presence.
I’m not brooding over the past. Nor am I crying about not being able to live it again. But I still feel sad… & I want to cry because something is with me no more. Just like the time I cried after arriving for the first time in hostel after leaving my home. I know that I left the campus with more happy memories than anybody I know; the need arising here to say that I left with not a quarter, not a third, not a half, but at least hundred times more happy memories than sad ones!
I also encountered police check post during my way from campus to the city (which we’d managed to do without for almost two years now). I also had a close brushing encounter with my dissertation guide, whom I’d told I’d left the campus about a day ago to do away with my presentation early. And all the way home, I sung our farewell song (it is in my Orkut videos) to myself, in a desperate attempt of self-soothing.
It’s 4:40 in the morning (in true MBA style, you’d think) (mind you, the blog may sport a different time due to time-zone differences) & I feel that right now I’m a lot relaxed vis-à-vis how I was when I started typing this manuscript; hoping for good times ahead…
Hasmukh :)
