Weddings and Funerals
A rain is always somehow welcome when you’re away from home. How can you not love waking up to see dark clouds at your window, a chill in the air, and petrichor wafting up through the trees and from within the blades of grass, from the very walls?
The cracking and crinkling of leaves as they roll around each other in the wind, the yellow amaltas flowers, as they spread across the pavement, heaped up by the wind in a corner, and the next second blown into your face. And when the heavens burst asunder, washing the world anew, how they lie wet where they had lain before, too heavy to move. Would everyday experiences if not torn by our indoctrinated biases ever be more realistic if observed in the absence of such?
The dark shadows roiled and slugged their way across the heavens, and in the darkness of the night, roiled and slugged very far away.
We woke up to blue skies and dry leaves. Heaps of yesterday’s flowers were still there, weighed down by themselves, no longer flailing against the windy tide. Lost, forlorn, and bearing the look of desertion. Heaped up against walls, where they had come to rest beaten by the wind, Stuck in windows high up where flight had taken them. Nestled unwelcomingly on the windows of a car, and bearing the same defeated loom of lost splendor as those who trudged their way to the first 8 am class of the semester.
It had, and had not. It was final, and the week long wait had finally concluded on myself perched rather precariously on the ledge of the tallest building in GIKI; Hostel 12, where I had spent a year of my life. I had been here so many times before, yet had never seen all that I did now.
It is usually never chilly when the sun is out. At least in this weather. And so it was now, with the sun with a small audience enjoying her leisurely stroll as she prepared for her final descent of the day. From my position, I could see people in their rooms, studying, reading, talking, maybe worrying about a new semester, or maybe like myself, mourning the last one.
It was an another end. Another goodbye.
It all caught up on me now. It never left. The first day here. Meeting my roommate, whom I knew nothing about. Our first conversation sitting on the rough concrete stairs next to the lawns outside. I could see them below me. The first night, hearing howling and the ragged breathing between it, and the loud purring of the fan. The first class. The oddly nice HM teacher. The first Tuesday. Meeting seniors at tuc, trying out my first Raju biryani. Not liking it. Exploring the campus. Finding paths and walkways everywhere. Exploring the mind of my roommate. Finding his explanations of the physical world to be boring. Taking pictures of everything. I don’t know why I did that. I loved everything and everything that I loved I must record. And record I did. The oreo shakes after class in the early days of humidity and sweat. Walking to tuc in the middle of the night, sharing an umbrella with a friend, just for the mere hell of it. The colds that we both had next morning. The week of sneezing. Doing the same shit the next time it rained. The frantic studying to save the semester. The TA kicking us out of class because we looked the wrong way. Exam season. Late night studying. The noise in the corridors because of a cricket match. The frantic knocking on doors by societies. No sir, you shall not have my bed I'm sorry. No sir, you wont either. Putting up posters in my room of my favourite bands. The cold mornings. The classes. Empty lecture halls. LDS. Inductions. Interviews. Sweating at the questions. Being inclined to climb a table. Tearing my induction letter. Surpring me with another minutes later. The welcome. Meeting everybody. Walking back at 3 am, talking every inch of the way back. More cold. Hot chocolates. Much, much, much more hot chocolates, and almost the same proportion of cold. The neglected haircuts. Midnight walks. Lying out in the Brabers Parking at 2 am watching the stars and blinking lamps.
More hot chocolates. A little more of the cold steel tables and plastic chairs.
These all, were meditations of my heart. A trace of my consciousness splayed out across the paper. There is so much more to tell. While I sat here thinking about all the days that are gone, all the suns that have set and all the laughs and the walks, the memes, blasting music, but even though today I sit recalling fragmented memories and fleeting visions of the joyful mornings and the nights spent in conversation, the only thing I am sure of is that they will never transcend memory, nor shall I ever be forgetful. It’s a good feeling that even though I grasped for and fumbled in the dark for, finally took a run, down left field, and eluded me.
All of the people, the ones whom getting to know spanned whole semesters from nodding to each other on the way to the bathrooms, to a how do you do on the way to class, to the first cups of tea, to noticing that the span of conversations growing longer and the cups of tea getting more frequent. And then you find them sleeping on your bed randomly, you know?
Drawing questionable images on their faces as they sleep.
Alas, the sun bid her farewell very quietly, and almost it seemed so; through the back door. She almost felt the despair of men as they realized that the day was now over, and looked towards it not with the energy they had had just hours ago, but in solemn gloom and resignation. She slipped beneath the horizon, slivers at a time, a little more every second that passed, as she was eaten in a wake of orange and red, and suddenly, as I looked, far away in her crimson bloody bed the last golden spot, slipped underneath the surface of the pale blue of the sky, and the world was thrown into a sudden, and unplanned crisis.
A chill leapt up and encompassed me. It crept up my neck, and tightened around my throat in the growing dark. I had a lump in my throat I had not noticed until now.
Presently, a star faintly poked a hole into the fading blue. It shone like a drop of water in the sun. Its light flickered and shone, so very far away.
The sun left me sparks to remember her by. Until she came along with her resplendence once more.
But did I ever notice her when she stared so mercilessly? I ran from her invasive gaze, and was frustrated by her. Basked in her warmth, and complained when she was muted, yet never looked.
I had never seen her until she had left, and in the waning light, I wished to see her, once more.
