Illustrations

It is just pleasant to sit at one place. Static. To calm yourself down and feel the breeze blowing, striking at your face in quiet long intervals. To observe things like the many posters on the notice board saying, “Maggi is back and so are we!” or that there is a “Entrepreneurship week” or showing “Solidarity with Palestine Convention” or “Dance of the heart” and the most common “CodeBenders”. Or how the people chit chat and keep doing it all day long, talking about ‘stuff’ or those second floor corridors that you roamed about in your first year of college.

Suddenly the breeze stops blowing and the time is immovably still. Silence silences. Even the chirpy birds have quietened. Only then you see, and realise that time moved all too fast but you trailed behind looking for answers when they were right in front of you. You were too busy to notice things pass by.  Like how the sun goes down, or how you shouted from the second floor so that your friends could hear you from the ground.

Here comes a bunch of students discussing movies, group hugs, squad goals and priorities. Priorities. That seems like a big heavy word. Just like the word dedication. When your best friend used to teach you various disciplines, you were too busy to observe the dedication she puts in and the motivation she gives you. When the rain pours, you’re too busy finding shelter to feel the cool water all over you, and revel in that integral moment. . And how one day you’re working here and the next day, there.  When the culturals happened and you anchored, you were too engaged to actually hear the crowds, sense their sudden surge of energy and see their expressions. And now you see, but don’t actually see anything. And now you feel but don’t actually feel anything.  You look, but not quite. Here I spot squirrels all around the campus but discerned their casual, searching quick walk just now. 

You don’t appreciate these moments, flashes of impact until the time you realise you lost them all of a sudden. 

Like how your best friend would never sit in the same class and walk the same corridors. And you wouldn’t be able to anchor again even though it’ll be just for quite some time. The experience is always enthralling.

I think that maybe not having work enough makes the very experience of working so significant, so poignant and holy. I now comprehend that some of the squirrels don’t just walk for food, they  might be looking for their love, waiting for rains to come, or living a life just like we are without observing anything like us. The staircase you tread on is so vacant now that it fills you with a miserable gloomy void. The only logical significance of having a staircase is when people stroll on it. But it is so terribly empty now. Empty. The word itself feels so empty, like nothingness.

The holy tree of the Girls Common Room (GCR), fun filled with fervent crowds singing, dancing, asking crowds to participate in countless activities is so scare fully secluded, silent and empty now that I feel sad because it has lost its charm and colour. It is a very dull shade of lush green now. Or how the time ruins everything in its path. It acts as a sole devourer, destroying everything on its way to eternity. Like it did with our college building. The scalped walls and the melancholy holes. Or the algal growth, and how it is another shade of green.

Sometimes I feel that this college building is another one of our parent taking care of us and the lampshade and the direction markers are a way leading to stability. Right now, everything is so static, deserted and immovable that it is petrifyingly scary. But the leaves are still making trifling movements with the wind, only if one could stop, take a halt and see. And the atoms inside of each of the living soul and the rest.

But I think, slightly think that somehow things are so meant to be. Perhaps the things are so out of place but still fit into each of their places so beautifully and only we just don’t care to notice. And maybe if we watched around, beheld and tried to observe things, like the ant on the tree leaf, or the spider on the tree branch and how the ant is relentlessly moving and the spider is spinning its web, we could actually see things. And we could appreciate the fact that just like us, even they do exist.

And perhaps we could find a way back to our memories and be delighted about how things were, even out of place. And maybe we could pile up the mess and clear it out. And possibly we could find all our missing pieces and join the concealed dots. And however tough, we could improve from our mistakes. And feel good about it.

A couple of students come by and the sounds of pigeons and squirrels is heard from a distance. As usual, life goes on.