September 7, 2009 was the day that marked the beginning of a story that I am about to tell you now. I would rather call it an experience! But to give it the feel, let’s stick to this being called a story 🙂 A story of emotions, memories, tons and tons of love!
By now, if you are wild guessing this to be a love story, you have got it absolutely wrong. I am here to talk about a much more valuable relationship equivalent of a family. A friend! To avoid this from being another cliche or another “I’ll be there for you” story (F.R.I.E.N.D.S reference..if you thought otherwise, please stop reading and comeback once you are done with the series :)) , let me not emphasize on the relationship or it’s importance. For the next two to three minutes (or whatever time it takes for you to read), I am gonna run you through my share of learning’s from a bunch of like minded idiots, throughout college! I wasn’t at one of the best colleges in the city! So, for the sake of it’s reputation, let’s keep the name anonymous 🙂
I would be exaggerating if i told you that i got to know everyone right on day 1. Nope, definitely not. Up until this point, I haven’t been away from my home for more than a couple of days. I couldn’t get myself together for the initial few days, not because of staying away from my parents, but because of the place I was put up in. The legendary “Boys Hostel” where you get served with the least delicious food you could have ever tasted. All I said to myself was: “You are definitely not an IIT material, so what more do you expect here, bitch?”. This is where it all began!
I pretty much knew it was a grave mistake to have chosen an engineering college that was so remotely situated in a place that no-one could have ever heard of. Nevertheless, there’s always someone to the rescue. During our initial days, it was the roommates. The type of room that we were in still makes us wonder how did we make it through for an entire year. Right above the cooking area, which felt like, we were directly above a heated up furnace.. yeah you read that right! And to add up to the woes, we were six in a room! All six from different districts of the state, which paved way for a variety of topics to be discussed relevant to each one of us. We did get along quite well and by the end of the week it was all cuss words that you could have heard from our room. Yay! First lesson learnt. “Swear a person for no reason and become the best of friends from thereon”. This applies to learning new languages as well. You start with cuss words only to make it better and easier… Go on.. Trust me, it works almost all the time!
I never know what could I have done, if not for y’all
Who relentlessly backed me up every time I fall
PS: Wouldn’t call it a poem, because that’s not my forte! Wrote what i thought 🙂
Remember the ad film that taught us sharing? Every hostel does it in an elegant fashion. “You don’t ask, you simply take” is the unwritten golden rule of successfully co-existing in any shared space. Be it anything, ranging from toothpaste to a few hundred bucks, you only make an informed decision and never seek for permission. Now, I particularly had difficulties coping with money, as I was always taught to keep track of what was lent, given the line of business my dad was into. So, it was these informed decisions that would always trigger the worst arsehole (see what i did with the accent there??) in me to ask for what was taken, until I went bankrupt and asked for help. I slowly started borrowing and not paying back to give them a dose of their own medicine. Yeah, that’s how smart I was. Or should I say dumb? But to my surprise, at least in most of the cases, all that mattered was the timely help offered and not the money, which guilt tripped me to a larger extent. Well, the lesson learnt here was of-course, to be there for whomsoever it may be, in any situation without expecting a return. And yeah, obviously “Karma is a deadlier bitch that I expected her to be”.
Fast forward few semesters, half-way through the well (or hell?), a whole lot of us were still aspiring to be engineers! Wow, that must be a great feeling, you think? No, honestly it sucks. Because a handful of people around me were already exploring various arenas to make a living. It was a golden era for “Short Films”. In my honest opinion, these were the ones who really had it in them! We, owing to our routine, sat in every class only to yawn and understand nothing, where as the aspiring film-makers/photographers were out in the streets living up to their dreams. We even had an incident with one of our classmates disappearing in search of recognition for his talent and more aptly in search of place where he actually belonged. This got me thinking, what was I doing there and did I really want to be an engineer? Nah. I had nothing special in me like em. So the best for me was to go with the flow. Couple of the other film-making aspirants that I knew are chasing their dreams to date. I have seen one of them reap benefits as well. He made it to the silver screen as an assistant director and now he owns a YouTube channel as well. Nonetheless, the pursuit never ends! But this sheer audacity of them not letting it go taught me something what I call “PERSEVERANCE”.
Click Here for his YouTube Channel – You won’t be disappointed for sure
Finally, there were few engineers who actually turned out to be engineers and lived up to their start-up dream as well. Though it dint work out the way they would have wanted it to, they still tried and don’t regret missing out on an opportunity. Despite the struggle, all those engineers have made a place for themselves in their respective roles today. Despite not seeing a phoenix bird rise from it’s ashes, I still got to know how it’s done from these boys of mine whom I am incredibly proud of, for the kind of attitude that they have shown throughout the struggle. And that leads to the last of the many lessons: “NEVER EVER GIVE UP!“
Having discussed so much about what my friends had to offer me, wouldn’t it be fair for me to thank them? But doing so, would make it so formal and cringe-max if I can put it that way 🙂 One thing’s for sure, without them having played their part, I wouldn’t have become who I am today. I am forever, indebted to all of them!
If you have reached this far, you will never cease to amaze me! Putting all of this aside, my college days were equally sweet and funny! I miss all of them so bad that given a chance I wouldn’t think twice to go back and spend an eternity there! This is the only group picture of us that I managed to pull up from the archives! Brownie points to all those who find me in the below picture!
Stay Safe, Stay Home! See you all soon.:)
