GUNTHROAT

I had gone to ernakulam after 3 months. Being there brought back memories of my college days. Though I am not old enough to sit back and remember those sweet experiences in an easy chair, I always think of the days in mec. My first year was filled with experiences of ragging. I vividly remember my friend crying for being asked to masturbate on the middle of the road. I used to get the lighter tasks which included asking for gunja in the nearby shop though they never sold it. I met the most peculiar individuals in my college. These included one who would give me company in the bus stop till my bus came listening to my balderdash without any sign of unease, one who had lot of talktime and would talk for hours in telephone (it was then for the first time that I ever talked in phone for more than one hour, later it became routine), the crudest one of all who had a doubt whether he was sinning by watching adult movies (who later went on to become the wholesale distributor of adult movies with a big customer base including me), an ostensible homosexual who remains a mystery (he has an inclination towards showing his private parts to his friends. Once he took the photo of his friend’s genitals from a close angle so that it didn’t look what it actually was. He then showed it to all the women in my class asking them to identify it), an aspiring actor who wanted to study in film institute but ended up in the wrong place, the most materialistic person I have ever seen who introduced herself by offering me a burger in exchange of doing her filing for mechanical workshop and went on giving the same proposition to every boy in the class and last but not the least the one who shocked us all by lodging a police complaint against seniors for ragging and sexual abuse. All of them amused and entertained me (some of them continue to entertain), some of them are my best friends. MEC is one place I am sure I would always miss. It gave me the moments that few would get. Those movies we watched together, the giant wheel in aluva manappuram on which I nearly cried of fear, the trip to marayoor where I got heavily drunk and went on to shower abuses at a faculty who was on phone (God bless him), the detour on jog falls when we nearly lost our life, the placement cell, my travel to college pushing my bike which usually had an empty tank, those endless conference calls, I miss them all. Alas those days are over, the age of innocence and camaraderie has given way painful loneliness and killing routine. Life will never be so full and adventurous hereafter. To quote Mir Taqi Mir
What matters it , O breeze,
If now has come the spring
When I have lost them both
The garden and my nest ?
October 13th