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Seasons In The Sun

“We look before and after.
We pine for what is not.”

As I sit to pen down my thoughts for this farewell note, I am reminded of the Westlife song (they actually remixed the original- sung by God only knows who), ‘Seasons in the Sun’. The lyrics are those of a youngster on his death bed from what I surmise. It’s the twilight of my college life (at least in NIT, Jamshedpur) and the beginning of a new one, in which I am thrown into the deep, dark and scary forest that is the crazy world, filled with hungry wolves and predators ready to pounce on the gullible and vulnerable sheep.

These four years have been seasons all right, but not only in the sun. There have been some real bleak winters and horrid summers and not to mention the stormy falls. This experience at this NIT is exactly the opposite of what I imagined it to be. I imagined a college full of nerds with soda bottle glasses (spectacles I mean) cramming away to glory. It was like fate was out on a mission to prove me wrong. I actually did have a roomie who studied day and night (now famously known as Meminem), but Sam and I converted him and brought him onto the other side of the spectrum to which I belong. Sam was the real opposite of Mann-he never even studied before exams. And what a conversion it was (the Mann – Meminem one), he is now famous for his rapping and time pass (he actually recorded a rap song 70 times in a row continuously till he got it right, much to the frustration of each and every one in the lobby- the neighbors say he raps in his sleep too). I expected to be the only one (or probably one of the few) to have played a good amount of Basketball before coming here and again fate proved me wrong. In my first year itself I was introduced to such amazing players that they made my game seem pale in comparison. Another of my perceptions was that I’d be the only one to listen to good English music (fortunately for me that one backfired on fate’s face itself- I was the only one to listen to good sensible English music, the rest of them were full of stuff that sounds exactly like screaming, screeching and noise to me, though I converted quite a few of them onto the right track).

I started this post sometime back now, but due my procrastinating ways and coupled with the fact that we had a loaded schedule with exams and vivas and the lot, I decided to postpone it till my last day in college. Alas that too came and went and I am now completing this pitiful piece that I call my writing in an equally pitiful environment that is my grandparent’s home in Dockyard, Bombay (for the uninformed lot, Dockyard by my standards is the dirtiest and shabbiest place in all of Bombay).

I guess today was a proper time to complete this final post of mine on Rathz’s blog for sometime now and also this farewell message to my batch mates & college mates. The reason I say that is because, the feeling of loss has finally sunk in. I am never to enter that college again as a student. Never to attend those classes (when we did), sleep in those rooms without lights and in scorching heat (minus the sun), play those different sports, or spend those hours doing nothing but total time pass, or eat that horrible horrible food (Ok I think that last one was a bit too much bullshit- I’m never gonna miss that food).

I knew leaving college would be hard- it had been home for four years after all, but boy I didn’t expect it to be this hard. Dropping everybody off was painful enough, but having to be the last to leave college was extremely harsh to say the least. To see those empty quiet corridors with rooms latched and locked; locked with the fat hostel padlocks and not the various sized ones that we normally see was heart wrenching. To my pals whom I dropped off, I’m sorry if I offended you’ll by damming the waterworks that were straining to be released, but that is one of my shortcomings- I can’t show my emotions in public, but I must say that watching each and everyone of you’ll leave was not something that I’d wish on any of you’ll. We shall meet again, that is one belief that I am holding on to. Put a smile on your faces, as it is the birth of a new life. Be happy for each other, as we are each off to do something that we dreamt of the day we joined college.

In the beginning I said that we were like sheep thrown to the wolves, but that would have been my belief before we entered these hallowed portals. Today we leave this college as hungry lions ready to take on the world headlong, as this college has given us the training of a lifetime, converting scared lambs in to hardy rams.

Emotions suffocate me as I say adieu to a place that has been home for four long and trying years dotted with a few highs here and there. It’s hard to say farewell to my brothers and sisters, my surrogate family for these four years, the 2003 batch. But I will always remember the Titans, the Titans that were the Class of 2007.

Don

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