Snapshots:
First year, St.Stephen's College.
Brick-red, stone-grey, leaf-green.
Innocence blended with guitars blended with Robert Browning blended with cigarette smoke blended with Kamala Nagar blended with assembly speeches.
Free falling
The Gang of Five. Pasta and iced-tea and Big Chill. The larger circle of College acquaintances. Kebab rolls at the Hindu canteen; looks like a railways station: multi-coloured railings, a juice-stall, 102.6 MHz and bathrooms right next to the counter. But the kebab rolls were worth it.
The Shakespeare Society.
Theatre games and theatre politics. Green room conversations- random and generally accompanied by a Navy Cut. Tinted with nostalgia even as we sat talking; we were so aware that this would be one of our defining memories of College Life. The first post-production party. Crazy. The alcohol was loud and the music was flowing.
Yes.
Exactly that.
Culture shock?? We thought we knew it all... :)
Heated political issues. To vote or not to vote? Presumptuous statements, cafe walkouts, SMS arguments...
Nainital.
English departmental trip. Comfortable silences, video game parlours, one hotel room with 15 people, guitars and whisky, midnight walks, mountain climbing, an unexpected dragon, boating on Naukuchiyatal, sizzling aloo paranthas and mountain-tea. The induction was complete.
Hash, Buzz, RPM, TGIF, Ruby Tuesday's. Dancing on the tables. Shot after shot after shot after shot. Tequila... Bailey's... Vodka... What's that? Who cares? Bring it on... Blowing up a week's allowance in one night. Broke. Tanking up in the car for a hundred bucks and then heading to Hash, ordering one drink and dancing the night away. LC tap dances on the bar, OB is constantly worried about her eye-brows and R is convinced he has left his car open.
Aaisha, Aaisha
Passing me by
Parallel cinema, the world of Latin American stardust, small-budget movies, foreign films, Bengali cinema. Afternoons in the auditorium. Laughing and crying with Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso. Drooling over Gabriel Garcia Bernal. Watching City of God and wondering whether life would ever be the same again. Intense discussions in the Sarai coffe shop about the German Nazi propoganda film. Terminology being tossed all over the room. The same way you'd say 'Espresso!' or 'Cappucchino!". Except here it was 'Leftist' and 'Marxist' and 'Nazi' and 'Capitalist'. No-one said pseudo-intellectual. I wonder why. There were enough of them around.
Understanding a text.
Really?? Can one line mean all that?? Bullshit. That line cannot be analyzed in 20 different ways. It means what it says. Really?? Can one line mean that little??
Give me a word and I shall show you the universe.
Sitting in the cafe from the moment we arrived till Mohan and Bhaiyyan would literally push us out at 2:00 pm. Endless cups of tea and coffee, cheese toasts, Maggis, cigarettes (that would be suitably stubbed out when Wilson/ any other Threats were approaching), cards, tutes, conversations with each other and Mohan (Bhaiyyan's a bit of a grouch!), nimbupaani... Like the post-office of a small village, The Cafe: our very own community centre. Coming and going, coming and going... the Hub of all the drama, and the news.
Learning. Learning how to be your own person. In the midst of people and groups that told you something other than what you believed all your life.
Realising that they are not always right.
Realising that you are not always right either.
One phone call. Goa to Delhi. 4:00 AM, 1st January.
The beginning of an era.
Vascillating for weeks.
Resorting to good old cellphones in order to flirt.
15th February. Clinched the deal.
BD- the Queen of Slaps: "let them echo forevermore"
Sunny afternoons outside the chapel.
Endless days and endless nights.
Maqbool and momos and mellow madness.
A summer full of vodka and hip-hop.
Football matches and sweaty bear-hugs.
Laughter.
Laage tumse mann ki lagan
Nescafe.
Pink sweaters and Christmas.
General Insanity at the Grad Di party.
Partying so hard that we learnt the art (there is one...).
Winter's cold spring erases
And the calm away by the storm is chasen
Everything good needs replacing
Look up, look down, all around
Satellite
To be continued...
9 comments:
"The alcohol was loud and the music was flowing."
Brilliant. I was there. Different time and place but I was there.
Lose the last line (below to be continued).
Ahh..the intoxication of nostalgia
And as usual I am curious..what was that one line..??
The first line is the pattern I see thematically and as far as style well..the alcohal was loud and the music was flowing..its like a river up in the mountains..delighting in its own rhythm..
"Give me a word and I shall show you the universe"...
this is what I was referring to was it a particular text or just the occupational hazard of being a lit student that brought this on...???
@ts- done!! :)
@anon/nandu- not a particular text really. Just the sheer joy of being able to examine a text closely and discover things about it that you would never even have considered otherwise... exhilerating!
Hmmm... been in north campus...have had uncountable discussions over romantics (which i hated)...victorian and Indian lit... loved tennyson, browning and christina rosseti... hated Literary theory... mental stimulation...almost heady with theatre...elocution and debates... D-School and Hindu (jaisingh) lawns...nostalgic
Interesting :) very different from my college experience, but thats the beauty of life!
days go by and still i think 'bout you... :-) stephania all the way
I always wondered why they took the benches away from us... still wondering.
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