The class came to an end and the next two hours were free. I wearily got up and followed my friends out. I just needed my bed badly. Rishabh stopped outside the Mechanical Engineering Department office.
“Wait a second; have to meet Sandhu for my project. I’ll be back soon,” he said.Meanwhile I leaned against the wall and talked to Pritish. We both had not dared to take any extra projects. Compulsory courses were already too much of a burden. Rishabh had take up a project in a state of infant zeal that so often fizzles out, and was suffering at the hands of Prof. Sidhu, who was a thorough professional and didn’t tolerate and laxity. Pritish and I made fun of his desolate state when suddenly I heard Rishabh shout for me. It sounded out of place. I thought may be Sandhu had finally decided to strangle my friend’s need for lack of discipline, and he had cried out for help but I saw him well outside the professor’s room before the department notice board.
“Look,” he said, staring grimly at the board.
“You know I don’t bother about notices talking about deadlines and.”
“But doesn’t deal with that,” he said, and I must say there was a distinct chill in his voice which made me uneasy.
I wet closer to the notice board, half expecting to see words written in bold. It was nothing of that sort. It was a simple printout on a plain better sized paper.
1. All students are hereby informed that they must produce documented proof if they wish exemption from the Industrial Tour. In case of a marriage ceremony the wedding card must be produced and likewise for other reasons.
2. The documents must first be submitted to the Tour Guide, Professor P.P. Sidhu, who, after his approval, will forward the application to the Dean, UG for his validation.
3. The leave will be granted only for the days of ceremonies and one day extra for traveling purpose after which the student must report to the tour. Under no circumstances the student will be allowed to miss the whole tour. The tour is a part of the curriculum and thus a prerequisite for the B. Tech. Degree.
Prof. P.P. Sidhu – Tour Committee Head and Tour Guide Prof. P.K. Dhingra – Dean, Under Graduate Students“Damn the fools!” came a voice from somewhere, and I discovered that the speaker was a boy standing next to me. I recognize him, he was my department-mate but one of those who sat in the first three rows, and thus I had not had the occasion to hobnob with him before. One cannot be chummy with all the class when it has almost a hundred potential candidates. “Damn the fools!” he cried again, “Don’t they have any common sense? How can one report to the tour immediately after his sister’s wedding? Insane. Damn the fools!” He looked at me and said, “You look horrified too, friend, someone getting married?”
“Yes,” I said deeply shaken but presently relieved a little to find a friend, “My brother!”
“Brothers are still fine, brother. But sisters! One has to do so much work in a sister’s wedding. There are endless arrangements and then the sentimental parting. How can they such a foolish and callous notice?”
“Don’t know, yaar!” I said, though I knew the answer. “Damn the fools!”
I withdrew from the cluster that had formed around the green notice board. I was gripped by a strange feeling. I was not depressed. It was a setback, no doubt. My suspicion, after all, had not been baseless. It had been vindicated by this notice. And that made me a little happy. I had been right. I gazed at the notice again, so simple in its black ink but so sinister in its content. There it was, pinned innocuously on the green board – my missing link. It completed the picture. It justified the professor volunteering himself for the tour. The notice was not there for the Mechanical Department. It was there for me. Just me. I knew others would be granted permission in the end but not me.
To anyone else, I guess, it might have seemed the end. But not to me. It was not the end, I told myself, but just the beginning. Beginning of the battle between men who had all the power and a boy who had nothing but the fire to do anything, anything to meet his love. There had to be a way out of it all, as there always is, but where, that was the question.
=========================================== ================Deserving or not being kept aside, if ever a historian was asked to put together a chronicle of my life, he would jump at the offer. For seldom does a life have its moments so distinguished and worth recording. Not a year has passed since my birth that doesn’t stand for something special. Therefore, mine would make a trim chronicle, with the year arranged neatly on the left, followed by a hyphen, and then the mishaps, listed year by year, in the column to the right, and the historian will find at least one satisfactory imbroglio predicament, that the together annals like these, of researching madly only to draw a blank. To illustrate the simplicity of the task, here it is, briefly and a historian may be allowed to use it:
for each year, thus not facing the
1984 – Born amidst utter confusion… Lost in an ocean of babies in the hospital by a careless nurse… Finally identified… after referring to the records… He was the only boy born in that week. The rest were all girls! What company! Phew!
1985 – Speaks his first word. Not common for a baby though. ‘Darling!’ western Nevertheless, they add, it shows early signs of a budding Casanova.
psychologists postulate the overdose of
1986 – Takes his first steps… when everybody had given up hope… surprise everybody by standing suddenly, walking and attempting to cross the road on his very first move. How daring! But the attempt is cut short by a speeding car which hits him; he flies up in the air, lands on his head, bounces a couple of times and comes to rest… Doctors attribute mental instability to this very incident.
1987 – Shows early promise again, this time of becoming a boxer… Knocks his classmate down after a fight over the ownership of a days… Parents call Records… But he misses the world record of the earliest suspension by three days… Tragic! India missed another world record!
pencil… Suspended for fifteen the Guinness Book of World
And so the chronicle will proceed effortlessly to arrive at this year, and go beyond, no doubt. You can gauge very well from the early years, what a life it has been! Thus you’ll expect in me nerves of steel and muscles of iron and you’ll not be wrong either. Therefore, the preset imbroglio, however distressing, could not shake me and I took it as casually as just another entry in the chronicle. Something had to be written against this year and this was it. The fact that I had sailed through all the earlier predicaments, gave me immense relief and encouragement. The only thing that I said to myself in the following days was, “Think, Tejas, think!” I had a particularly favourite teacher in high school. Mrs. Bhatia, a delightful lady who showered me with favours, who had this favourite line ready, whenever we failed to answer her questions, “Put on your thinking caps, children!”
Whether I found my thinking cap or not, I would certainly have made Bhatia ma’am proud, for I did arrive at a solution at a solution. I decided against mentioning all this to Shreya or else she’d tell me, again, not to come. But, having come so far, I was not going to retreat.