Confessions of a Drunken Mind

Today I shall toast to my people, my wing, my junta. For four years we’ve been together as room-mates, as room neighbours, as wing mates.

In the past four years I have changed. From the innocent, impatient and urgent want to do something for your country, to the skeptical view of the middle aged, to the final pragmatism and optimism of the old age. From the ignorance and denial of love, to the yearning for a beloved, finally to the desire for a child, my preferences, my views, my life has changed.

I almost know what it means to be old! There is no more jealousy of the peers; everything seems to have a meaning and a need, there is unconditional affinity for the juniors; it is almost like a death, a happy death. Like death is end to one life and a beginning of another, I seem to embark upon this journey and my luggage is packed.

But before I go on I have some confessions to make,

1. During the past 4 years I have had 2 or 3 crushes, I guess, if not more. I’ll start chronologically:

a: She plays tennis, she’s simply gorgeous and she Russian….no pts for guessing she’s Anna Kournikova!!

b: OK this happened on a fateful saturday night at OAT… I went to a gult movie “princess”. I fell in love with this heavenly beauty… Ramsubs and Satyashree know all about it… I think u should ask them only.

c: Finally, I fell for my dearest one… I wake up all night just simply admiring her face drenched in the moonlight, I sing to her on hot summer afternoon in the hope to calm her down… I can just sit and gaze into her deep expanse… I fell in love with the IIT-M campus…the ultimate supine beauty I’ve ever seen…

2. When I came to the insti, I was a dumb ass, a definite fool. In the very first ragging session almost all of the hostel seniors gathered together with me in the center of the ground… why? Because I won’t say ‘abusive language’ what a fool I was! The spell was broken somewhere in the second semester when one of the seniors Suhas was teasing me “Oh you are the one who won’t say ‘f***’!” and I shout back “No I won’t say ‘F***’’ (and realised oops I said it!) From then on there has been no turning back!

Come second semester and we have loads of time (the first semester was compressed and so it was six days a week!) What to do? One fine evening returning from labs and workshop, we decide to leave for Bangalore, from then on Bangalore has been our step-city every year one trip takes at least one of us to Bangalore.

(there is so much to tell about the Jaundice and how people fell ill in the first sem and how we used to carry juice for them to the hospi in the rains, to how Banner got senti and i saw him cry for the first time, and all about the S-factor, butl i'll cut my story short here and it shall be comlpeted in due time with inputs from all junta)

What I've learnt in the past few years is that :

There is simply no life without your junta, your family of four years. I can proudly say that ours is the most close-knit and most united group in all of the insti. Since our freshie years we have been referred to as X1 (that was the name of the freshie wing) till the end of fourth year.

We have done things together, even gone to other hostels to straighten up people for breaking the spectacles of one of ‘our’ wing-mates to every B’day treat which composed of not less than 12 people always!

And now I shift my wing just because I can’t bear to sit alone on the wing parapet, without them sitting alongside and Banner playing in the ground downstairs. I can’t imagine sitting alone on the parapet with no music coming from 216, I can’t see myself sitting there without seeing Jha come out of his room at 4:00 after his afternoon siesta with a sutta in his hand.

So if their lives change, so shall mine!

Apt is the saying “Saari duniya ek taraf, yaar ki dosti ek taraf”