The day before yesterday was supposed to be the last working day for the final year students of my college. Four years of fun, frolic and the best four years of life had finally drawn the curtain on them. I was standing on the first floor of Chith Vihar, outside the Java lab and watched all my seniors gathered in the ground floor and clicking photos with each other. There was some entertainment, speeches and a party for about two hours, which I missed almost entirely as I was in the lab. Once I got out, I found many of them still there and as I reached the ground floor, I heard two people talking to each other "Machi, call pannite iru da. Enna marandhudadha." and the other person replied "Unna marakka mudiyuma machi? Feel pannadha, namma eppodhume meet pannalam." Later, all of them stood for the final photographs at college before they bid farewell to each other, probably secretly crying in their minds that the best days of their lives had finally ended.
I imagined what it would be like when the time comes for me. I saw all of them and no one cried to each other. I'm quite sure that I'll not be able to hold back my tears. Earlier that day, I was sitting inside classroom CTV104 and was writing my laboratory record, when a few seniors entered the room. One girl said to a few other guys and girls "Hey avangalam enga pa? We shall go to all the places inside the campus where we've been from first year and we shall click photos." which made my attention drift away from what I was doing. I imagined how these people would have been in their first year, like "this day, that age" kind of effect and wondered how they would have felt when they saw their seniors leaving the campus. I still have two more years to go to meet my fate of this inevitable day in my life, when I'll be putting my feet in their shoes. And that would be the day when I'll look back and see the memories of a lifetime flash in front of my eyes in one glimpse. And that day, after everything is over, perhaps, maybe I'll open my blog and see this post, and have a heart attack. I still have no clue about how the first two years of my college life have gone by, how time has whizzed past me, blowing like a gentle breeze.
The day also meant something for me, as some of the people who inspire me the most were leaving the college. Sanjeev Gopinath, Vikas Mishra, Anurag Jain and Anil Kuncham were some who introduces me to, and helped the GLOSS community at the University sustain it's fame. It is like yesterday I saw the farewell of Dwarakanath, the former head of GLOSS and today, it is one year already. In just two more days, my college life too would end.
The farewell reminds me of my last day at school, when I made a huge and successful effort to hide my tears. I will not get into all that, but college life has been too good for me to hold back my emotions on that-day-to-come. Maybe the prime reason would be my first semester, probably the best among all of them, which made me all I am today and about which, I'll surely make a separate blog post, for those were golden days of my life.
I would like to justify the title of this post, the second part of the title to be precise. I'm quite sure every one of us have said goodbye to our friends who were once dearest to us at some part of our life. We promised them that we would be there for them always and will keep in touch or visit them frequently. Well, these promises are hardly kept up by anyone. I wonder how a very good friend becomes a stranger just because you haven't talked for a while. If you've read the short story 'After Twenty Years' by O'Henry, you'll see how the two friends kept up their promise of meeting at a place, to fulfill a promise made to each other twenty years ago. It gives an eerie feeling when I go through my phonebook to search for someone's number and I stumble upon an old friend's name. I suddenly have the urge to call him/her up but get this reluctant feeling inside.
I dedicate this post to all my seniors, who have inspired me and guided me throughout my life. I would like to quote J.K. Rowling's farewell speech at Harvard here, which goes like this- "I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister." This speech really touched my heart and I thought of sharing it everyone. As I've mentioned in the earlier paragraphs about those assuring others that they'd always be there, I wish they would always remember that promise that they made, forever.
I hope that the unity shall be more than in the photographs that were taken on that day. I wish success and happiness all through their life. I hope that I have the courage to face that day with determination. I hope.
