Things- Good, Bad, Pretty Young etc

As I begin typing awkwardly on the stone cold keys of my keyboard, dawn slowly breaks on R-land’s horizon, its steady ascent only disturbed by my phone’s cacophonous alarm. I’ve been up for the past three hours; the frigid air penetrated through every strand of fleece in my quilt to end uneasy dreams of being George Costanza’s business partner (or something like that). Feet propped up in front of the heat convector on the tea table, I look out of the window to see the night’s pitch black give way to the snowy blue of the morning, eliciting a bright response from the birds in the blanket of trees behind our wing. What I like most about dawn is how the changes are never too sudden, never too alarming. You get time to think about what's gone by, and get ready for what's up ahead. The darkest of the night soon seems a long way back, only in an hour, with the sounds of dreary slippers dragging on the corridor floor waking you up.

The rigours of academics, however, aren’t as accommodating. A first ever six (followed by three sweet zeroes) will sit next to the colon on my latest grade sheet’s SGPA column, its rotundity eerily irritating the eyes used to the more robust sevens, even as its inverted brother remains as elusive as a semblance of sense in Tees Maar Khan. A fourth consecutive New Year’s Eve in the insti didn’t help the saddened mind, itching to join the rest of the family watching another farcical orchestra crooning Daler Mehendi’s legendary Ho Gayi Teri Balle Balle as midnight strikes.

Yet, despite the insti’s most monstrous efforts over the past four years, that resilient bug of optimism fails to go with the (outrageously cold) wind. Ladies Luck and Love await, according to random quacks in the newspaper’s horoscope section but what really gets me cracking for the day and year ahead is the Quote of the Day from yesterday’s Hindustan Times.

“Everybody should believe in something. I believe I’ll have another coffee.”

– Anonymous.