If
I had any doubts that I'd still be sleepy after only a score of the
proverbial forty winks, they were cleared emphatically in the first
few seconds down the famous Amod Path
slope. The morning, still in its winter slumber, seemed to throw a
blast of icy wind across my unprotected face. Misty-eyed, I took it
in my stride, puffing my cheeks in and out with warm air. A slight
moment's hesitation forced me to check my right jacket-pocket:
Haddu's Hershey's bar
was safely locked in. Head down, hood up, I glided past the chirpy
many as we reached the road by the canal...
It's
the final semester, finally. The time I couldn't wait for ever since
that first meal in the Rajendra Bhawan
mess. But three years of watching one and many sing that cloying
swansong has left me unsentimental. Five years is way too long
anywhere, leave alone a hellhole like Roorkee.
It'll be goodbye and good riddance, when the time comes. Until then,
to paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd quite incorrectly, there's too
many places I haven't been.
One
of them's been that long misty stretch called the canal road at the
stroke of dawn. Following the many faintly visible jerseys ahead of
me, I forgo the familiar right turn across the bridge towards the
railway station, and soldier on ahead in the now navy blue darkness.
The road's full of speed breakers, and the many squirms of anguish
and the hollow clanks of metal ahead forewarn me of their oncoming
agony. A diversion's taken, and now on my left is a vast stretch of
fields, only slowly growing back to life after the kharif
harvest. On the right, an offshoot of the Solani
aqueduct, a grey mist floating over its calm blue surface. And the
two still dark sides, are seemingly seperated by an incredibly peeved
wall of wind, that'd flipped my flimsy hood off long ago. The annual
HEC Cycle Race could take a break- I stood up to soak it all in. It
wasn't 5:15 a.m., like that Knopfler song I love, but in that cold
pre-dawn haze of tranquility, I took those few breaths that I'll just
hold in as long as I last.
Past
the chaotic midway point, scything through the remaining heavy air
from the night before, chest number 114 entered the portals of the
campus at dawn. After an intriguing battle with number 126 ended in a
comic defeat, I collapsed at the foot of a huge tamarind tree. 4Th
placed Nivedan and 6th
placed Ashwin were
nice enough to keep me conscious enough to soak in the ecstasy of
finishing the race, halved as the distance may have been from the
original 36 kilometres. And after missing the year's annual b-plan
contest, and the last DJ Springeezz, I finally had my first check off
the bucket list.
P.S.-
In the long hiatus between this post and the last, I missed out on a
few things. In a short summary: there was one last sexual
Nihilanth trip, a first New Year's Eve at home in five years and this
little icky green blot on the face of the blogosphere turned four.
Happy happy!
