RETROSPECT

Friday, November 25, 2005
8:20:16 PM

This is the best time of the year. The college is almost empty, with four people sitting at the left corner, one loner at the back and a twosome (guys!) in front, of Arunda’s canteen. I am sitting at the center round table. Fortunately the radio is playing the ‘FRIENDS’ title song in some sensible FM station. Classes are called off, what a relief and I’ve still some time to live with myself until my classmates show up.

More people are coming in right now…The first to enter was our foolish third-yearian, who grabs at every opportunity to demonstrate his classical singing skills. The last one to enter till now was Mr. Peter Pan, for once, without any girl along with him. Lots of schoolboys have filed in.

They don’t remind me anything of my schooldays. I had a rather bleak, restricted school-life. I had nothing much to do other than falling in love. No, come on, it wasn’t that bad: I had my two best friends with whom I always hung around…We threesome always intimidated the teachers in some way. They made every effort to separate us by putting us in different sections, but that didn’t stop us from teaming up during the break or pass cryptic messages across the classrooms. We skated through trouble almost every other day. We were famous for the terror we caused by jumping on the sofa placed inside the Principal’s room, stealing school supplies from there and of course, we have photographic evidence of taking out facial tissues in style from the tissue box on the Principal’s desk…I remember making frivolous phone calls from the Principal’s office itself. Stealing Jules Verne’s “Journey To The Center Of The Earth” from the library was just as easy.

I feel proud to say that I never returned “Space Stories” from the Russian Cultural Center library. It had accounts from the diary of Pavel Popovich, Yuri Gagarin and other astronauts.

Anyway, let’s get back to my school-life again. Smoking in the teachers’ staff room…aah, a fairly good act of juvenile bravado. And guess who accompanied me? Fatty, of course… We have been subject to the effects of mutual Michelangelo phenomenon and now she is more like me and I am more like her. We sculpted each other’s symbolic self-awareness. Hey man, are you reading this??? Man, I miss our lovely times together… The times we blurted out the same thing, in the same tone, at identical timings…the times we delivered dialogues from movies and serials…Due South…remember, Fatty???
“I owe him”

“You owe nobody. He’s gonna get u killed”

Man, I forgot half the dialogues…most of them actually…
“In the name of the Royal Canadian…..(shot guns fired)”

“I don’t think he heard you”

Man, I forgot the most famous dialogues of them all…what was it???? Dammit! Damn the memory!
“There are strange things done
In the midnight sun
By the men, who toil for gold”

“Moil Ray, not toil”

“Aah, moil toil who cares?”

“Robert (something), apparently”

“Who’s he?”

“The poet”

Feels good to remember them all back again. Damn man, sign up in here so you can leave comments, so we can finally TALK! Like the old times…