The year that was…

March 23, 2011 | Posted by hven84 << back to blog

Jaage hain der tak, hamen kuchh der sone do
thodee see rat aur hai, subah toh hone do

The last few days, you walk around campus and you hear a few clicks here and there. If it’s dark enough, you see a flash (Instinctively you look to the sky wondering if it’s going to rain and then realize its Chennai, its summer and again its Chennai). Manamai has been extremely forgiving to us this year in terms of weather, yet that hasn’t stopped Gladiators from collecting their memories in snaps. Cameras are out like the umbrellas in the rain trying to store every passing moment. Even those who don’t have cameras brandish their mobiles to soak up their memories.

Every day is a party. Earlier in the year, chances are that you head to Mahabs (Sea Breeze, Nautilus, Bob Marley, Sonny’s etc etc and what not) and you would bump in to another group of gladiators. In the last month, every group has been partying hard and chance has become a certainty. You always bump into a fellow gladiator at Mahabs.

Of friendships and bonds, some formed, some forged, and some cracked, some weak and some broken. In this one year, friendship has been a key to survival, to existence. I know I will cherish all the friends here as will my fellow gladiators. Much as (some of them) they may claim that one year is too short a period of time to forge a friendship, the realization will hit only on moving out. Moving out is always emotional. The room that has been home to you for the past several months, the campus that has been your haven (at most times). Certain rooms/zones have been party zones for groups. We tend to realize the value of someone or thing only when we no longer have them around.

Sidin Vadukut in an article in ‘Mint’ mentions, “Realize that business school is perhaps the last place you were both truly intellectually challenged and emotionally excited. Live each moment fullest” This is the mode most gladiators find themselves in. Some spend most of their time in the cafeteria or at the bistro, some by the badminton courts, some in a “highly elevated” state and a few in attending as many courses as possible to make maximum value. Irrespective of what is being done, each one is still a “purpose maximising unit” here (C’mon, it’s the end of the course and I must at least try using jargon). This in all probability would be the last lap of education for most us and the fact that we are going to get back into the corporate grind, the fact that we can no longer be students will lash out at us and lash hard it will.

To know something has changed, we need a frame of reference. My mind struggles to come to terms with the fact that I’m inundated in memories and thoughts at a rate faster than that of my keystrokes. It took me 4 paragraphs and 459 words to reiterate the fact that the silence in my thoughts had more meaning and peace than just words. The one thing that seems to have gone by at a rate faster than the speed of thought is this year at Great Lakes.

It’s ironic, how in the first month when there were 11 months ahead of us, it seemed like much more than that and as that number kept reducing it felt much lesser than that. The last 15 days here seem like a time warp when the end and the beginning have to space between them, dream like. The path taken in the last 11 months, I look back and smile. I look at the roads I could have taken but didn’t, I smile. Time is the ultimate seduction. It flatters to deceive. The future is speeding at me and the past galloping away as I toil to grab the past and hold the future. I wish it would all just stop and go backwards so that I could walk the path yet again…

aadhe adhure khwab jo pure naa ho sake
ek bar phir se nind me woh khwab bone do

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