Just looking back..

On the way to office one morning, while I was sitting in auto rickshaw lost in mentally organizing my to-do list for the day ahead, something tingled on my hand that shook me out of my thoughts. It was an innocent droplet of the first rain of the season. As I looked around, there were many fat siblings of my droplet falling down merrily on the road. To my own surprise, my first reaction was to jerk off the droplet and pull down the auto rickshaw's side curtains, fearful of those dangerous droplets to spoil my neatly pleated trousers and clean shoes. When I was completely safe from the downpour outside, my eyes darted towards the rear view mirror.Before,I could twitch my nose, noticing the big line of cars that have queued up, my eyes caught hold of a bunch of college students clad in usual t-shirts, jeans and floaters carrying an almost empty backpack as if fully prepared to enjoy the first rains. They were happily splashing water around the puddles unaware of the noisy and angry traffic jam. Fully drenched and laughing uncontrollably they settled in a nearby road-side tea stall without even giving a second glance to the dusty stools. This whole scene reminded me of somebody, whom I have known so closely, it was 'Me’, just a few years younger.

In carefree years of college life, this scene was just so obvious and normal."How would one celebrate the first shower of season if not like this" was the tongue-in-cheek question that time. Completely aware of the fact that classes would not be commencing in such weather, the idea of going to college just to be with friends, to splash around, to sit down in the rickety tea stall outside college, sip tea and have piping hot fried snacks, was so luring that kept the youth spirit alive. The hours long discussions over nothing, playful leg pulling, seeing wide-eyed day dreams of being a big corporate with lots of money and recognition-all used to happen in the comforts of cafeteria or perched upon our favorite spot in the campus while gorging on canteen snacks and cribbing about it at the same time. Being part of the candle march for the justice in famous court cases looked so right that time, like duty of a citizen.

Planning a movie used to be just minutes affair, which now requires hundred phone calls to couple of friends, all citing their busy schedules and arguing on which, why and where, making it seem like more of a complex "Simplex" statistics problem , marring the whole fun of spontaneity .Dining at a plush fine-dining restaurant where everybody is willing to pay the bill does not sound that much fun as we used to have while fighting over a plateful of momos where everybody contributed not more than Rs.5.

Looking at that happy bunch of carefree college kids, made me feel so nostalgic as to moisten my eyes, still being careful not to smudge kohl-lined eyes. With a sigh, I disagreed with the mirror which said 

“Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear”.