College would have never been what it was if there were not friends. Four years in a residential campus meant a lot of time with friends. I made the best and worst of friends there. Friends who were family and friends who backstabbed. Together they helped me become a better person. My nostalgic trip down the college campus would not be complete if I didn’t speak about them.Between waking up at 6:30 to attend the 7 o’clock classes and sleeping in the wee hours of dawn, movies, gossips, eating and insane chatting were the ways of life. Often we prepared jhalmuri (an Indian snack) and then ate sitting on someone’s bed or on the roof. Even after talking the whole time in hostel, we still had lots left to talk so we continued in class too. I avoided sitting beside S usually but the days I sat were chaos. Words bubbled out of us like a bottle of soda freshly opened and we could not stop talking even if we wanted to.One such day, it was the Mechanical Science hour. Don’t ask, I don’t know, why computer students had to read Mechanical Science! Anyway, RSP, our professor, was young. Just out of university himself, still pursuing his research, his tolerance level was low. He spotted us, head bent together, busy talking. With a perfect aim, he threw a piece of chalk and it hit my ear squarely. The pain was sufficient to keep us quiet for a few minutes but not more than that. And then we started again, oblivious to the lecture, oblivious to the absolute silence that befell. Suddenly our heads were grabbed and banged together! Teary eyed we had to move to different seats! I fought with the same girl over a bottle of water one other day and we didn’t speak to each other for a week. But then I came back to hostel from home after the weekend with homemade Mohanthal (an Indian sweet) and we were friends again. This was how sweet our relationship was. We had survived a lot of things together. Heartbreaks and disappointments, unfulfilled wishes. But she stood by me no matter what came our way. In that process we grew a cherished friendship. So many such friends, so many such stories. They may be the scope of a novella, but definitely not this post. But they all speak of the same thing. That friends were what made the college fun. And I am grateful to each one of them for my coming my way and staying in spite of everything.
Love,
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Riot of Random
