Home Alone

[Image courtesy: notcot.com]

I sort of have a tendency to draw myself into a shell when people are around, but not having them around me doesn’t go too well with me either. I don’t know what this post is going to be about. I am writing only to distract myself. Six months have passed since I relinquished my hostel room for the comfort of full meals and a vast bed. And now that I am not maniacally preparing for MBA entrance exams, the loneliness pangs are sort of getting to me specially, on days when college is off. With Mom gone, it’s worse. I wonder how bad it is for her-staying indoors day in and day out. How does she bear these lazy, enervating, empty afternoons? Practice, perhaps.

Solitary musings are not a very great idea; the temptation to reminisce is utterly strong. We used to make a lot of crazy plans in our hostel rooms, snuggled together. Sometimes we even went as far as carrying them out. None too wild of course! We are all very well behaved, guardians of propriety, umm almost. I say that because at this very instance I can see myself and Fodoo walking over the hostel boundary wall to avoid wading in rain water and jumping over the gate. Fodoo went first while i stood hesitating. I was thinking of the time when i had done a similar thing but the gate had not been very kind to my clothes. But, with friends, you cannot but take the jump right? So i took my chances. The hostel owner saw this. She rebuked us for giving ideas to guys. We were er... compromising security. As if the guys wouldn’t have figured out that the wall was low without our help, duh! So we stood fighting back laughter and looking rather sheepish. But once we escaped from KAKIMA’s basilisk eyes, we were rather pleased. But I knew that our paths would cross again. She was so Dolores Umbridge¹ . The second Dolores Umbridge, I had happened to encounter. The first one was my biology teacher in higher secondary. We were jubilant when she left. Biology in our school was as cursed as Defense against the Dark Arts. The teachers never stayed for more than a couple months. We were not complaining though. Biology classes used to be boring. No, boring doesn’t quite cover it. They were soporific. The teacher used to read from the text book. It was the best lullaby, i had ever heard, almost magical. Infact the class had only looked lively once, when we were covering the reproduction system. I swear I wouldn’t have laughed or found it amusing but then she had to go ahead and explain how this was “all very normal” and then I couldn’t stop it. None of us could and we all exploded at the same time guffawing. But I am digressing. It’s funny how all these memories are coming to me from all corners. So coming back to Dolores Umbridge II, the lady with the basilisk eyes. So as i was saying, I crossed her again. Or I made her cross. Whichever is appropriate. It was raining, not just drizzling. Raining, beautifully. Large drops, consistent shower and my roommate chatni managed to drag me to the terrace for a rain dance. We were joined by a few more but the others refrained and were they wise to do so. A girl came up running, “SHE IS COMING FOR YOU”. Immediate Panic, we couldn’t go down to our room, she stayed on our floor. We took refuge, but she came for us wild eyed, enraged, hurling absurd accusations. She even said we were trying to kill her daughter’s baby. [Try to work out the logic here...rain dance => wet floor =>wet stairs => slippery stairs. Slippery stairs + pregnant daughter => the perfect murder] . The roof was banned for an entire year after that and we were labelled as the prodigals. I was not really comfortable being so tagged, but chatni helped me get a perspective. She said “Matiaao! No one can make me feel guilty for having fun”. That alien word worked like a balm and so we just chucked the thing off. Though I do thing “Matiaao” implied burying the thing. But who had time for funerals?