Home Again: of the Yester for the Morrow

Attribute it to luck or laziness: I did not come to Maurice Nagar for twelve long years; never after I graduated from college. The Shri Ram College of Commerce was a dream college for me before I walked across its campus for the first time in 1994, and ever since I did the same walking-act for the last time – twelve years ago – it has remained just that: a ‘dream’ college. The reason for the former is common-knowledge. The reason for the latter is simple: I only saw it my 'dreams' in the interim period! Institutions of repute are dream-destinations only before you join them and after you leave them; never while you are in them. The irony is… you fall in love with them only after your tenure there is over!

I had practised enough for the moment: that moment, which finally saw me standing on the campus of my alma mater. I had practised appropriate expressions that I must wear on seeing a familiar face: a lecturer, a peon, a fellow SR-ite, et al. I had even practised a subtle transmogrification of the genial expression into a more business-like one should the one with the familiar face fail to recognize me: just as a fallback option. It would help cut the embarrassment at least. Maybe all of it had been in vain. Simply because I was ruined by habit: I kept pushing the date for twelve years; and when I was there that November evening, I think I had arrived twelve hours later than I ideally should have. Or maybe twelve hours earlier. It was nine o’clock at night.

- - - - - - - - - -

Something seemed uncanny that evening. The gates of that college had never appeared so welcomingly ajar before. There was no lock there. No guards. In fact, the whole college was completely deserted. No boys, no girls. How vulnerable… exploitable it appeared – with the dazzling lights glinting brightly against the sun-deepened dullness of its facade. Almost like a maiden – with dazzling ear-studs glinting brightly against the sun-deepened darkness of her skin. I must have ogled at her skin for a good minute or two, and was only startled out of my reverie when my cigarette burnt my finger. It was a deep burn. I quickly lit another one, as I recalled the moment when a staff-member told me that the ‘No Smoking’ sign applied for students only.

My feet took an identity of their own as I walked in. They were so used to walking on this ground that the time-span seldom mattered. Immediately, I was greeted by that breeze that I knew so well, and I turned to look around for familiar sights and sounds. Swiftly, the campus turned into a living spirituality: the boughs over my head swayed with all their might and the buzzing of the crickets played a symbolic coda to mark my ingress. I felt the way a warrior does on homecoming.

Although it was dark, one could figure that the lawns were a smooth lush: combed grass and shaved bushes. I looked at the statute on my left – at the man to whom everyone in the SRCC-family was deeply indebted. I exhaled a puff of smoke and carried on. As was the wont, with my first step in the corridor, I threw an irresponsible gaze at the notice-board: solemn DebSoc notices, snazzy Quizzing invites, colourful college-fests, the all-important Corporate-Communication Cell meeting, a ‘Yamuna’ circular, and so forth and so forth. I experienced a déjà vu of a lifetime, made memorable by the subtle disparities underneath the conspicuous similarities. I caught sight of a quote on one of the posters against the name of British playwright Tom Stoppard: “We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”

I took a right. The Administrative-block as I remembered it. It really looked like a makeover of its former self. Numerous infrastructural changes had occurred. The outlets on both sides were gone: those dilapidated windows through which we deposited our fees and collected our examination slips. Things had become more sophisticated: a centralised office with well-bounded compartments and furnished cabinets had replaced them all. As a student, I was never too fond of this extension of the corridor. Primarily because the perpetual dust that clung to the windowpanes and the shreds of paper that lay unattended in the area and the remiss staff. Yet, that evening standing in the aforesaid place I longed for them – those badly polished floors and the dusty windowpanes. Particularly because they had a sense of familiarity about them. They smelled of geniality and made you feel at home: just as a light blotch on your bedroom wall does. I dropped some ash on the floor. I wanted the old times back.

The flexible gates were open, as if in my anticipation. The SBI branch on the left existed no longer. But I did not get much time to pay my condolences, for as I rubbed the haze off my eyes and the view of this part of the college became clearer, I saw the campus rise to life. A rendition of events played itself out in front of my eyes. Mere simulations of how they really were: nonetheless retaining the exact expressions, the same eyes, the identical voices. Frozen memories of the incessant talks, the discreet holding of the hands under the Banyan, the serpentine queues at the time of fee-deposition, and incidents associated with the traditional day-ski point thawed themselves out. I felt like a gallon of blood was being transfused into me. Precious moments, stored like pearls in the oyster of my heart, re-lived themselves in a fast-forward. Coming and going in the flash of a second, tantamount to sparkly sky-shots: maintaining a thin trial to begin with and reaching their moment of glory at short-notice, one after the other, one after the other; overlapping occasionally.

Straight across, I saw some relatively recent developments: a Photostat shop and a Co-operative store. Even the Boys’ Common-room was now the Seminar Room. I refrained from loitering in those seemingly acrimonious quarters. I felt uncomfortable and unsafe in their presence, just the way I felt when I saw strange faces at home as a child. I loathed it when they made accosted me and made untoward advances toward me. I walked faster, smiled reminiscently at the Canteen, which had not moved an inch, and turned left. I crossed the Girls’ Hostel and recognized the rear view of the library on my left. Twenty steps hence was where the SBI branch was currently located: straight opposite to the auditorium.

I walked straight to the corridor and hit the classrooms. Just before I could enter, a carpet of memories unrolled itself out. Those lectures in Mercantile Law, Statistics, English, and others. And more importantly the lecturers. My heart longed for the bygones. When I entered, I was pleasantly surprised to begin with. All the classrooms were embedded with air-conditioners and projectors. Soon however, the smile on my face turned faint and finally faded. I was beginning to see the whole AC-issue more as a vagary than a development. I felt that I had as much claim to college as anyone presently associated with it. And I didn’t seem to welcome anything that made the college any different from what it was twelve years ago. I wished to see college as I had left it; frozen in time, ad infinitum. My fag had exhausted but I refrained for lighting another one. All of a sudden, the 'No Smoking' sign had begun to apply to me. All over again. I felt as if someone had kicked the dustbin of my memory – full to the brim – and all its contents lay astray. I took to the 'Xerox Lawns'. Those pleasant reflections of the all-day-long strolling and scuttling here – in the name of some activity or the other – made me giggle. I was also reminded of the ragging incident that took place on the same lawns in our first week of college, the details of which, for the sake of being politically-correct, is unmentionable in print. In fact, it would subject both the parties to a lot of discomfiture, now that they know each other well! (I don't know if the present batches of students are conversant with this irony prevalent in the 'Xerox’ Lawns: there is no longer the Xerox-store – traditionally located roughly in the area where the Gents'-facility and the water-cooler stood currently – after which these lawns were named!)

I took a left from the notice-board into the front corridor. As the maturing night peered at me through the interspersed spaces, I realised that I had spent more time than what I had expected on campus. My watch showed fifteen minutes past eleven. I intended to walk faster but couldn't. The sight of the auditorium stopped me. As I looked inside, I discovered that all the lights were out. With the light that poured in from the outside, through the opened doors, the first thing that I saw was the cynosure of the auditorium: the stage. Immediately, I was reminded of the various events that were organised there: the plays, the talks by guest-speakers, the concerts, and the election-campaigns. (The way we pilloried the candidates was not funny! I hope that at least this tradition is on.) Shifting attention, I noticed that those wooden boards with the names of meritorious students – through which every SR-ite wished to be remembered by posterity – were no longer there. That was sad.

I exited from the auditorium and walked straight to the porch from there, with the statue of Sir Shri Ram on my right. In our times, we weren't permitted to walk on the whole of the front corridor: the stretch from the offices to the staff-room was out-of-bounds as the lecturers sought some quiet and student-presence created unwanted din. I adhered by the traditional rule.

On my way out a deep sense of realisation dawned upon me, which drew strength under the effect of the moonlight. It occurred to me that although I would remain an SR-ite for life, I would never get to feel 'the essence of being involved' again. It is so difficult to be a guest at your own college. It is so difficult to just be a part of the audience, and not perform yourself at your alma mater. College was a last chance to experience the heights of happiness and depths of despair in a group. I painfully longed for those moments when I laughed and cried with my friends: all of who are caught in the details of time and space today. Probably I would never get to compete again in healthy environs: not in sports, not in debating, not in academics. The every day competition that I face today reeks of grudges and prejudices. Lord Byron once said, "The days of our youth are the days of our glory." A truer statement was never made.

A deep sense of loss and all gone by enveloped me, just as the clouds were beginning to envelope the moon. Visiting the college after so many years was painfully pleasurable, or at best, pleasurably painful: there was the joy of meeting and the sorrow partition, all at once. I kept turning back on my way to the college gate. My legs felt like lead, oblivious of when would they walk this campus again. I turned again, for one final time: it appeared equally vulnerable… exploitable – with the dazzling lights glinting brightly against the sun-deepened dullness of its facade. Somehow I was reminded of Cowley who once wrote the following for his beloved:

By every wind that comes this way,

Send me, at least, a sigh or two,

Such and so many I'll repay.

As shall themselves make winds to get to you.

For the past twelve years of my life, somehow, I had forgotten the college. Or maybe, as a small part of me feels, shoved the details pertaining to the college in some unattended corner of my memory. A brief visit to college had revived it all. The burn mark prevails on my finger still. So does the clandestine mark that I had left in a discreet corner of the college. I hope that the two always stay where they are… unaffected by time and hidden from the paint.