Home Away From Home
A nostalgic normal
Cursing at the despicable noise of the alarm, Kriti reaches out for her phone and her groggy eyes stare blankly at the home screen for a few seconds…
8.01 AM
Wait what?!
Looking around the room, she sees her roommate peacefully asleep and still smiling happily in her slumber. With barely five hours of sleep after the previous night’s birthday party, the idea of bunking the morning class and drifting back to sleep seems lucrative. But, the lack of attendance just waiting to strike that V-grade looms over threateningly, leaving her with no option but to relinquish that dream and go to class.
Choosing between having breakfast and taking a bath in the limited time, she decides to be the better — and cleaner — person. (Though the real reason is that she’s left with no more deodorant.) She dashes into her favourite bathroom stall, as evidenced by the least abundance of creepy-crawlies lurking in the nooks and corners, and undergoes a mini-therapy session. Back she runs into her room, dresses up for the day, grabs some notebooks and a bag and exits as swiftly.
Her stomach grumbles in protest as she cycles through the roads leading up to the LHC, but being late to class after all the hassle of getting ready seems pointless. Almost out of breath, she sprints and manages to reach her class just in time. She takes her seat right under the fan and heaves a sigh of relief.
The next four hours are a blur with the monotonicity of the professor and his boring lecture, along with a minuscule break that’s half taken by some seniors for a small briefing and the other half leaving a small window for a walk down to the Coke station.
After what seems like ages, the lunch bell clangs and the corridors fill with chatter. Lunch at Classics or Dimora before the lab session isn’t a choice, because she’s broke — and hence, she has to head back to the mess. Entering the mess during the rush hour and getting a seat with her friends isn’t as easy as it sounds. And all it takes is one look at the bland food for nostalgia to hit. Her mind begins to wander into the comforting world of her mom’s home-cooked delicacies when she suddenly hears a certain voice screaming:
WAKE UP!
The cold AC air hits her as her blanket is snatched away; she finds herself in the comfort of her own soft bed. She can hear her dog barking outside and her dad grumbling as the newsreader reads out depressing news about the surge in COVID-19 cases. It then dawns on her that she had been sent home for a few weeks to be quarantined. The first few days of returning home were enjoyable, lazy — and most importantly relaxing, especially after the hectic days on campus; after a few days though, life becomes nothing more than Netflix and chill. Waking up at noon and after “brunch”, Kriti tries to occupy herself with helping mom with household chores, aimless doodling, striking off book after book on her reading list and everything else she can possibly lay her eyes upon.
Binging on series and movies all night, Kriti starts finding it a hard time having fun in her own company. In the initial stages of lockdown, the wave of random challenges on social media and online games were definitely fun to participate in — but also pointless, because she started to understand the level of desperation she felt for mindless distraction and social connect. Being deprived of even a walk in a park, her cellphone and computer were her only gateways to the outside world. Shackles of screen time guilt were thrown off as the days were spent staring in front of the glowing LCD screen.
Time flies by with mindless thoughts and “attempts” at being productive at home, eventually ending up with a video call to the gang and posting screenshots on Instagram stories. After a huge yet futile Twitter war, last-minute prep and surfing the net for answers, online exams were the last nails in the coffin. With no excitement about becoming a sophomore, no new semester enthusiasm and no breakfast-bathing crisis, the online semester makes Kriti feel almost invisible, empty and lifeless, with the muted mike and a shut camera. Attending boring lectures was far more fun when equally bored people were with her in a classroom.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Life takes a 180° flip as she starts missing the spontaneity of college — solving assignments till the last day of the deadline, endless projects discussions, midnight Maggi and coffee, pulling off all-nighters for CTs with the pictures of illegible notes and scribbles, club meetings and briefings, but most importantly her friends.
Nostalgia hits hard when she scrolls through her gallery and re-lives weird pictures of crazy, laughing roommates to midnight birthday-bump videos or just random terrible candids.
Homemade milkshakes don’t do justice to after-practice fruit juice at RK’s; Coke doesn’t taste the same as Pazhani anna’s exotic mocktails at D3 and snacks don’t make sense unless they’re secretly stashed for late-night therapy sessions.
Being cooped up at home rouses the stifling experience of loneliness and boredom — a life entirely antipodal to the blizzard that one had been accustomed to in college. Be it the big fests in college or the little moments of absolute craziness in her dorm room, she learns to be more appreciative of her hectic yet amusing life on campus.
Time teaches Kriti that overdoing something makes it boring, even if it is sleeping. She attempts to fill her empty schedules by venturing into hitherto unknown territories. She learns that there’s a chef in all of us, board games are underrated and exercising is a nightmare.
But as the days become weeks and weeks become months, Kriti finds it cumbersome to keep track of time; for, in her memory, the past few months were just one indistinguishable blob.
She had lost track of time, for here, in this land of monotony, there was no clock that chimed with The Pride of India.
This piece was written in collaboration with Akshaya Subramanian.
