“As little as you want to write when you’re happy, that’s how much you have to write when you’re miserable”, quotes Brian Bloom in movie ‘5 to 7’. Today is November 17, 2018, exactly four years since our first day in college. I am almost miserable. The college is over. The fabulous four years have finished. I wish it could last forever, or at least for longer. I have no friends to meet daily between 10 to 5. No bunking classes for tea breaks or attending classes between tea breaks for a change. I miss them. The people, the life, the place.
I vividly remember the first day of class. The orientation in the library hall where professors continued with their mumbo-jumbo while we were looking for any recognizable faces in the herd. The next priority was to look for pretty faces. Latter was more difficult. I had only one friend there that day. Now I have more. More than I could have asked for. I made friends bunking classes together and one of the best friends by bunking an exam together. So many groups of friends I have been in these four years I think I’ve gelled up with most people in class. People who are polar opposites in nature. I have probably never told you guys how much I love you, except when we were drunk together, and I miss you guys. (I hope your eyes are just as wet as mine are while writing this.)
I will miss our “educational” tours and picnics. The differences between them were only a few. Tours were the picnics where the college decided the place and provided bus and faculty members. Drinking, dancing and fun were the same. Fun was the first priority. So much that on Irrigation tour we drank and talked until 5 am when the reporting time was 6:30 am. I will miss being part of the most consistent cricket team of my life. Cricket ground hosted some of the happiest and saddest moments of my college life.
I can’t think of writing a memoir of an engineering college life without mentioning the girls or lack of them. It’s the thing guys talk about half of their time, except when politics is red hot. Because in Pulchowk Campus no matter how hot a girl is, politics will always be hotter.
Just like the walls of Pulchowk Campus my heart was also painted red a number of times. During Saraswati Puja in my first year, I saw a really cute girl. I never saw her again for two years and when I did, she already had a boyfriend. We are friends now. Honestly, I didn’t know, she said that we were. I’ll take her word for it. That paint washed out pretty quickly. The one that stayed for over a year was when I saw a girl in the workshop. She was there to make a hammer handle and I couldn’t handle myself after seeing her. In the third year we eventually talked. When she asked my name, I asked hers too. I knew, obviously, since in the first year when I searched for her name on the noticeboard where all the students’ photos are next to their names. We talked some more. I don’t think we connected much, more honestly she didn’t like me, and that pretty much washed off that paint or I should say hammered my heart.
After heartbreak came art-break. I thought this happened only in movies and stories but I was wrong. It may sound strange but my redemption was my phone. With the photos I clicked for my Instagram and other people’s profile pictures I had opportunity to know more people in the campus. So many that if you are from campus there is a very slight chance that you haven’t ever seen a post tagged ‘PC: Randhir.’ I spent half of the semester clicking the beautiful purple flower and explaining it to people that it is not Blue Mimosa (Shirish Ko Phool) but Jacaranda. And then there was poetry I wrote. I don’t know if they are qualified to be called poetry but anyway.
I don’t know if Pulchowk Campus is really the best in the country. But I do know it is the most beautiful college in the country. I may be biased. But what is love without bias? Without the extravagant compliments and over the top declaration of bewildering beauty of the thing or person you love, believing each word you say about their mesmerizing beauty possesses the absolute truth. If you doubt my claim visit the campus during spring. A time when not only leaves fall from trees but flowers too, like rain, purpling the ground and eyes.
A good engineer is what I aspired to become when I came here. I evolved as a subpar photographer and writer. I evolved as a person the most. I don’t know if that was possible elsewhere but I would like to believe it wasn’t. I thank all of you people who became a part of the most important phase of my life. In one way or another, you shaped me the way I am today. Crazy, honest, blunt. We all came to this college to learn a lesson in science, but we also learnt a lesson in life. For me the latter outweighs the former.
These four years were memorable. I hope I was too, for you.
