The Pencil

As I sipped my cup of  chai, there were thousands of thoughts running through mind. Thousands of stories being formed, thousands of ideas slowly taking shape. Thousands of words running through my itching to find an outlet, itching find a way in paper.

I looked around for my laptop, only to realise that I had given it for servicing. And luck would have it, my phone was completely drained. 

So I looked around for something where I could pour my thoughts  before it slipped into oblivion, thanks to a very forgetful mind (I blame it on those diminishing grey cells and increasing greys in the hair).

And there it lay, like a long forgotten friend, a best friend who at one point in time I couldn’t do without, but now had been relegated to the back of mind, my dearest pencil, with its trusty sidekick, notepad.

The sight of this trusty old friend flooded my mind with sweet memory of the wonderful times we shared.

I remembered how I proudly showed it off to my friend. How I used to sharpen it to ensure that it was always on point. Remember all the competition it helped me win, when I compared it with those of my classmates, the tallest and the most pointed. It was incomparable, unbeatable, one of a kind.

I remembered all the access adorned it with to not just increase its utility but make it all the more fancy.

Come birthday, it was that what you distributed amongst your classmates and not seemed so cheap.

I remember all the doodles I had drawn, the incoherent scribbling, the examinations and papers I wrote. A very trusty friend.

The advent of the digital gadget had diminished it importance, reduced it dependency, speeding it up to near obseletion.

But now that I found it, it was time to make new memories with it, relive the old ones. So I began scribbling my thoughts with glee, behaving like we were never apart.

A Change Could Do You Good

They met each other in the strangest of times, when humanity was locked up, and an unseen enemy threatened the very existence of their species. Two lonely souls in search of companionship in the most unlikeliest of places and at the most unlikeliest of times, came together, when they felt all hope was lost.

They chatted and flirted and talked to each other for hours on end. Slowly and steadily they began to fall for each other. But they were wary of saying it out loud, cause they had been burned before, and were bruised and broken, and they didn’t want to get hurt again. But what they felt for each other was deep and true, and those words were inevitable.

So when they finally proclaimed their love for each other it felt like their search had now come to an end. They were each other’s soulmate, destined to meet and be with each other.

So at the first sign of unlocking, they flew to each other, to seal their love with kiss. 

By and by as the days went by, they discovered more of each other. Like the peeling off the layers of an onion, each brought with it something new, each layer brought with it tears. 

If their mutual admiration brought them together, their differences threatened to tear them apart. Each moment they spent led them to discover that they were similar as chalk and cheese. 

They presumed that they weren’t what the other was looking for. They were stubborn, stubborn as any one could be, refusing to give an inch to the other.  Even though they loved each other deeply, they struggled with their differences, with threatened to let their love be undone.

What they didn’t realise that opposites attract and change is the only constant. If they wanted to make it work they would needed to change, change for the good. Cause an acceptance could only be possible if it was complete, or there would be no acceptance at all. And if they wanted their love to work, they would need to bring change, a change in their perception, a change in their views. They needed to breakdown the walls they had put up and pave their own way through. Cause if they refused to change, their love would perish. 

All they needed to do is to let their love bring about the change they needed. And though change would never be easy, the change would do them good.

So they decided to give their love a chance, to let their love thrive and grow, to bring about a change in each other, a change for the good. 

And they continue to thrive and love and let it slowly effect a change. And through the ups and downs, and the disagreements, they have learned to accept change.

If Words Could Kill!!

She took her seat just as he was tuning his guitar and doing a sound check. She was glad she was just in time, as she didn’t want to miss his performance. 

Theirs was a summer romance that had ended with the culmination of summer. She hoped that he had no hard feelings towards her ending it with summer.

As he began to strum, she could feel pain in her chest. The lines he sang seemed oddly familiar. And then she got the answer to what she was wondering.

He continued to strum her pain with his fingers. He was singing her life with his words. It was as if he had got hold of her diaries and read each word out loud.

She wondered if words could kill, cause at the moment, each time he strummed his guitar it felt like a dagger through her heart. He was killing her softly with his words.

She had to get out there as she was flushed with anger, embarrassed by his song. She needed to get away and let this nightmare end.

She left in a hurry, knowing that it was sweet revenge for him, but for how long would that sweetness last, she wondered.

The next morning she woke up, trying to put the events of the previous in the recesses of her memory. 

She picked up her morning paper and scanned the headlines. She saw a particular piece and smiled. She then picked a tissue to wipe off the grease stain on her fingers. She threw it in the dustbin where there  a lot greased cloth.

She grinned and took a sip of her coffee. “If only words could kill,” she thought, “but he did get killed for his song.”

The Unofficial Cafeteria

The best part of college life is you get to spend with your friends. Share experiences, share crushes, share so much with each other. You create memories, embark on adventures together. All your life you always wanted to go to school the way Archie, Betty and Veronica and friends went, not quite the Karan Johar way. You always wanted to learn (yes some of us did go to learn, we call them nerds), but you want to learn wearing the trendiest of clothes. And though we may have academics and careers on our minds (or at least our parents and professors would have want us too), the best memories we made were not in not only those classrooms ( or not always, you got to learn some way), but on those cafeteria benches. Where else would be able to sit and yap not get thrown out for talking. And if your college, like mine, didn’t have one, or a semblance of one, or the one  that existed was priced, the Dosawala bhaiya, the Sandwichwala, Chaiwala Bhaiya, became your unofficial cafeteria.

Now you maybe wondering which damn college did I go to? I so wanted to be a Xaverite but I ended up going to HR (well that’s a story for a different post). So that may bring you to another question, what does HR stand for? No, it’s Human Resource, or Harvard and Radcliffe (as our then Vice Principal would have loved us to believe), or even House of Romance, after all college is the time that brings the genders in close proximity, causing the hormones of youth to speed up its development. Alas the actual name, wasn’t as exciting as we hoped it would, after all the kids in the college always acted like elitist snobs, and so we shall not dwell upon it today.

Now the college didn’t anything that could be called a cafeteria (it didn’t have anything remotely close to a campus), so the dosawala and the sandwichwala filled in for a cafeteria, albeit unofficial capacity. 

So throughout the day you found student at the gate, which literally made them outstanding, enjoying a dosa or sandwich. And guess what, you didn’t have to buy one, catch friend eating one and you could pile on, after all sharing is caring.

These were the best place to hangout. Meet up with your friends, chat for hours  on end, you didn’t always have to buy, or you wouldn’t be chased out. This was the place where everyone hung out, for whatever reason. You weren’t segregated based on your, coolness, popularity, or your nerdiness. Everyone hung out like one big meting pot.

You stood there and made plans, decide on movies you wanted to go for, of course bunking lectures, cause Bunking is our brith right and we  shall do it, and you had the choicest of cinemas to go to. You planned vacations, short trips or even bragged about the things you’ve done.

So you stood there, shared jokes, shared lecture notes (you had to do that sometimes), shared agonies, waited for your favourite eye candy to show up, and like clockwork they always showed up on time.

And since you were at the gate you knew which professors at come. It was the best place to hangout with your posse, group, your tribe, your significant other and their friends, and even checkout the eye candies of the college.

In the end a major part of the students, if not all of them, could always be found at the gate, unless you wanted to improve your attendance, and avoid being on the Blacklist (thr literal list and not the show). So when the municipal came around to demolish our own unofficial cafeteria, the Vice Principal, now the Principal, move them into the college premises (whatever could be spared), finally making them the official cafeteria of the college.