03:30 am. 3rd no actually 4th
January 2012, Boys hostel - IIIT Hyderabad. Deafening silence... Confused??
Well there you go...
Here I am... sitting upright with eyelids
heavy, tired of watching 3 back to back movies after playing hot pursuit an
hour... what a cool college life! Then why is the hostel absolutely silent at
this time?? Let me answer it. As first years, we are supposed to attend the
‘pre-morning’ sessions of Yoga and PT. Yes, PT, “Physical Training”, about to
start at 6, a mandatory course with 2 credits, failing to complete can make you
stay here after getting a dream placement in a dream company. Yep you’ll have
to stay here and complete the PT credits coz you know they’re trying to make
your life better... yes indeed. Then why the hell am I not sleeping??
I too as anyone else thought I would do
this and that in my college life, a preconception that any fresher has in mind,
an engineering college is supposed to be a place where you spend the golden 4
years of life. As a JEE aspirant I thought golden implies were I’ll have
freedom to do whatever I wished for, night-outs, trips, hang-outs etc etc. But
here, these are a rare opportunity and whenever a person from this institute
gets the thing, he cannot afford to let it go... these are the times for which
we breathe, hoping that there is such a day forthcoming where we’ll have some
time to live as we had hoped in our years at college. Now having overused such
an opportunity, I’m paying by sacrificing the night’s sleep, well whatever has
left of the night now... because I know that I’ll not get up at 6 if I sleep at
- what is it?? – yes 03:45 am. Definitely not.
When you sit idle wondering over nothing,
all sorts of bad memories rush out of your mind, and that’s what happened
now... I remembered the conversation that I had with my P.T. teacher the other
day...
PT teacher: “You passed, right??”
”No sir, I felt short of attendance...”
PT teacher:”You failed!!”
Common
man!!! As if it’s such a big issue not being able to complete damn 85% of
attendance for this stupid course...
“Uh! Yea... i felt short of attendance...”
The
successively emerging frown on his face reminded me of the bitter memories
of the past - encounters with a number of teachers – the look they all - most
of them used to have when I used to appear with a request...
“I’ll see what I can do...”
Yes,
I know you surely will... “Thanks a lot sir...”
Staring at my roomie for a while, after
having accidentally asked the time from the corpse ;) I wondered what he may be
dreaming about... The bulky volumes of ‘Linux Command lines and Shell
scripting’ suggest that he might be fantasizing the release of the latest
version of ‘his’ new OS... shaking hands will Steve Jobs while he admits that
the OS made by Piyush has really overshadowed Mac by a mile. Jobs sir, may thy
soul rest in peace...
Trying to keep me from sleeping is even
harder watching the alarm clock tick in front of my eyes... maybe I should
sleep... just a little... And yes, at this point your brain terribly starts
supporting your body’s need by quoting extracts from the impressive
conversation with a variety of people over the course of time, while the small
quivering part of the mind still protesting at this thought... and as always
like the bigger and bulkier part overpowers the small feeble one, I dozed
off...
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
“WHAT?? F**king 6:20?? Darn it!!” I got up
in a hurry, not to try and reach the Yoga hall (as it was no use, get late by a
second and you’ll have a forced leave for a day) but towards the calendar, to
check how many more leaves remained for me to atleast complete the course in
this semester...
I
felt a terrible jolt of pain in my leg - which I had accidentally banged
against the wall – and there I sat with me feet in my arms mourning over its
broken ligaments... Oh yes! I now had a reason not to attend PT for ‘bout a
week or so... and a very solid indeed (as it looked uphill the next encounter
with my PT teacher). I would go, meet the teacher personally and ask him
exemption from PT for some time...
No problem, I thought and yet again, dozed
off...
“Oye Tarang, get up dude, it’s 8:20, I’m
leaving... don’t get late...” My roomie cum alarm clock rang and went off...
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
“Oh! I’m so sorry, now you’ll not be able to do PT... efficiently...”
“wha... sir I’m not able to walk properly,
and i think I need to rest my foot in order to resume early...”
“You can still do some light exercises; it
doesn’t look so bad...”
“Sir, my leg pains very badly...”
“humph! Okay then, I think it’s time for
you to utilize the 15% grace period...”
“The 15% what??”
“Grace period... The 15% grace period, you
see, you people have already been allotted 15% exemption from 100% attendance
for these kind of ‘mishaps’... you can utilize this. No problem with me”
Aren’t
we supposed to have that “15% grace period” for the days when we could
willingly not go to PT, totally leaving aside the granted leaves for these
“mishaps”?? ... “no problem with me...” indeed...
“oh! Yes sir.. I just wanted to bring it to
your notice... #$^%%^&$”
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
The new semester resolution... or whatever
you call it didn't even last a week... not much but i took one leave on the first
week, and if you wanna hear about the second week, the whole week was yogaless.
Yup, I decided to drop the course even for this semester. Nope that was not a
sudden decision, but was verified and approved by many of my friends, (one of
them suggested try giving a medical certificate, will cost you at the max. 100
bucks... you have been absent for a week... a good chance that they would
consider but the possibility of them cross checking my attendance with that of
the classes made us drop the topic ) who had already decided to drop the course
for the sem... Man!! who likes their friend to complete the race when they
themselves are out of it right from the start?? Seeing it as a better option so
that I could concentrate on studies for the whole sem, i decided than it was
really better for me... was it really the reason?? I asked myself... Oh yeah!..
my mind replied back.
