One last time

It is true when people say that life has many shades. Indeed, it has. Once we were all small kids, so innocent and charming that everyone wanted to cuddle their arms around us. People entertained us for hours in a stretch to just spot a momentary smile radiate out from our face, and we took all the privilege of their love. Ironically, in return of immense love we even literally pissed over their costly silk saris or reputed army uniforms. And they only smiled. Then there was a school life, the first memories of making friends, of sharpening pencils and littering the neighbour's compound. Eating tiffins together and running across the field, chasing balls and seldom friends. The post-lunch lecture, at times of a power-cut was the most unbearable moment of the day as the entire body exhausted heat fumes and every bottle in the classroom soon drained out of its last drop. The moment when everyone smiled as the last ally too walked out of the class to join the punishment. Memories of growing up from lower school to middle school and finally getting promoted to higher school now seems as if it all happened so quickly.

There was little sense of responsibility then and life was lived with utter joy and immense zeal. The present mattered and future was of little importance, until one day we walked in through that college gate. Things changed all of a sudden, just overnight. The first day's orientation marked the culmination of freestyle living and the beginning of an era of responsibility and future planning. We were expected and trained to grow up. We were warned to control over getting addicted to a few habits termed 'bad,' what friends termed 'cool,' 'necessary,' 'stress-relievers' and so forth. It was an all new world, just identical to the feeling of getting introduced to puberty in the past.

They say good times are short lived. Burdened under the workload of submitting assignments after due date, preparing and appearing in numerous exams per semester and commuting to and fro from college ended the college life time before it even started. Yet, we clinch tight a few memories- going out at lunch and late night to have parantahs with coke, tucking the shirts under the belt, bunking classes together, buying new sim-cards from the stalls outside the college gate almost every month, and walking down the aisle kicking everything that came in the way. Time ended just like the path ended every morning from college gate to the classroom.

An year has past and we are all scattered in different directions like marbles after a toss. Groups that were once united are all apart and busy with their lives now. Some have got on the wagon that takes them to the journey called 'life after college,' while some are still on the stands, trying their luck to get inside every one that comes their way, already overstuffed from the last station.

As I sit on the stands, waiting for the next wagon with hopes of getting a seat, memories of college life embraces me. There were days when we were unconcerned of such a day, days when we slept under a blanket of a million stars and gazed back at them dreaming of such a shiny and lustrous future to come our way. There were friends, best friends, who ate, drunk and slept together until dawn cracked and today they're all scattered away. Too far to schedule a meet, to far to reunite and too busy to borrow a moment. New people have taken their place and things have changed, thus proving again that time waits for none.

As almost a quarter of this life span marks its completion, life starts playing its cards. From days of togetherness and close friendship to loneliness again. There are twists and turns all the way up and what lies on the other end can not be foreseen. It might be a busy routine job waiting to handcuff us for the next many years or perhaps in the next turn, we'll all meet again to sleep for one last time under the open sky, overstuffed on one single blanket, struggling to stay on it, gazing at the million stars and laughing our hearts out on old memories.