From Home to Beyond

The sweet-scented memories now sway by my desk from time and within. The memories which bring a chest of emotions, pure within but ephemeral on the shell. The dancing thoughts always halted upon the familiar faces, faces that can’t be swept away even from the subconscious. A series of ecstatic faces and figures, showed up every other day, simply because I was going to the college. A college far away where my paraphernalia of life for the past eighteen years, would cease to be with me. This inscrutable truth was kept on ignored by me, but not for long.

 

The day which I least aspired of, of leaving home was already glancing through the first set of sunrays. The family plays a crucial role in departing us hiding their feelings in the best way possible. So, we set upon the journey of traveling physically, yet emotionally took the longest time. After touring the vicinity of the campus, we entered the campus with high hopes and thankfully they haven’t left me till now. An ordinary first day of a freshie at the college and hostel should be hectic in all ways. But in mine, it was more or less a sort of picnic for my family. Recalling an event, where I was allotted a hostel room that didn’t even exist on the campus, makes me question the skills of authorities till now. Nevertheless, we settled in the later allotted room as a fruit of running errands to get the fault rectified. Finally, we started off to morph the rather small and ugly-looking room into a warm and welcoming homely home. After filling in the snacking supplies and an inch-to-inch cleaning, the room can finally be enounced the abode to me for the next five years. Now was the time to socialize and make that ‘connect’ with the wingmates. Surprisingly enough, the trait of extroversion happened to help me here. Currently, the situation now is that a room made for double occupancy holds a farrago of eight people (maybe more) all at once till late at night. Everybody holds a unique persona and talent associated with them which locks their name in my mind. All in all, they are now the second group of humans I’ll hang out with for a meaningful portion of my life. 

 

The day before my first day of college was scheduled to be the day for orientation. Getting ready for the same in the morning and leaving for the auditorium was the hardest part for me. Might ask why. Just before the orientation started, I had to bid the most heartbreaking goodbye. Sometimes, events just occur in their pre-set chronological order so smoothly, that one fails to notice the course of time being swept slowly but steadily. My parents had to leave for the train which obviously couldn’t depart late only because I wanted that. Suddenly, the events flashed before me of those three days that I spent with them before college could start. Somehow, my father kept a straight face, as if he was calculating the investment rightly made for my future. Certainly, he was hiding the tears deep down in the chambers of his heart, where he also stored the prayers for my wellbeing. Poles apart, my mother burst into tears for she contained the purest form of love through all these years for me. As for me, I was in an enigmatic state, which I have also failed to decipher till now. The time comes, the event occurs, and the time moves on irrespective of what you wish. The same happened that day, the auditorium just two blocks away turned into a walk down memory lane.

 

Just like the king departs from the luxury and loved ones towards the battlefield for unprecedented times, I surely knew that this would be nonetheless of the same essence for me for the next five years. At the instance of writing this, I am perplexed to move forward with my thoughts. The reason is that I must board the train home tomorrow, and the reminiscent ink is now turning to be tranquil. All those faces would come out of the video calls finally standing before me. Their mere touch would come as a means of catharsis for me. The thousands of ifs and thens now surround me as I plan the journey back home for the first time after a long stretch of a semester. Just overthinking about the fact that I will be traversing the path back home on the same route just without those people on my side seats and without those engrossing chit-chats that happened a few months back.