Vacant

Hi.

So its been a busy week for me and in fact everyone at my college. Exams.

5 hours of sleep a day, no idea how many hours of study, an hour of day-dreaming, a ‘do I still have my i-card’ moment, 3 hours of writing supplementary sheets and ‘one’ pen is what it takes to be me surviving exams. For others, probably the only difference is 0-2 hours of sleep a day and a ‘where IS my i-card!?!’ moment. Oh and sometimes zero pens.

And after 8 such 1.5x faster days including a Sunday break, here we are. 5/8 semesters far from the first day at college. 3/8 near to the last. I don’t know which one to celebrate though… Its more like a birthday you see.

You get an year older, an year mature, you mark the time of the year when you can say you have enjoyed another year in your life, but you are nearer to the end too, though its still infinitely far obviously.

And the similarity is the difference in itself. Its not the end that makes us sad or worried. Its how near we are to it and the nearer we get to it. Our seniors are having their last few moments in the college campus and they would be definitely more attached to the green grass than we are. We just want to walk on it 😛 . While for our birthdays, we never feel the same. That is because we don’t know when it will all end. I don’t mean about life and death, I mean to say the ‘moment’. We sometimes have those moments. And we don’t know when it would end… and how… Though sometimes no matter how hard we try not to let go, we just have to let the moment go. And all you are left is the feeling that if you had the chance to, you would make things different, you would make the moment freeze forever.

Did you ever realize that once your mother picked you up as a baby of maybe at max 8-10 years and dropped you back.. and never lifted you up again because you had just grown up… That’s the struggle of growing up. It happens in a heartbeat.

Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you’re in diapers, the next day you’re gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. – The Wonder Years

There is a last time for things that grow up. Your last tricycle ride, your last ride on your father’s shoulder, your last day at the playground, your last day at school.. list to be continued. And there is a first time for everything that grows up too. Your first successful bicycle ride, the first time your father sits on the passenger seat of your car, the first day at school, the first day at work, the first day that you couldn’t sleep and the first day that you just didn’t want to sleep… 😉

I haven’t lived long enough till now to make my memories start fading away but I am not sure when it does start to fade, those things I want to remember today, will I remember them tomorrow or not… That’s the uncertainty of life…

Just joking. Stars are beautiful and you know what’s the wonder there, they are too far and yet you can see them.. and they are always there even if you can’t see them. One night you look at the stars, the next night you spend looking at your computer screens or mobiles or maybe write about the stars you saw. Or the moon you didn’t. Or the star that you did..

Today, when I started writing this article, I didn’t know what exactly I would write about because there was indeed one thing I could write about, but I decided not to.. and as of now, I haven’t even decided a title for the article!

I once met a person. I don’t know how. I don’t know exactly when. That generally doesn’t happen with me because I have a habit of remembering how I meet people for the first time and so. But in this case I don’t. So I met this person. And I am glad I did. You see sometimes there are those people who are totally the opposite of you and that’s the thing you like about them. You get to see a new perspective and get to know new things, things you won’t get to know by knowing people like you.

Sometimes its bad, sometimes its good. Sometimes even opposite minds think alike. My last exam was for a subject called ‘Creativity and Innovation’ and there was a question to present a case study on something by us that we would consider as an innovation. And I knew that this person would know what I was going to write about.. And I knew he wouldn’t write the same even though he could have or he even should have. Both me and him were always proud of our project work on ‘Home Automation’ that we did this semester together and we called it a little ‘innovation’ in itself. And that case study was the most direct and true case study I could present without bluffing of any kind thanks to him.

OK I think I messed up when I said I don’t remember how we met. Maybe I do. Its just not epic enough to mention here 😛 And I don’t want to bore you.

The yellow image with a quote about a girl, why is it here?

This man I was talking about, just made a Jon Snow out of it by adding a ‘nothing’ next to ‘what she knew’…

*ba dum tss*

Anyways, remember the exam day? The last one, ‘Creativity’ one, later that night it was the girl’s birthday. She grew an year older, we ate cake and egg dishes (for the record, I know a person who makes better egg bhurji), she got gifts and when I tried to wish her birthday, it took another one person to actually translate my language into her, just so that she could understand what I meant to say.. or else she would have just looked behind me, through me. I’m skinny and it was dark and noisy out there, the perfect camouflage situation for me.

I never believed in celebrating a birthday the way she did or to my notice, everyone else did. The watches being of full use that night, “What time is it?” , “Oh its 9 minutes to go” , “No, your watch is just slow, we have 6 minutes”, “Where’s the man who changes the WhatsApp group name!”. No, most of these sentences never came out of anyone’s mouth but I know people thought this way. There was a cake for her. And there were friends for her. What else do you need..? I don’t know if that birthday was ‘perfect’ for her or not but I know it was good. It had to be.

Birthdays are meant to be special. I remember few years back I removed my birthday from Facebook just to see what happens and the results were… um.. good. Almost nobody knew it was my birthday except my family and friends that I could count using my 1 hand.. with few fingers to spare. But hey, it was good, because the next day when I told my friends about my birthday, they kind of taught me a lesson which I will remember. Its not about who remembers and who can’t is it? She was at least way too luckier than me to be celebrating the day like that.

I never cut a birthday cake with my friends since I was like 11 until this very year thanks to a Ahmm.. best friend. Broke an ongoing record I guess! 😛

/* Second person dialogue starts 😛 */

Well, you have had a good birthday. You had everything you wanted.. at least I hope so. If not, add it to your next wish list! You know there are people who would do their best to keep you happy. People, who were happy that day, people that were happy to see you happy.. Me, I was just happy that I didn’t need to ask whether you liked the gift or not.

Because either that or you are a very brilliant actor ( apart from all the things you are good at 😉 ) and I would like to believe its the former.. and I need not hear it.

Ending words, focus on the word ‘was’ when I say, there was a place in this world, a place in the lives of your family, your friends and in my life, that you filled in, a place you won’t leave and more places that you will make for yourself, places that sometimes mean more to others than it would to you, a place which had previously been… Vacant…