Musings...

“The main advantage of Matrix Minimization Technique over…” the lecturer droned on in his steady and horribly drowsing monotone….

I sat at the bench that I always occupied… on the rare occasions that I was present in class, at any rate… and stifled yet another yawn. I sank a little lower in my seat, rested my chin on the palm of my hand… and made myself a bit more comfortable.

Outside, the sunlight glinted off the windows of the adjacent building in a distracting manner… distracting only to the students that actually paid attention to the class…. For the rest, that is, people like me… it was a part of the world that we were being deprived from, for the duration of the period….

I gazed out of the window next to me and surveyed my college. Being on the second floor, I had a pretty comprehensive view of the surrounding campus and the buildings. Here and there small groups of students hung around chatting… all bunking some class or the other. The professors traditionally took a lenient approach to these petty transgressions and let these truants be….

I bunked a lot of classes myself as a matter of fact. I was usually to be found in the common room during the college hours (and even afterwards…) instead of in my class, where I was by all means supposed to be. I loved to play Table Tennis… and made full use of the opportunity that my college provided me in this regard. The fact that I hated attending boring lectures… lectures that usually passed over my head… was an added bonus.

Playing Table Tennis was a hobby I had picked up while in Darjeeling… and carried on ever since. I used to play for my school back then and was considered to be pretty good.

Darjeeling had certainly been a really fun place to be….

I had moved there from Asansol, after my parents had gotten transferred for what had seemed like the umpteenth time, and been enrolled in one of the best schools I have studied in… and there really were a lot of them….

St. Joseph’s Darjeeling… nothing but fond memories of a place that I had adapted to like a second home… and which had adopted me like a son…. I rarely felt nostalgic about the various childhoods and their associated pasts that I had left behind in the process of growing up… but North Point (that was our alias…) was special.

As if to balance the gala time I had spent in the hills… I had also served time in schools that would best be described as purgatory…. The first name to spring to mind in that context would be Model School Port Blair.

I was interviewed in the principal’s office of a decent enough school… then sent off to study in its extension that totally tanked. I spent a sick time there surrounded by damp walls and moth eaten furniture… and hardly any students at all….

It was a huge contrast to the rest of the time that I spent in the islands…. “Utterly divine” I guess… should be an apt way to summarize it.

Golden beaches, tropical evergreen forests, pristine blue lagoons, green ceaseless waves, and the gentle never ending breeze… paradise made real!

Andaman and Nicober islands still continue to be… by far the most beautiful place I have lived in till date.

Among my other addresses… only two towns even come close… namely Darjeeling with its majestic hills… and Cochbehar with its dense emerald green forests….

My mom and I always say… that in spite of this… Andaman still takes the cake. Dad… always the diplomat, despite his profession… says it’s unfair to compare since these places all have different types of scenic beauty….

Its damn near impossible to ever get a straight answer out of dad…. He is so careful about avoiding any form of controversy, he answers every question put in front of him with logic that, while maddening, cannot be argued against…. Oh well… maybe that’s the case with all ex-lawyers, and not just him….

Studying law… ah… that was a career that my parents had considered for me…. I had even been made to appear for the entrance exam to the nation’s finest law school… thankfully I did not get in, and was allowed to pursue a course of my own choice instead… vis-à-vis engineering….

I don’t know how the fascination had been born… but it was undoubtedly there as I had prepared for my board exams at the end of the twelfth grade…. I had even begun attending classes at the classiest and most prestigious college of the city, before forcing a change of stream so that I could do an engineering course instead….

In retrospect… now that the craze has died… one of the poorest decisions I have made about my career….

A nudge in my ribs, shook me out of my stupor.

I had been day dreaming again… wandering aimlessly in the vast palace of my memories… long enough for the lecture to be over and the professor to begin taking attendance….

I said the obligatory “Present!” a bit late on account of the reverie I had fallen into… and sank back into my seat.

The teacher walked out… shortly the next teacher walked in.

I gazed out of my window again….