NEWTON’S LAW OF SLEEPING:
The regular classes of my college had begun. As the professors start to write their subject title we could imagine ourselves being dumped with ten sleeping pills. No nightingale could ever sing a beautiful lullaby to make us sleep like the professors’ low pitch tone during the lecture hours.
According to the Newton’s law of sleeping,
“The intensity of your sleep is directly proportional to the food you ate before attending the lecture. And inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the professor and the bench in which you are sitting…”
As I always ate full of my stomach and I usually sat on the first bench, so the intensity of my sleep was hard to imagine. But sometimes in the class I would be interested in some other thing when sleep didn’t call me. Mostly due to the harsh and high pitch voices of some of the professors. During those times I would be interested in imagining my future with her.
Sometimes I would marry her in a temple, sometimes in a church. Sometimes we would feel warm in the Australian Culburra beach. And sometimes we would feel cold in the Siachen glacier of Kashmir. If there was a lot of time i.e. During the guest lecture hours I and she would be thinking a name to keep for our daughter. By the time I would suggest some modern names my mother would be protesting it with her words. And the argument between me and my mother would go on. Until a chalk piece in the size of a small stone would hit my head.
As I had sent my marriage invitation to the moon even during my eleventh standard, these imaginations were easier for me. To me anything was possible in my dreams and imaginations.
Throwing the chalk piece straight on my head the professor would be asking me some questions. But I would confuse his question with my unimaginable answer and I would manage. Like that went my college days and lecturing hours.
WAITING FOR THE SATURDAYS:
For me, it was first difficult to stay in the hostel, because I never missed my mother like this ever before. During the morning, it was really tedious for me to wake up without my mother’s habitual coffee. For the first few days, our college proved out to be as if they were the world’s strictest college. That they told us to study compulsory during the study hours which was between 6’o clock to 9’o clock. However, we knew that these comedies could last only for a few days.
For two weeks our mess food sounded to be great and the third week it was palatable and in the fourth week our mess food just reminded missing of our mother’s food. If I really hadn’t remembered my mother at any time, I truly got her remembrance when I saw my dirty clothes. I felt that for all these years she washed my filthy clothes. She took care whenever I got ill, and she was the one who really thinks me much about all the time. Though I loved my girl, my love for my mother never decreased but increased in proportions. Because it was my yearning to get her love that made me realise how it was gifted to be loved by someone truly.
I would ring my mother every night, and I would say that.
” I am not thinking for you most of the time as my time goes busy with my friends. I am really enjoying these days”,
After I went far from my mother, I always liked to speak the truth to my mother.
My mother would say as
“Here is the same. We don’t often think about you. We are also busy with our works”
But I knew very well why mother was lying to me. I knew that in a day, she would be taking the phone at least for five times to ring me up in order to hear my voice, but she wouldn’t. Thinking that I might get disturbed, she would keep the phone back. She missed me more, but she didn’t want to show this to me because she felt that I might feel sad if I know that she really needs me. She always gave me immense love. If she had given me some droplets of love like the earth, then I would have equalised it as the rain from the sky. But she gave me the love like the ocean which I always felt hard to return. Being like this. How could I stay more than five days in my hostel? As soon as the Friday evening arrives, I would be standing at the bus stop near my college to get the bus that destined for my home town.
In my mother’s calendar, the Saturdays and Sundays always yearned to taste themselves with the delicious dishes that she would be preparing. Decorate themselves with the new things that she would be buying. And please themselves with the soulful stories that she would be rehearsed in her mind during the other days to be said on that day. Because those were the days in which her little prince would be returning home from the hostel. Another one who enjoyed all those stuffs was none other than my father. That he would ring me up for at least five times within 10 minutes, after I had said to him that I began from my hostel.
When those Saturdays ended she would be little worried as she had another only one day more in the Saturday night. And in the Sunday night, my mother’s thought would be frayed and preoccupied that.
“These miserable Mondays should never come once again."
Just like, I wished while I was a kid. But she would give me a kiss that could last up to one week, and she would send me back to the hostel. Because she knew very well that my studies were really important than these, and those significant things shouldn’t be disturbed by her love.
MUTUAL SHARING:
One day Sakthi asked the toothpaste from me, I gave that to him. Then one day I borrowed the shampoo from him. If he woke early in the morning, he would bath and put my bucket in the queue formed in the bathrooms. According to which we bathed in the order. Rarely sometimes I woke early and I put his bucket in the queue. We went to the college together in the morning.
Few days went. I ceased to buy the shampoo, and he ceased to buy the paste. This was the story how myself, and Sakthi became close friends in two months. I felt I had got Syed by the name of him.
SAME PINCH:
One day during our mathematics period Sakthi wrote something in his note which was not definitely related to the maths. I doubted and when I was about to see, he had hidden that from me. After some time in his absence, I took that note and saw what he had written on it.
It was written as,
“Our love is constant with time
If it is differentiated it becomes nothing…
On the other hand, if nothing could divide our love,
Then it becomes an infinite love”
Differentiating (constant) =0
Constant/0=infinity
Later, I understood two things. One was that Sakthi was good in maths. And the other was that he was also like me; that is he too was in love with some girl.
I started to like him because he was, in fact, similar to me. I love someone, and I was afraid to express it. He must also be just like that else he wouldn’t have hidden the poem he wrote.
TRAPPED (BY THE TREES AND EXAMS):
During the winter season, the trees that were soaked by the rain; the droplets that were accumulated on the leaves waiting to fall straight on my head; the benches underneath those trees; the scent that prevailed by the combination of all these never allowed me to go to the class. They always begged to me
“Sit here for five minutes” like our grandparents asking for our time to hear their stories.
After that they would say to me
“Dream your girl you don’t have any other pleasant thing in your life other than this."
I would be sitting on it sometimes for the whole day. Those were the main reasons that caused the poor attendance percentage for the class. Most of the days went like that, and then soon our semester examinations began.
I haven’t prepared anything for my semester examination. Thoug
h Sakthi also hadn’t read or prepared anything he would write the exam well because he had some prenatal powers of knowledge, I believed. In the morning, I first woke him up at 6’o clock, and I slept. He went to sleep after five minutes. Then he woke me up at 7’o clock and he went back to sleep. I went to sleep on at 7.01 AM. And at last my other roommate woke both of us at 8’o clock. Then Sakthi gave me some quick review of few important questions. I grasped some of them, and as it was our first semester, the subjects would be little related to our twelfth standard, so I hoped to get pass marks.
I entered the exam hall, and after I got the question paper. I searched for the question to attend from the available questions like a man searching for a new pair of slippers from the available pairs of slippers to compensate the one he lost in the marriage session.
For the one-word questions, I managed with “Inkie, Pinkie and Ponky." I had a good faith in them. At least, I would be getting half right answers whenever I adopted this technique.
MYSTIFYING MYSTERIES:
First semester was over. We all made a big goodbye to all our new budding friendships as we would be meeting each other only after a month of semester holidays. Everyone planned for their schedule for their holidays. I was really worried about those holidays because I could at least kill the time if I was in the college. But being at home and being idle would make me go mad especially towards her.
Every time when I was going away from my college to my home all I would be thinking was that
“Won’t I see her today?”
Yearning for this my eyes would be searching for my girl with the thought that she might be hiding in one of the every girl I could see.
During the semester holidays all our school friends met each other. I was happy as well as sad that I found most of my school friends except her. I was keen on asking the college she had joined but like me all of my other friends were also unaware of the college she had joined.
It was mainly because of the fact that in our school boys and girls conversed with each other to the rare as our school was a highly dignified school. And she was more dignified than our school that she wouldn’t talk with most of the boys. But some other boys who had some close relationships with some other girls of our class would know the college she was studying, but I wasn’t not in contact with them. So in fact knowing the college she would be studying was a mystified mystery to my brains.
Another semester ended with the thought of finding a solution to this mystery. The second semester in a college life always moves so fast. As days went, like we shared our paste, shampoo and other things with each other we started sharing our thoughts and our secrets of love that we kept locked in our hearts for these days.
I told my full story of love to Sakthi. And he told his love story he said that he love a girl who came to live in the house opposite to his home exactly at the age of 16. She belonged to some other state and he had spoken with her only ten to fifteen times. Little unluckier than me, because at least I love a girl of my same state while even state separated his love. And if he wants to find his girl he needed to search in the two states.
A WALK TO THE TEMPLE:
I never hesitated to take his things. I never hesitated to give him my things. Whenever I was in a problem I would say “I am alright”, yet he would understand and run to be with me. I would tell some lies for his happiness but he would identify the truth beneath my lies. I would go with him when he was right and he would support me even when I was wrong.
First we were introduced as strangers. As time went we became accustomed, then we named our acquaintance as friendship. Then we both understood that we were not only friends we were enemies sometimes. We argued with each other, we quarrelled and fought with each other most of the times yet we never let those blades to slash the friendship thread that tied both of our hearts.
Though there were many friends I hung on with Sakthi. Every friend is a special, and a best friend is something special in a special. Like was Sakthi Praveen to me.
Whenever I was depressed thinking about my life without her, I drew sustenance from his words. Whenever he was dejected I was there as the sustenance. But at times we both get depressed, so we had no other options than approaching the Master. It was during the second year, I and Sakthi started to go the temple which was in our college daily.
We went to the temple because we found that to be a serene place, which offered patience and confidence to our wishes.
But I was indeed angry with God…
I always believed in the existence of him
I always prayed to him
I always shared all my happenings with him
I have always been like a trusted friend to him
And I always have been unselfish to him
But how selfish he was really
“Oh! God how silly he was
He doesn’t want me to give her
Because he was afraid that
I may forget him if I get her…”
Even in the temple my mind would revolve around her thoughts only. Earth couldn’t do without revolving the Sun, isn’t it?
It would take 15 minutes by walk from our hostel to the temple. And we spent nearly 30 minutes in the temple just by sitting inside of it idly.
HAUNTING MEMORIES:
On few days, while we finished our laboratory early we would be having plenty of hours so we both went to some of the movies. In that turn we never missed even one of the romantic movies that came at that time. We went to bus stops and travelled to the places, which we ever heard of, and returned only when we wished. We explored new places in our college.
We were really lucky enough that we had a beech (it was a shore to be said absolutely) very near to our college. It was at a walking distance, only a few Kilometres away. We went to that beach and sometimes we even slept on its sand. For our love minds the shore was same like a beautiful background for an attractive photograph.
In that place, we discussed about how our future would be, he often asked how we would be after five years. We conjured the things lying ahead in our lives. Sometimes they brought us tears and sometimes smiles. On that I asked him how the day of his marriage would be because he was the one, who talked about it often.
He then started demonstrating about his day of marriage:
I am sitting there as the groom, a groom who is little nervous and fully excited about being the centre of attraction. The floor is bedecked with the red carpet. The aromas of blithe and different flowers of various colours are wide-spread over the whole place. The pleasing music of the marriage eve can be heard everywhere.
Almost all our friends and relatives have gathered in the place to lively visualise the happening of a heavenly marriage. It is my day and her day; our day. All the arrangements are made by our parents in the mint condition with a keen focus that the day has fallen nothing sort in terms of anything.
The relatives and friends have been busy with their colloquial talks, yet their eyes cleanly focussed on me. I am little afraid that I can never be a perfect match to her, in terms of appearance, but my fear vanished when I saw our parents’ faces. In our parents’ face a hundred splendid suns glow together flaunting their happiness.
The pressure in my brain rose a bit every minute, because I have never been a centre of attraction like this before. With the traditional Indian costume being wrapped, my body smelled with the Red Sandals, which my mother applied over me before, soothed my mood.
As a feast to the eyes of everyone, she came downstairs with her slow steps like a swan. The musical notes of Nadhswaram gained their pitch and their volume too rose highlighting the entry of the moon-faced bride. My tension got a little relieved because, sooner the people’s gaze caught her sight, their attention turned towards her from me. Now she became the centre of attraction like every
time. Another four girls accompanied her. They too are beautiful, but none could compete with her. (I am little worried that my license to ogle these beauties is going to be cancelled soon; but how the pennies of beauty would tempt me when I am going to become a billionaire of beauty)
Her hands are decorated with ornate Mehndi. The ornaments she wore sparkled but isn’t noticeable much as her blissful countenance shined over, surpassing it. The pink silk sari sewn with the golden embroideries of foliages and blue & pale green borders captured all the eyes of women. But none of the above adorned her like the nature did; it perfectly adorned her by gifting the flawless beauty.
The excitement and exuberance of the surrounding air, which were billowed by the crowd of relatives and friends, rocked the whole Mahal. Then she came near me. I saw her eyes; they conveyed me how her heart is bouncing inside. Her visage appeared like a serene pond, while her feminine shyness is the reverberations on it, when a leaf of a demure smile is dropped by her protruding lips.
She came and sat near me. The whole attention of the people rested with us. I put my fingers over hers, unknown to anyone. She suddenly raised her head towards me as soon as my fingers disturbed hers; then with an inhibited cute smile, she again put her head down facing the Earth.
Few moments later I felt the auspicious thread resting in my hands. I felt as if I attained the whole world.
The music from Nadhswaram and other instruments once again gave loud beats and notes exhibiting the arrival of the most precious moments.
Then I indicated the whole world that she is mine, mine forever by tying the auspicious thread around her neck. The flowers, which our friends and relations bestowed, reached us like a shower of wishes straight from the heaven. I am so elated and engrossed by the splendour things happening in my life. I fathomed that I am forever blessed. Then I recognised the things, which were running in her mind. I realised what she felt. Eventually, I comprehended the fact our two souls tied to each other by this sacred thing has ultimately become as one.
Then I saw in the eyes of some men, who came over there, filled with jealousy of how I could be born as the one to deserve this priceless boon. Subsequently I visualised some of the faces brimmed with the sadness of their love being gone as an unrequited or untold one. And I was sorry that I am the one responsible for that.