Farewell

This post isn't, as the name may suggest, about my farewell party. This June, I and 13000 other engineers in Mumbai, will graduate and step out into the real world. This post isn't really about that either.

This is a retrospective post, looking back on nearly four years spent in a dark corner of Vashi. I first heard of my college, Fr C Rodrigues Institute of Technology, from my cousin, who was already a student there. Fr Agnel, as it's better known, had a reputation for being a strict college. I thought to myself, "I think I need a bit of discipline." What a fool I was!

Fr Agnel isn't strict the way the police and law are strict in Western countries. Fr Agnel is strict in the manner of Soviet Russia or the People's Republic of China. I'm talking about exiles in Siberia, gulags, water drops on shaved heads and executions without a trial.

I didn't know this and so I was even ready to get in by paying a "donation". So it transpired that I stood in line with approximately 100 other students on a muggy June day, dad in tow. I was pretty far back in line, since it was on the basis of marks in the qualifying exams. Just ahead of me stood one of the most attractive girls I had ever seen, with the most dazzling smile. When I walked into the office and was offered a choice between the only two branches with openings, IT and Electrical, I instantly replied IT. The three admissions officials were all smiles. I realised later why it was so. There were very few takers for IT in that particular year. There wasn't much "scope" in it, apparently. EXTC was the hot branch. It had a lot of "scope", whatever that means.

And I was in. I spent the next four years in this institution. I fell in love, bought a cell phone and topped in an exam. I fell ill, had rows, danced, sang and even studied. I made friends, lost friends, ate, drank, made merry, made enemies. I slept in lectures and stayed up all night, went on late night drives with friends during exams, split my head open (exaggeration), lost 5 kilos and then gained 10, sang in a band, promoted festivals, made robots and did just about everything else that an engineering student does in this city.

Last month we had our last working day. The entire class went out for lunch after this. There was still a feeling in the air that college wasn't over yet. There was still a farewell party to come, after all, and exams.

I didn't join the class for lunch. I have a certain antipathy towards most of my classmates so I made my excuses and ducked out. However, I did wait in college for a couple of my friends to come back from lunch, so that we could go home together.

So I sat in front of the college's office, lonely and miserable, wishing I was somewhere else. And just then she walked by. It was the girl who had stood in line in front of me four years ago. We'd been classmates and acquaintances, and though initially I'd had a bit of a crush on her, we'd never got past the "acquaintance" phase. As she walked past, she gave me one of her 100,000-volt smiles and said "Hi". As she walked past, hips swaying, I realised that college was finally over. Her smile book-ended things quite neatly.