Some memories are like old scars. No matter how much you try to erase them they never fade away. They make you wish you had selective amnesia so that you could forget them, or even better, that you had a time machine, so that you could go back and change the memories. And there are other memories. As fleeting as waves on the seashore and as ephemeral as dew drops on a blade of grass, these memories make you wish for a pensieve just like the one Dumbledore had. A pensieve where you could store the magic of the moment, and with that freeze frame of sepia do a Ted Mosby thirty years henceforth.
I’ve never known myself to be nostalgic. Quite the opposite actually. But sometimes, just sometimes (and contrary to popular belief) I do remember and I do reminisce. Or maybe (as some part of my brain keeps telling me annoyingly), I have been watching too much of How I Met Your Mother after all.
It’s been a year since a sudden bout of wayward whim (or perhaps my absolute distaste for Rajnikant and sweating a bucketload a day had something to do with it) saw me put IITR Chem Dual above IITM Meta in my preference list, and in retrospect, it’s been a year with little cause for regret. Sure, my academic accomplishments might not have put others to shame. Far from it, in fact. But belonging to the noble breed of young men who don’t let something as trivial as academics get in the way of focused inactivity (read: sleeping) and spend their otherwise worthless time on other important non value adding hobbies(like gaming), I never expected as much. But do not take that to mean that I have not learnt anything this year(perhaps nothing of value but still!). Learning to do a wheelie on a bicycle, creating 25 knights in 25 minutes and mastering the subtle art of giving proxies all form but the tip of the metaphorical iceberg that happens to be my learning curve in R-land.
It is weird how the tiniest of things seemingly inconsequential at that moment can change a life. Yeah, yeah I know- it sounds straight out of some mushy Hollywood flick but do bear with me, coz it is one of those cliches which are very true. Had I concentrated more on my lecturers than the girls in class, had I realized that there was more to metallurgy than Ellingham’s diagram, had my dislike for aloo sabzi and dal been matched by my dislike for Pongal, had I not been looted by one crazy auto driver on that fateful day of JEE counseling in Madras (or come to think of it, had I spotted even one decent looking girl there), had I known about MA-102 earlier, or more importantly had I been Christiano Ronaldo, life might have been a whole lot different. Alas, IIT-M wasn’t more fortunate(nor was football).
My first memories of roorkee are probably not the ones I’d cherish the most. Now, i won’t begin with the “I vividly remember my first day on campus” crap because I don’t. But what I do remember about my first day at roorkee is that it vaguely reminded me of Malgudi. Strange really, because even though I’ve read the book I don’t really remember much of it, but the hustle and bustle at the railway station, the cycle rickshaws, the sights of people by the riverside, the innumerable trees, and the myriads of little shops adorning both sides of the streets somehow made me associate roorkee with malgudi. And yet, I found the place less than endearing at the time. Nesci has nothing on Coffee Day leave alone Barista. Roorkee seemed blissfully unaware of even the ‘T’ of theatres leave alone multiplexes. Expecting a mall to exist in this place seemed as ludicrous as expecting the Indian football team to win the world cup. Also, I was leaving behind a life of eighteen long years in Bangalore, and the estrangement of old friendships is never too easy ( Not to mention that the sudden realization, that by coming to Rland I had effectually made myself single till classified ads adorning the newspapers or online marriage portals rendered me otherwise, didn’t help any). To add to this, coming to a land where every sentence began with a certain ‘B’ word and where anyone hailing from south of the Vindhyas was dubbed a ‘madarasi’ and treated with general dislike made me feel as perfectly at home as Sachin Tendulkar would be on a football field. So all I did was rant about it to friends and family. In fact, I even remember writing (and eventually deleting) a long ‘holden caulfieldesque’ blog post ranting about how life in IITR was a bitch. But then as one senior put it then -” Rland grows on you. You’ll learn to like it with time.”
It’s been a year since then and try as I might, I cannot deny that I have missed roorkee these holidays. Perhaps it’s not the place that I miss but the people. Perhaps roorkee will never be the home to me that Bangalore was. But if there’s one thing I have learnt during the past year it is that home is just a fleeting notion. One year down the lane roorkee might still not be the place I’d call ‘Home sweet Home’. But five years from now, I might feel the same way about Bangalore. Which is precisely why, embarking upon a jaunt down memory lane fifty years from now and reminiscing with a ‘Those were the days’ sigh, R-land will still hold a special place in the deepest crevices of my memory.
As a sophomore this year (hard to believe that I passed, huh?), continuing the tradition of R-land I would be expected to dispense unsolicited advice to gullible fachchas (after some bad-ass ragging, i might add) crowding around me (more out of fear than genuine interest) and should I come across anyone cribbing about R-land I should’nt be surprised if I gave him a piece of Joey-esque wisdom – “If chicks, food and weather were the only things to certify a place as worth living (which they are), you and I would probably be in Brazil or Paris, but since neither can afford the plane tickets you’d better STFU”, before reverting to those wise old words - ” Rland grows on you. You’ll learn to like it with time.”. After all, life comes a full circle.
P.S: I composed this thing a few days before I left for roorkee, but lack of a good modem meant I could not post.
P.P.S: My first attempt (and a rather lame one, i might add) at a senti post. 
P.P.P.S: The title alludes to a John Denver Song I have been listening to quite a lot lately, and also the fact that Jet Airways>>Any other airline
P.P.P.P.S: Fachchas beware, coz Daddy’s Home.
P.P.P.P.P.S: I luv using P.Ss.
P.P.P.P.P.P.S: Bugger off losers, haven’t you had enough P.Ss already??
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