Chapter - 9

It was almost a couple of months since we last met. Hameed, Paras, Punch and Lakshman had gone past the honeymoon phase at work, and it was starting to get to them. This was a meeting we knew was coming, and we had hoped for it to come real soon too. Every student’s convocation is a memory that is made for life. We had decided to make it memorable in our small little way.

The degrees were given. The photos were clicked, with gowns and without, with parents and without, all permutations and combinations. It was one last meeting. After this, we might all meet, probably when we’re 35, with families, and kids. That would be funny, and this would be missing then. We hung together after the convocation. The parents were asked to go back to hotel rooms, and we decided to have a grand dinner at the Park Sheraton. It was dry, of course, with parents in rooms and all that. It was a long night spent in the department lab, to which we had gained temporary access, thanks to the smart card of a couple of juniors working in the same lab. It was a long night, and we chatted about all sorts of stuff, right from how the guys found the job, to the visa interviews of the other four of us who were going abroad to study. Pramod was going to leave in another week, followed by Nigga who left a couple of weeks down. Kat and I had a month’s time to leave.

Then, as the sun rose, the calls started coming from the hotels. The guys needed to get back to their parents. But before that, there was one last thing to do. We marched back to the canteen, for one last cup of tea, and our quota of butter biscuits. The place, that had forged so many memories. We might have visited a lot of restaurants, costly ones, cheap ones, but the place that defined our relationship was the department canteen. That was the last memory I had of my college life, laughing and chatting with tea cups in hand!

Life shares with us a whole lot of experiences. Most times, we just live through them, never really experience them the way we should. We never really live life with a sense of each day being a last. Then, one day, it all ends. An experience is over. A door closes. It is true, that another door opens elsewhere. But this door is closed forever.