It was the evening of the 25th of May. Engineering was all over but for a little slip of paper in our folders which would say "B. Tech, NIT Kurukshetra". Four years of mismanagement and brutish survival coming to a much awaited end. The hostel was nearly empty as most of my friends left behind their eventful RECK life with hardly a backward glance. I, assuming my usual place amongst the stragglers chose to extend my stay a day longer than my friends had chosen to.
As I sat enjoying my final evening at the "khokha" pondering over a cup of tea, out of the blue, there awoke a powerful wind. The sky darkened with approaching clouds, as they were dragged along by the persistent wind. The dust twirled along with the wind, as though it was drawn to its mournful wail. Walking back to the hostel, I could feel the wind exert itself as it rushed along to get to who knows where. The handful of people who were still in the hostel were all out on the grounds or in their verandahs, responding to some unspoken agreement. They laughed and talked aloud, but only to hide their anxiety for the bitter-sweet bits of their lives that the wind was sweeping away.
The wind howled and slammed its way through the now empty corridors, knocking on the occasional unfastened window. For sure in a couple of months, a new batch would move into the hostel and there would be life once more in that quiet place. But not the same persons that I had spent such precious moments with over the past 4 years, not the same jokes that we had laughed to and not the same fears that we had faced in moments of adversity. The sum of hostel life will probably never change, but the substance surely will, with every new batch. The comfortable pillow of familiarity that the hostel had provided us with was being ripped in to shreds.
The wind was intent on its purpose. Puff out the old, ring in the new! Abandoned posters, neglected clothes, forgotten photographs, all rustled along in a rush to get out of the way, as the circle of our lives turned yet another revolution.
