I passed out of college in 2006 and since then had not really had a chance to visit it again. But the University of Pune is not a little inconspicuous structure tucked away in obscurity, rather it is a sprawling campus of some huge no of acres located close to the heart of the city. It's an exceptionally beautiful place, an oasis in the chaos of this city trying to grow out of its pants.
Now the Univ for me is somewhat like the ring in Lord of the Rings. Why? Ok, whenever I am near the University, I have this overwhelming urge to visit it. To which you might wonder, if you have ever been there, that it is a really beautiful place, a place to soothen frayed nerves and get some perspective in life, (and trust me I need perspective, a whole lot of it) why would I not want to visit it. Am I some kind of masochistic personality who wants to deprive himself of some peace and tranquility? No, I am not. I consciously try to avoid it because it haunts me in a way. Not exactly in the eerie, ghostly way, but in a different way which you will understand as you engross yourself a little more in this article (I suffer from this congenital disorder of presuming that whatever I write is extremely engrossing and stimulating).
However, the other day while passing it, and honestly at this point of time I have no clue what I was doing there, I could not resist the urge and rode straight into it. If you take a look at it, I mean the Univ, it looks more like an abandoned post of the Raj era with its dense foliage and stone buildings, so riding into it gives you that feeling of entering some place which the guys warming their hands on the last bend advised you not to enter. Anyway, I rode straight into it and then it happened. I knew it would. I knew I could not resist it. But then again I have not been that obedient kind of a person. Within seconds I was inundated with memories. You might wonder what's wrong with getting inundated with memories, all of us do go through that at some point or the other. But what you do not know is that I am not very well versed with the word moderate. I have never learnt to do anything in moderation: I am an extremist, one of the purest and most unadulterated kind of this breed of people. More on extremists later, for now I will tell you what happened next.
So, now that like a junkie I had given way to the urge, I decided I would go all the way and completely wallow in the nostalgia (extremism you see!).
Every nook and corner of the univ had a memory. Here's where I had met him for the first time, there's where I had stolen a look from her and again there's where I was sitting in a state of complete abandonment. And so it continued like this, till I could not take it anymore. I had to park the bike in one corner and sit down. So, I did that. Turning of the ignition suddenly made me realise the stillness of the place. And then came this surge of blood. I walked towards a common meeting spot. It was silent. Dead silent. I stood there all by myself. Wasn't it only a few months ago that there was the lively chatter of us here, didn't this place ring with our ambitions, our ideas on how seriously things were wrong in the world, on how and where mankind had made fundamental errors and how greed and inhumanity would ultimately sound the clarion of human destruction. This was the place where millions of cups of tea and zillions of cigarettes had been consumed and everything having a remote possibility of an argument was argued upon. And now this place was silent, dead silent. It seemed as if our voices had trailed off into eternity; never to turn back. And this is when it struck me, it struck me that all this reminded me of the innate transitory nature of things. That all things that begin shall come to an end and this is what I found most difficult to accept. For a few seconds I suppressed the moans of helplessness that arose in my heart, I squashed my irrationality and parried all my sentiments: but to no avail.
In a larger sense leaving the Univ had meant leaving an idealistic world. Leaving a world of ethics, a world of honest pursuits and being thrown into a world that was in a shockingly stark contrast to all this. A world which I would understand,but not accept. I stood a few minutes more, but then I turned around, jumped on my bike and rode off. For the next few seconds, till I emerged from the clasps of nostalgia, all went blank. And then suddenly the street lights and the confusion embraced me once again. I rode off.
