A maddening pilgrimage.

Not a month had passed since that famed madness from Ziddane in the world cup finals that my four years of cautious insanity began; these are the four fathomless, farcical, fabulous, farraginous, fantastic, farzi years now running to an end.

It has been a see saw between the highs and the utterly disappointing anticlimaxes, my measure of myself has fluctuated at a rate that would shame the Bombay stock exchange, These were the years during which disassociation was so easily and quickly overtaken by maddening bearish embraces, and the proximity was so easily destroyed to trouble the myopic me. The great depressions were assumed to be many, and the self-fabricated, self-imagined sab-time crises even more. If anything remained intransigent was the realization that I am boarded on a nonstop Duranto that stops only once. So much for the Mamta... .I shall have my hands over the heart and swear, board on Duranto never meant bored in Duranto. it was happening time, just that the why of happening even with much persuasion and seduction didn't reveal itself with the regularity that would comfort the inquisitive me, and the resulting desperation often pushed the limits of the queries, though non bore the promised fruits. 

These were like the Dicken's time, the best of them and the worst of them. The four unfathomable years turned out to be a story of ever increasing empathy with myself and with the ever increasing kinship of the engineering graduates, it turned out to be a sordid tale of anger upon the disregard of joy, and it was about the ecstasy of learning and the discomfiture of occasional stagnation. This was like the journey when I travel home, the bus goes up and it comes down and climbs up again. In the process covering distances earlier I used to struggle with travel sickness. Things have changed now I go back home insulated with the ups and downs of the bus, listening to the music and forgetting the road, now I regret that I do not see the content fishes of the trickling green blue river but I travel comfortable unnerved by the spiraling bus on which I sit yet the more I think the things have changed the more they remain the same..

The four farraginous years were supposed to rally around changes, change from the uniformity of school to the aspirational challenges of the graduation. I feared changes and yet I desired them. The transitions approached ever so steadily characteristically pussyfooted. The desires didn't quench and sometime in between, when that nonstop engine had already caught speed an articulate, eloquent black American declared "we can change". Yes together we can, he said and that repeating twitch came to surface. I was already bored of the annoying monolithic Duranto, not bored in Duranto has to be specified again. The desire to stop and enjoy the landscape was overpowering the rational to move with the prototyped caravan. I wish this journey into graduating could have had some moments of leisure where I and kinship could sit down on a night's halt at some oasis and discuss our discoveries of the day. The call of that unsuspecting or in our case I should say uncaring, indifferent black American towards change echoed with many in my shire but that moment of leisure that Utopian hour of sitting around the fire sharing and enjoying learning has so far remained elusive.

The things got smaller and fickle. It probably is a side effect of growing, of maturing I should say. I could overlook those fishes for some comfort, I could write an exam with a few hours preparation and all this was like somehow stamping my growth and maturity. It feels silly calling it growth, but then is it how things happen? Even when my journey on the mono-graphic terrain was on, an iconic innovation had reduced the game of cricket to poly-graphic display of colors and glamor and short it was, so I was convinced that shorter spans and little attention are better, off course with some unflinching support.

Amidst the continuing journey things happened from the defeat of the giant Lalu in Bihar, to the struggle of the little NANO in Bengal, the overnight terror in Mumbai that certainly was different from our recurrent overnight terrors. Much more happened all had their impact. Not on the Duranto, as it’s well isolated to environmental changes outside it. It’s harder to decipher how it has been able to keep itself aloof of the changes in the inside. It is a maddening ride at times, it has promised to be a pilgrimage, neither the pilgrimage nor the madness is yet complete and I have my co-passengers with me to embrace any eventuality.

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