The Travelogue !!!

Usually travelogue refers to a place. But this travelogue travels in time. To my first year. To my first days in the college. Irrelevant though, the legal age for marrying in india is 21. Atleast for men. And my dear friend, RAJU GUGULOTHU, turned 21, some 4 months back, is currently married. Married on 13th of Feb. 2009, 9-35 A.M, IST @ Mangalabandi Tanda, Warangal.

I never expected that someone I would meet on the first day of the college as my room mate will marry mid way in his final year. I remember he received a call from a girl on 14th February 2006 on my number. I never expected though that he would be marrying her on 13th of February 2009. I remember he bought some bangles and ear rings from BIG BAZAAR in December 2005. I never expected he would be preparing his wedding suit in December 2008. I remember the first day he told me about her, way back in September 2005. I never expected though that her name would be scripted on their wedding card so soon.

I am his first year room mate, 4 year branch mate, 7 month ragging mate and an eternal friend. I have some little known facts about him. He would struggle with hindi sometimes, he would heat 3 buckets of water in winter to take a bath(which even i followed), he was fond of roll no : 05/166 atleast for a small period of time, and also recieved some festival bonus from Prof. Kumbhakar, dept of physics to buy sweets. He found a hundred rupee note on the road once, he got a Waitlist 265 ticket confirmed on a train once. we were 4 mechanical engineers in one room and it was the only room in the whole of Hall-9 which had 4 students from the same branch.

We would play cricket and chess in that first year room. Satish panda the other mechanical was a clear winner at chess. you can look at him and you would know how he earned his -5.5 power spectacles. Of course, the obvious. He was fond of a particular roll number too, but due to some special reasons I wont be mentioning it. The strange thing about him was that he had an airtel number which started with '9'. Okay Okay that's not strange. But the strange thing is that his balance suddenly falls by Rs. 50 /- for cricket updates which he never subscribed. He never complained about anything. I have so many sorry's to tell him, for things i dont like to recall. All these aside, he topped the room in the first semester with a grade point of 8.7/10. Though he spoke hindi, he had strange flaws in it. He used 'Main jaa raha hoon' for both 'Im going' and 'Im coming'.

Our fourth partner GOPAL SINGH, on the contrary was a hindi pundit. Flawless both in ascent and pronounciation. He would correct us in grammar and was ever ready with the meaning of any stringent hindi Vocabulary. I remember he wrote a 4 page essay once in ragging on a COW'S TAIL. He had seniors who changed his name to PALGO SINGH. And to-date he is also known 'palgo'. When i first entered our room, he'd already reached and had a really colourful bedsheet on his mattress. I don't recall him being in fond of any particular roll number. But i remember he suffered from typhoid for no fault of his. Like satish, he also never complains but he had a friend who always complained. They called him Alok khatiyar. He could curse the college, the mess food, anything he could imagine. But hearing him was fun.

None of us had a camera or a mobile with a camera and so we could never record our time together. It just remains in the neurons. But the pixels are large enough not to erase. We had weekly room cleaning sessions in which all the 4 participated actively. Every 15 days or so we would change the alignment of beds. If only we had paint for free, we would have painted our walls lavender.

It has been a long journey since then. We are about to complete our engineering. We have very little time left here in college. May be we will meet next in our convocation. May be Raju, the married man will be blessed with a child by then. The travelogue of TIME. Time will only tell....