Anniversaries
16th July.
Feast Day. Within thy hallowed portals
Carmel dear…Colour dress, food, music and dancing. My first year, when I
was still new, I turned up wearing my best frock, and found the fashion sense
of the rest of the school far evolved than me. Honestly though, I liked frocks-
still do. You pick one thing, and you’re done. No need to find the right blouse
or where in the name of Narnian cupboards did the dupatta or salwar disappear
to? Anyway, I think I wore salwar suits for the next two feast days. As absurd
as it now sounds, not every girl wore jeans those days, and I didn’t have any
till I got to Class 10. I owe my fellow Carmelites for my first exposure to
fashion, and for being able to conceive the thought that I could wear jeans
too. And so on Feast Day in Class 10, I wore my first pair of bare denims with a pale pink tee. One of
my friends kept trying to get me to dance but I couldn’t dance back then and I
can’t dance now. Sorry, Mr. Darcy, you’ll always be my first love, but you were
wrong about this one- not everyone can dance. Okay, I know you said “every
savage” but we both knew you meant “everybody including random bespectacled school-going
nerds some two centuries later who will grow up into random bespectacled
college-teaching nerd” so there! Anyway, Feast Day was sort of like the event in the school calendar. People
used to plan their outfits for weeks. It was like prom, minus the boys,
although, sometimes there would be gossip afterwards – about which girl met who
after the feast. All that seems so silly in retrospect.
In 2005, the year I
finally left school, 16th July was the day Harry Potter and the HalfBlood Prince was published. It was also my
first day in college. The memories that stand out from that day begin with
reaching the Oxford BookStore early in the morning to grab my pre-ordered copy
and sitting down in a quiet corner to read. I remember texting the friend
nicknamed ‘Buckbeak’ that I was going to call her ‘Witherwings’ from then on,
and I remember her reply but divulging that would involve sharing one of my own
nicknames so I won’t. I remember another friend spoiling the death of a certain
giant man-eating spider. I don’t think any of us were particularly devastated.
(Sorry, friend nicknamed Aragog. You know I love you.) Funny how I remember the
texts when none of those mobile sets in or those sim cards remain. “Where do
vanished objects go? Into non-being, that is to say, everywhere.”[i]
I think by the next
morning we all knew about the big death in the book, except for two people in
the group. The first hadn’t bought the book on principle, because Sirius Black
was dead so why the hell were we even crying over Dumbledore (I appreciated
that sentiment, sort of. Sirius Black was, and remains to this day, my Greatest
Fictional Love Ever, sorry again, Mr. Darcy). The other one hadn’t got a book
yet, and so on the next day when we met for lunch where she arrived late, we
all welcomed her by shouting- “Snape killed Dumbledore” at the top of our
voices, that is to say, all of us except
the-resolutely-not-mourning-Dumbledore-Sirius-fan who chipped in with an
ingenious “Harry killed himself” in the
loudest voice. And that, people is how you do spoilers. And may all the White
Walkers chase you if you throw any my way.
But I digress. I was at
Oxford Book Store on the morning of the 16th, so engrossed that I
nearly missed my Orientation. Naturally, I had no time to eat my tiffin. After
we had learned about the history and the notable alumni and the motto of the
college, we went up to our classrooms to meet our respective HoDs. Room 10 was
on the first floor, right in front of the staircase. I remember being anxious
that I wasn’t going to hear Prof. Da Silva call out my roll number, so I asked
the people sitting next to me what their roll numbers were so I could keep
count. As soon as he left, the Second Years barged in. They came in and started
demanding introductions. I said my name, and apparently no one could hear me,
so I had to turn in every direction to say it again and again and again. And
can I just mention that I was starving at this point and in the middle of a new
Harry Potter book that I was just dying to get back to? Sorry, seniors, but I
could never like you again after this. (I do like Monali Thakur, who was one of
the 2nd Years then, but she never bothered us,
and that’s not why I like her anyway).Incidentally, their methods sucked. The
way to get a normally soft-spoken person to raise her voice is to make her
teach a 50 marks English language paper to a very bratty Mechanical Engineering
class or the CU Compulsory English course to half the college in one room. The
last time I invigilated, I surprised myself with my own shouting.
I could talk about my
three years in Xaviers’, but I already wrote a story about it back in my 3rd
Year. It was about a tree and the marble steps to the auditorium and the momos
on Wood Street and rain-washed days and dreams and lessons and first loves and
interrupted games of Chinese Whispers. . It was my first published story, and
when I feel too hopeless about things, I recall the encouragement I had
received from my professors who read it and that sometimes keeps me going.
Back then I didn’t
believe in Expiry Dates. Now I know they are inevitable, but there are always
possibilities. And so long as I can believe in those, I know I will always be
this dreaming young girl at heart, nervous on entering a new world- but hopeful
of a wonderful future. Nihil Ultra, right?
Gotta go, peeps. Season
7 is Coming. You know what I said about spoilers.
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