Emptiness!

“I’m not a perfect person…..” my phone sings the song for an alarm at 5:45 am. I snooze it twice, thrice or sometimes even more, ultimately producing the same result of waking up late. I rush to the bathroom, sit like the ‘king-of-the-world’, finish up the morning routine and go in search of hot water for a bath.

I scream at my mother for not keeping the bucket and mug handy. I finally start with it. Time runs away when I’m enjoying the combination of hot water and my echoing voice.  My mom reminds me that I’ve to start to college and that I’m getting late.

I get ready, watching the clock seventeen times in three and a half minutes! I walk towards the bus stop, hastily. My legs disagree with my speed and protest by aching. The bus leaves, and my damp face gently dries up. I spend most of the journey looking out of the window, and parts of it reading and listening to music.

I finally reach college, and sit in the same classroom, on the same bench watching the same boring faces. We sleep, eat, doze, write records, text, play silly games, read novels, and do all nonsense things in classes, other than listening. We somehow pull our stunts (of listening) off for the day.

Once in a while, good things too happen in college, like the fest! We bunk classes, keeping fest as a ready excuse. We work, we have fun, we roam, we laugh, we take part, we win, we lose, we fight; and finally we are done!

We pretend to study for internals tests and we pretend to write it! Lecturers pretend to correct our blue books and our marks disastrously depend on their moods.

College closes for the day with water-less washrooms and chocolate-less canteen. Things go as they went yesterday, the day before and the day before. I come back home, stare at my TV and computer screens, on ‘time-sharing’ basis. I search for DVDs that might come to my rescue but fail to find any.

Finally, my day closes with meals and meds.

Each day is like the previous and the next. The joblessness, the photocopy routine and the monotonous college life creates a space that awaits to be filled.

My phone faithfully sings again,

“I’m not a perfect person….”