The happiest moment after beginning campus life arrived a few weeks after our academic term began. The sky was overcast that morning; a wet wind announced the onset of happy rains, blowing away twigs and shrunken leaves accumulated over a long dry summer. As we were reluctantly preparing for college, the news came it would be a day off for the entire university. Moreover, it would be a day of outing, an English word I hadn’t heard.
Soon, hundreds of boys and girls began walking away from the campus, along gravelled roads, across barren undulating red laterite grounds called the khowai, many singing in groups. Our destination was the River Kopai. The horizon beckoned us as dark clouds above turned the ground below into a darker shade of crimson. An outing was a part of the campus life in Santinketan. An event to usher in a new season.
Whoever had thought of the event was a teenager at heart. Apart from being close to nature, it was the first time I was in proximity with so many young girls. After nine years in a boys’ school that was as barren as the sands of a seashore, spending half a day with so many beautiful girls was a delight. Countless glances would have been stolen that morning, and I guess some hearts would have been exchanged, or just given!
I gave my heart to a girl who smiled at me. She was beautiful, slender, and exceedingly fair. Let me quickly add that she would have been beautiful in everyone’s eyes, not just to a seventeen-year-old yokel. She looked like a princess. Most unfortunately for me, she was actually a princess! Of an Indian princely state.
I never mustered up the courage to speak to her, though I rehearsed the opening lines of a never-to-happen dialogue in my head millions of times. There was some chemistry whenever our eyes met on the campus. There was also a hint of a smile on her lips, or maybe, I imagined it. In our dining hall, I noticed her a couple of times, looking dejectedly at the steel plate with rice, watery dal, postor jhol, and maybe, an egg. Her grandfather might have been an admirer of Rabindranath Tagore, but it would have been cruel to expose her to the food served by the kitchen of the university set up by him. She left after a few months.
A huge burden was off my chest.
Bengaluru, March 2025
