Separation Anxiety

Hello, all. Wow, I sounded quite grown-up there for a second. In the instance of me not observing anything notable today, I had kept a little list of past ideas stocked up for today’s post. Luckily for me, as it turns out, life keeps happening and observations keep a-coming (fingers crossed, not jinxing it). I am of course extremely grateful for this state of affairs, as today I find myself addressing quite an audience indeed. Not a lot, to be honest, but still way more readers than I'd bargained for when I started this little exercise. As I bite into a juicy, ripe chikoo (sapota) fruit and write this at the same time, I am extremely grateful for both its high fiber content that’ll stand me in good stead tomorrow morning and the lot of you who took the time to let me know that you read my blog. You’ve made my day for two days in a row now, and I cannot thank you enough for that. 

Now, onto the pressing matters of the day. Today was one of the more fun, laughter-filled days in college, with my friends and I spending a free hour on the stone benches listing increasingly wild conspiracy theories. Somewhere in the middle of a belly-aching laugh, I had the sobering realization that I would be missing this place terribly in around a month or so when MCC would “kick us out” (in the words of a dear teacher) of its comforting green embrace. And as though the universe wanted to rub salt in the wound, that very afternoon as two of us sat in the exact same place after lunch, discussing the terrifying prospect of real life, jobs, and responsibilities, a respectable-looking older gentleman approached us with a smile. By the time my initial wariness had worn off,  we had discovered that he was an old student of MCC who returned to reminisce on all the good times he'd had here once. 

 “It's a wonderful college, you’re really going to miss it here when you leave”. Ouch, Universe, I know you aren’t known for subtlety but could you please be not so much on the nose all the time?! He then went on to advise us (rather knowledgeably) about the different career prospects we each would have in our fields of interest and then asked us to “carry on”, leaving just as quickly as he’d come. As we watched him stride away with surprising energy, it wasn't all that difficult to picture him as the young man in the ID he’d shown us, with the same side bag slung over his shoulder as he did today, walking under the same shadows of the same trees that we did.

“How old would we be if we came back in thirty years, dyu think?” my friend H___ asked, looking wistful. My heart twisted in my chest as I thought of how emotional I would be if I did – me, who got nostalgic looking at the benches of the classroom we’d sat in just last year. Not that there was any doubt in this regard to start with, but I am now completely sure that our farewell will be the end of me. 

I would love to go on and on about all the different emotions this day threw up for me but unfortunately, I have a thesis I have been ignoring for much too long to think about today. I will leave you all today with a song recommendation – A R Rahman’s ‘Varaha Nathikarai’ that my enterprising roommate has been playing on full blast while I struggled to compose the perfect sentence – in case you were wondering what to listen to tonight. 

Yours in anticipation of a lot of tears come April 2024, 

Sneha.