Nostalgia

There are certain memories which come to my mind whenever the winter steps in. I don’t know how to write them in a sequential manner, because these thoughts never flow in a sequence. I can just gather them from here and there and make a collage of it. Probably you can call it an incoherent collection of thoughts.

Memories of my life as a student in Brennen College, (a college blessed with a beautiful campus) is something that recur in my mind in all winters. That was my first experience of staying in a hostel away from my parents - the beginning of an independent life. (Something about our college: The College evolved from a school established by the English philanthropist, Edward Brennen, who had made Thalassery his home. The college, which is more than a hundred years old is included in the list of colleges to be granted the University status.)

I was one of the very few students who reached college early, even before the peon came. Though only half an hour bus journey, from my college, I always took the local train as it was comfortable for me, without being crushed in the overcrowded buses I needed to take otherwise.

The train arrived at sharp 7.40 am at the local station called Temple Gate, just in front of my hostel. I got the yellow colored tickets which the person at the counter issued by pressing a machine that looked like a bore well pump. I used to wonder at the appearance of the ticket as it was very different from the computerized one which I used to get from Calicut, my home town.

The compartment of the Caliut –Kannur passenger train which I usually boarded was like a temporary home to me which gave me some time to observe the different types of people. The compartments used to be almost vacant with only a few people who were regular passengers. Men passed time by playing cards or discussing politics. For the ladies, the compartment was an ideal venue to display their new saris and to lament about the exorbitant prices of the groceries. Some of them continued with their knitting starting from where they left it the previous day, quite unaware of what is going on around them.

It was quite interesting for me to observe these people and listen to the various discussions they had. I was the only person who carried a novel with me to read, thinking I would be able to read at least two or three pages, but never could, as my attention would be diverted to the passengers’ mannerisms, or the issues they were speaking of. The passengers in turn, treated me as a ‘kid’ who hasn’t seen the world yet and themselves styled as worldly wise people.

This daily train journey of mine to college was of just 15 minutes long as there was only two stations’ difference between my hostel and college. From the station, I had to walk 10 minutes through a narrow zigzag path full of trees on either sides, to reach my college. It was a pleasure to walk early in the morning through the sandy lane, listening to the chirping of birds. The fresh fragrance of flowers and leaves spread everywhere. Being an early bird to college, I was one of the rare persons who got the opportunity to enjoy the solitude there. The shady trees that adorned the campus would be in full bloom with magnificent yellow flowers and tender leaves. There was a clam silence always in the early mornings. The cement benches were always cold and wet with dewdrops that fell from the leaves hanging from nearby trees.

Fascinated by the puzzles and intricacies of Quantum Mechanics, its connection with universal mysteries, I used to sit, leaning on the wall, beside the parapet of the verandah immersed in my own thoughts. Trying to find a correlation between science and eastern mysticism was something that kept my mind preoccupied in those days as is even now. My mind wandered here and there until the peon came and opened the doors of the classrooms.

Mornings were the only time when one could find the cement benches empty. Once the classes started, all the benches were occupied either by the popular gangs of the college or by the ‘couples’ , a nick name we used to give the students who were locked in affair. We, the senior most students of the college, had to look out for some other places in the campus to sit and chat. We had a very beautiful hilly area at the back of the college, full of green trees and shade, which was popularly known as the “Shanti Van” of Brennen. We used to make occasional visits to Shanti Van to refresh ourselves from the continuous theory classes of equations and derivations.

One of the greatest boon for the voracious readers of our college was an excellent library we had with a wide collection of books. This library was like a secret home to me to where I escaped whenever I could spare some time. The smell of the books with pages that had turned yellow with age gave me an inexpressible pleasure. In my imaginary world, I lived the life of characters of Somerset Maugham, Marquez and Thomas Hardy and racked my brain thinking if Milan Kundera’s novels are justifiable or not.

Back in class, I tried hard to pull my mind from novels and fix it on my Electronics Sir who went on lecturing about the theories of electronic circuits. Electronics, being a boring subject to me, always diverted my concentration from the lecture to the mannerisms and histrionics of the Sir, which I then imitated to my friends when back in the hostel. I would not like to blame my Sir for the boredom, as he was an excellent professor, an author of many articles and books, who even gifted me one of his books as an encouragement to my reading.

But anyhow I was a bad listener in classes and never took down the notes carefully and took the pains of creating notes myself during study holidays. The classes I listened to seriously were Classical and Quantum Mechanics which reinforced the passion for Physics in me and I used to dream of myself doing research at ISRO at some point of time in future (My list of dreams is a long one which I occasionally update, deleting some and replacing it with new ones depending on my moods).

It was a pleasure to sit in the classes of lecturers who breathed Physics all the time, for whom it was a passion rather than a profession. I am indebted to my beloved lecturers, who patiently listened to my odd queries, (which I asked only when I was listening), who advised me not to read too much, but still gave me books to read and shared their knowledge as if to a friend and showed more concern to me than to my attentive friends, and to Physics, my all time favorite subject for imprinting a rational mode of thinking in my mind, when I some times wished to escape from the irrational thoughts. But then I now know that a perfect harmony of both rational and irrational modes is necessary to understand the mysteries of this universe.

After the class, I would be back in my hostel, which, was near a temple. The hostel was remarkable for its neatness. There was a big glass window overlooking the temple, and this window was closed only at night. There was a long desk put beside the window so that we could sit and chat looking at the green paddy fields swaying in the breeze. It was a perfect combination of natural beauty - left side temple, green paddy fields in front and the rail on the right side. At dusk, we could see the regular devotees coming to pray at the temple. I used to wonder what they could be praying so devoutly. There were some guys too, who were regular visitors to the temple, who came there not to pray, but just because of our hostel there. They used to pretend praying and then open their eyes and glance at our window, where we used to sit and chat. And it was a fun to my mischievous friends to sit on the desk in blessing posture, so as to tease the guys who glanced at our window after praying.

The long curved rails that stretched across the vast green fields was an extremely comforting sight. The trains that whistled past at regular intervals reminded me how quickly time flew. The long siren that faded away instilled in me a mischievous spirit to secretly jump into it and escape to some remote places. Standing near the glass windows, gazing into the distant sky, I would wish that I could enjoy that solitude forever.

When the sun shone brightly, it was a pleasure to stand under the yellow rays that crept through the narrow gaps between the windows of my room, to make myself warm. The fog that covering the compound walls, the green leaves turning yellow.. the cold wind that sweeps through your nose.. a silence that spread in early morning, all these winter specialties are sweet memories to me. Winters thus come and go. But memories are still there in a corner of my mind always fresh, which just have to be recollected.