November Rain

“I hate this place” I reiterated. A phrase that I've said so many times this sem that it's become almost synonymous with my very existence here. Just when you think you have fought against the ever-present blisters of bad food, discomfort, innumerable unfathomable restrictions, workload, ennui, your life beginning to resemble a recurring nightmare in inifinite loop, things happen that set the whole balance topsy-turvy again and you realise with vehemence that you do, indeed hate the place.
And so I said to myself all over again “I hate this place” and thought, case closed.
But just when frustration and fruitless anger reaches its peak comes one of those days.
A cold winter night with a crazy wind, the kind that brings out that streak of madness in the sanest of people. The hazy air is shot with the eerie glow of the streetlight and the trees outside swish in tune with a song in an unknown tongue. A night of spirits walking free and dancing their crazy way into you. They swirl in the thick fog, they rummage through the trees, they blur the hazy starlight and they envelope you, teasing you, waiting for that moment when you open yourself up to them and close your eyes and let them in. A cold night with scattered droplets of rain, that fresh, earthy smell of rain calls out to you to leave everything and just close your eyes and dissolve, dissolve into the mist. I could walk away now, leaving all these earthly trappings behind. I could walk away and disappear into the mist and no one would know. It's a magical night.
And then it comes over me again, how much I love these moments in this place, how much I love these little trysts I have with nature here, how much I love the familiarity of darkness and the song of the swishing trees as I drift into sleep, and no matter how much hypocrisy, unfairness, discomfort, malpractices or shackles this place has to dole out, this bit of home is out of their reach. It's mine, all mine.

:)

There now, steady, love
So if you come in, don't go
Will you, won't you
Be the one I'll always know?

In The Real World

When you no longer begin the semester with the customary "I'm going to make a ten this sem", you know reality is finally catching up with optimism. Sucks.