Day Zero
On my first day back at work, I visited a college for their placement week. This is one task I’ve really looked forward to, since I started working and in the past few months, since interviewing has become one of my responsibilities, it is something I find I really enjoy. There is a certain heady thrill, which I still haven’t gotten over, about being on the other side of the firing squad (well…not always but at least in the early days of job-hunting it felt that way). This was my first experience with a placement week scenario, since my own college didn’t have one.
And it addition, this was his college. At one time I knew this place as well as I knew my own campus. I admit I had a lot of mixed feelings about that day, which I didn’t share with any of my colleagues or friends. I just tightened my belt and rushed into the day as I have been doing largely at work (it seems to have brought only good results so far, so why not…it suits my M.O.)
As we drove into the campus, I wondered what I would feel. I thought my nostalgia trip was over. But apparantly making peace with the past is a minute-to-minute process. The deeper you dig, the more you uncover. I passed the little coffee shop where we had our first real conversation, trading our stories about the cities we loved, Mumbai and Delhi. I walked past classrooms, where I knew he had sat for his lectures. I didn’t have the time to take a walk around the whole campus. But somehow, it didn’t seem necessary. I took another walk down another memory lane.
His home had a whole lot of memories, mostly painful, attached to it and this trip was all about my escaping the scars they caused me. But his campus, I found, I had only good memories of the place and him. Our first meeting at his college annual fest, much later waiting on the benches behind his college to surprise him after his exams, walking past the basketball hoop to ask his friends where he was, riding pillion down to the gate with him as he dropped me home. They were sweet memories, innocent memories untainted by the bitterness of the rest of the relationship. Yes, so much of nostalgia is about making peace with the past.
As I walked out, I passed some students in the corridor and I knew they were staring at my back. I remembered what it felt like, imagining that one’s whole future was staked on this one job. The blind panic, furtively smoothened out to appear confident before the peer group and the interview panel. Simmering under-the-surface hostility and competition with one’s own friends, flatmates and classmates. Bitter-tasting envy coupled with a pasted-on smile while congratulating the ones that made it. And that giddy-headed euphoria over finally MAKING IT!! It was a rough ride and I hope I never forget what it felt like to be a student.
One full circle I’ve come. Zero is a good starting point I guess.
@Ideasmith: It is necessary to get on with life. You make your own belief system to get you through things, at least for most of the moments, even if it looks ridiculous at times.
@Enigma:
With all the extremes,
It seems to be the best times,
I wonder how good it was then,
How good it could have been now?
@ Anonymous: That’s ‘out of sight, out of mind’? And yet, each time you go back to those places, the memory pries itself loose and shakes you up all over again. The time I described weren’t exactly the best days of my life but they were warm memories anyway.
@ Enigma:
Do you ever miss being intense?
Do you ever miss feeling deeply?
Do you miss being washed over by emotion…and totally and completely swept over by it?
Do you miss being young?
Do you miss who you were?
I do.
@ Itchingtowrite: Not sure now though it was just this morning. I know I came through someone else’s blog…just can’t remember who, I’ve seen quite a few today!
@ Sherriff: I could tell you but I’d have to shoot you after that. 😉 And yes maybe thats why memories are painful or maybe because we realise nothing will ever feel like that again.
@ Artnavy: I used to do that. Now, once I step out, its over for me and I don’t think about it until I hear from them again.
@ Sakshi: Mathematically speaking, it is. Spiritually, maybe zero is all there is. 🙂
Somehow I always found “0” to be a complete number. 🙂
i often relive the moments after the interview but bef the announcement of decision is made- really tense
“about being on the other side of the firing squad”…how many murders u ended up with…lol
…why memories related to relationship are alway painful…coz we expect relationship to last forever??
nice blog. i cud relate to some of your posts and the way u describe things are extremely realistic
thnks for dropping by on mine
how did u find it?
The best days of life.
Waiting in the lab
Sulking in the lib
Ignoring in the corridors
Rejoicing in the courts
Laughter on the outside
The tears that well inside
The days somehow glide by
The nights remain to haunt
Hmmm, the feeling is … – in extremes.
My friend once told me
When you don’t see it, you don’t think of it.
You don’t think of it, then you don’t feel the emotion with it.
When you don’t feel the emotion, you don’t feel swayed around.
Somehow, it holds true for these moments.
The classrooms where you sat and waited, the aisles where you stood and fought, the particular classroom where for the first time, the feeling was mutually accepted. Hmmm, the feeling is … – in extremes.
The best days of life.