In the race of final year in Engineering

In the whole life “they” dissuaded me to leave my friends. But as I started my final year, things changed like weather. My neighbor used to slap me with the same placement question in every morning. Then don’t know how and why I found myself caught in the darkness filled hands of purging lips. The lips which do not say anything but make me speechless. The hands which do not grab my throat but make me breathless. And the eyes which do not look at me but kill brutally. So to conquer this anxiety I learnt the second part of life, where I fought with “myself”. No nono… not with “myself”, I fought for “myself”.I started to avoid my claque to dissemble.Don’t know why I accepted the friendship of loneliness and those rubbish book which I always hated. I wanted to elude because I really couldn’t fathom what books were talking about.I pretended to feel awesome in that pestered at the all midnights locked inside my room A-115 of 120 hostel. Though I was not happy but I had to lose to gain something. That something was only in my mind, never set on my words. I didn’t know the gain but I lost in a hope that someday something special would be mine. Only mine. My journey of achieving unforeseen had been started. I learnt to crush the dreams of others to make mine true. Though I was going through plights but learnt to lie my parents “yes I am happy”. I learnt to give up pageants. I learnt to say my words to my consort loneliness and those abhorrent books. I wanted to abscond but didn’t know, from where to where. Thousands of times I cried to myself behind the door of room A-115. And hundreds of times I pacified myself by saying it is last. My soggy cheeks and xeric tears were not in the mood of cheerio. I still remember my 3^rd year’s days when I used to see the journey of the moon at night. It would start from the right above my hostel and just before the dawn it ended in the boulevard of Devprayag hills. But in the final year up to the four months I didn’t see the night and sprinkling moon light. My love left me, my few closest friends left me my happiness left me then one day my phone rang with an unknown no.

“Hello”. I said.

“Are you Kamal Paneru?” voice came from other end. Then we talked for 9 minutes 56 seconds. I still remember his last line.

“Okay Mr. Kamal, you are placed now. You can join us just after your graduation.” His last word caressed me.

Then I came to know that was the moment I was waiting for. And I enjoyed hosanna. Really it was mine. Only mine. My race had been finished. I won it. I won myself. But I lost more than that. I lost my love, my friends, my trusts, my originality, my moon, my nights and most especial thing the life of those four months of final year. I had no one to share the feelings of that moment. I regretted a lot and after that day I cry night after night after night. I do fight with my loneliness to leave me but it asks myself “to whom I should leave you, once you left them now they left you. Tit for tat”. I can’t bring those days back, but I am still carrying a hope that one day I would see the cessation and they will come back. Now my neighbors have folded their lips. And I want to be out from those horror nights but every time I feel abdicated.

“main jeet ke bhi haar gya. Jeeta kisse main ye bhi nahi janta, hara kisse ye bhi nahi”

Na pucho mera haal ki main tanha kitna hu

Samet to gaagar, baha do to saagar jitna hu.

-          © Kamal Paneru