There’s something about this road that makes me cry. I’m talking about the outer ring road. The stretch between Bannerghatta road and Kamakhya theater. I know you guys are going to slam me for still being so hung-up over my life at IIMB. Somehow, I’m unable to get it out of my head. It doesn’t happen when I take this road the other way. It doesn’t happen when I’m actually in campus, quizzing or having a general chat session or whatever. I’ve visited my room on campus once after graduating and it hasn’t happened then.
Put me in a car, on this road in this direction, and I cry. I wonder if it is because I associate taking this road in this direction to 29th March 2006. The day I returned home from IIMB after graduating. When I had driven up my car right up to the stairs of J Block and loaded it with everything that was in my room. When I’d spent most of the day quiet and brooding, bidding goodbyes to all. When I’d spent the wee hours of the morning taking pics of different parts of IIMB. When I’d stayed up right until the end of the previous night’s L^2 party, maybe for just the second time the two years there.
After I’d gotten drunk much earlier that morning, I’d realized I was wasting away my last L^2. And forced myself to puke and drank loads of frooti and became sober again. Before that, I had entered into a rolling race with Sathya, and lost (yes, you heard that right, it was a rolling race. it’s like you roll on the floor. the one that covers the distance in minimum time wins). For the first time ever, I had smoked an entire cigarette, donated by Andy. And I was crying in front of Neha, telling her that it was all over. And she was comforting me that I was miscalculating and nothing really was wrong. And that my relationship was right on track.
And that relationship. Something had snapped right at the end. She had suddenly wanted to puke and wanted to hang up. I had tried, and almost succeeded, in opening her up for the first time – and then felt like something went snap – like a door shutting on me and jamming my fingers. It was a three and a half hour conversation, our longest ever – the kind of conversation that has made a millionaire out of Sunil Mittal, who, incidentally was the chief guest at the convocation the previous evening.
And that relationship. It went bust a couple of months after that. A few third parties tried to kindle the embers, and are still rumored to be? doing so. No, it won’t work.
Coming back to the road, it was the road I took twice a week, almost every week, for the better part of a year and a half. I knew every pothole, every hump (call it speed-breaker if you like), every cut in the divider – and it all still remains the same. Except for one additional signal right at my end – near the Kamakhya theater.
I think it’s down to that. My last journey on that road for a long time to come. The end of an excellent era in professional life. The signal of a certain non-starting relationship in personal life. I’ve never hit on anyone after that. I’ve had two fairly nondescript jobs and am thinking. The road. Signals an end to certain things beautiful. And will make me cry until some of these things are set right, I think. I’m working on it, and things should be better soon. Till then, I guess, I should just try different routes.