Starry Starry Nights

06.09.06 | 15 Comments

My last post on depression in some ways inspired this post. Re-reading that post reminded me of an incident in my first year of hostel life, or rather beginning of second year, the days during which my exam results were announced. I remember this because there was something about it which proved as a spark in my rebound from depression; it was not a special incident, and frankly nothing dramatic happened either – but somehow it is still etched in my memory.

It was the days during which our first semester results were going to be announced. Being the lazy sloth I was, and still under depression, I was frankly hoping against hope of clearing all my exams in one go – in fact if I did, then I would have been surprised. There was a surprise – no, a better word would be “shock” when the results came out. I had managed to fail in 4 subjects, and meagerly make it out in other three. Out of the 7 subjects that we gave, I had managed a feat of failing in 4, and failing badly at that. That probably was the pits when I was in depression. It was the end of the world as I saw it; Parents would be shocked and they would shout at me, I had figured, and frankly saw my whole life wasted out.

However, as Karan mentioned in my last post, there comes a point when you tend to be in depression so long that you actually begin to enjoy it! That was precisely beginning to happen – so I would harp on my achievements or lack of it in front of my friends; but secretly I would be sad and jealous that I couldn’t clear my exams as my both roommates had done (clearing the exam was the only priority then).

It was probably a few nights after the results, when I was still sulking, and it was after dinner, that my roommate said “Lets go for a walk!”

The night was looking pretty nice with cool breeze blowing, with a sky full of stars. Hubli being a small town, it did not have that halogen glow over it restricting the view of stars - infact, the days we had a power loss, often we would sit out looking at the sky, full of stars - sometime you could make out the edges of the milky way.

“Sure” I said, not knowing why my roommate would ask me to go for a walk with him in the night (Why me?). As we left the building, we decided to take a circle around both our hostel and the senior hostel, and return to our hostel by road besides our sports ground.

For most part, I and my roommate didn’t talk much. It was as if we did not want to talk, but keep walking. As we reached the desolate part of the area between the ground and our hostel, he spoke up in Kannada: “You know, you really need to figure out what you are doing!”

“What?” I quizzed him, instantly realizing the direction this discussion was headed to.

“Nothing – its about your results – you are down 4, you need to think about it” – He said. I smirked at that comment. He asked me then– “Do you want to tell me something?”

“Tell you what?” I asked him, still trying to joke around, when he quipped – “Anything at all?”

I don’t know why, and frankly I don’t even remember why after all these years, but I do remember this – at the end of it, the look on my roommate’s face was that of “I will never ask you this again!” – I remember telling him that night about my depression; I remember telling him how my life sucked, and how I had lost so many good things in life; I remember telling him too how I hated Hubli and wanted to be in Ahmedabad, and how I had been forced to be in Hubli by my parents; About the girl that I liked so much back then; About disappointing everyone around me; And about my disappointment that nobody really shouted at me or anything because I failed – I had expected it, but it didn’t happen.

Frankly I don’t even remember finishing off my story to him – after all it was not an endless walk to the hostel. All I remember though was that night I and my roommate became better friends; It was nearly 7 months we had been staying together, and we were good friends already, but that evening he became a better friend of mine; maybe because he just listened to what I had to say, without telling me what I needed to do.

Things didn’t change overnight in my life after that night, but that night helped me get some of my thoughts out in the wind. My roommates words didn’t necessarily change my attitude towards life dramatically the very next day either, but I guess somewhere along, it always remained that much needed impetus that was required to kick start a thinking process.

And it was neither the first walk we had gone after dinner, neither the last one we too. Usually three or four of us would go walking every night. But that night, it was just a walk, under the starry starry night.

————————————————————–

It took me another 2 years to get my backlogs over my back. And frankly that part itself is another story which I will put up sometime. However I never failed again throughout my engineering. At the peak of my engineering, in seventh semester I had topped couple of subjects not only in my college, but university as well. That night of the results, one person I would have loved to go for a walk lay smiling, six feet under.

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