The NIMC Times [Part 7]

Down the memory lane in times of yore, some may be peddling across the corporate threshold, but if you swim across the edge of professionalism and build your nest, you may soon groove out with it. Times when one hardly gets to think of past notions, of past explorations and of exploits, of past ambles and of scandals, the memory of which will make you go whimper of nothing but praying for the well being.

…And in the good times before everything began to look the same, in times before adventure became a night out, in times when the library smelled of jokers and barracks had not yet converted to amusement squares, in times before seat belts in lecture halls were not fastened, desks were not scribbled with emerald lines, quickie précis or olive excerpts, in times when soccer matches were not yet played inter college and spies really did come out from the Eden garden, times before speed digitals and LAN messengers with overheard missed call conversations were on the run, before stock options and answers tickled the Inferno, in the good times when cynics were not stateless, in times, long ago, I vowed never to leave my track and become a wet blanket waxing lyrical about the past and having let go.

Deep in sleep and reverie about it, deep in sleep it lies. The still lake of summer water and under the still skies; many a fathom below, the new fishes would now soon come. Blessed was the boundary within which you carved your foundry, as one exalted in its pride, and for the still lake, to lie afresh and gloom, and a lost place beside the lake, deep asleep till doom?

In times before mess became an overcrowded oasis and before the googling of everything and slides of paperwork, in times before branding of jargons and power breakfasts with crack of dawn break-out sessions and thinking out of the box, in times of ideological battles of just a minute and bruising debates over whatnot, times when every second person was not a hero and every third was not a victim of the forth who in turn was out for his next girl, in times before channel surfing and online everything, in times of the introductory hippie trails in the back porches and before the war on test series, in those times, way back when, I would not have thought there could be so many elegant jokers at one time in Calcutta.

They say its never safe to long for something until you're absolutely certain there's no chance of its coming back. But I’m sure the NIMC times would always reverie us back to the lovely place. NIMC was our grammar lesson. We found the present tense and the past perfect.

But if the good times were that illusory, if recalling them is no more than a tale of middle age, how come they feel so good? Give or take an interlude or a joyful passage, and things are always about the same jaunt along the side track. And with unbearable thoughts of limbic bursts, NIMC begins to glow.

The NIMC Times [Part 6]

Go, for they call you, the shepherd or to that joker, from the hill top;
Go shepherd go, and untie the wattled cotes left far behind!
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Never have regrets or a simple repentance,
But learn by having let go, the reminisces, left far behind.
And the tired jokers and the dogs unfed,
And did they all go to rest for a while?
Only the rising sheeps were sometimes seen,
Those that cross and recross the same old path,
And the strips of the same green pastures.
Here will I sit and wait,
While to my ear from uplands far away,
With distant cries of reapers in the olive corn,
All the live murmur gone back to an instance past gone.
But once and months later, in the same country-lanes,
And in the same old porches,
Two, three, a dozen and a community,
Whom at college erst they knew,
Why they were back to have their meet,
of a long forgotten distant heat.
And the lost scholar was seen to stray,
Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,
And in shape as what the jokers wore.
‘Cas that’s what they did to make him a gem,
A star was born year and ever after.

Though I must be explicit about it, wanted to ask a few about a LML scooter (PB-03) that used to stand sandwiched between the Hard Rock and the Garage, has anyone seen it lately. Heard about its dismantled parts here there and everywhere. Seems to be quite an old disaster issue altogether. But that puts you in doubt of NIMC perimeters getting infiltrators. I also noticed the abbreviation ‘AIM’ as graffiti on one of the walls as you pass by from P to S or vice versa.

And sure if you’ve got jokers stuck up in mud and getting dozes of the famous Amoxicillin + Vit C package in the nearby Command, lovely hearts will pump on to meet you and drop by soon. For years have past by but never could a solution come up for the patent ’Conjunctivitis’ that gave way to more men in black, that sickening ‘Jaundice’ courtesy water coolers and the frightening ‘chicken pox’ that devoid even your roommate to attend any classes!!

And when outsiders and kids from next door landed on to the NIMC Zoo, happenings took place. Never forget the way Bhatta Sir used to tick them off with his warmth of genuine humanity.

But don’t you stray away from the esteemed tradition of having a word with your senior. All you’ve got to do is give a missed call.

And when lady jokers reciprocated to the whistles from the jail, times seemed to favour the better half. And when jokers tried to hide or even ride that cute little Bajaj auto that belonged to the mess, but the charm of it all was in putting an ear to the late night Cellular discussions from above the faculty block. What a turn-on. Wasn’t it?

Not to mention the last few days of yet another closing chapter, when all got engrossed in one or the others scrap, penning their books to keep an acquaintance. And when your batchies packed and left for good, could you be in a place to bid, and send them a flashing hand. All it could pour on the BBC more for jokers to have gala of a time swaying in puddles and in lush green nostalgic reminisces, flashing down the moments, graffiti on walls, paying tokens to one and hugging them rest, GP hunger that’ll one day starve them for its richness. That’s how it ended for a few.

Moments when everything comes to a halt and when you make the best of everything, when those past years flashed down like murmuring meadows thirsting for more. And how times winded us back to have grudges and resents and have them repeat for good, something’s that always reverts you to get to the crux for one last time and be apologetically stronger or be happy about it.

[Any doubts may not be entertained]

In the times of yore, here’s a final adieu, a final goodbye….
“We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet to the times gone by”
God Bless NIMC