Chapter 1- The text

Jan 16th , 2009

The clock was ticking .. It seemed suddenly the fourth dimension was undergoing some unfavorable changes as the mid-semester exam time was approaching.  The usually noisy environment in hostel was filled with chants of guys cramming their xeroxes. The usually empty corridors were filled with walkers, drowned in the notes.

"chal be sale m@@ch@@daeye.. jo hoga dekha jayega!.. chal chalte hain" said a very good local friend of mine as he gatecrashed through the flocked group of fellow students who came into my room for several reasons which ranged from knowing the syllabus to clearing doubts. I was also tensed as we used to have two exams on a single day and it was the time for the business management paper. The most dreaded paper which included almost thousands of lines of cramming and mugging without any possible application of brain. Anyway Rushil's (my localite gatecrasher friend) took me by surprise but I felt relieved. Atleast someone came into my room with a topic not related to exams.

Mobiles check.. Cheats check... Codes written on hand covered under sleeves check.. id card - check.. All done .. And as I was about to leave a very unexpected person texted me. The probability that I would get a text from this person was like a 0.0000000001. I couldn't read the text as I had to rush to the hall as we already got late for the test. Getting late had become like a habit. I was kind of a good boy and an obedient student unlike Rushil. Rushil was like smart, intelligent but had very cool attitude. Atleast he gets the credit for teaching me the art and fun of arriving late in lectures and skipping them for galla-talks.

As expected exams got over and fortunately it was the last exam for the mid-sem. I got back to my hostel, turned on my PC and instantly joined the CS servers.  One hell of a game we used to play a lot in our hostel no matter what time of the day it was. That day we played a marathon CS match for almost like 6-7 hours. Finally I was on my bed resting after a long hectic three days of exams and then I remembered about the text.

The text was from Ananya.....

"Hi.. how are you?"

I was speechless. I didn't know whether it would be correct to reply back or not. So I deleted the text, restraining my urge to reply her back. I was worried if she was alright or if she was in some problem, but it wouldn't be appropriate to talk to her.

I put away my phone and desperately needed something to switch my mind off to some different topic. And every hostel inmate knew that nothing could be as effective a stress buster as the bhajan folder collection on possibly all the systems in the campus.

Finally, the day ended for me and the next day I was back on my regular routine with all the thoughts about the text drained out of my mind.

I was at peace but not for long..