Of Memories and Promises…

29th March, 2007

The appointed day has come at last… five long years become history today… a history that exists only in our memories… a history that is known only to us… a history that is at once beautiful and gruesome, wonderful yet terrible, inspires love but is still hated…!

The last day of college life… the last day of exams… the whole batch seemed to have gathered in front of the college – there were people who usually scampered off to the nearest hang-outs as soon as the exams ended, those who usually fled the scene before the inevitable “re-evaluating” the paper begins (this category includes yours truly! I hate it when my batchmates start discussing what the right answers are/should have been – I mean, who wants to write the entire exam all over again?!)… even those, who had finished their two-hour papers in an hour’s time…! Given the fact that our exams ended at 6 pm, and that most of us hadn’t been sleeping well for the past few days, courtesy the exams, that’s saying quite something! Perhaps it just showed that in spite of everything, we still cared for the small things in life!

We were moving on… on to a new phase of our career… on with life…

We were leaving a lot behind… our friends… our carefree life… our favourite hang out places…

It was truly not sinking in yet… some of us are settled in life… some aren’t… some know where they would be in the next few months… some aren’t sure about the next few days! It still felt like the ending of any other year, when the reassuring feeling of coming back for yet another year at Symbi filled our hearts, and the only promises exchanged were the ones of meeting up and keeping in touch in the holidays!

But it was different this time, and the air of finality was everywhere… our eyes were filled with anticipation of the uncertain, sadness of leaving our identities behind, anxiety of creating a new one in the big, bad world… shouldering new responsibilities, not only of charting the growth of our career paths and making our families proud, but also of living up to the name and reputation of being a “Symbi-ite”!

The heart still refused to believe that its time to bid adieu… the mind stopped the many tears from rolling down the cheeks… we promised a lot – to ourselves, to our college, to our friends… and wondered silently, which of them would life let us keep?

As of now, though, we all have our own plans made – surprisingly enough, they all sound quite similar… Plans to enjoy the last few days in the city of Pune… to take full advantage of our carefree student-life that can never be replicated… to eat, drink and be merry… to revisit all those favourite haunts which are etched in our memories forever… to create a “few last memories” to cherish forever… to exchange the last vows of keeping in touch!

We slowly disperse... Some of us want to execute the plans they have, some just want to make one still... As we take the slow and uncertain steps out of college, the ones that are perhaps the first ones taken towards the journey of future life, we do look back fondly… and remember that this is the place which has taught us the skills of life! And the place waves back to tell us that one day, we will surely come back, more successful than ever, and fulfill all these promises – the ones we made to ourselves, the ones we gave to each other, and the ones that our “Symbi” asked of us!