123 Days of Summer (And Crying)

 It has been 123 days since college ended. Does it feel longer? Absolutely. Does it also feel like yesterday? Slightly. What happened in these 123 days that I had nothing to blog about? Well. Forgettable things I suppose. 

These 123 days saw two birthdays and an anniversary, sickness and health, a lot of literature and existential crises, a little baking, a tiny car crash, multiple cases of academic burnouts, a handful of futile attempts at adulting and quite a substantial amount of crying. What, then, brings me here today you ask?

I went back to MCC on the 22nd of August with Sneha Dominic to collect some marksheets. Was that the big crazy life-changing moment of your life that you thought should be blogged about Diya? yes.

Nostalgia is almost deceiving. What is it that you miss really? The supposed security the place provided? The beauty of her roads and corridors? The classes? The classmates? The teachers? The random people you met between the classroom and the canteen? The canteen? The gutters? The amount of money wasted on kurkure and chocopie (because balance)? In true nostalgic fashion... is it the tamarind pods you collected from around the stone bench near Greenesque? Ok maybe yes to that. But other than that. What's nostalgic about a place you just left 4 months ago? (it has only been 4 months Diya. Aren't you overreacting? A little bit?)

The people. The ones who were your safe spaces. the ones you walked those roads and corridors with. The ones you attended or bunked classes with. Because everything is still the same at MCC... except those few who left with you. So when Sneha Dominic asked me that day "Do you feel nostalgic about this place?", I looked at her and said yes, I missed Hotside in MCC. The buildings are merely bricks and cement. They were everything.

There was nothing different about this visit. I drove the same car, walked the same roads, reached the same place hugged the same person- a little longer than usual I admit... it was 4 months pending, cribbed about the same weather, had the same conversations, took the same shortcut to the canteen and ordered the same food we would have ordered 6 months ago too - Beef and Parotta for Diya and Beef Biriyani for Sneha. We took the same time to eat and she wasted a little bit because of the same gastric issues. We walked out and took the same roads to leave college once again- like muscle memory. 

Nothing had changed. We were still unemployed and knee-deep in quarter-life crises, the college hadn't changed except for a now fully constructed MRF Innovation Centre Building, and the department hadn't changed from the outside at least. And yet, everything was different. Not enough to be nostalgic but enough to notice. 

And then you go down the spiral of how everything is changing just enough to notice and there's nothing you can do about it- turn back time and go redo some years in school, pause time to really think about your 20s, fast forward time to see if you really make it in life. Nothing. Nada. Except watching it change a little every day until the memory reaches Grandma Nostalgia. That's a later fight for an older Diya

Now had I changed in these 123 days? I'd like to say yes but we all know the only change I saw was an increase in weight and a gradual decrease in the general interest of living. Staying true to the ethics of the Indian Education System, I, along with 11 lakh aspirants wrote the Net exam twice - which is not a lot but it is interesting it happened twice even. Are we to blame this as the cause of burnout? Not openly but yes. (who even is reading this)

Alright alright... just to clear some things off... I am not gay. Especially not for my best friend.