The Rooms

He opened the door after a long time. The room is calm, neat and clean. No cobwebs no dust, everything in the room is tidy and in perfect order. This room is perfectly set for a student who would like to stay in it for some average rent. Its design is meant only for a student. It ain’t a huge room with grandeur, sparkling illumination, crystal work, attractive painting, and wall decorations. You will find nothing of that sort .It is a small room big enough for one student to spend his student life. Now one of his old school pals rents that room who was presently out of station on vacation.

He stepped in it after a long two months. You may ask "2 months is so long?” Yes, for Sunny it is too long. He walked into the soothing silence of his room. A smile flashed on his lips .He is happy to be at the place where his engineering career started, went along, and ended. But he isn’t completely happy. The serenity of the room started piercing him. He always wanted his room to be this silent during his student life. It was his dream but it was never so. The room now, is how he wanted it to be. But his favorite silence is tearing him apart. Some vague images and voices are wobbling in his mind. Through the mildness of the silence he could now clearly hear people yelling and complaining to him about the mischief of Puppy and Simmi. The smile on face vanished in a snap. He desperately wants them back. Once he used to yell at them, scold them and even asked them to get out of his room many a time for making his room look shabby. Now Sunny wants them to come back and destroy the neatness of his room and hear them shout and scream. He is missing their sweet mischief. Not just Pup and Sim, he wants to hear all the voices again. He wants Amy to shout from upstairs asking him to get the drinking water filled in the bottles. He wants Ash and Sandy to “measure his depth” forcibly. He wants Pup and Sandy to pull his underwear out and tear it into pieces. He wants to have a brawl with Sandy. He wants Ash to tell him that he is personifying himself in Sunny. He wants Pratt and Jo to talk to him about everything. He wants Bob to call him up and assign him some personal work. He wants Dumbu to wish him “hi my big bro” everyday. He wants Sam to occasionally blast someone and keep smiling always……….He is missing everyone and everything.

He wants his LEVEN back.

Lying on his bed alone he keeps dreaming about all the wonderful things that had happened to him in the past four years. He wants everything to happen again right here right now. Now that each one of LEVEN has turned away from each other to reach the places where they are destined for, Sunny feels hard to realize that they became someone in life and that the time has come for them to stand on their own feet. And now that each one of them fished out of the pond and put in a bigger place called the ocean where they are bound to take their own directions. To meet, they have to swim back to the place where they started which is a very long way from where they are now. Very rarely they are going to meet. All these thoughts creep into his mind like venom. Unable to bear this bitter truth he wakes up in a whisk and tries to get out of the room to get rid of the sweet memories which are continuously haunting him. He decides to go to Amy’s room upstairs which is not rented by anyone and is currently used as LEVEN’s guest house in Hyderabad, the place where LEVEN was given birth.

He walks up the stairs hoping to get those memories out of his mind. He walks through the pile of stones stacked in the entrance of the corridor from which they used to pick and pelt the stones on each other. He looks over the pile and suddenly pauses only to see people all around. Saamaja with a cricket bat in her hand and the bowler was Sunny himself. Puppy, Amy and Ash were on the on-side and Sandy, Simmi and Bob were on the off-side, Pratt, Dumbu and Jo were leaning on the pitta goda watching the match. The kids from the adjoining Blooming Dales School peeping through their windows and cheering for Saamaja. Sunny wants to get her out and Sandy is in a very tight stature fielding at silly point. His eyes were very keen on the bat, his mind was fully concentrated, his hands were together to grip the ball into his hands immediately after 2-taps, at any cost he wants to get her out because it is his turn next. Sunny chuckles watching all this standing near the stone-pile. In a fraction of a second the world around him darkens and comes to light. Everything around him is gone. In a blink of his eye everything vanishes. All the voices gone, there were no kids and no LEVEN. His eyes become wetter, a warm wave runs down his whole body, his heart thumps more and becomes heavier. Takes a deep breath and walks.

Sunny approaches the door. He could hear nothing but the silent whistle of the breeze. He puts his hand into his pocket to grab the key. Ashish suddenly swooshes from the door screaming for help. Sunny pulls himself back to get out of Ash’s way. And immediately pushes himself a bit forward to avoid any hit by the air cooler which is hung by the window beside the door. Ash is fiercely followed by Jo, she wants to beat him for calling her “sue bhabi”. He turns around to grab Jo’s hand to stop her from beating Ash. He could find nothing but his hand stretched in the nothingness of the air. No Jo and no Ash and even the air cooler isn’t there now. The corridor was pin drop silent except for the whistle of the breeze. The memories keep coming back again. He couldn’t help the tears rolling in his eyes. Even before entering the room, memories of their last lunch together comes to his mind. Sitting round the entire room with all the food in the middle has been their trademark. It was always like a fish market bargaining rather than a meal. The laughs n noise was much more than the time they spend for the meal. He enters Amy’s room with the loud laughs of their lunch fading into thin air.

With all the memories running in his mind he lies on Amy’s mattress. Staring at the bleakness of the ceiling he reminiscences about how they used to play with water, spit water in each others mouths and occasional vomits by Sandy, how they used to spend till late night talking about all the stuff with Puppy, Simmi n Jo sitting on the wall and Sandy sitting in the center of the cot and the rest of the gang sitting around him, how they used to spend time sleeping on the terrace staring into the empty sky, how he used to yell at Puppy when he asked for a midnight walk, how Ash used to work on his system during his project, how they all spent the midnight parties, how they used to have threesome and foursome in his room while Bob used to prepare for GATE in Amy’s room and how they captured it on video, how Sandy used to get A-certificate movies by giving Sunny and Amar’s names, how they used to watch them in Sunny’s system and Amy’s system and all the things that happened to him in the room. For sometime he forgets his corporate professionalism and dwells into his life as a student cherishing all the memories from the time of ragging in first year to the time of project in the final year. Tired of the journey, he slowly falls asleep thinking about the farmhouse he dreamt of. Not expecting how life would turn him after he wakes up, he goes into deep sleep with the sweetest of the dreams.

The Rooms are our second home after our parental home. We spent most of our college life in these rooms than in college. We had the wonders our college life here and the memories with it are countless. No matter where we are and how we are, we will never forget these rooms. They will forever remain the home of LEVEN.