Fresh graduate-ing

In definitely more personal writing than I usually put up online, a piece as the ink on my newly minted degree certificate metaphorically dries.

If this was Instagram, #instigram, and for the first time, a college post tagged #throwback. :/

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Dear IITM,

I miss you.

It has barely been three days since you officially closed your doors behind me and yet, already, I miss you.

I miss that corner in 409 that was witness to so many conversations; heartbreak and euphoria in equal measure, that space where we could sit in our t-shirts or kurtis and forget about the social norms of appropriate dressing in favour of just being.

I miss the view from my hostel room floor, the right edge of the clothes line blocking the otherwise uninterrupted view of the Chennai evening sky with just a few windows to remind me of where I am. I miss the ability to look up from typing away at my thesis till my fingers are sore, and notice with every paragraph the changing hues as the sun set and slipped away late into the midnight sky.

I miss knowing that no matter where the sun was and what tattered state those paragraphs were in, Ramu would have the best double chai on campus and anywhere between two doors to two floors away, I would have company to propel me through those few hundred metres, all the while our vocabularies getting ready to comment at how Himalaya was such a gendered space, how the female body was still a spectacle and how the adrak-waali chai was gold.

I miss Sharav, the building that was home for four years, stage to the complaints against monkeys and men in equal measure. The walls that surrounded me for those years bore the scars of generations past me, each Room Mother/Sister leaving a bit of her behind in that dingy, ten by ten space, before moving on, never quite just as complete. For years, I looked at a door forever scarred by green marker reminding me to take some mechanics textbook (and medicines) and I often wondered if to-do lists and memos were meant to last quite that long. Just beneath the switchboard was the rather detailed sketch of the female anatomy, and so many of us have wondered what the conversation was that put that there.

I miss the stretch outside Sharav, the one always spotted with deer and couples, each having their own fun unmindful of the others. I miss walking on the “sidewalk” to mess, cribbing about just how many times we had to subject ourselves to being fingerprinted as IIT Madras tried to embrace the biometric bug. I miss hopping over to Sarayu, barely decently dressed in short shorts and an overlarge grey t-shirt, to drop off readings. “Saaptutu varom, Anna,” we used to say.

I miss the department, and how it taught every last one of us to identify Warli art. We may not know Gond from Madhubani from Chikankaari but DoHSS produced batch after batch of a motley set of students who went out into the world armed with the ability to identify traditionally white paint on earthen backgrounds.

I miss the corridors. The stretch outside DCF where you may trip over a Dead Poets’ Society meeting if you aren’t careful, or the one outside the office where we squatted for our first All Coordinators Meeting when I was Secretary, more preoccupied with whether the man in a kurta was a professor or not (and where was that kurta from, anyway?) Oh, and the professors’ corridor, and all the times we have been at our tippy-toed best, trying to sneak past those we didn’t want to catch, hiding amongst the shadows of the collective. Or the monkey corridor, starting at 356 and stretching all the way to (Prof) Suresh Babu’s room, the site of much yelping and screaming, and during thesis writing, pacing. Standing at the MML door looking at the other end at 5 PM, you would see a rather dark tunnel with evening light silhouetting the other end, and so many Instagram feeds are peppered with that view.

I miss CLT, and the door on the stage left that always creaked at the uncanniest times. I miss the high of being side-stage minutes before a LitSoc drams performance, and the comfort of settling down into the blue chairs to listen as WM/LM solo filled the air. I remember the adrenaline of a two-minute costume change, and a play that saw saris falling off and hairstyling being improv-ed into the act. I remember the anxiety of events, hoping the seats fill up, briefing photographers to shoot at flattering angles, and the unfettered celebration when people stood in the aisles for an HSS department event. I miss being a freshie, cheering a classmate on while she sang, and being a senior, waltzing into the auditorium only to hear our favourites.

I miss the shortcuts – the OAT route to Guru, the dirt path leading up to CLT, and feeling like each of us discovered a step of it. My eyes are still not used to that monstrosity of a new department next door to CLT (Chem?) and its multi-coloured fountain. Instead, my eyes will forever be trained on the massive banyan tree that acted as our parking canopy, our photoshoot backdrop, our shade for late night conversing and confiding. And all this while, I will chuckle at the memory of someone asking me if insti had a banyan tree, and my response barely hiding my amusement. “We have a Banyan Avenue,” I explained.

I miss the rooftops, and the times that were spent on it, whether we were supposed to be there or not. From a freshie who climbed up Jam Tank in a sari to a senior who vegetated on ESB, I will carry pictures of that clear, starry sky even as my hands swatted at pestering mosquitoes. I will always belong to that generation who complained (against the dictats of conscientious citizenship, sure) about the newly installed solar panels on top of HSB. Where would we host department events now, we cribbed.

I miss the perpetual hunt for first phone signal, and then WiFi. Sometimes I imagine voices behind me asking “Airport Three or LAN5?” and for a second, I am back in that dingy, unhealthy, artificially recycled air of MML. Even today as I scroll down my phone, I see Wlan of varying numbers and each tells a different story – some classes survived thanks to class groups, some semesters when we’d know each other’s timetables based on Whatsapp activity, some classrooms better loved than others (freshie classroom, please!) And on days that I feel particularly lonely, I miss hosting WiFi networks, being asked whether it is my “usual” password and creating a map of our hours, each network name speaking of the trials and triumphs that dotted that night, that paper, that presentation.

Sometimes I even miss SAC, and the journey it represents. From meeting a girl in red tights and a white kurta at Orientation to treating her home as my own, from entering a lost freshie with no idea of what lay ahead to dancing my heart out for the first time at Sunburn, from getting lost on my way from Sharav to sitting for hours in a horrendous yet momentous graduating gown, what that hall has not seen.

I could go on about how much the classroom has taught me and what the professors gave me. I could write pages on how much we have grown and found the hints of our adult selves in that place. I could speak about getting a degree and everything else that we lost or gained. But I think I will stop here.

I miss the jungle and so, I write. Sitting hundreds of kilometres away, I create a map of memories that weave together half a decade, creating a dotted path through the jungle that this MA in Development Studies has been.

In what may be the first in a rather long series, this is just to say I miss it all.