Sitting down to pack 4 years into 4 cartons I
wondered if it was all that it was. 4 years, 4 cartons of luggage and memories
lasting a lifetime. For the many of us life had not begun until we left home
with dreams in our eyes and a bag full of necessities to an unknown place to
live among unknown people and just when life started making sense and the “unknown”
started feeling like home, it is time to move; again ; to keep in motion the
journey called life. Let me not sugarcoat this and call it the “best days of my
life” no, how can one objectively categorise these four years into good/bad or
their superlative degrees? These days have been marked with far more myriad events
and emotions than just good/bad. They have been tough as they could have been.
So tough that sometimes (read very often) you feel like leaving everything
behind and running away into the wilderness never to be found again. But hey! You
made it…through the mud pits and the long dreary tunnel you made it. This right
now is your Shawshank Redemption moment. The days have also been fun. The most
fun you have had in your life. 4 am parties and unlimited intoxicated
bullshitting around. You’ve made friends. Great ones. Like the Marauders type
good friends. And you might also become the god parents to their children in
the future! And you have also made enemies, but let’s not go there today. And
then you might have fallen in love, for some once, for others multiple times,
so many that the people around you lost count, and for some of us our love
lives in these 4 years have been akin to an highly anticipated episode of the “Keeping up with the Kardashians”.
But through all of this, these four years have been what they could have been.
Like our parents before us, like the dinner table conversations sometimes they
begin with, “During college, once….” These are our stories, our tales, our
fables for our children and for theirs and no matter how many times we
complained, how many times we just wanted out, how do you begin to separate these
4 years from your existence? You cannot and you will not want to, because this
is a part of your identity. A part of you!! What you made of these years is
yours for eternity! Hence congrats mate! We were in this together!!
