Fare thee well, my friend......

Farewells are always a tough thing to go through. Going through each day knowing it is one less you shall be spending with some people. Waiting for the appointed day, making a few laughs while getting the baggage ready and if u are lucky enough saying goodbye at the station without any tears. It is this whole process of saying farewell to people whom you hope to rendezvous with in the future. At Kharagpur, like in many other Indian colleges, this season of bidding farewell is in the month of May. I have heard that batchmates who leave last often reprimand themselves for being the last of the 'deserters'.

I say 'I have heard ..' because, I have not seen any of these seasons in my 4 years of stay here. The first 3 years I was always in a hurry to go home and this year, when majority of my batchmates left, I was undergoing a Summer internship. Hence, I missed most of the hugs and tears that are normally associated with farewell. It was more of calling my friends up and realising they are at home or in some cases a wierd 'bangaali' voice picking it up and saying 'Yeh number humne naya kharida hai'. And there it was... the signs of people cutting off their links with the place they called home for 4 years (not that I blame them for selling a BSNL sim card for 1000 bucks)

Still, it didn't hit me until I reached kharagpur after the summers. I walk down the often-trodden paths and fail to recognise anyone. These are all strange faces, unknown faces. I walk into the hall and I missed many of the smiling faces, the swagger in their walk, the simple nod of the head, which meant "Hey! How are u? I'm great!". Then I spoke to a few of my friends and talked to them about jobs, cursed their bosses for them, wished them luck in their new endeavors. And then it sunk in.

It is not the same.

Nothing is.

Nor will it ever be.

I often used to ask myself why don't alumni jump at the chance of coming to their alma mater. I used to meet many of the alumni during sponsorship work for the college festival and all used to get in return to an invitation to Kharagpur was a shrug. Just a shrug. It baffled me. How can a guy, who can part with a few bucks for his college and also does have the time to visit, simply shrug of a visit? It baffled me... until today.

Any home is not a home without its memories. All those starry-eyed boys, who entered these hallowed halls of knowledge and left with fire in their eyes, grew up here together. They lived, ate, laughed, cried and left together. For them coming back to these buildings of mortar and stone without their comrades is simply not worth it. For they learnt more from their brothers than they learnt from the grey-haired professors.

Hence it is time, for me(and my remaining wingies) to bid a fond farewell to all our dear friends. And hope that we shall meet again. For it is only hope that remains in the box.

Farewell