I wasn’t going for romance but I feel it in my room anyway. Hibernating here has been therapeutic beyond measure. It’s a cultural practice of sorts to decorate rooms in MICA and infuse walls with bits and pieces of us. My walls stand as empty and white-washed since the day I stepped in but the shelves remain full and spilling books all over on the desk, the bed, the floor. Some haven’t been touched, some have been unnecessarily leafed through too many times, some are picked up and left time and again at the same page and some are picked up time and again for the same page. Whichever it is, they’ve made this space home. And there’s that large tree, hugging the window, ensuring that the occupant remains caved in at all times. There’s only a little while left here now. The books will go with me. But no other space will be the same. Or feel the same - that feeling of feeling just right. It seems almost unfair and definitely unhealthy to feel this welcome somewhere, anywhere. But we know what they say about all good things and the implicit expiry. Sigh.
This post is about my best friend and my favourite place in the world, written by one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. It doesn’t get better than this! Thanks Disha!
I dedicate this post to whose birthday happened to fall on this day- Neha Kulkarni. Neha is one of the people who make MICA what it is for me. She is probably the most understatedly awesome person I have ever met. I know the looks I’ll get when she reads this, but I know I’ll miss her like hell! I will avoid going on and on about her though (for fear of borrowing too much from that dreaded thing called the testimonial) but her birthday was definitely a good start to the end of our days at MICA.
But this post is also a dedication to the one MICA phenomenon that is associated with a lot of people (including Neha)- the walk. The MICA walk is many things. It is an indicator of relationships to be for, it is a gossip session in itself for others, it is a desperate, intermittent, and mostly unsuccessful attempt by some others to lose weight.
A very wise soul once said, that Facebook should have a relationship status exclusively for MICA called ‘is taking walks with’. The walk- a simple act of traversing the path from the cricket ground, past Chhota, around the football field, through the parking lot, all the way till Nescafe and back- has been the cause and location of many friendships that erupted in discreet corners of Palaash, Parijat and Silver Oak. It is also the cause of many a love that bloomed on campus (and sometimes met an early demise) and also of many, many discussions of everything under the sun. In the same breath, we talked about placement woes and whether they’ll make biryani in the mess tonight. It was where we fought over what-letter-of-the-alphabet school MICA is.
The walk in MICA, for whatever it means to all of us, will always be a special memory. We’ll remember those precise moments when we discovered each other and (for want of a better cliché), ourselves.
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So much love for Will Smith right now
“We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like how can you teach her that you’re in control of her body? If I...
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I miss QAF!
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Jerry Schatzberg’s photo of The Rolling Stones in drag from 1966
such a killer photo! my father e-mailed it to me today. he knows me well -tara
