College Rants#2: All about a 'Rose Day'

I need to put in a disclaimer before I start this. If from the title anyone is expecting a mushy mushy story of how a tall, hot guy with a husky voice(like Jason wade’s) gave me a bunch of  roses and I blushed a color deeper than the flowers in my hand, then they might better stop reading here already :D

There is nothing but disappointment ahead then. A love life can’t be expected from me anyways :P

So though I wasn’t the one fitting into the above description, a few girls from my hostel did. One of them was Joyeeta’s friend and she got a whole bunch of 55 red roses wrapped up prettily in pink ribbons. I would be denying my hopelessly romantic side a turn if I say I wasn’t jealous over it :D but I did wonder what would happen to those poor flowers once they dry up. Won’t they be a sorry sight to see?

No offence but I agree with Antara’s words over it. 55 red roses would freak me out as well. Roses look so pretty on plants. More real. The smell of the earth when you go near them makes them more alive. And don’t fallen petals look more beautiful on the ground than between the pages of a diary?

I mean, they even get decomposed and enrich the humus :D

Ok enough of showing off ‘gyan’.

So snubbing down this very practical, smart, roses-look-more-beautiful-on-the-plant-instead-of-being-enwrapped-with-showy-pink-ribbons side of me, I couldn’t help but whining to Joyeeta that we didn’t get any of this (its fun, this whining. It has become a routine these days :D)

So in order to console ourselves, we promised to get each other a rose. Just like that. And a casually spoken thing became our heart and soul for yesterday’s evening.

We decided to get roses for our other friends as well others who were vase-less and rose-less like us.

And so we did, sharing the money between us (cuz we were both going bankrupt) and in the spur of the moment, I suggested to tag little notes on them as well.

It was fun, sneaking in the paper covered roses into the room with the questioning eyes of rose-identification expert love-gurus following us :D

It was doubly fun to write tiny notes on my yellow post-it stamps as well, grinning as we imagined their reactions.

It was fun to trot along the corridors of the hostel delivering the roses, smiling to the squeals of excited thanks-you’s and enjoying the glances of envy from the people we didn’t consider ‘important enough to include in our list :D(the actual thing was we weren’t rich or selfless enough to spend hundreds on roses that would wilt in a few days anyways).

We saved our favourite people to the very end, entering the mush beloved Room 216 with the roses hidden behind our backs.

The 3 were sitting on adjacent beds, Rimli (Sulagna) on hers and Huttu (Sanchita) and Ruku (Rukmini) on Huttu’s bed.

The mood seemed somber, you wouldn’t expect anything less than high pitched squeals and shouts from their room. I didn’t give it much thought, eager to see the smiles of surprise as we handed the roses. But I got nothing in return and my heart was already hurt when I saw the thing that brought a swooping sensation in my gut. Huttu’s eyes were rimmed in red, her cheeks and nose pink as she gave a weak smile in response to my ‘kichu to bol’.

I don’t have words to explain what I felt then, I still feel sad as that image of her swims before my eyes. I wouldn’t have reacted this way had I seen any other girl cry; I somehow felt this overpowering sense of fear as I saw Huttu that way.

Huttu who was so cheerful and smiling all the time. Huttu who handled her feelings so well, was so strong without being insensitive, was so controlled without being cold.

I know everyone has their own limit of endurance and that threatens to break sometime but seeing her like that shocked me to the core. It was like seeing someone so strong like my brother cry for that is what Sanchita is to me here- a person so sensible that I borrow sense from time to time, a girl I look up to in many ways, a person I would rely on for good advice- my first friend in this unknown place.

So though she wouldn’t tell me what the matter was, I hoped with all my heart she would smile soon again.

I couldn’t stop my tears as I escaped into our bathroom under the pretext of washing clothes, I just kept thinking about her face and that brought a round of tears again.

Padfoot was in pain. How could Prongs be happy?

When Joyeeta and Rimli came to exclaim over my silliness, I let them call me ‘Pagol’ and ‘Ki public’; my feelings were in a mess to be explained.

Huttu was back to her normal self after that I got called ‘ki public aachis re’ a lot more times but if any amount of my silliness could bring a smile on my friend’s face, I was ready to be called a ‘public’ all my life.

So my small attempt to bring a smile on my friend’s face somewhat went in vain and my heart ached to see someone so close to me in pain but apart from that, at least I tried.

I knew how lonely it got sometimes, living so far away from the people you truly love, people who don’t need roses for love to be expressed(I talk about my family here. Don’t misinterpret :P) and it felt nice to see smile on someone’s face because of you, even if your own smile was lost somewhere J

Love is in the air now. I am hearing about ‘days’ I didn’t have a hint of before in theses seventeen ‘day’-less years of my life :D

I probably have a lot more mushiness to see around me I guess but whatever the ‘days’ might come, I have ink on my hands to gloat over and a shy rose standing in the glass I drink horlicks in (with lots of sugar and milk powder and good-day cashew to go with :D) given to me by Joyeeta, with a Huttu who tries her best to smile again, keeps my heart beating without troubling me (No, I am not a heart patient :P)

And that is more than enough.

A-girl-who-wont-wish-any-‘day’-to-her-readers

Kirti