COMPATRIOTS

I think it would be silly to say that I miss my college days because everyone worth his salt would say the same thing whether they study in Ramjas or Zakir Hussain. Hope my classmates would get the pun. But I am not the only one in my institute to do so. I was happy to discover that there are more. One is a senior, Arjun, who was a senior in college as well whom I never met. By a common friend we got introduced to each other. He asked me about few people whose names I had heard thanks to the vulgar campaigns that happen but didn’t know and he was really disappointed that my knowledge about the college was so little. I mentioned about some ‘famous’ people from my class whom he couldn’t identify and I didn’t miss to return the comment. We greet each other since then whenever we cross each other as we don’t have much time to sit and talk. Couple of days back I found him pulling my shirt. Soon I realized that he was pointing towards the Ramjas logo on my sweat shirt. He was so excited to see it as if we were in some far off country and he has just discovered a compatriot in me.

The other one, Devendra, is my classmate and is in my section as well. We were in the same batch in college. He was in Maths (Hon) and I was in English. Our classrooms were in the same floor and one of his classmates was my friend. Add on to that I even had a crush on one of his classmates. Still we never crossed each other. Both of us found it quite strange. So we sat together one day with our laptops and started identifying each other’s friends and we were quite successful in that. And I got to see my crush after such a long time. Now whenever we sit to talk, we talk only about Ramjas and it goes on for hours.

The funny thing happened during the autumn break when I met my cousin Aminul who is in IBS, Ahmedabad. As I was checking out his photographs, I saw a familiar face.

“There was a girl like her in my college in political science or so.”

“It’s not like her. It’s her.” He replied.

Before I could ask to tell her about me he said, “I had asked about you but she doesn’t know”

Maybe a picture of mine could be a great reminder.