olympus-google-fonts domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/ranjumam/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6121In the four years that I lived inside my college, my soul was broken and remade and then broken again. I left it behind twelve years ago. It is funny that in all that time I have never known how to describe it. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I know what it looks like. Picturesque, concrete department buildings standing erect like forts on small green hills, tarred roads on winding paths, a white painted library building behind the cafeteria kiosk. But if you lived as viscerally as I did in my time there, you know that every photograph of the place appears deeply flawed, every video seems 2X\u2019ed, and every description, no matter how gifted the writer, will miss the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Afew years after passing out of my engineering college, I had a teaching job at Royal College of Engineering and Technology, Akkikkavu, Thrissur, where the work culture was a source of daily rage. I was making the once-monthly trip to Kollam from Thrissur and the bus took a stop at Kottayam. It was about twelve in the night and I bought myself a cup of coffee. But instead of getting back on my bus I got into another. This one was heading to Nedumkuzhy, where my college was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What were you thinking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n What was your plan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nothing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The streetlights on the campus had been a resigned lot even in my time, and as soon as the sun sets, the college falls into a timeless primordial darkness. Walking the college paths alone some nights had brought me close to a heart attack when I was a student there. It had taken the bus about one and a half hours to get to the college. I walked unspotted past the main gate. But as I approached close to the second gate, I heard young voices, laughing, talking, making fun of each other. I was reminded of my own homos, Mithun and Sruthin. But it was fast approaching two in the morning and they were both dead asleep. I avoided the second gate to avoid arousing suspicions. I knew another way to get into the college, a mud road that passed alongside one of the hostels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was only once I was inside the campus that real fear took possession of me. What would I do if someone confronted me? Was what I was doing legal? What if they called the cops? And if the police questioned me, what answer would I give? What if they called an institution for the insane?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only time I had felt my heart beating as in that moment had been in another moment on that same campus years ago. I remember standing next to a pillar, talking to a girl, trying to put in words that I liked her, while all around us the campus was bursting in shouts and screams and the beating of drums. That place of memory was, unluckily, not on my route tonight because I was taking the shortest path out of the campus without getting arrested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the opposite edge of the campus was a gate that led to a tarred village road which intersected with my only way out of here. The gate had always been open. I know because on the night before an exam, my homos and I would usually take the gate to a favorite haunt where we would stand around chatting about everything except the exam. That gate was closed. My heart was leaping out of my chest. If I turned back, there was a good chance I might get caught. The one option open to me was to jump the gate, which would have required athletic ability. At that moment I chose it over courage. I threw the bag over the gate and then climbed it myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGuess where I am right now?\u201d I asked Mithun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHmmph,\u201d He snorted through his sleep. I explained where I was. He asked me, quite innocently, what I was doing there. Not knowing what to say, I cut the call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The village road was lean, arcing, rubber-tree-lined, and like the college, drowning in darkness. I had to switch on the flash on my Nokia phone to see where I was going. I was afraid. Not of police and people but of the dark, of the quiet evil lurking behind gnarled trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I called her, the girl who is my wife today. I told her what was up as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She asked me if I had lost my mind. But she kept talking and it helped. It quieted my nerves until I got out of the village road and found my way past the second gate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I saw the ATM with flickering lights and a nonchalant cow chewing cud as if it was done with this bullshit called life. It was three o\u2019 clock in the morning and the sight made me laugh like a maniac for some reason. The bus arrived in fifteen minutes. I took back-to-back buses and got home early in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite knowing that I was back in the safety of my own home, fear didn\u2019t leave my bones for the next few days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n