A Prequel to my Grad Walk

Graduation during BTech was radically straightforward than in Master’s. There was only one step – to graduate.  But that was three years ago –  when I didn’t know how to fold a tee shirt or wash a plate.

So there I was, amidst the Malboro mist, sipping ice tea from a coffee mug. In 1522’s patio, the lights lit up delightful conversations about a myriad of things, mostly girls, especially ex’s. During more sloshed occasions, someone would try to jump off the patio in a jagermeister-induced longing for their ex. But this time, it was a more sober setting where my roommate reminisced about how much he liked doing laundry back at his hostel. Well, I am sure his wife would see a potential market there. The only thing I ever liked doing back in college was girls. And boy! After that, the easy parts just disappeared like MH370.

I remember how culture shock in a new country came in the form of a new room for me, when ISA dropped me at an apartment whose insides were basically a wreckage from an inter-galactic war that raged several eons. In the spaces between those debris lived four roommates of mine. Illegally. So that was just the start of Master’s.

Then you realize, there are certain rules you live by. Weeks are the time periods that occur between your cooking turns. When you hear a knock on the door, the first thing you do is to hide your comforters. And there are things worse than home work – cooking, laundry, grocery shopping and other chores plus home work.

And the Texas weather, of course, is like mood swings of an eighteen year old. But the worst weather, though, is during the debt seasons. And you have it all over the place. With the school, banks back home, banks here, friends back home, friends here, you name it. So many things go down like mercury levels in Antarctica – your bank balances, GPA, relationships…

Damn. Breathe. Breathe!

Oh no, hold it! You still have to get a job, don’t you?

Geez! It’s D minus about two weeks now and it’s still that race where I have to claw my way to the finish line! I guess I see a point why my roommate reminisced so much about days when he just had to do his laundry after all!

The sleep troll.

It’s 3:13 in the morning and I can’t sleep. I have less than five hours for the test and I am trying in vain to stain my eyes with the saintly white light of WordPress through my phone’s broken screen. My roommate has burst into the room for the, I don’t know, six hundred and eighty ninth time now and each time, I seethed inside like Vesuvius on steroids. He doesn’t just open the door. He masturbates with the door knob and breaks in and rapes my sleep. And the click of the air conditioner’s relay is exasperating, for it switches the blower off and makes it seem like someone has put me to microwave in my blanket. And I smell something burning. No, it’s not a figure of speech; my roommate has left something to burn on the stove. The last thing I want now is the smoke detector to go off!

I guess finally something seems to be working. I do feel sleepy. But I can’t think of a good title for this blog post yet.

Guess what, I came up with a title.
It’s 7:50.

This would have worked at any time of the year.