not just ordinary...

"All that shimmers in this world is sure to fade away… " - Fuel in their song shimmer

But some memories live. Gleam and never fade. For memories, like ideas are never created with a premonition , or a plan to make them last… they just happen, and may be they are meant to be so.

Its been nearly 3 weeks since I've been back from Jaipur networking training. It was an experience out of ordinary. Spending 25 days away from home, in an out of town college with friends and eating, living, spending time together, working together and being there for each other… cant be ordinary. Of innumerable memories that have been made on the trip, I guess a few certainly stand out, and one such evening will be something I will remember for quite some time...

Task number 4.

It was meant to be a bonus group task of 30 marks. Bamboo (the nettech lingo for test). We had failed in all our previous three attempts at group tasks. (both me, nigam , ap in group 40 and aastha, Swati, ankita, vartika n jyoti in group 50)(lol. I remember the group numbers… see!) and were desperate for success. The task as other previous ones wasn't that easy, yet not that hard, bit time consuming and required some bit of mind but quite a bit of coordination and some good piece of luck.

Luckily this time (group 40) we made it, yet to everybody's (me-nig-ap's) surprise Aastha-Swati (group-50) weren't that lucky. May be they missed out on their coordination part (Guns and Bins factor [;)]). Since it was our and one other group's first successful task and that too after three consecutive failures, atmosphere was all filled with our victory jig's and winner salutes, after we did it . The din was stopped soon as papers of previous day's theory test were to be distributed.

It started and Rajiv (the guy who checked papers) started with his daily dose of funda's:

Rajiv : Jin logon ne cheat kara hai unka paper rakh liya jayega, and will be asked how they answered… ya to fir 0 de denge!

(Oh! Same ol dialogue everyday!, I thought)

Then papers started to get distributed…

1 min up : I din get my paper.

2 min up : I din get my paper. Ap got his paper… (4 marks I guess- hard luck for him this time due to a cheeky question)

3 min up: I still haven't got my paper. Even Nigam (topper again! 6 marks!) has got his paper… in fact nearly all of the people, voila! WTF??? Where is mine??? Was my paper withheld for cheating… oh no! f^^^!

I did stared at Nigam's paper last time, but I din cheat! No!

Just as my heart beats were racing a grand prix I saw Santu sir calling me in hushed tone.

F^^^! Yaar I didn’t cheat! Was I going to be disgraced publicly?

Should I run?

Is hiding an option?

And just when I was coming to him I saw him pointing towards something… and saying , "go comfort your friends!".

I looked that side and voila!

That really shook me at first sight! Aastha, Vartika and even Swati were getting bit senti.( Not for the marks but cause they didn’t make it in the bonus task.) Now handling moist eyed girls is something definitely out of my league… I tried my best comforting them, with whatever third grade comforting dialogues I could manage… it was just a test... You are winner... an stuff…

As expected they were hardly comforted, time to get help! AP! NIGAM!

Ap and nigam are surely heroes at the time of peril, they came in and eased things quite a bit.

Nigam's camera got some good clicks too, lol.

And yes I did get my paper back, the last paper to be distributed was mine… score was good!

With so much tension about the test and what followed, class was suspended that evening by Santu sir.

And the five of us (me, nig, ap, asta, swat) just lay languid in the lawns of JMIT for the next 2 hours or so… discussing things far from what we usually break our heads on… lol

Seems funny that "we" were discussing the life ahead, things like marriage, honeymoon(that wasn’t me! And neither was it Nigam nor Ap nor Swati),children… Paris... and more…

That sunset, the lawn, the silly jokes, the effort in keeping the mood light for Aastha and Swati…. the company of friends, that tacit bond of support that we anchored for each other… everything! As I try to recollect , there's certainly something magical… I mean I can remember it so vividly, something like in slow motion…

Was it ordinary?

I guess it wasn’t…