With the indecisiveness regarding my future out of the way, I had now slowly started embracing my college life. Though the things were not as rosy as I had envisioned before that entire ruckus happened, I was gradually warming to the best that was available to me. I was really thankful to Prof. Shiksha for this. Initially, my high hopes had dashed that day when she too repeated the same set of words.
“You have to make that decision. Nobody else can make that for you” She had said flatly.
An expression of annoyance emerged on my face and as I was turning back to go back to my class, she added something to her previous sentence
“This is what everyone must have been telling you, right?”
I stopped and looked at her. She was smiling. Her assuring smile gave me some hope.
“Yes,” I nodded “Nobody has given me a proper answer, neither my father nor my friends. I am so terribly confused why everyone is convinced that I need to take the call.”
“Because it is an absolute truth” Before I could open my mouth again, she raised her hand and asked me to sit down. I reluctantly occupied the chair in front of her.
“Anshu, I think you getting confused because your heart says one thing while your mind takes you in a different direction. For the others, it is not that tricky question because they are applying simple logic to this question. I understand that you are not exactly satisfied with the place you are in because, as per your rank, you deserved a better college. Now that you have got a chance to go to a superior college, there is another issue that you might end up with a branch you dislike. The simple question is, are you willing to take that risk? The others can give you all the pros and cons but it is you who needs to take a call on that. The simplest way to look at it is this – Keeping the worst outcome in mind, do you prefer mechanical engineering in RV over Computer engineering here? Take your time and then come up with the answer. You have a promising future. It doesn’t matter if it is here or at RV. Ok?”
She smiled and a little smile broke on my face too. Finally, the clouds had started moving away and I was able to see the sun.
And so with all that confusion and uncertainty gone, I was able to give a close look at the things around me.
The monsoon was almost over as we were inching closer to the end of the month of August. We were slowly getting a grip on the things. We now knew the faculty as well as assistants. Everyone had got their favourite lecturers and then there were a couple of them who were disliked by many just because they were a bit too strict. We had our favourite lab sessions too. I liked computers and despised mechanical. Ashwin liked Chemistry which was weird as, like me, he too had fared badly in the same paper in PET. Sulabh, on the other hand, had a penchant for the Mechanical lab. He was so good that once I was tempted to ask him why he went for Computer Science because if he really liked Mechanical, nothing in the world could have stopped him from going for it. He was a rebel, remember? Strangely, he just smiled and ignored this question altogether.
There was one lab session we all liked. This liking had nothing to do with the subject itself. It was just that the experiments were mostly easy and we had done a similar few in class 12th too. Secondly, Prof. Gupta, the Physics faculty was an easy-going person. After finishing the allotted experiments, the students would roam around the lab, moving from one table to another and chatting & giggling. Prof. Gupta would not be present half of the time owing to his other assignments and the lab assistant was himself a very young person who loved the company of the students as he himself couldn’t do the engineering owing to financial constraints. His only concern used to be noise beyond a threshold level which could attract the attention of any senior faculty or the Principal himself. The kind of freedom that we used to get in the Physics lab was not there in the other labs. That is why we used to wait for its turn every week.
And on one such day, when I had very quickly completed a dark room experiment and was now by the side of Ashwin as he fiddled with a CRO (Cathode Ray Oscilloscope), my eyes fell on Sameena who had just walked in.
To be continued ...
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
