last times

i went to my university today. for the last time, i think. i can't imagine a situation where i will be required to go again, unless a document goes missing and i have to re-apply - in which case, god help me. for the first time, i was indifferent to everything attached to the university. the building, classroom, teachers. we didn't have a canteen; the dirty, smelly room on the ground floor that was supposedly the canteen was always either locked or empty. i didn't have a favourite hang-out spot or a preferred chair, nor was i friends with the librarian and neither did i feel kinship to the semi-terrace-like space which was remotely the only place in the two-building "campus" that i'd have otherwise absolutely loved and missed.

when i visited my school 7 years after leaving, i spent the most time in the music room, chatting with my sarod teacher. i waited 20 minutes to meet my 5th standard english teacher, nervous that she wouldn't recognise me as a 23 year-old, but she did and we hugged for 10 seconds. my physics teacher remembered my last name even though i was worst at physics out of the three science subjects, and she knew it too. 

i kept going back to college after graduating, for various reasons - a poetry event here, a doubt-solving talk there. every time, i would do a round of the staff room, get teased by english teachers for not taking up literature but working as a writer, get real talk from my research methodology teacher about not doing enough. i saw my two best teachers retiring and made it a point to meet them before they left. for the first two years of degree college, i had a semi-reliable bench partner and at least three people whose presence in class mattered to me. the third year, i was possessive about my (shared) table and my seat next to the window. by then, the canteen anna knew that i would have tea in the first break and coffee in the next, unofficial one.

so you see why i was taken aback by my indifference. i make homes out of places very easily - dropping crumbs, straightening up crooked things, losing umbrellas in shelves - you know, the likes. maybe it was because i went to university for just half a year. and then covid happened. in those six-ish months, i was lucky enough to have met two teachers who made me question things, introspect, put one foot out of my comfort zone. and that was all. i got the last document that i had applied for, today. i was only filled with profuse relief about never (touch wood) having to go back there.

is this adulthood? am i too scared to get emotionally attached to buildings and spaces? or do i think it's beneath me, that my thoughts and emotions are worth more than a decrepit, dying, ill-maintained concrete structure? questions, questions.

on the way back, i wondered about what happened to the baby pink bougainvillea that peeped through the other side of the metal net on the side of the pathway between azad maidan and khau galli. that was the end of my curiosity.