The two lettered evocation seemed to work as the happily dis-engaged man began to twitch in his seat. With an unconscious sense of complete rebuttal, his forehead, now a complex assemblage of furrowed wrinkles, wafted along with the tightly sealed and lightly stifled frown on his lips. As he tried to open his eyes, I stood there watching him break the shackles of sleep and arrive to the call of his senses. He saw me and perhaps as his countenance would suggest, was embarrased. He promptly returned my greeting with one which was inflected with a sense of caring and serving, "Sai Ram?". He essentially meant, "How may I help you?"
I fished out the pale - yellow receipt voucher that was given as an admission certificate at the check in counter from my pocket and handed it over. The man felt his right pocket and tapped it twice. He did the same with the left one. He couldn't find something. He turned back to his armchair and in a great sense of relief and happiness, picked up his spectacles which came off consciously or unconsciously during his session of coming back to life. A few seconds into scrutinizing that poor piece of paper, his tightly clasped lips let go of a few intensely rarified and extremely fortunate words which finally came to see daylight. "Seedhe jaate raho!"
I obliged. As I kept walking, I reached the T junction where the three cemented roads heading out in three perpendicular directions met. There was no road that would take me straight. So I chose to choose the cheesier path. The one between the Western Canteen and the Seva dal office. It was just a walkway with no road. It was a path I often frequented as a child for the cemented roads often clocked melting point temperatures at noon. And without footwear, I used to gingerly hop all along the road from Kulwant Hall to the T junction and this mud path used to give me some respite. The diabolical feeling of consummate helplessness that rushes through your body when your feet land on fierily incandescent material and you have no cold land in sight is worth experiencing, unless you take it too seriously. My feet, however, this time around were snugly buried in split grain suede birkenstocks.
I must have walked a mile. And as the last lump of my energy that I had gathered by reliving my memories faded away into oblivion, there it was, the A1 dorm. It was of a relatyively newer construction, but the essemtial formula remained the same. Some, seven thousand square feet of perfectly ventilated and well lit living space. Memories of my previous visits started to kick in. The dormitory created in me 'dormishness'. A legendary feeling of nostalgic laziness. But why laziness?
