Akon

I cannot actually remember the last time I was so physically alone, without the net, in a place where my nearest friend was in another city altogether and also about 4 hours by car (although she does it in less). Having been thoroughly spoilt by the 20mb net we enjoy in notts,with enviable download speeds and wonderful wi-fi (not to mention the fact that my name used to be the password), having to use a cable to connect to a not half as fast internet is sheer torture. As is the complete lack of human company outside work. It's exhausting and took its toll on me about 3 days in, so the fact that anyone has yet to utter the magic words, ' Care for a pint?' often leaves me with a very confused look on my otherwise clued-up face.

So, when these factors come together, the mind starts doing something it doesn't normally. It starts to think. Back at Notts the future is what we talk about the most. What we want to do, see, feel... those hard-hitting stories about the past, about what we did, saw and felt only come up after a glass of wine when the night has a melancholy tinge to it. It's not that we don't talk about the past, it's just that over dinner or random liming, talking about one's sense of insignificance upon seeing the Taj Mahal would receive bemused stares and whispers of ' has she started drinking already?'. Hm, maybe I need new friends. But truth is, apart from when I shower, there are precious few times when I am ALONE in notts, practically cut off from everyone else. Precious little time when I can reflect and recollect, cry for no reason and laugh like a hyena to the mirror. I don't think I mind it terribly, I love waking up and seeing him there, I love studying with everyone and furiously getting ready as everyone tut-tuts and makes to finish the wine before I get a chance to have a taste (being tipsy while putting mascara on or deciding whether the neon blue liner looks funky or retarded , is not the best of ideas). Oh, I love every minute of the time I spend with them.

But here, in Mumbai, that all is basically a memory. I never did realise how much I enjoyed all this time spending before, until I actually started thinking about it. And as always, a long conversation with Meenakshi spurred me on to thinking about school. Not the bricks and mortar and the obvious, but of the nuances, of diary monitors and crushes on teachers (hahaha) and being squeezed into a room so tiny it would have sent the elf and safety brigade in the UK into quite a tizzy.
This conversation had started innocently enough, with her awe and apparent surprise that one day she woke up and her sister was in the 11th.
'And Commerce, Lem. She took Commerce. She prefers the free time to Lab Coats'

In horror and despair at Aditi's reasoning (Lab Coats are the single coolest things in the world. However, even the nicest of lab coats could have been destroyed with Scubaesque goggles. In retrospect, the fact that we didn't have a serious accident all year is quite commendable and well surprising)behind her choice of subject and her general generation (us oldies like to do things like that) little bits of school previously forgotten came flooding back and I ominously heralded this tidal wave with ' I feel a blog coming along'. So here's the blog. By now I've almost forgotten all we'd spoken about, but I'm fairly certain it would have involved many instances of euphorically manic laughter at the most banal of occurrences, laughter that would have us paralysed for entire hours and would later be referred to as ' the time meenakshi cried... no, the other one. Nope, before that. Yeahh!' And we'd all fall about laughing again as we remembered what happened that morning.

The innocence we possessed, before university slightly cynicised our souls was beautiful. We weren't big on innuendo, it was more about the funny. Sex, drugs an alcohol, now commonplace were things we never really spoke about apart from how we didn't want to do the latter two. I had absolutely no idea how big a part alcohol would play in my university and subsequent home life. Not even in a (completely atleast) off my face, 'how the hell did I get here' sort of way (though those are always fun). From the gulps in between heated foosball games, to sipping my staro while surveying the pool table, to an absolutely ill thought out night instigated by Sainsbury's own brand vodka (just don't), to wine induced belly dancing by the lake (punctuated ofcourse by screams of 'Lamia!!!') I wouldn't say alcohol is a lubricant, it doesn't make me get along with my friends any easier, it's a sort of. Hm. I don't know. It's not even the frosting on the cake. It's well.

Ok, maybe we don't need it.

Need.

But, we do want it.