Of Maelias, Tractor rides and The Crazy Old Man.

I’m sitting in my room, looking around and wondering why all of a sudden there’s this stagnant feeling all around. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I didn’t wake this morning scrambling to go to have a bath before 25 other girls could get there first. I didn’t wake to a stupid alarm and sudhakar’s fist on the door. I didn’t wake to see aparna, avanti and stuti all curled up, blissfully unaware that we were late. I didn’t wake with a feeling of anticipation at the pit of my stomach, thinking of what the day was going to be like.
[Sighs deeply].
Six days ago, I wondered how I’d get through this trip without biting someone’s head off at the end of it all. Now, I’m wishing to hell it wasn’t over so soon. Whether it was the hooligan-ish hooting on the bus, with Matthew asking random[bewildered] people “Dilli aaya kya?” or painful visits to sugar mills [where everything went over my head and the smell of fermenting rum [or was it molasses?] nearly had me throw up in the guide’s face, I MISS EVERYTHING about the trip.
Those poor, poor students of the engineering college probably never knew what hit them. Their wonderfully quiet, cultured, peaceful, [maybe even boring] lives were interrupted by a loud, crazy, ill-mannered, colourful bunch of people who thought they were walking through their living rooms. Even the community center was ‘all shook up’ when a few brave souls from class decided to have a post-dinner ice-cream. That little decision on our parts gave the community center people the shock of their lives. Poor souls. They’re ears are probably still recovering from the decibel levels of that night.
The gossiping, the bitching, the major and minor fights, and the seamless patching up [you DO know who I’m talking about, don’t you?] all contributed in making this trip one hell of an experience.
Even the crazy old man’s sessions were memorable, though at the time, I’d have given anything to be able to sleep. The best one, was undoubtedly the last ‘warm fuzzies’ one. What with people bending over in long chains to enable others to write random things like [‘very well-behaved in eco class’ and ‘sweet, nice, cute, cool’ ] on their sheets, and Jeremy strutting around looking like an angel of some sort with paper-wings on his back [HE HAD FIVE SHEETS!!!!], it was a bloody awesome session.
My vocabulary now includes words like ‘maelia’ and ‘madar-bablu’, the meanings of which are still very unclear to me, but they are highly amusing to hear or see as the latest nicknames on msn.
Also, the female bonding sessions deserve special mention. [Not BONDING bonding, you perverts : ) ] I mean the awesome talks and getting-to-know each other sessions we women had at the hostel, where many issues were dealt with and where we actually got to KNOW and like people instead of just saying so. Not to mention the randomly, crazily FUN dancing sessions that also took place. I’ll violate the secrecy rules if I say any more, so I’ll shut up now.
Then there was the retard bus-driver who was responsible for screwing up our trip completely. Then again, it gave some of us the river-bathing opportunity where Joslin seems to have created a record number of falls within an hour. [I’m just stating a fact, NOT poking fun at him. I really think the guy deserves a break. Please lets give it to him.]
Also, would we have had that immensely scary, wonderfully FUN tractor ride, if it wasn’t for that bus incident?? That is something I will not forget as long as I live. I think I’ll tell my grand-kids about it. The sheer idiocy of the situation didn’t fail to amuse me; 50-odd people on a tractor, with nothing to hold onto, YELLING at the top of their lungs, scaring the shit out of the poor farmer households lining the road, and at the end of it all, actually WISHING we could climb on once more and go someplace else. For that poor soul who was driving, we were the stuff nightmares are made of.
I have to mention that I am really proud of all the guys who decided to stick with Sudhakar that night. Apart from walking for an hour in the dark, and carrying bags all the way, they stayed and gave Sudhakar the moral support he needed. My heart went out to the guy when he sat down under that tree, all alone and miserably dejected when the bus got stuck. I’m sure he was thankful for the guys’ presence. Doris, Siddhanth, Karan, Matthew, Hakim, Jayesh, Joslin, Lenin….. You guys ROCK. The best part is, I didn’t hear a SINGLE guy whine or crib about it.
Another thing that deserves special mention is the Wagon-r ride back to the hotel. There were 9 of us in there, and nobody knew their limbs from anyone else’s. What with one person feeling nauseous, someone else experiencing a severe full-bladder crisis, and one person actually raising the point that we might be abducted and pushed into the flesh-trade, its a wonder we all reached in one piece, with our sanity intact. When a casual passer-by saw 9 people tumbling out of that deceptively tiny-looking car, the look on his face made me wish I had a camera so I could look at it everytime I needed a good
laugh.
Then came the card-games. Mafia-nights were pretty good fun. It was Matthew’s brain-child and it really kept us entertained those two nights at Satara. For further details on the game, contact Matthew himself, and I’m sure he’ll be happy to explain it to you, hurl abuses at you in between and then play it with you in the end.
My admiration and respect for Sudhakar has gone up ten-fold. Not that it needed any major boosting anyway. I’m personally ready to take on any of the brainless females who were bad-mouthing him that last night at dinner. The man is on a never-ending mission to make us better human-beings, above anything else and that’s something I really love about him. He really is an important person in my life and though we don’t see it now, I think in the long run, when we graduate, EVERY trip he takes us for, EVERY session, EVERY pointless discussion we have with the man, will have helped us in some way or the other. I don’t think I’ve ever learnt this much in four months. Come to think of it, I doubt I’ve exerted myself this much for any projects anytime before. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a class with so many wonderful, amazingly talented, FUN people. This trip really has been the stuff memories are made of. And the best part is, there will be many more just like this. And what with a wonderful professor, a pretty good course, and a wild, crazily quirky yet beautiful bunch of people, I think this class is reallllly going places.


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