A day without cellphone

Strange is the place called classroom.

It has its own aura around it, no one wants to get into it, and once you get into it you hardly want to leave it. But if you step out, stepping in is out of question for the rest of the day.

Having been driven out of the classroom by the HOD herself, I made it straight to my cozy bed in the not so cozy hostel room.

‘If there is a paradise upon the face of this Earth, it is here in Kashmir.’ aptly said by emperor Jehangir.

The snow capped mountains, the deep ravines, the pine and Chinar forests, fresh cold breeze, rowdy rivers and a shivering sheila; life looked right out of a Bollywood movie. I, who was enjoying nature’s bounty, am certainly not to be blamed for forgetting the Earthly reality that Kashmir had been infested with terrorists for the past half century and continues till the present. I realized the Earthly reality on the planet’s Paradise after hearing a loud bang.

My heart skipped a beat. My mind coaxed my heart that it must be a Deepawali fire cracker and not a terrorist’s AK47 and not at all a suicide bomber, while I slowly turned around. I had hardly lifted my trembling foot that more bangs followed. The bangs were loud, but frantic and hollow, like a wild child banging upon plywood.  Pandiculating, I opened my eyes to hear a song or curses and expletives appended to my name, while the banging door kept the rhythm. I cursed out loud before getting out of the bed and opening the door with sleepy eyes.

Half an hour later I and a couple of other boys were in the nearby orchards stealing mangoes. By the time the constellation Scorpio hung on the tree tops we had filled our parched stomachs with about a dozen partially ripe mangoes. Since the day we had spotted the fox in the orchards we had promised to ourselves never to venture there alone or to stay after night fall. Hurriedly and hungrily we headed towards our hostel mess. After gobbling the bland dinner we sat down to play least-count, while the Telugu heroes dashed around the computer screen upturning cars on one hand and waltzing with half-their-age heroines on the other. It took 12 games, 2 Telugu and an English movie, for us to realize at past 2 that it was time to sleep.