The Escape

The Friday was no ordinary Friday It marked my freedom from college for the next five days. VinAyaka chaturthi was round the corner and the college had given a day’s holiday on the following Tuesday, and I had no plans to re enter college before Wednesday, ignoring the absenteeism on Saturday and Monday.

Einstein had so beautifully explained the theory of relativity :

E=MC²

“When you are with your lady love you hardly feel the time pass by but when you are in waiting for her each second passes as an eon”

This applies not just to one’s lady love but also to one’s escape from hostel. The periods seemed to have doubled their duration and when I felt it was time for the final bell to ring, it was just the lunch break that got commenced. Neither the lecturer’s lengthy speeches nor the prankster’s silly comments made any difference to my anxiety. After what seemed to be eons the final bell rang. By the time the lecturer had reached the bottom of the staircase I had raced to my hostel room. Packed the duffel bag in a jiffy and reached the warden’s cabin right in time when he was about to go out for his evening tea.

“Out-pass!” I panted.

“The management has asked not to issue any out-pass till Monday evening.”, the warden smirked.

“There are guards guarding the way along the lake”, poor Rahul added in a frustrated tone, apparently his attempts to slip out had been quashed.

I made my Jaw drop with the mouth unusually wide open, put up the most pitiful expression I could conjure. My thoughts raced along all the alternate escape routes which I alone was familiar with.

Usually under such tense situations two routes proved trustworthy, one was through the cashew orchard of Easwar Rao(whom I fondly called Izwar rAo tAtA, tAtA is a Telugu word which means grandfather) and the other was through the mango orchard, whose owner was a woman whom I called tOta-mAma(tOTa in Telugu means orchard and mAma means grandmother thus tOTa-mAma means granny of the orchards).It was the mango season and tOTa-mAma always gave me mangoes whenever she saw me. Tempted by the fruit I made my mind in favour of the second route.

The warden was long gone and most of the hostlers were in the mess or the playground having left their hopes of going home. I took my bag and went out carefully looking out for the watchful guards. After about 20 yards of brisk walk I went behind a row of teak trees. Things were easy from there as people hardly ventured out here since the day when a cobra was spotted, those who did dare to come around occasionally, left all the courage after a python was spotted. Having crossed the teak trees the thick groove of Palmyra palms, tamarind and canon ball trees with a dense undergrowth of elephant grass ensured proper cover. 30 Yards of brushing about and I had reached the high fence that marked the college boundary. I slung my duffel upon my back. Rolled up my jeans upto my knees and climbed up a Margosa tree, whose canopy extended well beyond the other side of the fence. Carefully crawling on the branch for a few feet I then jumped off to land on the other side, into tOTa-mAma’s orchard.  The small temporary hut made of Palmyra palm leaves was in its usual place, with a big heap of mangoes on one side a string cot on the other. tOTa-mAma was nowhere to be seen. With a low spirit I walked along the way to reach the bus stop, which would be a 20 minute walk through the orchard followed by a field, a cemetery and a hamlet. I crossed the orchard and had barely entered the field when a high pitched “bApan bAbU(It is country slang of Telugu which meant ‘Brahmin boy’)” I looked up, granny was sitting on a thatched platform alongwith another woman in the middle of the field.

Carrying an additional, small polyethene bag of kottavillikobbari mangoes (given by tOTa-mAma)(Kotthavillikobbari is a type of mango that is eaten raw, it is large and almost weighs a kilogram per fruit) and sapodillas(given by the other women), I stood at the bus-stand waiting for the bus. It was 7:00 in the evening and the stars had started to appear. The village street was alive with hawkers, farmers were returning on bullock carts, birds flew from everywhere to everywhere, when at last the bus appeared.

* The words from Indian languages with the exception of proper nouns are spelled according to the Harvard Kyoto convention for romanisation.