Leaving on a Jet Plane

My B school is a strong believer of making your life miserable by forcing unpleasant subjects/schedules/roommates down your throat, because, apparently, reality doesn’t give you any alternatives. So while students in other colleges enjoyed a lot of freedom and were considered matured enough to be responsible for their choices, our college was a replica of our government: a moral police telling us what to study, who to study with or even who to live with. Hence, we were ALLOCATED roommates on the very first day, based on some random variables. I, for one, DO NOT believe it was random at all; they deliberately put the MOST INCOMPATIBLE people together, so that we could learn to adjust, compromise and become more tolerant, i.e. more prepared for marriage.

So this is how I met SH, five years back, on an unpleasant June afternoon. Now, given my gift for judging people accurately based on first impression, I had immediately decided that I wasn’t going to get along with her. After all, she was from Faridabad (and NOT Delhi), she was tall, slim, fair and worst of all, she was an ENGINEER! In the following months, my dislike for her was only more strengthened: we were opposites, like Rahul Dravid and Shahid Afridi, like Bono and Justin Bieber or like Shah Rukh Khan and well, a normal person.

She was a social butterfly, who would hang out in the cafeteria/Sweety Stores with people even AFTER classes got over at 10:00 p.m., while I would rush upstairs to be on my own/go for a jog just to be alone…

She had her entire bookshelf empty and NEVER read, while I would finish off one bad book after another…

She could never study on her own and would insist that we mug up Segmentation variables TOGETHER, while I needed to be alone in one corner of the library, scribbling notes, WITHOUT HER MAKING PNEMONICS…

She loved to party and dance and despite being older than me, she had enough energy to put a 5-year old to shame, while I would crib every time she booked a table at Mezzanine… AGAIN…

She had the metabolism of a hummingbird, and she ate everybody else’s food but still remained thin, while I was fat despite my jogging/diet/gymming/diet/swimming/diet…

And since she was the queen of the room (apparently three years of pre-MBA work experience gives you the right to boss people around), she would ORDER us about. There were so many times she would scream at me, “Close the windows”, while I would scream back, “Close them yourself!” and she would retort back, “Stop lying around and lose some weight” and I would stop talking to her, SUFFERING SILENTLY.

To cut a long story short, we BARELY tolerated each other, and anon, as the most moderate of the three, had to act as a mediator to arrest the collapse of Room No. 213. But somehow we managed to survive through the open wars and the cold wars, and finally after two years of living with her, I heaved a sigh of relief that she was finally off my back.

But, no, apparently that was not to be. Both of us got placed in Mumbai, so even though she got married in the same year and we weren’t roommates anymore, I saw her more than I would have liked to. Every weekend, I would dread her phone call/text message, again ORDERING me to come to town or Bandra or to her place, not caring if I actually WANTED to go to town or Bandra or to her place. The worst was after every few weeks of avoiding her, when I would be celebrating the rare peace of mind, she would call me innocently saying that she was coming to Powai for some work and we could catch up for a quick cup of coffee. But it would NEVER remain ‘a quick cup of coffee’ as promised as she would just crash at my place, again not caring if I actually WANTED her to stay back. And then there were those times when I would be drunk/sick/upset and I would explicitly tell her NOT TO COME HOME and that she WAS NOT WELCOME, and yet she would show up in the middle of the night with medicines/alcohol/a shoulder to cry on, repeatedly buzzing the doorbell till I finally gave in and opened it. Or she would drag me to her home on my birthday or help me with the saree every time I had to go for some guest lecture/placement duty/social event.

And now, after five years of being bullied by her, she is finally gone, if not from my life, but from the city, as she starts a new life in a new country, leaving me a little more lonely, a little more nostalgic and a little more sad.

There is something about the person you have shared beds/closets/bathrooms with...