An Everyday Lunch(?)
After gobbling up a block of paneer as big as an A.C. remote and two yolkless eggs, I headed to the mess. I had two more in a white, thin, translucent plastic bag, almost the size of my palm in terms of length, which was further inside my larger stone-grey bag possessing a very lively and somewhat noisy texture due to the crisscrossing fibers which its surface is made of. I see those new people which I have befriended, and wonder automatically: what do they think of me in these moments, these moments in which I look ahead and only ahead while I walk? What do they think of me going past them without even waving? Am I rude for that? “Probably not” I think to myself, for after only a few minutes of asking the mess staff for more beans and no gravy — which he almost seemingly intentionally mistakes for all gravy and no beans — I come down, holding the stainless steel plate studded with circular and further smaller rectangular cavities meant for containing roti, chawal and sabji, and spend the rest of my break with them, outside.
Get Akshat Kumar’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
As I walk towards the grey concrete cuboidal edge studded with rai-sized cavities and garnished with dried leaves that fall on it from the trees planted half a foot across them, I notice that the air today is unusually soothing, pleasing in a very settling way. It was the kind of air that can make you let go of everything. The kind of air that makes you sit, the kind that breathes itself in and out of you. The kind that makes you happy. The kind that whispers very faintly the point of it all in your ears; though it also very quickly is subdued under the nonstop string of thought, of judgments, of insecurity. I wanted to lay myself on a chair in the area wide open paved with light grey bricks of concrete, sloping from the foot of a two-story building towards that concrete edge that I have mentioned previously, though I also had lunch to do, so I abandoned the chair idea.
The weather of Pune has also been very damp recently and thus nostalgia-inducing. The shades of grey and blue in which the sun paints the sky, the many adjacent restaurants, the occupied and unoccupied vendor carts, the tall palm and coconut trees, the roads, the scooters, and the bikes that lie outside my college remind me of the time when I would travel to or back from school. It made me question: how much more of life do I really now know? Is there any difference between the Akshat that stood on those streets of Kalyan and that which stands now in those of Pune?
Anyways, I went as usual and looked for a place to sit. Those people very kindly made space for me, as they do every day. I see a girl among them in a hairstyle — which shared a very striking resemblance with the one that Shri Ram had, back when he was exiled — which I found oddly fascinating; it had this aesthetic and rebellious vibe to it which went so well with the rest of her outfit. Also, both of the Gauri had planned to twin; both wore a white O-necked t-shirt with orange stripes coupled with light blue denim jeans.
As usual, conversations were going on; conversations that were high-paced, and set in a context that would make it impossible for me to join them. There are times when I can decipher what they are talking about, but there are also times when I can’t. But then there are kind people like Gauri and Burde, who easily provide me with all the context of the ongoing topic. At times I am only listening to all that is being said, and I say nothing back, for there is simply nothing that comes to my mind. Plus to look for things to say is only suffering, and what is even the point of that? It is definitely not fun.
