There
was a culvert.
I guess it’s still there.
If you came from inside the
University, exited through the gate and took the road towards the right, you
had to walk for about 500 metres before reaching a stretch where, at least in
those days, the line of shops ended and the open fields began.
And somewhere along that
road, there was a culvert.
It was a lonely stretch of
road then.
This was 2007.
And then came the seniors.
They seemed to be everywhere.
There were introductions to
be given, questions to be answered, the strange ritual of the “90 Degree” and
evenings that could suddenly turn into long sessions with seniors. We were
learning the unwritten rules of hostel life one day at a time.
Perhaps that was why that
culvert became important to us.
Escape from the hostel.
Escape from the seniors.
Escape from the constant
feeling that someone might call out our names and ask us to report somewhere.
But gradually, that little
escape became something more.
We would sit there for long
stretches in the evening, talking about classes, hostel life, people we had
met, things we had seen and probably a hundred other things that seemed
terribly important to us at that age. There were jokes, gossip, plans, complaints
and occasional silences.
It was the four-five of us
and the darkness of the night.
And then there were the
nights when the moon came out in full glory.
Under the moonlight, the
open fields looked completely different. For a few moments, there was nothing
to do and nowhere to go. We could simply sit there and look.
We kept returning to that
place through the first few months of university life. But as the months
passed, our visits became less frequent. Hostel life changed. We grew more
comfortable with our seniors. Classes, assignments, sports, hostel activities
and the thousand little things that fill up university life gradually took
over.
Our visits to the culvert
almost stopped.
Slowly, it became just
another place we had once gone to; a small, almost forgotten corner of those
early university days.
We completed our studies.
Years passed.
Then, in 2023, I was
staying at the Guest House of the University for three days, and one evening, I
decided to go there again.
Perhaps it was nostalgia.
Perhaps it was simply the quiet pull that certain places continue to have over
us, even after years have passed.
Whatever the reason, I
wanted to see that culvert again.
I stood there and looked
around.
The place had changed.
The road that had once been
quiet was now busy. The open stretch that had once seemed so secluded no longer
felt quite as remote. The University around it had grown and changed too.
But standing there, I could
almost see the four or five of us again; young, new to the University, sitting
on that culvert in the fading evening light, looking towards the open fields.
I took a photograph that
evening.
The photograph does not
really capture what the place looked like in 2007. It cannot. The darkness
hides much of what is there now, and the camera can only record what was in
front of me that evening.
But perhaps that is
appropriate.
Some places are not
remembered for how they look.
They are remembered for who
we were when we were there.
That culvert was just a
concrete structure beside a quiet road. It had no name, no significance, no
reason for anyone else to remember it.
But for a few of us, for a
few months in 2007, it was our little corner of the University.
A place where we could sit,
breathe, talk, laugh and sometimes simply look at the fields under the
moonlight.
The road has become busy
now.
The University has changed.
But somewhere in my memory,
those evenings on the culvert are still exactly where we left them.
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