zondya

My last friend in the Campus. Zondya. Nitin. A good feller.

Time has come to leave. Leave the childhood behind. We are shifting out of the place we have been staying for the past 20 years. The years of fun and frolic. School. College. My teens. The chor-poolice whole day. The football in the middle of the night. The fights. The parties. The night-outs. The TT mania. The "she is not for you". The place where I first fell in love. The place of my first heartbreak. The place where I used to take lots of walks in the rain with her.

One time, when I had finished my Std IV exams we visited a strange place in Kalina. We travelled from Tarkhad Village via Vasai. The occasion was the visit of the Haeley's comet. A large telescope had been put up on top of a large mysterious building. In the darkness I could see lots of mysterious people and children. The feller with the telescope showed us the comet. He also explained how to find it (it was not visible to the naked eye) with a pair of binoculars. I have memories of tracking it down and finding it. That hazy fluffy patch of sky seen through a 20x50 Zenith. I had always been interested in the heavens.

That place was the University of Mumbai Campus. That building was the LN Library building. Those children were to be my friends. That was the place we were to shift to, flat no.4, bldg. A, my father's newly acquired quarters, and to my new school before it started... That was March 1986.

One part of my life comes to an end.
Adios.