A Box Among Other Things

Being the trunk broker that I've become in my final days on campus, it is only fair that I part with mine too. It became all the more important since mum keeps reminding me over the telephone: "Get rid of all your junk!" But the question which kept me dilly-dallying forever was just one: To sell or to give?

It only takes you a moment to come up with an answer to that one, actually. It's a response which comes to you as naturally as, "Mom, stop calling it junk! I've really gotten attached to each of these things I've used during my four years here!" You realize that you can never put a price tag on something with such great sentimental value, and since it's rather impractical to lug an elephantine aluminium trunk over 2000 kilometres, the rational way to go about things is to give it away. As of tonight, my trunk is owned by a lad named Aditya Gokhale.

One would think I'm stupid to post stories about cycles and trunks, but inanimate objects are powerful memory tools. While I often find it hopelessly difficult to shut my eyes and recall a face, the way these everyday possessions of mine bring people back to life is rather eerie. However, to be very frank, I didn't care much about this large ungainly object which inhabited one half of S7, Cautley Bhawan long before its very last moments.

I was shifting stuff off the lid so that I could empty its contents when I spotted the ink. Much like the Camlin ad for permanent markers, my handwriting stared back at me from three years back. I remember that day, outside the Cautley cloak-room, when, as a kid who had just put up a status message "25% complete", I was instructed to ink my name on the top for identification purposes.

Obedient that I was, I began writing my name. I followed it up with my enrollment number '070607'. And then, I wrote the following words:

B.Tech (M

My hand froze at that point as I realized what I had done. I'm rather superstitious, and I still say a prayer at the beginning of every exam I write. And superstition freaked me out that day as I realized I never should have started writing 'Metallurgical and Materials Engineering' in the first place - not when a possible branch change was in the offing! After considering striking it out, I decided that I'd much rather let it stay there, and I thought, 'one day I might look back at this and smile... and it will remind me of this day.'

Well, that day was today.