The Sun that will never set

What is an ideal place for retrospection? Is it a garden, a historical monument or the sea-side. I think it is any place that is quiet yet filled with nature's chaos, which is calm yet dynamic in nature. It is a place which allows you to be amidst nature yet offers the vantage point of an observer. I believe that nothing artificial can ignite your thoughts in the way nature can. I had the opportunity to visit such a place recently. Its a dam called the "Pahuj Dam", situated in the town I love the most, Jhansi.
I reached the dam in the afternoon, descended the stairs and sat by the river. The afternoon sun was shining brightly, the "Betwa river" glowed like diamond in its light. A hill, on the other side of the river, stood shielding me from the world on the other side. I settled under the shade of a tree on the bank of the river. There was no trace of another human being for miles, and that was fine by me.
In that moment of solace, the first thing that came to my mind was my college. My college life is almost over with only the last semester remaining. Three and a half years, I have spent in VNIT. Three and a half years!! Enough to live a lifetime. College is the place where we ward off our childhood and step into the shoes of adulthood. Some of your most lasting memories are built in this period. So the question in my mind was, what had I learned? What were my experiences? Was it worth it?
Of course every one studies courses in a discipline in a college. But that is not all that you learn, is it?
In college life, some of the most important lessons are learnt outside the classroom.
While I was indulging in my thoughts, I laid down on the sand and watched the limitless skies cover me like a blanket. Just then, nature propped up a question for me. I saw a group of birds fly by. How beautiful they looked flying in complete agreement with each other. The kite shape they made looked lovely against the blue background of the skies. This made me think that had I learnt the importance of group effort in college? Had I learnt to be a part of a group? My mind took me to the time when we were preparing for the drama competition in our college.
How it had all looked so dull when all of us were not working in unison. How, then irritated with our own indiscipline, we had put our heads together and worked day and night. How satisfied we had felt after putting up a good show as a result of this team effort. We hadn’t won the competition but, nevertheless, it had been one of the most enthralling experiences of my college life.
Smiling to myself, I sat up and looked at the river. The sound of flowing water in that silence seemed like Beethoven’s symphony played on a piano. Right across the river, I saw lush green grass with spread out plants spreading like velvet below the hill. How beautifully had the river and the hill conspired in nurturing them!! The river was there source of the moisture they needed and the hill protected them from the sun light for a good part of the day. Had I witnessed similar acts of kindness in college? Had I and my friends been kind enough to the needy?
Well, this brought an incident to my mind. I remembered how in the first year we played volleyball every day outside our hostel as if our life depended on it. Some construction work had been going on and the labor toiled as we played next to them. Even some women worked there and as they had no choice, they brought their kids to the site too. That day we were playing as usual when the bell rang indicating that snacks were available in the mess and that we should collect them. Some of us, like me, were so engaged in playing that we didn’t go to collect the snacks. Others did. One of my friends, Baba(His real name is Ankit), brought his biscuits outside. A poor kid who had come with his mother looked on with misty eyes as people ate their biscuits. Suddenly, Baba approached the kid and gave all his biscuits to him. The child looked perplexed but took the biscuits eagerly. As he ate them hungrily, and we looked at him, our hearts started to ache with a rush of emotion that cannot be described in words. Everybody stopped playing and the ever chaotic playground was totally silent for the briefest of moments. Baba had given us all a lesson in kindness.
A faint smile crossed my face as I thought of that incident. Suddenly, I felt something on my foot. I saw some ants that were trying to climb up the bark of the tree. My foot just happened to be in their way and they climbed without any loss of enthusiasm. They were trying to carry some dead insect at least 5 times their size. They climbed up some distance and fell to the ground. Then they tried again and fell again. But they didn’t loose heart and kept on trying. A question propped up in my mind. Had I learnt such perseverance in college? Had I lost heart after failures or did I have to guts to carry on? Did I get intoxicated by success or did I maintain my composure?
My thoughts flashbacked to the third year when I had participated in a paper presentation contest. The presentation had gone awry minute and my team had lost. Not only this, the judge had ridiculed our presentation and mocked at us. The next year I again participated in a similar contest and we won the first prize. So had the failure early on deterred me? Had the success later made me too proud? I like to believe the answer to both the questions is no. This reminded me of some lines from “IF”, a famous poem composed by Rudyard Kipling.
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
Yes, in nature’s company the mind does start to have poetic inclinations. I took a deep breath and fixed my gaze on the water. I saw a school of fish travelling in the water. Their motions seemed so fluid that it filled my heart with joy just to look at it. They were travelling like free spirits, creating ripples on the water surface like souls without a care in the world. This brought me to think that had I experienced such joy and freedom of spirit in college? Had I learned how to enjoy my moments?
This thought at once reminded me of my friends. They were the people whose company acted like panacea for all my worries. I remembered how we rode bikes at two in the night just for tea or a cigarette.
How, on the bike, I felt the punishing chill of the winter season and yet the reassuring hand of my friend on my shoulder. I remembered the songs my friends sang after “controlled consumption of alcoholic beverages”. I remembered how we endlessly laughed at our pranks and at the friend who was at its receiving end. How we played volleyball all night mindless of the consequences we were going to face in the next day’s exam.
It was getting darker now with the sun hiding behind the hill. I got up to go back but my thoughts were still in the premises of my college. The last semester was upon us. The time when we’ll have our last class, the last party, the last prank, the last cigarette……….the last laugh together.
With these pictures in my mind I started my bike to go back to civilization, away from this nature’s playground. As I saw the sun set behind the hill, I knew that there was a sun which will never set…..that of the memories and experiences of my college life.