The Thick Plottens

It was the application form with its series of questions that I mostly fibbed on (”What magazines do you read and what is the frequency with which you read them?” “The Economist and I read it every 15 days without fail!”).

It was the first glimpse of the majestic building on Ellis Road which was to become my home (”This must be the administrative building, the real college must be somewhere else”).

It was the slow change in my vocabulary and the creeping in of phrases and people that I would never have thought of using before (”J school”, “the owl of Minerva”, “the little green men”).

It was the mind-boggling array of assignments, the bewildering number of people whose names I tried to guess from the admissions list, the frantic worry when faced with the mysteries of the camera and technology. The way I initially clung to Priti and Jincy who were “old friends”, the way I would painstakingly take down names of a million people mentioned in class, most of whose names I couldn’t even recognize, the humiliating realization that I knew too little, and the gradual acceptance that I would never know enough and I was quite happy staying that way.

It was the countless Submarine sessions, sitting in the dingy interiors and eating dubious snacks while trying to hear ourselves over the blare of Sun TV. The unlikeliest group of friends possible, which we couldn’t explain even though we tried (”But why are we all friends?”). It was trying to force Jiby to forego sleep and come drinking with us, Karthik and his Sri Lanka T-shirts, the mad Dipanjan vs. Vijaykanth session, Kamakshi and our Sunday sessions in Bikes, the 5 of us forcing the watchman to open up the gates for a last photo.

It was Lucky and our infrequent sessions at the canteen, Aparna and I as the laziest Magazine cycle team possible (”yeah, call Jiby’s mother and get a quote”), Jatin and the Terry Prachett that never was, Arpit and HIMYM and the WordPress debt that he still owes me, Moonmoon and her endless jigsaw puzzles, Ajai and his watering eyes and his subsequent theft of the infamous aviators, the Environment group and our consequent fixation on Pallikaranai even after the course ended. It was Kanchipuram and Taxi Taxi, with its entertaining anecdotes of Mohan and the birds, and Nalini Rajan grappling with her Tamil, in the background of a heady mix of alcohol, jokes and room parties. It was G1 in the third semester and the strange Robin and Ramnarayan parties, one with too much pizza and the other with too much beer. 

It was a disjointed series of interaction with too many people to name, and too many people whom I will, in all probability, never meet again.

Now it’s a series of photographs in the prospectus and on the website of us in unnatural poses of concentration and diligence, of Facebook messages (”hey how you doing? when do you start work?”), and of the cluttered memories of the ten hectic months that were.

We were bound by the loose ties of being students at the Asian College of Journalism. In reality, we were that and a lot more.

Title Source: Roll Another Joint by Tom Petty