A Place Like No Other

The clock hits 3 at night and he’s been wide awake. He has been lying supine and staring at the ceiling, with an open travel magazine resting on his chest. Page opened to his first published photograph. Proud moment indeed. Yet, he was thinking about nothing at all and thinking about everything, all at once. Sleeplessness captivates him. With the thundering sound from outside, his soul runs elsewhere. Despite of the fact that he was here, traveling in the mountains, like he always wanted to. But like each night, tonight his heart was lost, wandering somewhere entirely else.

The place where his stomach had ached laughing, for every time he remembers. Where he stood talking with his friends, late at nights. Sometimes, not just talking but shooting at each other through guns on the computer screens. The place where nights often turned to mornings just by walking around from the basketball court to the football field. Place where friends turned into brothers.

Boys Hostel at School of Planning & Architecture, Bhopal | Picture Courtesy: Umang Goyal

Yet today he lay here, peacefully in the hotel room. Controlling the talab – the invoking of his feet to get up and go out in the woods nearby. To put a cigarette between his lips and inhale the taste he had been told to forget. This urge to burn his lungs had been common now. Even though it has been 4 months since he left smoking and that place where he smoked for the first and last time. He wanted to go out and see, who would meet at this hour of the night near the city lake. Who else like him, cannot sleep in the cozy hotel bed. His stomach grumbled with hunger, so he decides to go out and eat. Then he remembers the midnight meals with the online football matches. The ink of thoughts is spilled again over his blank mind. Those four years were something nobody can take away. Those moments, have settled in his abrooh – his conscience. The endless Memories take a stroll and like every night, he falls asleep thinking about his Hostel Days.