Wednesday Morning 3 a.m…and before…

Manipal is empty…

In a small ghost town,the stupor of a slow evening settles languidly upon the landscape of a routine summer day.A blanket of darkness descends,further amplifying the silence that already echoes from everywhere.No beautiful sunset signals the slow entrance of night-the clouds see to that.A steady rain has been falling all day and despite the brief respite at the moment,angry rainbearers still patrol the heavens to warn of their omnipresence.The ground is wet,as are the fields,and the forest far way down in the valley…and the deserted streets along which my footsteps fall…

There is hardly anyone to talk to and not much to do either.Long endless walks with no destination in mind.A little more of the endless hours that hang heavy over me through fifty one days that seem to stretch into fifty one years fall away.It has not yet been long enough for me to get used to the ghosts that replace the life with which these very same streets usually bustle.So I walk in the middle of the road yet glance over my shoulder continually to look for a speeding bike.It is hard to reconcile myself to the blank television screens that stare back at me from the common rooms of the hostels I walk past.To see the shutters of the shops that dot the roadside downed during the very hours in which the crowds frequented them.To see no one sitting on the old basketball court or under the misspelt ‘No Squating’ sign or on the steps of the Innovation Centre.It is hard to reconcile myself to the loneliness that pervades every corner of the campus.

In the entire town,I can turn to just one person for company,and her presence is a godsend.The local pub is closing and rumours about it reopening are still unconfirmed.So we go to spend what might be our last moments in that cramped semi-darkness where so many emotions have been played out,where our hopes, fears, joys, disappointments and tears have mingled for years to create a plethora of unforgettable memories seen through a kaleidoscope of whirling colours.We sit there and laugh over anecdotes of times gone by while sipping,ironically,soft drinks.

It is late by the time we step out.I walk her back to her hostel and then start the long solitary walk back to my own room.The rain has started again by this time.A soft unobtrusive rain that falls slowly,almost apologetically through the night air.My road takes me past those fateful steps and I linger a long moment there before I can summon the will to move on.I deliberately choose the darkest and usually most deserted way back so that the emptiness does not weigh down on me quite so heavily.Yet it is also the road which awakens memory after memory of our shared moments…a road that I am not accustomed to walking alone…

‘When you walk through a storm,
Hold your head up high,
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm,
There's a golden sky,
And the sweet silver song of a lark…’

I look up at the neon lights that throw their wavering lights on the road ahead and the thin streaks of rain that are framed so clearly as they fall past the orange glow.There is a graceful music in the rain,a rhythm in its barely audible patter on the wet street that hazily reflects the streetlamps,a certain reassurance that life goes on,that what has been will be again,that these dead streets and buildings will awaken and take up the life that was theirs,that partings are temporary and the normal order of the universe will be restored in days to come,no matter how long and painful the wait for that restoration…

‘Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown…’

The rain has now ended.In its place,the valley and the hills that stand sentinel on its farthest edge send forth a fog that rolls in slowly,but surely and envelops the entire hostel complex.It grows chilly but the sight is wonderful to behold.The valley is totally covered in white wreaths of mist that break and reform in a million myriad woolly shapes,sending forth yet another legion of ghosts to haunt the already besieged town.With childlike naivete,I pretend that with everything else around me,I too am floating in mid-air because no land is discernible in the east.I cannot go back to my room just yet,I cannot walk past row after row of locked rooms that remind me with steadily increasing mockery that I am completely alone in that vast building.I sit on the edge of the new basketball court and breathe in the cold night air.Once again I look up at the one lamp that tries in vain to light the entire court and I see the mists swirling about and obscuring it till a orange-tinted white sea is all that is visible.

I miss you…