It WAS a violent storm indeed… One of the very awaited days of my college life… November 24th… The final result of our Craft Documentation programme. More than the urge to know which group will get the ‘Best Collection’ and ‘Best Documentary’ was the urge to see the grand finale to the days of practicing… I was in charge of a few things, incl. the music for the show. Everything did not go as fine as I thought it would go… The idiotic Delhi group models were too slow on stage and their music finished even before they made the final formation before leaving stage. They had to leave without music and guys [ from SB college, i suppose ] did what they do best…. hooting, howling, whistling and screaming…… I had warned all the Delhi models in the morning that this might happen and so they’ll have to walk faster when they messed up during the stage practice… They had been doing everything great till the previous day… But once they got on stage, they screwed up… I played the next track, but it didn’t start until they all were gone..

Everything went almost fine till the last part of that day’s programme. And as usual, singing the national anthem was the last part… Oh God!! I don’t even wanna think about it!!!! It went, "Jana gana mangala dhayaka jaya he…….." "Punjab Sindh Gujarat Maratha uchchala aashish mange……… " [too bad i can't remember the rest]. Its quite possible that our senior, the girl from the third year must not have tried singing the national anthem in a long long time… So she tried fitting the words "uchchala" "mange" "aashisha" "taranga" etc into the tune, wherever she pleased, to make it appear as good and similar as the original national anthem!! Again guys did a very good job…. When she stopped in between, one of the faculty grabbed the mic and started screaming, "VINDHYA HIMACHALA YAMUNA GANGA…………." on top of her voice and made it sound much more frightful than before….. The guys were given no rest…… Yes, it was a disaster… I could sense my skin peeling off….

But these are just the icing on the cake… isn’t that the right metaphor? Anyways, what I mean to say is that, Nov 24th was the day of climax to a lot more of stuff other than the Craft Doc. It was an end to a lot of fake smiles, fake understanding, fake co-operation, fake love.. In short, an end to a fake ME.. The thing that has been bothering me for 6 months, the venom of fake friendship I’ve been having is finally over…. It feels great to be the real ‘me’ again.. Looking back and then forwarding to the present, I clearly understand the sole reason behind all the failures. The only thing I faked everything for, the one thing that I didn’t wanna mess up, its over, and all pain, no gain is my situation.. No.. I don’t wanna weigh the pros and cons now.. Its too late.. And this is not the place where I wanna do it.. Rather, I’ll think about something else… Something that went unnoticed the last year.. Something that was accidentally focussed on this year.. And something that shouldn’t be probably left unnoticed. I was talking about stopping a fake friendship before.. Let me think, if everyone were to stop every fake friendship they had, how many people will still have friends? Forget about the others, how many friends will I have? The thought is frightfully disturbing… The number of fake smiles I bring on my face everyday and the ones that are returned makes my heart skip a beat… I can feel my eyes widen while I’m thinking about it.. i know that some friends of mine are just faking it. Do they know that I’m doing it too? Then why do we keep on doing it again? I can remember lots of precious moments when I smiled and laughed with people, without having to fake it.. And I can remember lots of moments when I tried hard to bring a smile on my face during conversations. I know I hate that person. And I can figure out why. So why can’t I just be myself? Why should I fake friendship? Probably because things would be very awkward if I be myself. Its just a matter of one more year… I know that I might meet more people of those types in future.. I know I can’t go on faking it forever.. [ or can I? ] And I must learn to genuinely co-operate someday.. I am trying.. But when the others do not do so, they get on my nerves. Like a friend said, its okay to be nice, but never a doormat..