CBS

 when i wrote this as the editorial for the college magazine (where of course it was appropriately censored for any negative sounding word against the college) i never thought i'd re read it. today i miss the damned place.

A few months from now as we’ll walk back into this dusty compound beautifully camouflaged as a Boys’ government school building, it will have a strange feeling of being alien to us. Unknown faces of the new batch of first years will nervously dart their eyes around, trying, desperately, to pick up tips to fit in or try and be horribly loud to attract attention. Second years will strut around the campus like they run it. Third years, with their blissful sense of realization that all deadlines can be pushed and no task is worth worrying for, will go lazily albeit wistfully about their daily work.
This is CBS.
Where everyone knew everyone.

Today if someone asks me about my college experience, I’ll tell them that the gates shut at 9 am sharp leaving half the college panting and begging the guard to let them in. I’ll also tell them how we are only slightly different from the school they’ll pass out of. The legend of how every passing truck shakes the foundations of the building ever so slightly and the mysterious urinals in the girls washroom shall also be narrated to them. Yet, in this hopeless setting comes to you the wonderful realization of who you really are. It is in this Jhilmil wonderland that we transform, being a different person every year to finally being someone we are at peace with. 

The best thing about CBS was always its people. There is no one here you cannot talk to. There are cliques, there is a slightly more than acceptable number of societies and a little too many BlackBerrys littered around the campus, but what never dies is the chatter.
Self-glorifying as this may sound, but with us ends an era. With us end the dreaded mid-sems, five subjects a semester and, much to the chagrin of teachers, the old course. We can only hope that the fresh batches live up to us, clicking as many pictures and outdoing each other with as many events. 

As we bid farewell, let us make a few promises to ourselves, write letters to our future selves, dream a little more and most importantly try not get stuck in the inevitable rut of mediocrity. 

Nahin tera nasheman ,qasr-e-sultani ki gumbad par,
Tu shaheen hai, basera kar, pahadon ki chattanon par. 
~Iqbal
(You don’t have to make your nest on the dome of Queen’s palace, 
Oh Eagle, you are royal, choose to reside on the peaks of mountains.)