THE BAG, THE UMBRELLA, AND THE GIRL

Those, who wish to get inside this college, can avail themselves of a myriad different street:
For those who always come through the front door, two head entrances gapingly greet;
For those, who wish a stealthier path- come through the back, to walk into those futile Math slots;
But, beware sloth and temptation lurks behind K-bar’s calls, for an hour of rummy, or two rum shots;
For those abject brethren majoring the engineering approach on how to watch birds rare;
For those unseen angels seeking vengeance- money is your answer, pass through the ATM’s lair;
And for those who seek none of these, but to come on the sly from the side door,
Can cut through the cemented valley that swills with water in seasons, when rains pour.

Through one of these roads, came to this college a jolly good fellow,
Who, always smiled and showed off his teeth yellow;
His heavy black bag, that he carried with him everyday,
Was given special attention on his favourite Friday;
When everything from his stinking underwear to the unwashe sweater,
It would carry all the dirty secrets that would be laundered at his home later.

On other days, with his black bag balancing his skewed shoulder,
He walked round the gallery, to the canteen, making people roll with laughter;
When one day, he saw this beautiful girl, in a pretty white dress,
And lost his self, as she waltzed past him before he regained consciousness;
As he lay on his cot, in his hostel room, he knew he had lost his slumber,
For her round face kept coming back to him- ‘Am I in love?’ he asked in wonder.

He poked around, and got to know that she, it seems, was in the college’s centre dock,
When he was, two jumps from the end, in what was called the production block;
He then saw her once, in an ice cream parlour inside the city centre ring,
And then again, by chance or fate, in a Chinese restaurant named “The Ming”;
Once more, as he saw her passing through, when he least expected her,
The shock caused this, chest congestion, and a week’s time of delirious fever.

The curly hair which crashed softly on her shoulders, was dark as the picture of outer space;
In her eyes, whose gaze his had never met, he mused, lay the dark labyrinth of love’s maze;
As he searched its convoluted paths, his mind and heart, conspired his next pretense to meet;
In the empty college corridors, he dreamt of how she would smile, and how he would greet;
He found an open door as he composed a poem, of atrocious rhyme, meter, and length;
Which he wrote sipping tea in Wimbis, finishing it before the hour reached night’s tenth.

It was when he woke up beneath the Mech-tree, his limbs fumbled for a decent step,
And as he reached the civil facility he had lost his entire faculty that slacked his pep;
He wondered, why he wrote this unmitigated piece of crap, that spewed an ersatz flame,
How, if silence were golden, and words only silver, is this going to woo the opulent dame?
But, aren’t words, he consoled himself, more beautiful than the ostentatious golden glitter;
And thus saying passed through the eternally closed library, to the gallery- perennially in litter.

‘Twas not long before, that she came out to glorify the world around him, or so he felt,
But, she swept past him, he thought later, before he had a chance to spell “Spelt.”;
He followed her, to the ends of the college, through the decrepit Chemical flank,
Manoeuvring with grace between vehicles parked, ducking beneath the moribund water tank;
To stop before the puddle of water, before the sneering façade of the production bank;
To see her profess, undying love to the guy holding a lanky blue umbrella, fit for the villain’s role;
When, our poet, slumped down and declared, “Who cares, when my heart is like a black hole!”