Being

The lanes that I pass through everyday as I walk up to my college are happy. I know “happy” isn’t the word I should use in this format but then that is what I feel about them. I know they are still going to linger when I am not around and perhaps someone else will feel the same way about them as I feel now. For one thing I know they’ll never get wasted and for me,it will fade into memories someday. 

I don’t have a particular favourite professor at the college but Mr. Lawrence is someone entirely different. Since the day I met him,I have felt unfathomably drawn to him… in the good sense though;it’s like I could keep on attending his class forever. Unmoved by petulant questions put up by some pedantic students,he replies to each of them with equivalent patience,providing them with the perfect answers and somehow it shuts them up for the rest of the class.

 I’ve never managed to decipher this secret trick of his and I guess I will never find it out. He teaches us the “history of english literature” part which as the name suggests is infinitely boring but it’s my favourite topic and the whole class shares the common interst with me. He makes the yoke of studies very light and it really saves us  from getting our nerves racked. Some of the girls of my class and even some guys,so I ‘ve heard,from sources unknown,have a huge crush on him and why not,he is the youngest professor in our college and by far the best looking.

He knows the names of most of the student of my class and I think he probably doesn’t even know me from his class but I wouldn’t be so sure about that again because the other day when we were attending a friend’s birthday party,he happened to be there which then,had  made me wonder whether anyone else thought it to be absurd to invite professors to birthday parties but since it was Mr. Lawrence,I think a few exceptions could always be made.

So I was standing in one corner like a wimp,gawking at my friends dancing with their partners,when Mr. Lawrence came up to me with two cups of pepsi and I didn’t know whether to smile at him or just pretend that I hadn’t noticed him since I wasn’t sure whether he had recognized me  from his class or not, so I decided to go with the latter option but before I could go to it,he smiled warmly at me and offered me the other cup of pepsi, from which he hadn’t been drinking. He stood beside me and instantly started sipping from from his glass. Some of the girls who I had learnt,were head over heels in love with him,came rushing up to him and started imploring him to dance with them.

He gave some lame excuse and managed his evasion ingeniously while the girls went back to the dance floor with crestfallen faces. I don’t know why or whether it was an  apparition of my eyes or something,I thought I saw one of them furitively pass me a look of sheer hatred while passing by. That had really pissed me off at the moment because they made it look like, Mr.Lawrence stayed back because of me or something which was absolutely gibberish.

Anyway as I told, Mr.Lawrence kept sipping from his cup and he had a very nervous air about himself. He seemed to be waiting for something while I was kind of enjoying his presence…I mean who wouldn’t have;but my story was different in some ways. In retrospect,it was the first time,ever since my friends left, I wasn’t standing alone in a party. It was as if the time had slowed down,everyone around me seemed lost in the colourful dicso lights which had emblazoned the entire room , a loud music was playing in the background but somehow all the sounds had drowned away for me and there I was standing in the farthest corner of the room,not alone,sipping pepsi with a person who,I wasn’t even sure knew my name but nevertheless still stood beside me and taught my favourite topic at the college. It was real.

After Mr.Lawrence finished off his pepsi,he crushed the cup and disposed if off in a nearby trash bin,then he turned around and abruptly asked me,”so how is your Renaissance assignement coming out?”.