There I am, slumped on my bed with my laptop propped up on my lap. Three Chrome windows open, each consisting of twenty open tabs. Currently trying to get through the gazillionth 30-page reading without nodding off, but my eyelids scream in protest. At the same time, gentle golden sunlight spills into my room through the window—it’s around 5 PM. The weather is absolutely perfect, and the campus suddenly looks immensely alluring.Â
“I’m fighting for my life here,” says my poor brain. “Literally not able to function. This reading is never going to end, but the gorgeous sunset will. You’ll have to wait a whole day before you see it again, whereas this godforsaken reading can survive a nuclear disaster”
“What do you say, let’s take a walk?” My brain prompts me eagerly.Â
Well, you can never ignore a call for help from your own body, now can you? The reading can wait.
So I grab my earphones and phone, create a quick queue of songs, and waltz right outside the RH to take on the tree-lined paths of Krea. As the songs play, I head straight to the open air theatre, with its perfect view of the sky. On my way to the theatre, I walk past the tennis court and football field, over which the sky is painted vibrant shades of pink and orange. I subconsciously sync my footsteps to the beats of the current song, and with each step I take, I feel increasingly reinvigorated. The songs I listen to are high-energy songs like Bollywood party hits or 2010s bops. And let me tell you, once those songs are on, I enter a completely different dimension. The world around me is a blur.
You know how sometimes you listen to particular songs just to feel something? Well, I imagine myself having a tiny, private, main-character moment, the type that plays at the beginning of a movie or a banger music video. I feel my gait automatically transform into more of a strut. By this time, I have reached a flow state, and the 30-page reading (of which I may have read only five pages) is well out of my conscious mind and forced into abstract oblivion. All this while, the sunlight continues to shine on my face, softly washing over my eyes in the process. I don’t shy away from it. The sun manages to rejuvenate my tired eyes in the best way possible.Â
By the time the seventh track plays, I realise that I have taken five rounds around the open air theatre, with my gait nearly turning into a very noticeable catwalk. “Crap, did people notice?” My brain whispers frantically. Then a moment later it retracts: “You know what? I don’t care.” This is about the time I decide to change my route and ditch the circularity of the theatre path. Breaking free, I step onto the university road, letting my pace slow down and unwittingly go wherever my feet take me. There are no rules, there is no structure to the path I take. If I still had Strava on my phone, my path would look like a giant unintelligible scribble.Â
This is when the mellow tunes start playing. From the more confident main-character headspace, I now transition into a more emo one. Somewhat an equivalent of staring out of a car window when it rains and pretending to be in a sad music video. My pace drops down to a leisurely stroll. Songs by The Neighbourhood, Arctic Monkeys and Lana Del Rey start flooding my head. Before I know it, my most treasured, nostalgic memories play out in greyscale in my head. I am now fully immersed in an evocative mental montage of some of the best times of my life, whether it be the surprise party my class threw for me on my fifteenth birthday, or the time when my parents and I would sit in the living room while my dad took half an hour to decide what we should watch. I mentally peruse through more such memories as “Sweater Weather” plays in my earphones, barely aware of where I’m going, and I start growing a bit wistful.Â
Whoa! I almost walk headlong into someone. This jerks me back into the present, and I realise that almost an hour has passed since I first stepped out. The sun has set and darkness has started to creep in. The growing number of mosquitoes makes me even more painfully aware of the current moment. I see that I’m near the entrance of the campus, right in front of the academic building.Â
“I think that’s enough for today. Time to lock back in.” Says my brain. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.” I mutter to myself.