The Horrors

The tiny numbers on the edge of my laptop blinked the time. On my screen, Mammooty’s unnerving grin flashed in black and white. I had decided that for a change, I would kick back, relax, and watch a movie, sleep schedules and everything else be damned. I settled on Bramayugam after much thought, a Malayalam horror movie that had familiar settings and a gripping storyline (a review for another day). 

Presently, it was 00:18 a.m., and I was halfway through the movie, shovelling my face with my second packet of Maggi, my pillow crushed within my arms. I could feel it creeping through the back door of my mind, like a poisonous fog. I shook my head, shovelled more Maggi in my mouth, and decided that I would not fall prey to this anxiety once again. I forced my gaze back on the screen, on the men struggling in a sprawling bungalow against an all-pervading spirit. Talk about cinematic parallels, this is exactly what I was going through in my head: the fear of me having to repeat a year or be left stranded because I unknowingly missed a compulsory course was invading my head as I sat there. 

I smashed the spacebar key and took a deep, deep breath. No, there was no way I could have left out a core course. As the trimester ended, I would have completed all the ones that needed to be completed. I had passed them all with good, perfectly good grades and would pass this last one with good grades too, and I would not have to sit in a class with bored first years ever again. 

Or would I?

I know there are two halves of the brain, not because I am a student of biology, but because during times like these, it becomes ever apparent. One half, screaming at me to check the course catalogue and the documents, screaming that we were done for, we had forgotten a course, and we were damned, doomed to repeat university, or worse, get expelled. The other half, crying for me to stop being so paranoid and just watch the goddamn movie. And I, sitting with both halves nestled snugly within my skull, am at a loss with regard to what I must do. 

That day, I tried. I tried to switch back to the movie, but I had to rewind a couple of times to grasp what was going on. I tried to swirl the maggi on my fork and slurp it down, to think of the brownie I would eat after the maggi as a sweet treat, of anything else, anything but the courses and the requirements. 

In the end, however, slave as I am to my anxieties, I caved, I lunged over to my laptop with its frozen screen, and switched tabs. And then I realised that it had been far too long since I visited the document, and I didn’t have it saved. So off I went to WhatsApp, where, curiously, it began to lag like never before. By the time I had typed in the group name, I almost gave up on my idea. 

Almost. 

The document link popped up, green and beckoning. I tapped on it thrice, impatiently, trying to quell a fear I knew to be irrational but gripped me in a vice anyway. 

Welcome, students, blah blah blah, credit structure blah blah blah… where was the course list? The holy grail I sought so desperately? 

Like a sudden comet in the sky, it landed in front of my eyes. There, sitting placid and calm against the bright white document, was the compulsory course list. I anxiously went through them, through the list, and finally breathed a sigh of relief. 

I had completed all that I needed to complete. I was fine, covered for the next few years. There. My mind could now calm from its anxious wailing. I leaned back in my chair and breathed out softly. So much ado about nothing. I switched tabs. Mammooty was not grinning anymore; his face was twisted in a curious expression. 

I hugged my pillow tighter and hit play. The clock blinked the time, 00:28. 

• college
• entertainment
• overthinking