It started with a panicked call on my cellphone. She asked if my room-mate was around. Sure he was, he was in the washroom. Momentarily I was concerned. How else is someone to feel when you are woken up by the piercing ringing noise at around noon? As soon as I handed the cell phone to my room-mate who had just walked out of the washroom, he said those scary words, “sure,come over, glad to be of help”. I immediately indicated to him “NO NO NO”, and he quickly understood and tried to steer the venue of the meeting somewhere else. Alas, he was defeated in the logical conversation what he could not counter. His attempts show off his skills at some softwares have earned our room the status of ‘the photo and video studio of the hostel’.
Oh darn, I havnt even properly got up out of my sleep, and I get to know that 2 ladies are gonna be coming over to my room to work on some project. Why do I have to sacrifice my sleep over someone else? But then my room-mate reminded me that these are our “friends”. It was obvious that they would be staying for quite some time. And believe it or not, even I become uncomfortable doing my morning rituals when women are around, the ones that are not really my blood relatives.
So the process of us getting ready to clear our room and get ready started. The fast forward way in which we brush, take a quick shower and so on. But by the time I am out of the shower, they are there. Well only one of them was there and not two as I had feared. And my room-mate was in some sort of deep discussion. I quietly tip-toed and got some stuff and stepped out of the room. My intention was not to make any contact. Im not the chatty type early in the morning you know. And yes, despite whatever you may say, I will still call 12:30 PM early on a Sunday morning. I quickly & quietly tried to get my cell phone and take the key to sneak out of the room, but the damn keys got stuck in the lock and made a ruckus. It was enough to turn the 2 heads in the room towards me. I knew I was spotted, and so I swiftly took the keys out of the lock and as soon as the two people stared at me, I was grinning and dodging out of the room. Within minutes, I was at my neighbors and was planning how to go around doing some work. Under normal circumstances, I do not have trouble conversing with girls, but as I said, not the chatty type in the early morning. The growling stomach reminded me of the most important meal of the day – Lunch. In our case, lunch is the first meal of the day, the ideal conversation starter. I gave a buzz to a few of my friends to ask if they are up for lunch. Usually, I go with my room-mate, but it seemed obvious that his (our) lady friend was gonna be sitting put for a while. Having quickly grabbed a bite at lunch(not my favorite meal of the week though), I returned to my room to find that it was locked. An array of hope for the peaceful activities such as reading the paper, internet surfing, chatting with friends online, checking the email and so on. Sunday mornings or (afternoons) are meant for “ME” time. No miscellaneous activity, no long boring conversations of simple exchange of pleasantries, no work. AAH, beautiful. So I got in my room, went around doing some Facebooking(yes, it’s a verb now), and simultaneous watching of some action movie(multitasking is the trade of the day), and even went out for an hour to do some constructive work with friends on a case study. After a while I come back to my room only to find that my room-mate is again hand in glove with his (our) lady friend, discussing some important aspects of some project. The funny part is, the project was a video recording and the audio playback was quite amusing. This was the indication for my power nap going away, slipping like sand through my fingers, a painful realization for all afternoon nap lovers. Some may find it queer that even after waking up at around noon, I wish to have a power nap around 3 in the afternoon, but then they need to understand the relevance of a Sunday afternoon. I quietly step out to my neighbor’s room who is now a close friend and sulk over the gross injustice to me. I complain of the alien creatures occupying my land, one where mostly there is quiet, peace, mostly there is blissful silence. I love that environment. My friend smirks and offers me to sit in his room and do something while he is busy working on the laptop. But my need to sleep overpowered my hesitation to be in my room. So this time I was determined not to get discouraged by company in my room. I assured myself that despite external presence and funny noises in the background, I would be able to get a nap. My room-mate holds proof of the fact that I can sleep in the most noisy of the circumstances, but today for some reason I was heading for a surprise. I politely exchanged greetings and pleasantries with her and put in my earplugs. Turned the audio on full volume and started the Eminem album in shuffle mode. The full volume can’t hurt my ear, or so I thought, since I play the song on full while on my jog, but for some reason, when you are lying on your bed, the full volume hurts your ear(audio entertainment industry should write it on their manual, but on second thought, who reads those??). As soon as I turn down the volume just to reduce it to bearable levels, I hear pieces of conversation of absolutely no interest to me, on the contrary, of annoying nature. I hear high pitched laughter; I hear some audio recordings of her voice being played back on the computer. All in all, I am unable to drown external sounds without turning up my music volume which in turn starts hurting my ear. So I get up after lying for about 10 minutes and walk in to my neighbor’s room, only to complain that I can’t sleep. He consoles me by saying that I can kill time by watching some more episodes of some series, and then he quietly gets back to watching Big Bang Theory. I get back to my room; start to watch Criminal Minds, a renowned thriller series, but then again the background audio proved to be a distraction. I can’t find this interesting enough so I go back to my neighbor and complain again. He starts laughing. Not at me, but at Penny, the beautiful girl next door in Big Bang Theory. He looks at me and pauses the episode momentarily. I ask him which episodes is he watching, and he tells me about the initial episodes. And then suddenly I am reminded of the latest Big Bang Theory (BBT) episodes that I have not yet seen. So I quickly get back to my room and start watching those new episodes and this time, I am not disturbed by any distractions in my room. My colleagues continue work in the background, and I devoted to the series am loving BBT. Occasionally I notice that THEY are distracted by my laughter that I am desperately trying to keep in check. I didn’t want to be the distraction, but BBT is too hilarious to think different. So I take my laptop away and continue watching BBT in my neighbor’s room who is also in his own world watching BBT. This goes on for an hour and when I return to my room at around 5:30PM, I find them still working on the project. So I go grab a bite since by 5:30 PM my stomach is growling again. Well it had been growling since 4PM, but I could not get anything to eat before 5:30PM. I return only to find that the work seems to go on forever, and my roommate still working with our lady friend. I go to my neighbor again and this time I am really sleep, so I crash on his bed while he has gone away to grab a bite. While leaving, he locks me in since he had planned not to wake me up if he is back and tells me that I should give him a call if I need to get out and he isn’t around. With my mind drifting into sleep, and in no mood for any conversation, I reply to him with an affirmative response. At around 7PM when I get up after about an hour of sleep, I realize that I am stuck locked in his room and unable to get out. I call up my friend who happens to be at least 10 minutes away. I grab the opportunity to get as much more sleep as I can. By about 7:15, I go back to my room to still find my room-mate working with our friend (oh dear God, how long does this project take to get over??). I quietly put on my running shoes with a minimum of conversation with the pair and step out for my jog. The only trouble, since I had just woken up from my sleep, I was not really able to gather the energy that I needed for my run. So I strolled, walked slowly, and after about 30min, was able to take a run. My mind still imagining how my Sunday would have gone had I had it all to myself? Of course like every other Sunday, clocking close to 10 hours of sleep, occasionally getting up to curse the fact that the day would be over in a few hours to start a whole new week. Why do people have Monday morning blues when Sundays can be termed as Sunday reds? I am sure people would love to hate the only day of the week when realization hits that the weekend is almost over. Funny how our mind drifts to even the oddest questions while on solitary run. Finally by around 8:15, I was back and realized that the work was done since the duo were gathering their stuff and our lady friend was getting ready to head out….ADIOS AMIGOs.!!!!!!
We bid out parting greetings. And finally I came to peace in my own room. “ROOM SWEET ROOM”
