My Love in College

My childhood belonged to the 90s movie era. Why I am connecting my childhood with the 90s era and its memory and nothing else has a reason. We 90s kids (if not ‘we’ at least ‘I’) grown up watching movies where love blooms in the college between the hero and the heroine. The hero will do N number of things to impress the heroine (things include singing and dancing for her, physically teasing her, doing pranks, proposing in front of the whole college on the college sound system and so on). The hero usually would belong to the poor class family with mother sewing clothes on the sewing machine, coughing, wearing white saree (come on she is a widow), and the heroine would belong to a rich family where she could buy anything. Most of the movies had the same theme with a central theme of revenge of father’s death. Yes, we’ve grown up watching these kinds of stuff. But trust me, in that era, Romance was in the music, and the music was everywhere.

I used to watch a lot of movies, and still do. As a child when I would watch such movies, I had an idea of a Dream College where students hardly attend any class, where boys and girls hang out, where teasing (and even physically teasing) a girl is a heroic act. (Yes, heroes did the same in the movies). That time my cousin was in a junior college, and the stories he used to share with me made me realize that yes, college was the coolest place ever. So, I wanted to grow up early to do the same in the college.

I went to college. Forget about looking at a girl or teasing her by any name, I couldn’t even bunk a single class (don’t take me as a sincere student). College wasn’t the same as it was shown in the movies, as it was told by my cousin. It was all a lie. College was all about ‘whether you shape in now’ or ‘you are nowhere’. My dream of having a girlfriend in the college and dating her was a dream only. On the other hand, college was for much more serious studies, I realized. Many students and my friends had their love affairs, and their affairs were like Shakespeare’s ‘Bubble Reputation’ (short lived). They used to have girls and friends and girlfriends, but they hardly passed the exams with good grades. I did not have any friend who is a girl and even any girlfriend, but, I too hardly passed with good grades.

It has been 12 years I finished my senior college. Today I was watching ‘Phool Aur Kaante’ (Ajay Devgn’s Debut film) on Zee Cinema, and yes, in those days, I was crazy for his action, and today, I remembered how the concept of college presented in the movies is completely opposite of what it actually is. (Spending time like you see in the pic below was also my dream when I was in college)