The Laughter Memoirs - JNU 1

As summer came, the bougainvillea would become positively intoxicating. Rich and uninhibited, sometimes mango yellow , mostly voluptuous magenta. There we would be, a group of friends and I, looking for more friends to make the evening plan with, walking down those bougainvillea-flattered roads.

[At least one known human being in recorded history, however, managed to transcended that rich floral spell. A professor, walking down from a Linguistics seminar with a colleague, found himself more lost for words than usual in expressing his appreciation of the flowers, since he couldn’t remember their name.

 “What’s the name of that flower”, he cried in agony.

And his erudite Linguistics expert companion suggested, “Rose, you mean? The Name of the Rose?”

I kid you not, you can see the exact spot where this happened. Umberto Eco’s spirit is still standing there, I hope, slapping its forehead.]

Yes, so, all parantheses apart, there we would be walking among those flaming shameless hussies of bougainvillea and we would come across a friend walking towards the library, even carrying some books. This meant that he was either going directly to the library canteen (once introduced to a new student as the only canteen in JNU with a library attached to it), or going to the library to recce for a nice spot – from where an eye could be kept on the general comings and goings, where he could put his books, maybe even his notebook or pen, in perfect readiness for when the inspiration would take him  – and then going on to the library canteen. 

Come with us, we would say, come na, Rohit has come from home and is bound to have some money. Yaar, I have to write this paper, he’d object as he swivelled right around and joined us, with every symptom of being a good-natured soul doing his duty by insistent friends.

And on we would walk to the nearest liquor shop in Munirka, as the sun set, and some peacock let out a loud indignant squack, in a breeze that hadn’t exactly lost the memory of cooler times, at that hour of godhuli. Godhuli. That hour of twilight in JNU when dust would be kicked up by the moving hooves of students going to the local booze shop.