one last love letter to campus
looking back on almost 4 years, all i’ve done, the heart i found, the sweat i broke, all look a bit like nothing, & also a bit like everything i am today.
to be fair, i was barely on campus last semester, i spent most of my time outside century gate with a book & a cigarette, watching people like i desperately wanted the scoop on the outside world. this was until this boy i was seeing said “graduating is supposed to be sad, aadi.” & yes, maybe i’m avoidant. but maybe i’m just still trying to articulate what matters to me. but still, this substack used to be called roorkee, etc. this place has made, broken, & made so much of my heart.
i’ve always loved talking about my life in terms of the city i’m in. i was bunking every class to roam & document every corner of kota on snapchat for my long distance best friend. covid in kerala was a reconnection with my caste & family, as i filmed and wrote about the arabian sea & her fishermen. this ex-metrocity, ex-nri, won-at-neoliberal-capitalism nuclear family’s only son suspended in a pandemic, with 90s pacific northwest indie rock in his earphones, & a million walks that were never enough, deeply enamoured by living in conjunction with the land (& sea).
i came to roorkee right after two break-ups. with the best friend & a boyfriend. that they happened in the same week should tell you at least one of them was my fault. but the thing about queer love, platonic or otherwise, is that the love will always feel a little hard to explain. it’s always like no one else gets it. so i had no one to really help me process everything. & i was alone in this world anyway, so we move. & roorkee has been a beautiful place to write about.
every city i’ve lived in turns into a story with specific references, characters & rhythms. roorkee simply becomes a collection of patterns- a reliably sanghi administration, good weather exclusively during exam season, & the feeling of not wanting that rare good night to ever end. shobhna & i once spoke about the difference between a place & a space. that a space is when a place starts to mean something. when you name the rhythm. sign the time.
so i’m here again. etc. roorkee. ityaadi. barbaadi.
okay. cool then. here’s the big question. drumroll. did roorkee ruin my voice or was it the cigarettes?
i learnt how to sing & play the guitar while singing my best friend’s favourite songs to her for over two years. that’s pretty much the best way you can find your voice. a place of love. she was the one that made me apply for music section. that online interview was the first time i had sung to anyone but her. & my beautiful seniors’ (strangers then) praises confused me so much because i had no context for who they were, or what they liked about my voice, or what i was doing right. & naturally, “fuck. is there a way to do this wrong?” a thought that had never occurred to me before, a new fear, crept in. i remember we had an open whatsapp group for music & kids would share their work there, & there was this one boy who hadn’t gotten through the interview & it broke my brain. i remember sending his beautiful cover of zara zara to my best friend & screaming for hours about how none of this made any sense.
now, here, talking about it publicly, maybe we can call this ✨imposter syndrome✨. but fuck psychiatric diagnoses actually. i knew who i was. i knew my voice. the false idea of an objective metric that my judges had never articulated to me- MERIT. that’s what was messing with me. but obviously, if it existed, i had to conquer it. gay audacity or something.
i was barely introduced to the section when i performed comfortably numb with a bunch of graduating seniors. i remember the first day i walked into practice & they jokingly complained about how this junior who hadn’t smoked up a day in his life was performing this song with them. i was uncertain what my place was. the only thing on my side was my accent. so i just had sex with the microphone that dhun.
but i still didn’t know who i was singing for. i had brought my guitar but would barely sing above a whisper in my rajendra bhawan d-block room. every part of myself that was met with misunderstanding in this new world got locked away further & further into my private hell. everything became a whisper. every revolt became a plea. anger became grief. & for the record, getting death threats for talking about caste does make it harder to sing in your room. but i’m getting better now, sincerely seeing it through every few weeks for a few sweet friends on instagram. finding my voice again. but a lot of the time i sing like a whiny bitch & it’s easy bait for homophobia/ femmephobia across the hostel walls. but mom, help, a lot of the time i FEEL like a whiny bitch!
all this crashed on me when this beautiful boy i met last year told me- singing is not controlling your vocal folds but setting them free. & god, i remember that feeling. against the window in my grandmothers house in kerala, banana leaves outside, phone on the windowsill, setting my vocal cords free & recording the evidence for my favourite girl on the other side of the earth. when i came to college, the neighbours told my grandparents they missed the boy screaming all evening trying to hit that goddamn g-sharp.
i don’t know where that feeling went. or if it is still there somewhere. maybe i am still free & my freedom just has more to account for. there are things i’m learning. about the difference in the culture of singing as a practice in india & what my own personal tastes have known in their global third culture soup. i’m trying to mediate between them now. that’s the sweeter way to look at time always, isn’t it- a series of lessons. a never ending coming of age of movie. always growing. that obviously if i was singing in my hostel room i would wanna put on a show all the boys would like. but still, i wish they could imagine a thin difference between performance & practice & allow my own insecurities, frustrations, & agony some room, however loud, for just a while, mutter a prayer or curse at the madman in the next room, but still, go easy on his poor heart. because hey, the truth is, you know my misery. it’s all of our misery. the same helplessness & boredom. come on, man. just scream with me. it’s a cold fucking night.
so my voice is just my history. roorkee is a tight thread in the knit-work of my life. talking about helps make the fabric a little breathable. it all flows better.
i didn’t know if i would ever make a friend again when i came to campus honestly. at least in the way her & i were. & i was still & will always be in love with & talking to that ex. maybe i’m never completely on campus & parts of me are scattered around the world with all the people that love me. my dad calls me a dreamer (derogatory). but i think something people can never miss in my eyes is wonder. & wonder is such a funny thing because it’s always completely in service of the beauty in front of it, but it also is a feeling of novelty, like something completely new is happening & so, it is a comparative judgement- a direct evaluation & cataloguing against everything i have known before, to make the judgement of the beauty being truly wonderful. (not to say that everything isn’t a little wonderful when you pay attention) but what i’m trying to say is i guess we’re all always a bit in our heads so that we can do the world outside more justice. i hope to always remember everything i have ever learnt.
& occasionally, more so now than before, i step out completely. to simply exist in all the love we’ve built. relish the sweet fruits of our labour. our home, our campus. when will we know love like this again? built bottom up, against odds & administration & state infrastructure. breaking through gendered spaces, queering public space, freeing movement, infecting the air with love, god, section on the stage in patna, abhisar’s foot on out hearts, that was love, man. love we built. we’ll know love like this again when we build it again. that’s the dream of living anyway.
& where do we go from here? i can’t wait to see y’all & cheer your lives on from the sidelines. & it sounds like big picture stuff but what i’ll truly miss the most are the smallest, silliest stories you could tell me about your day, what makes you laugh, you sharing your world with me, offering your heart in words. & the longer this goes on, it’s getting clearer that is all that means anything- the parts of each other we carry with ourselves. thank you for everything you have given me. i will take you everywhere i go. wear you on my sleeve. i love you. i’ll remember.