The Intimacy of Fuelzone

Edited by Sreenandana Nair

1. Fuelzone is simultaneously the site of true activity and true rest on the Ashoka campus. It is where you come to when you can’t go to your mother in the kitchen anymore, when you cannot rely on your father to bring you cut apples, and when you cannot coerce your brother into bringing you a water bottle. Your activity is the truest because you cannot hide here. Your anger, your exhaustion, even your deepest joy: I feel like it has a way of spilling out in your coffee order. In whether you get some food to go along with it, in how much joy you take in ordering a cappuccino, in whether you make fun of your friend for ordering the veg pizza again. Fuelzone never tells you to stop. Fuelzone tells you to come as you are, to rest, to wait for a few minutes, and take in all the grand and mundane beauty of being a university student, regardless of how much studying you have left or how much the day overwhelms you. Fuelzone grounds. It calms. It leaves you feeling, always, at least a little bit better.

2. We always go to Fuelzone in the evening, right when our days are becoming bigger and longer than our minds can encompass. At this point, your eyes are hollow, and sunken, my nails so bitten down that you can barely put nail polish on them. We don’t talk much on the way. But then we get there, and you know my order. You hand me the sugar and stirrer, move aside when you know I will move ahead. You know my motions. This is a rehearsed routine. We are safe here. I am known here. You make a passing comment on something you know I will want to talk about, and I take the cue. This is so easy, talking, existing— belonging has never felt this easy before. Even on my worst, busiest days, this always comes easily to me. Fuelzone always makes it easy.

3. I was angry and betrayed and my heart felt like it was breaking in ways that it had not before. I could not think straight, even for a second. You found me seething near the lava cups, even Bhaiya looking at me concernedly, wondering what about the desserts I usually enjoy was causing such anger in me. You did not even ask me how I am. You did not wait to ask me what I wanted. You ordered our order, got both our coffees, and told me to come and sit. I refused, and you told me to sit down and have the coffee before it got cold. Just like that, we were talking again. Laughing about what was hurtling through my brain at a hundred miles an hour just a minute ago. You tell me you will always buy me a coffee when I am mad at you. I said it’s not always going to work. I lied. It’s always going to work. There is nothing that is so the polar opposite of my anger as sitting at Fuelzone and drinking coffees while debating the existence of free will with you on a random Tuesday afternoon.

4. You had been sick for a week now. The most horrible cough, the kind that makes you sneeze like your dad, or your grandfather even. And everyone who knows you knows you love the Fuelzone cold coffee. Bhaiya has asked you, thrice now: “Aaj cold coffee?” And you keep having to say no. Today, the cold has turned into a mild irritant, just a scratch in your throat and you announce at lunch: “Guys, I think I can finally have cold coffee again.” We all go down and get our usual orders. We wait, excitedly, for yours. You order, we wait, and the coffee arrives in an almost pompous fashion. You take your first sip and we all cheer. We don’t care that everyone looks at us. This is a grand victory, and you emerged victorious in the war. It is a cause for celebration. I remember thinking to myself to never forget the small things. I remember buying you a sweet treat from Fuelzone every time you got a cold. I remember thinking how I wished it was always like this: I am always close enough to buy you a sweet treat and get you your favorite cold coffee, and you are always willing to do the same for me. What a beautiful, safe mundane joy. Fuelzone was our beautiful, safe, mundane joy.

5. The first time I came to Ashoka, I was so terrified that I did not speak to anyone. The place seemed larger than life, and I was seventeen years old. The reality of it all was hitting me like a brother after a terrible fight (everything hurt like hell and I could not complain to my mother because she would tell me that I chose this for myself). Right when we got to the mess, it began feeling too real. My heart felt heavy and I did not know how to tell my parents that I couldn’t live here, I couldn’t be here, I was sorry. Before I could think more, my dad got everyone coffee, and me a coffee and a lava cup. He told me that one day, I would be here at this exact time, buying coffee for myself before class, talking to my friends, carrying out the motions of the life of a university student. That was the first time I could imagine a life for myself at Ashoka, a life I would like to live. The simple vision of getting coffee for myself kept me going, because it represented a mature enough independence that let me care for myself, and such independence would mean that I am ready to be out alone in this big world. And I am ready. Fuelzone made me ready. For me, Ashoka begins and ends in Fuelzone.

• ashoka
• ASHOKA UNIVERSITY
• belonging
• coffee
• Fuelzone