The Playlist

Edited by: Pratyusha Gupta

This is an article about a 10-minute conversation. However, I feel uncomfortable just telling you what the conversation was without any context. For example, I cannot just tell you we were playing a playlist on a cheap speaker which coughed in the middle of every paragraph. I need to tell you that the playlist only had 5 songs, and we made it together after a few months of college. I cannot just tell you the room smelled like monsoon rain. I need to tell you that it smelled like monsoon because I had obsessively sprayed my new air freshener all over the room. 

*These are just snippets from our conversation, by the way. It feels invasive telling you everything that we talked about as I don’t really know you (no offence).*

Track 1: Cold/Mess (Prateek Kuhad)

Some of my friends and I were sitting in the blue light from my sunset lamp. The lamp was a Secret Santa gift. It was only half alive, since I broke its stand 15 days after Christmas. So, as a stand, we had to use the copy of Norwegian Wood on my table. The book was a gift too, with a note scribbled on its front page: I hope this changes your life as much as it did mine.

Someone said, “This polaroid is so nice, tell me everything about it.” and I smiled, looking at all the photos in my room. “That’s the photo we took when we got Mowgli for the first time. He was just a small puppy who could barely walk.” 

There were new characters in the pictures now. Friends I made in the first few months of University. They were on the wall with friends I made in kindergarten and high school. They all knew different versions of me. Some of them knew the version of me that used to google jokes every day to recite on the school bus. Some of them knew the version of me that loved (loves) Mogu Mogu. I read somewhere that every cell in your body changes after 7 years. So, by that logic, I must have changed so much. Every version is like a canopy over the next, but yet, even if everything changed, some things still feel the same. Every now and then, an old character would make a cameo, and I would be converted back to a self that I haven’t encountered in a while. Then, I would be left wondering: which version of me is a mask over the other and which is the real one? What cells stayed intact in the transition from middle school to senior school and then to college? 

You must be wondering by now what is so special about those 10 minutes that I felt compelled to write a whole article about it. The thing is, the content of the conversation is not the crux of this article. The reason that 10 minutes mattered is because…well, I can’t show you all the eggs in my basket in the first few words, now, can I? (HC minimum word count is 800 so tolerate me till there.) 

Track 2: Yellow Paper Daisies (When Chai Meets Toast)

“What did you think of me when you first saw me?” I voiced.

“I wasn’t sure if you liked me,” and “I thought you were sweet but also kind of scary,” We all laughed. It’s funny how much time we spend overthinking if people are mad at us or if they hate us when for the most part their mood is a reflection of them and not us. 

I think about this a lot. I am not someone who comes off as very sweet the first time you meet me. Or so I have been told. People think I dislike them because I don’t talk to them. But, really, the only reason I don’t talk to them is because I think they will dislike me. It is a constant paradox that I can never escape because there is no base case in this recursive function. (I have a computer science quiz in 2 days, I apologize. Also, I am pretty sure I used that wrong.)

On the other side of the room, one of my friends fidgeted with the cardboard puzzle house I made. The reason I am mentioning this, out of nowhere, is because I am quite proud of my bargaining skills when buying the puzzle. (It was 150, and I got it for 100. When I told my mom, she told me she would have gotten it for 20. So, my self confidence has really taken a hit and I am looking for some validation. Oh, hold up, I am getting a call from my editor.)

Track 3: Apocalypse (Cigarettes After Sex)

**This article is solely for the purpose of giving advice and sharing my experiences. In no way, shape or form is the author searching for any form of validation related to any of her skills.**

“Let’s go to Delhi and get Boba Tea tomorrow.” I said, and we all did a mental calculation of how much work we will miss. It was a lot. (We still went to Delhi the next day, by the way.) I first had boba tea in MKT (AMA cafe) in the first month. “I like how Ashoka has these cultural things of its own,” I said. My friend added, “MKT, Boba Tea, that one song by Ritwiz, Thursday nights.”

I feel like Ashoka adds these cultural things to your spectrum, until there is a common thread joining all of us, no matter how different we really are. Sometimes, I wonder if half the things I have started developing a fondness for in university is because I actually like them, or I like the sense of belongingness they provide me.

That’s the first thing you struggle with when you come to college: belonging somewhere. You join all the clubs in the World, and attend all the mixers and movie nights looking for a conversation, a person, a place. Anything to feel like you are not alone, that home isn’t that far away. Most conversations in the beginning of college are surface level. Usually, only three questions. “What’s your name?”, “What’s your major?” and “Where are you from?” And then you move on.

Track 4: Sofia (Clairo)

“Did you study for the EPS quiz?” 

“Nope. I am beyond all these mortal concepts.” 

I only heard the conversation in the background now. Like a melody playing in the backdrop of my thoughts. I just kept looking back and forth at my polaroids. Every photo, every story. There were people from all parts of my life. People who knew me when I cried after getting 99/100 (Yes, I was that one person in school). People who knew me when my overthinking got the best of me. People who helped me out of it. All my friends from college were there, too.

It wasn’t easy finding them in the pool of surface-level conversations. It wasn’t easy believing that they were hanging out with me because they wanted to, and not because they felt forced to because of some social conventions. In fact, I still had lurking doubts.

And yet, as I looked at the polaroids, under the blue sunlight lamp light and listened to the song on the playlist, it was the first time I realized: I finally found space in this 25-acre campus for the college-me. Until now, it always felt like the high school version was trapped in the wrong place, and it struggled to run back home every chance it got. It couldn’t adapt to college. It didn’t belong in college.

After these 10 minutes of a flickering conversation between our deepest thoughts and surface-level jabberings, after these 10 minutes of being in a room where everything was mine, where every story was mine, every person was mine to remember, it finally felt like I wasn’t struggling to run back home the first chance I got. 

Track 5: Hum toh Udd Gaye (Ritwizz)

Well, that’s that, then.

The conversation continued even after those 10 minutes. We went to MKT the next day. I went home that weekend, and my friends texted, “When are you coming back? Missing you.” And things continued the way they were. Just one thing changed. Soon after, when I went back home, I started missing college. And, well, how lucky am I that I have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. 

(Then again, I live in Noida, so it’s not that hard. It’s just 2.5 hours away. I don’t know why I am being so dramatic.)

(I failed my computer science quiz by the way.)

Fin.

• Ashoka University
• college
• friendship
• lost
• songs