#ankit kulshrestha | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

writerspit · 7 years ago

Text

Not nostalgia

In the morning, I needed to go to my college to get some application forms signed. I put on my blue denim shirt ,the same I wore yesterday when we went to visit a mall to kill our time, and the same rugged blue white shaded jeans that is tighter than others that I bought to hold the tongue of those who made me double-think about my jean fitting. Got my applications printed and reached to scooty stand in hostel parking. As foreseeable as it could be, I found its seat covered with those filthy, muddy and slender limbs. I loathe those creatures. But in spite of that I worship one of them. I rubbed it with a piece of cloth. With each effort they became more and more obscure and finally enough to press my butt against it and ride my way to collage. I parked it in collage parking in front of second block still being skeptical and quashing my desires to park it beneath the trees.Because that area was wet enough to drown me four inch into the mud due to an untimely drizzle in the morning. After four months, I was walking on the same land, same grass, same gravels, same cobblestones, same pavement block and i felt nothing.Then I heard a car horn honk and I turn back. I’m still thinking what did I expect some girl asking me to hop in and offering me a quick trip to the north campus before entering dull, tedious and weary schedule of south campus. Its not possible.Schedule is over and I had already finished that schedule seven months back after following it for three and a half year. What then nostalgia. No that’s not possible either. Because those things never happened. Whatever this feeling was, i needed to reach my training office where I have been going for four months. I needed to hurry up. So I went into the office and asked madam to get it signed and stamped by HOD.She assured me she will get it done perhaps assuming it a work of infinite window. Well It was not.I need it by tomorrow. But I tell her this.

After nine miles of journey, horrible security screening and grim scanning of my belongings, I reached inside the training campus. After covering few hundred meters and skipping the HR office, there came an aisle having two entry points. Each side of the aisle is surrounded by lawn. The Flowers,trees and plants I can't tell names of. I entered through one of the entry points discerning those black and white pavement blocks leading to the canteen. As I looked ahead, my view caught a series of flower baskets hanging in an unending sequence. And when that aisle ended, one flower pot was missing. I guided myself to the canteen door and got myself on the first floor above the canteen only to find the student sitting area, a temporary dwelling place for all those interns who are themselves shirks or their mentors are, closed. In my case,we both are. Now I needed to reverse myself back to the HR office.

As I came back treading on the same path or aisle, I again noticed that one missed flower pot and gratuitously looked for it. Stepping on those black and white blocks, I ended up with a familiar skepticism at the same point when the way scissored into two. Trying to choose my way out, I realized for the first time that none of that scissors’ hands ends at HR office front but cleverly bent around it. It was like someone paused a clapping hand while wrists touching and palms and fingers wide open and office front in the middle ready to get squeezed. And then I saw a flower. I kept looking at it. It wasn’t a flower. It was a puddle which reflected my past happenings and not-happenings.

-Ankit Kulshrestha

10 notes · View notes

writerspit · 7 years ago

Text

Torn between embarrassment and Euphoria

Right now, I’m in a state of embarrassing but euphoric disarray. Insane combination one would say. In the morning when I left for the placement drive for teaching job conducted by an educational institution, I really didn’t think about my previous long account of failures in getting any placement in dozens of companies I sat. I was careless and nonchalant as I have always been, without preparation, I brought with me five copies of resume`, a pile of evidences of my academic ventures and one guy who clashed with me while getting all these photocopied in a shop. We reached the venue and entered different rooms as our company’s names didn’t match. But before entering the room, I found three- four guys donning dark black blazer, an extra wardrobe along with same white shirt and black trousers that I had put on, standing at the gate as gatekeepers.

“Can I go inside” I asked one of them. The guy pointing his index finger towards the gate, the other side of which was echoing with an old and tired but fervent voice, nodded with an imperceptible ‘Yes’. I entered the room and started looking for a chair in the vicinity so that I don’t disturb the instructor. Though I found three chairs in a row closest to the gate, I didn’t dare to sit in any of those. An unfamiliar rotating writing tablet wooden frame was fitted in those chairs from one arm to the other. I could only think myself jumping from the backside plunging my feet through wooden frame and then providing my spinal with stiff back support of the chair, which was of course inappropriate considering this was a placement drive not an animal circus led by a monkey. So, I decided to sit behind this girl in same formal dress like me with her glasses perching in her upper side of nose. But then I realized the chair behind the girl was not different from those three chairs before her. But my chair searching was finished, it had already taken too much time.I should not be so annoyingly meticulous. But I am not. I just don’t know this new chair fitted with wooden frame which is different from others. I have seen the ones with small size writing frames fitted on only one arm but this one was fucking arm to arm. I had to take stance and I dared to go to the chair and try to rotate the writing frame with my hand placed under it in the middle. First it meddled with the girl’s chair’s back support but as she shifted the chair, it rotated vertically along the arm nearer to me surprisingly to my relief. And finally I embarked on the chair with sweaty ass drenching the base up to two inch ,I swear.

The instructor completed preplacement talk with, “You can choose any subjects from maths, physics, chemistry..........” Then asked to raise the hand whoever wants to appear in maths then physics ,then............... Someone from the students asked if economics is a choice and he denied shaking his head. Then both lost in uninteresting discussion. But here, I had no fucking idea what was happening. I asked a girl in pink suit sitting besides me in an alienated place along the aisle between my row and second row. “ Do we need to choose a subject.” She said “Yes”. “ Have you already filled the choice” I asked. “No, we are told now only” she said satiating my query. And I took a sigh of relief.

Then my mind raised another query in a second ‘ Which subject should I choose and serendipitously the instructor continued “ Post graduates are allowed to choose their major subject only.” But I’m no post graduate. Eventually, the girl with the glasses turned back and asked whether only post graduates are allowed. “ I am B.com. Which subject I should choose” . “ I don’t know. I am BE.” “ Oh you are too pursuing B.com. Which college”. “No, I’m doing B.E.,engineering you know.” Which trade she asked and I said “ECE”. “But we are not graduates” she continued. “ Graduate are eligible but postgraduates have to choose their major subject” The girl in pink suit answered. “ But I’m an engineer. which subject i should choose among these. I studied these just as additional subject in first year. That’s it.” I said without expecting any reply. But the girl in pink suit said “ which stream”.” ECE, Electronics and communication” I answered.

“ Didn’t you get a job?” she said bluntly and I couldn’t react for a moment thinking how can she say that. You don’t ask an unemployed, didn’t you get a job. Just like you don’t ask an amputee, didn’t you get limbs. You just don’t do that.These are basic etiquettes. Basic rules about which this whole world revolves. But she was of course lacking in them. I wanted to react critically but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead I looked downside drooping my eyelids on my rueful eyes, elongating my face out of shame. I must be looking like a puppy when it doesn’t get milk. She sympathized but what the fuck. You can’t extinguish the fire having water in one hand and kerosene in the other.

But now sitting in my hostel I can’t stop thinking about her. I barely remember details of her suit. But I remember details of her face. Fair,, cheeks little bulging out and a big black nevus mole between her left nostril and lips.

-Ankit Kulshrestha

#cant stop thinking #annoying #not love #embarrassment #jobless #unemployed #placement #writercreed #poet on tumblr #poets on tumblr #story #story writing #excerpt from a book i'll never write #writer on tumblr #writing #ankit kulshrestha

3 notes · View notes