As if to make life more miserable for an already battered poor soul, I heard the train screech to a halt. One look outside and it became clear as a glass that it is a transit station. I yawned with disinterest, pretty unhappy with how I’m being a muted spectator to everything around me. A small lamp post in a corner of the station fighting the magnificent darkness around it, knowing very well the best of the possible outcomes seemed to mock my meek surrender to the course of events. As if dismissing the insipid darkness and shoving my deploration with majesty, out emerged a silhouette through the crowd progressing briskly but without a hint of violation of poise or grace. A lurid inter mixture of a rush of excitement and nervousness increased in the tiniest of my nerves with each step of this ravishing young lady towards me which ended in a final halt inches close to me and a greeting with a dulcet voice. An already awed narrator got a better view of her person in that semi-darkness which was so very easy to fantasize as the cliched “candle lit” place. She easily had the loveliest of the faces I’d ever seen in my rather long fight with life. The figure-hugging outfit she had put on made an honest reconstruction of every inch of her delicate person. Without sounding too poetic, I thought her long flowing hair caressing her bosom struggling to stay in place in the spate of the delicate winds, was blacker than the deadliest of darknesses. A mild tantalizing fragrance reminded me of the blind yet beautiful girl from the famous Ruskin Bond’s “Girl on the Train” with an anti-climax!

Things started to appear different, so differently that the neighbor no longer appeared irritating nor did the surroundings gloomy. I had easily been bowled over by such an intimidatingly wonderful mixture of beauty and figure. In a life where I’d been blessed with so few an interesting companions, I had in front of me this damsel as my co-passenger on this wonderful starry night. After all, I mused and said to myself, the Almighty is reasonably fair! Hesitatingly, I started a “sounding-to-be casual” conversation and she’d, I must say no girly reservations, pleasantly surprising me. For her destination she carried too little of belongings resembling her wonderful slender waist adding to the mystic aura about her. A very brief casual chatter and we were at absolute ease with each other speaking as if we’d known each other for a lifetime. It had struck to me how increasingly difficult it used to get for me previously as a conversation with a girl progressed. “Then why this ease, why this feel-at-home feeling?!” I wondered. “Is this a hallucination, is it infatuation or is this what they call love at first sight?” Even with all those years of instruction of the best of the sciences which told me that love is no more than a chemical, a state of trans came down walking over marauding me! For her beauty I thought, she was over intelligent and yet one has to call her “understanding- caring” and the first soul to sympathize with my life which had been thoroughly full of material riches sans happiness. My intuitions had never failed me and on this special occasion, I felt that she did ‘feel’ for me and is just a matter of time before something interesting happened! After a prolonged yet lively and romantic conversation which raised some eyebrows in that compartment-la-home, we wished each other goodnight retiring to our own places to put the elaborate dreams temporarily to rest.

For someone who has been to himself more often than not, I thought, the next morning, “has the ‘day’ arrived?” It pleasantly reminded me of the rather unrealistic astrology message in a Vodafone Commercial about meeting soul mate in the elevator. “Is this wonderful train my elevator ?” I asked myself as I prepared to get down to be with the girl of my dreams for the remainder of the longish journey. My nonchalant smile suddenly disappeared as an elderly lady greeted me with a big smile as I got down. The night was indeed long given how much I waited for the dawn to dawn upon, but certainly it wasn’t long enough to transform the nymph into this wrinkled lady! My prospective soul mate had been too gentle to be the fiery Keyzer Soze to have disappeared this very cleanly and pristinely. Intriguingly enough however, my baggage with those “wretched material riches” vanished into thin air.

The very arrival of the day, brings in passion and excitement into the otherwise dull and drab student lives characterized by battering labs and lecs. Even as I cycle along to catch up with my classes in the morning, I get to see on the foggy and misty roads guyz and gals from adjoining instis lining up. Indeed,all roads lead to IITKanpur on antaragni! Therez a slight drizzle in the afternoon threateningly seeming to play foul with the party plans . But after a while, everythin becomes clear and the making the weather even more pleasant and ready for the big day!
One thoroughly satisfying feature of the event every year is the sudden upsurge of the sex ratio out in the campus. The otherwise starved boys suddenly get to see the most lovelist of the girls these few days. Surprisingly enough, we also get to see the otherwise lazy boyz who have eluded bath suddenly taking showers, getting into their best of the dresses and doing anything and everything that has the remotest possibilty to make them look better in their attemps to woo some girl ! Attitude T-shirts made splly for antaragni get to be seen everywhere. There is a slight unmistakable expression of happiness and excitement on every face out in the campus. As I go out the day before to canteen at 2am, part of my daily routine, I was pleasantly taken by surprise when I saw people singing to the tunes of MTV numbers in the chilling night. It dint take me long to realise that the antaragni “enthu” has set in already!

The formal opening show started off at 6 in the evening. The director and the cultural secy made regular speeches.

We then proceded to the open grnds where lots of informals take place. As we moved on the roads, i remained awestruck throghout the walk for we came across numerous stunning beauties!! We were roaming in the lawns, eyeing even more girls when we came across a small outlet of a management training institute.They were challenging the guyz around with mathematics problems against a reward of Rs50. I go out, rack my brains up but with no +ve result. My friend then tries out his hand and throws out the soln in an amazing time with a mischievious smile. The guy at the counter gives a puzzled look shocked at his brains. With a camouflage of expressions of disbelief and a false grin ,he quietly hands over the promised money. We erupt in joy–the amount is immaterial but what a way to earn and party!! We make a trip around the huge ground glancing at the malls set up for the evening not forgetting the ground’s general drabness on the regular days. What a difference antaragni makes!!

The evening left us very tired and in no mood of any further adventuring when some friends suddenly came up and forced my way into Calypso,the disco. The atmosphere inside was just electrifying with the adrenaline levels running high everywhere. The lucky gones got to dance with girls and the “even luckier” managed it alone or with fellow boys (dont mistake me for something!!!) The DJ mixed it well making the night memorable.

Day 1 came to an end with the performances even better than anticipated! What does Day2 have in store for us? something bigger??! letz see!!