Darkness

Hi, all!

My first day here was so eventfull that it deserves its own blog post:

8.30am. So here I was at Heathrow Airport, passing formality after formality. The final step was to go find the group meeting point where I would meet a representative of University of Essex. It so happened that this meeting point was at Terminal 3 and I was at Terminal 5. These terminals at Heathrow are infamously far away from each other. When I was on my way to the intra-airport shuttle train that runs between terminals, I found Aparna, who went on to become one of my two closest friends here. Both of us, new Uni of Essex students, began to make our way to Terminal 5.

Too soon, we hit a roadblock... the first of a long series that would follow during the course of the day. Luggage trolleys were not allowed on airport shuttles! So we had to haul our collective seven pieces of very heavy luggage into and out of the shuttle trains. When we managed to find new trolleys, they were the worst possible ones. We put all our focus and energies into exiting the shuttle station and locating the meeting point. Once we found it, there was no one there!!! Thankfully, we did locate them in some time. We were both on the 1pm bus and we requested to be put onto the 11am one. Big mistake!

The 11am bus was finally ready, they told us at 11.45. Just as we were about to enter, roadblock no. 2 came along and they announced that the bus had broken down. Back we went, into the airport, frustrated and low on energy.

An hour and a half later, they told us our replacement bus was here. Great! we thought. Luggage loaded, we sat comfortably in good seats on the upper of the double-decker. Another 20 minutes later, we were on our way. Just when we were ready to say 'Thank goodness!' and start enjoying the scenery, roadblock no. 3 showed up to add to our overflowing misery. Half way through, the bus got a FLAT TIRE!!!!!!!!!!!! In the middle of nowhere, for nearly two hours, we sometimes stood, sometimes sat on the insect-filled grass of the English countryside in chilly English weather, wondering what on earth we had done to deserve this fate. The only plus from this outing was that here I made another friend who also went on to become one of my closest friends, Abhilasha. In the meantime, they managed to call a professional tyre change mechanic to do what turned out to be quite a complex job. Finally, we hauled our exhausted bodies back into the bus. I slept soundly through the next hour or so. Finally, at nearly 4.30, we arrived at University of Essex.

Once we had picked up our keys, we began the arduous task of getting our bags into our rooms. Abhilasha and I were located in the North Towers, she in Rayleigh and I in Tawney while Aparna was to be in Harwich Court. Before parting, we decided to meet to grab a bite. I finally made it to my tower and then to my flat on the 12th floor. When I entered my room, roadblock no. 4, the most evil of them all, came at me so unexpectedly that it knocked me off my feet: loneliness.

I managed to hold my nerve till I told my father that I had reached my room safely. Then I broke down. Regret flooded me. I cursed myself for doing what I had just done. I had left behind a perfectly happy, cozy life full of people I loved for a life full of nothing but responsibility and despair, to be spent alone in a tiny room which I had to take care of singlehandedly, in a flat shared with strangers. I wanted to run. I wanted to go back.

I met Abhilasha for dinner. It was 7.30pm and a Sunday. Just the one restaurant was open: Happy Days Diner. I wasn't even hungry, which was lucky for me since there wasn't much I could eat there anyways. I used my food coupon to get a free coffee. We sat down and talked for a while, the exhaustion apparent on our faces and in our voices. I couldn't get myself to finish my coffee and she couldn't get through any more that half her hotdog. We soon said goodnight in the hope that we would bump into each other somewhere the next day.

I went back to my room half-heartedly, dreading the emptiness and the pressing silence. I steeled myself a bit and decided to unpack. Despite being bone-tired, I unpacked every single bag before I went to bed. Sleep, at least, was kind to me and came upon me quickly to relieve me of the horror of having to think any more about what had been, probably, one of the darkest days of my life.