The ‘Alex Page’ Series – Part 3

Continued…

Maryland College Of Commerce (MCC).

chirp chirp chirp… Alex woke up with a start with the wake up sounds of the tiny sparrows residing in the ashoka trees bang outside Alex’s balcony . It was five in the morning. One month passed by in a whoosh and it was the day Alex will be attending his first day in junior college. It was the first day Alex will be travelling by the local trains to attend college. He was excited but he was nervous too. Nervous because he will be meeting new people, nervous because he was afraid that he will not be able to make friends just because he was from the sleepy village town of Amby Valley, nervous because it will be his first day of his college life.

Never in his school life, Alex had interacted with girls. He used to be very afraid of girls. If at all, the only interaction he used to have with them was – give a smile and mind his own his business. He used to be so nervous, he used to shiver with fear whenever he was to face a Venus. For him chatting with girls were a distant dream and making friends with them was much more far! However he hoped that at least in college he will make away with this ‘disease’.

Travelling to Maryland was a tedious process, a process of jumping inside a hot box of moving iron in a span of 15 seconds along with another 40 people, filled with two legged creatures with sweat running down from every visible part of their body. With age old fans covered with dust, leafs rotating inside which never blew air. These were the local trains which chugged from Amby valley to the city of Maryland. These were the trains which never obeyed their time. These were the trains which were termed ‘The lifeline of Maryland’. Almost ninety percent of people working in Maryland were from the suburban cities of Amby valley, Santa Cruz, Churchgate, Banderas, Elphinstone, who used the lifeline to reach Maryland. The trains carried double their capacity of passengers. There used to be at least twenty accidents every month. Alex had to face all these odds in a tiring forty five minute journey from Valley. This was the reason Clara was not interested in sending her son to Maryland.

Page accompanied Alex to MCC to make him comfortable on the first day.

Big walls painted in cream and brown, students sitting on bikes parked in a line on one side of the road, a police station on the other, a barren land with tid bits of grass bang outside the entrance, bustling with students, some zooming on bikes with their friends, some in cars, some talking endlessly in their cell phones before a board which said – Cell Phones Strictly Prohibited Inside College Premises According to University Regulations. MARYLAND COLLEGE OF COMMERCE written boldly in black on a big board on the front… MCC was already ‘awake’ with lectures, canteens and ‘bunking’!

Five rows, three large windows on one side, nine fans rotating in slow pace, a big blackboard with charts of human skeleton, atoms, molecules and atom bombs,charts in pink yellow and white, the classroom was already filled with the new faces, everything was same as school except one thing, you did not have to wear uniforms!

Alex decided to do something he had never dared to do. He sat on the first bench. First bench of the third row. He thought SOMETHING will change in him if he sits in the front. Good effort!

trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiinngggggGG!! the bell rang. Students on their seats, a short dark haired guy wearing spectacles with big glasses sat next to Alex. Both of them exchanged smiles, introduced each other and then kept mum.

A tall middle-aged man with files, a pair of chalks, a duster entered the room. It was the professor. He took a long look around the whole class as if he was looking for some suspect criminal.

“Good morning stoodents!” said he with a big gleaming smile. The smile was so broad that one could see the texture of his teeth. It was stained in red color with one devils teeth missing.

“Good morning sir'” replied the stoodents in a low voice.

“i am sure you people had your breakfast..yeah?”

“Good morning sir!!!!!” the class replied back in their full might.

“Now everyone introduce yourself one by one starting from the first bench”

As soon as Alex heard this, a chill ran down his spine, beads of sweat on his forehead.

He slowly shifted to the last bench. Facing the crowd made him shiver ;)…

To Be Continued..