I'll miss you, Scholars Avenue

Today is a very special day. On this 17th day of April, 2007, about 2 years after we conceived it, 'The Scholars' Avenue' (more popularly known as ScholsAve), IIT Kharagpur's campus newspaper, has reached out to every single room on campus. To be very honest, till date, I've never dreamt of going to, say, MIT or Stanford or Berkeley. For that matter, I don't dream about 'achievements' because they're so evanescent that the bar just keeps getting raised every time you reach a 'target'. What I, however, did say to Ali Da (Anuj Dayal, for the uninitiated) on one chilly night after a ScholsAve meeting in the Insti Foyer, "Its my dream to see an issue per room". Pat came the reply, "Same here". For once, I'd say - "The dream has come true".

Today, as I walked with Buzz (Basant, my fellow Executive Editor) on the Scholars' Avenue, with a couple of Scholars' Avenues in my hand (pun intended), there was this excitement juxtaposed with a sense of longing. Damn! This is it - I won't be able to do this any more.

I'll miss interviewing the bigwigs coming to campus.

I'll miss interviewing the mavericks and achievers inside campus.

I'll miss writing out the interview and going over it a zillion times before posting it on the group e-mail.

I'll miss threatening fellow batchmates and juniors with yellow journalism.

I'll miss reassuring them soon after with a "But this would be off the record!"

I'll miss singing Hindi numbers, both old and new, at the top of my voice and from the bottom of my heart with the ScholsAve junta on trips to the beach.

I'll especially miss singing "Jungle, jungle baat chali hai, pata chala hai - Arre chaddi pehenke phool khila hai, phool khila hai!" with Sunny.

I'll miss Ali Da getting high on the car, and sleeping through the real fun on the beach.

I'll miss being dead tired and sleeping on Aravind's shoulder on the way back.

I'll miss poring through the issue after layout, searching for every extra blankspace character, and every spelling mistake, and be quick to point out to the ever-restless Marathe.

I'll miss Marathe's lessons on the Queen's English after every email on every thread in the group.

I'll miss the two-hour chats with Sunny on "Lets make things better".

I'll miss Shanks popping in with a "Hey Chinto!" on GTalk during every layout.

I'll miss saying, "Baf! My darling!" to Baffling.

I'll miss Mangu's sense of humour and Dash's sheer flamboyance.

I'll miss Aravind's Mallu pronounciation of Robin as 'Row-bin'.

I'll miss Pranesh's, Vinayak's, Sheekha's, Sreeja's and Swati's sweet smiles.

I'll miss the cool nicks - Myth for Mithun and Bish for Bishnoi.

I'll miss Srinath's and DC's serious discussions on rock, even though I don't get a word of it.

I'll miss AVN's T-Shirt Association.

I'll miss Mickey Kedia's "Cheers, cheers, and more cheers" after every email.

I'll miss the power to reach out to every student inside IIT Kharagpur and every alumni beyond it.

I'll miss you, Scholars Avenue.