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The Dark Cloud

This is my entry for https://housing.com/in

Sometimes it happens that the most difficult of the times are cut short by few people who may or may not do much in real but the boost in morale they pump in you at those times in much more than any real thing any real person could do on any real day. This takes me back down on the memory lane to the fourth semester of my graduation in the summer of 2013. It was a dark semester for me overall. I was down for a month with typhoid in addition to a half month till it was diagnosed. Then just ten days prior to my exams, I was left with a heap of course to go through, a load of material to learn, and an infinite amount of panic.

Thanks to my very lovely friends, it did get a little smooth in the middle. I got the "banned" notes which were just like cheat codes to my game altogether. But this story is not about it. This is the story of how some friends get into your trouble without giving any second thoughts and drag you out from the dark using a very strong mental rope.

We had just come out of the examination hall after our microeconomics paper. It went okay enough to pass which was a relief for me. I was happy. Just after the exam, we had to sign the internal assessment marks. I was not scared of that as I already submitted the minimum required assignments to pass and the teachers told me it had all been taken care of. So I went with a smile to the window and started searching for my name in the register. As my fingers ran down vertically for my name and then horizontally for my marks, my growing anxiety burst into horror when I saw 9 out of 25 in microeconomics. I was failing by one mark. But how on earth was it even possible? I emailed my second assignment to the teacher after a brief discussion on my problem over the phone. I was furious and on top of my panic level. I was sweating out of fear thinking what would happen if I had to repeat? A thousand questions with a "what if" beginning were bouncing in my head.

Just then my friend Shivanshu came along and he knew how to calm me down. I have a bad mouth when it gets on my nerve and I get on it very easily. But then he calmed me down. He took me out of college and we sat at our regular tea shop, in spite of my reluctance. As the hot glasses came into our hands, he told me to calm down and think. He told me then that anger is just like a dark cloud. A very dense dark cloud. It covers all the bright sun. There is sun up there, but all that the people could see is the darkness. Until and unless we clear that cloud, we would never be able to get hold of the sunlight. That did help me calm.

We sat there for fifteen or twenty minutes and then we went to talk to the teachers. We cleared off all the confusion and I got decent enough marks for an emailed assignment. But that roadside tea and that advice became memorable. It filled me of a kind of optimism that I carry even today. I wonder how long it would have taken me to clear off that cloud if I did not have that tea that day. How long would it have taken me to sort it all by myself. Even though we had an exam the day after, he stood by me. He did not have to, but he did. I guess that's what friends are for.

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