The Alarm Clock

Nine years ago,I started using my first alarm clock.Today nine years laterI bought a new one.It's just an ordinary alarm clock,with three hands and a "snooze light".There's nothing new about someone buying an alarm clock.Clocks stop working,you lose them and hence you buy a new one.Now I bought it specifically for a reason.

Nine years ago on this day a 17 year old entered the campus of a very prestigious college in South India.But she had fallen in love with that place years before that.It was the same college her dad and sister had graduated from.A charismatic Mechanical engineer and a brilliant aeronautical scientist had come out the college.She was sure she would make it big in her own.It was her rite of passage,this college.
She looked around and wondered if her dad had walked the same steps up to the classes.If her sister had sit in those classes eyes wide open as she sat today.She knew she belonged there.

With her;had come a tiny blue alarm clock.With seven girls stacked in room,it was absolutely necessary to wake up early if you believed in bathing in the morning (which she did).The little alarm was confined to the room,the owner did not venture out much (lest you get caught by a senior).
But in the second year,the little alarm found her way to main study hall.Now the owner was a senior in her own right and hence she wasn't bothered about getting ragged.Both of them sat through exams and assignments.The little alarm woke up birthday babies at sharp twelve.Some times there were cakes and gifts.Some times it was just a candle and cookies soaked in strawberry jam sprinkled with sugar.

As time moved on mobile phones entered the scene,no one needed a silly alarm clock to tell the time or wake them up.So the little alarm clock was proudly placed in the main hall where students filed in to study.Girls checked her to see if it was time to sleep,call home or boyfriends.And the new kids thought of the alarm clock as a gift from the hostel owner and some silly fresher said that out aloud.The owner of the little blue alarmed stormed out from her den and scolded the fresher for trying to make a blatant statement like that.
Now the alarm clock was never funded by her owner.The only time the owner bought her batteries was just the first time.Later on the batteries too drained to be used for walkman's were donated to the alarm clock..Oh yes the CD's were a new thingand phones still didnt have mp3 player.The first mp3 player we saw, was from KL and was 128 MB memory.Yes,we used walkman's with cassettes.Now there is no previous or next buttons on a walkman.But someone had found an alternative;
press together rewind and play together.Voila!The tape would start playing from the previous track.

I had left the alarm clock at my hostel.My juniors used it and it still sits there on the window sill which over look the road.The little alarm clock which stood by me as I waded (sometimes drowning) through subjects and relationships.Today as I was shopping for some household stuff,I remembered,"Gosh it's 9 years,Almost a decade after life gave my bestfriends;my room mates."This episode is not complete without the girls,they loved the alarm clock almost as much as I did and used it more than me.Somehow buying the alarm clock,I try to bring all those memories together.Rewind and play again thoseepisodes.Preserve those beautiful moments of life,so that every passing second I can cherish them.