From 3 bags to 3000

Only once had I stayed up the whole night before. I was in school, 8th standard. India was celebrating her 50th I-Day and there were celebrations all night long.
It is a different matter, that for the following one year or so, every test and exam had one compulsory question in either English or Kannada papers:
'Write an essay on the I-Day celebrations in your school or Write a letter to your friend informing him/her about the ...'
I had written a letter to a new girl everytime!

Now I didn't want to sleep. I had to get up at 5 in the morning anyway. It was our last chance to glide over the IIT. The following morning I would be ready with bags on my back. I opened the door of my room and kept it ajar. There was cool breeze blowing outside. Not everybody had slept. A familiar song was audible from a distant room. I laid down and reveled in the experience. Thoughts of the first day when I had come carrying three bags sleeked through the pages of my memory. I thought I'll write a blog; I'll name it 'From 3 bags to 3000'.
'Why 3000?', I had thought.
'3000 bags-full of memory', I had justified.

'Buddy!', I had yelled across another block of our hostel. It was his nick-name. He hadn't slept too. But then he did it regularly. But today I felt a strange admiration for the man. Not sleeping, I felt, was not something ordinary.

'Who are all coming today?', he asked with a grand smile.

His smile had a short story to say. The previous day, I had woken up 10 people, almost all of whom kicked my arse.

The plane didn't arrive that day and all of them had lost, as one of them would often remark, the most precious sleeping period of the day, early morning!

So, today I made cautious advances to the various rooms, tapped the doors and stood at some distance. I had expected the answers. Some were diplomatic with either a severe head-ache or a leg pain while others made their point clear with 'No, no way. I wan't to sleep'. But all of them had red eyes and swollen faces.
'I'll include these things in the blog', I thought.

Finally only three of us managed and made it to the glider. However, there was one more strong motivation to make it to the air-strip.

'We would have to contact one Mr. Surya to make arrangements for gliding', buddy had told me a few days before. However when he eventually contacted Mr. Surya, it turned out that it was Ms. Suryaa and not Mr.
I could see the excitement in his eyes when he told me this. May be he saw that in mine!

So, equally motivated, we cycled our way to the air-strip. After parking our cycles at the stand, we got into a jeep that took us to some kind of a shelter half a km away where we were supposed to wait for the glider and our turn to arrive. We all sat there and so did Ms. Surya. She had carried along a book and a pen with her.

I sat there and saw buddy and the other guy talking to her. Then I thought seeing was unnecessary, I'll just listen to what they speak and closed my eyes. I thought I was hearing everything they spoke. I saw pictures. They moved. A story made itself up and was showing in front of my eyes. I had fallen asleep. The sleepless night was taking its toll.
Suddenly, I heard a clear ringing laughter and a little push waking me up. They were still talking.

I was given a pen in my hand and was asked to sign somewhere. I started going through the sheet of paper. I had to agree that 'I alone would be responsible for my death or loss of limbs resulting from an accident while gliding and neither IIT nor the Govt. of India would take any responsibility whatsoever in case...'

Again I heard laughter. This time it was louder.
I signed and dozed away.

Only later did I realize that they had laughed at my attempting to sign the document with a pen upside down!

Eventually, the plane came, we glided, thought of taking a photograph with Ms. Surya, only succeeding in giving her the camera to click one of ours; and I finally left IIT after not the sleeping the following night too..

I didn't cry.
I thought I would, but I didn't.
I had done that the previous evening when no one was around!