A Social Automaton (Convocation Diaries Pt. 2)

From the Convocation Diaries

I was beaming with a certain self-satisfying smile akin to a certain cooler moment which is attainable upon pursing water in between your tongue and the cheeks during extreme thirst. I’d just stepped foot in the vicinity of my alma mater! With a natural gaiety in my gait and a heartiness in my heartbeat, I trotted closer to the campus I had moused in for five years.

My distance from the university building was being reduced with each step that I took towards it. After a sustained exercise in that direction, the first familiar faces were gaining visibility in the scope of my eyes. I held my gaze with the persons to who those faces belonged, long enough to notify each other of mutual recognition, but such did not convert into the social phenomena that greeting and wishing is.

But such a scenario was highly unstable as is usually the case and is bound to quickly give way to a pandemonium of frantic emotions expressing wonder, warmth and joyous feelings between two persons often exchanged socially and which includes such elements as from the staid and cold, “Hello! How are you?” to the chest shattering hugs.

It was charming to see familiar faces bob in front of my eyes once again as if puzzle pieces were emerging on the blank slate of my memory. They kept floating up at different spots in an ocean of mental creations as they circled in my head reminding me of instances and incidents experienced with each of those faces before in the last 5 years. They reminded me of the talks I had with them, my walks around in the university campus during which I might have encountered them; breezing in the gusts of memory flowing through like a river.

As each of those faces kept emerging, my interactions were increasing and verbal exchanges dwelt from the customary “hello”, an expression that can engage two people together for sometime to a full blown crash-course in learning of the other person's life in the time that went by. Following the greetings, questions came up next as part of the crash course as above mentioned, often mixing them with a hint of interest and curiosity to make it seem as if they had been genuinely asked. As the day progressed, I lost count of the number of people who I had met with and declared my campus presence to.

I was rambling around in the campus when I saw one of my juniors in the university. As I was walking towards him, his right hand arose (naturally or automatically?) and had only slightly came forward when it stopped, because he was having his afternoon meal and therefore his hand was wrapped in a paint of curry. So the handshake did not occur. If it had happened, then he might have uttered the “hello” greeting and as I had been socially trained to perfection by now, I would have replied with the oft-repeated, “I am doing great”.

But he did not exclaim the said greeting and before he could start, I automatically blurted out, “I am doing great.” The social folly of it was immense in my opinion and I almost chuckled inside my heart’s left ventricle. Before the still mouth-shut junior could comprehend and make sense of my reply and say something, I quickly, added, “You must also be doing great, I hope?"

You should already know the answer to what he must have said.

I went out to buy some cigarettes and laughed to myself.

Image from here.