LINGERING SHADOW

Time passed away in swift listlessness, although the activities in the dorm and the gathering of friends in the evening gave the color of vivacity. There was no academic exercise except that he had recently posted a typescript entitled” Structure and Composition of Ribosomal DNA…’’ to the Journal of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK. It was acknowledged to have been received on June 14.1973, vide paper no.298/73.

While packing he had to select some items and leave behind others. He gave away his table lamp and tennis racket to Amitabh and a few books to Dhiraj. Some garments had to be left in a box near Durham. Four footlockers were packed. He called International Sea and Air Shipping Corporation to arrange for shipping them to India.

With the relentless movements of events, he came to a pass where the rebellion in him died. And, the expanse of the future that he could conjure up looked indolently blurred. The days did not appear to be compartmentalized in terms of specific activities. They appeared to be mixed upon the foamy layer as the swaying waves unite on the surface of the ocean. But left in these days was something still boundless, gripping, haggard, unattainable, and unrealizable. It was this ‘something’ that had created a fathomless chasm in his heart and gave him a faint sting, an awful knot, a silent shriek.

 On the morning of the final day, he woke to a haunting emptiness of the room. That was not the day to plunge into the vortex of emotions. But in his subconscious mind lay the interconnectedness of events, of thoughts, efforts, and results. He knew the inexorable fact that he was leaving Chapel Hill where his creativity was nurtured, where many changes occurred not by mutation but by gradual evolution, where many traditional concepts became irrelevant, if not obsolete. It was a place where he saw for himself the prevailing of truth in the market place of ideas. It was this place where fraternization grew like anything. From here he had taken in his mind so many snapshots of the shimmering, purple splendor of the sunsets of fall, golden glory of summer dawn, myriads of formations of clouds….