So-Weak Boundaries
It is the year 2073, and to the great surprise of its alumni, Ashoka University stands tall and proud, having withstood duststorms, Twitter storms and whatever ominous evil the fumigation schedule defeats.
In honour of the Mars Exchange Orientation Week, @auconfessions has released from its archives some never seen before content from 50 years ago.
Help! I Told Her All My Childhood Trauma and Now We Keep Sending Each Other ‘We Should Call’ But Never Do
We thought we were best friends, soul sisters. Grew up in the same city, went to the same interschool competitions, have the same super niche but actually super mainstream taste in music. Our eight-hour-long zoom calls just made sense. We clicked so naturally. It was orientation week. The rush of thinking you get to decide your first term classes, playing skribbl.io with 10 people on discord and thinking this is truly the peak of our youth. In all that, the familiarity I found in someone who knew which infographic I took my hot takes from was so, so special.
As the weeks passed life changed. The distance that felt so easy to traverse via video call expanded more and more, driving a wedge between us. Now I see her beautiful, haunting face in zoom calls (but her camera is off so it is normally the beautiful, haunting letters of her name). I know that she knows about the time my mother forgot me in a grocery store which is why I have trust and abandonment issues. But just like that, she took my trust and abandoned me.
Every now and then I send her a ‘we should call’ text. In turn, I get a Spotify music playlist I will never listen to.
Help! I Asked Him What Professor To Take And Now He Sits In My Restricted Messages
The seniors were so welcoming. Resident Assistants who were being paid in tens of thousands to play among us with us, Cohort Leaders who taught me everything I know about which designer brands offer student discounts during Shopping Week- the Ashokan community came together to make the freshers experience one I could cherish.
Around then the five-layer, Hunger Games mimicking, permutation-combination needing registration process began. In all that, I received a mysterious message on Instagram.
Hi…This might be weird but I saw your bio says ashoka23….. Reach out to me if you need anything
I jumped at this opportunity to clarify my doubts, set my expectations and start off on my glorious purpose. This abstract entity knew all that was to know and I with wide-eyes absorbed the great wisdom. The hidden secrets that dictated the inner workings of the registration process were revealed to me. So was insider information on how the grading curve of professors differs. Around then I began to grow busy. Every day, this entity checked up on me. My interest in the conversation waned, but I was now suddenly accountable to this mysterious figure. Where have you been? It asked. You haven’t reached out, what’s up? The harmless enquiries accumulated, and I wondered if I had misunderstood, misread our dynamic. What did I do? This entity asked. It told me it missed me but I all I remembered was one week of asking what the difference between MyAshoka and the LMS was. It was just a name on a screen. It couldn’t harm me. It never threatened to. But it felt as if clouds of icky feelings leaked through my headphone jack, and surrounded me in a suffocating bubble.
