Roses are red. Yellow and white, too.

Most days in college are pretty rosy. In the mould of rosy days… with bright sunshine, brighter moods and all things black and gloomy locked up inside the skeleton closet. These are the days which make you want to take out that flamboyant, fluorescent yellow shirt and pair it with those red leather pants you picked up under the influence of someone under the influence. Those are the rosy days. And then there are the rosier days, like Rose Day.

So t’was, with the smell of fresh roses and the wailing of a distraught wingmate, that consciousness called on my person that day. I stirred, but was not yet shaken by the events that had unfolded in the ungodly hours of dawn. Unlike most other such events, I actually remembered the significance of the day. It wasn’t that tough really, considering the conversation that two visibly excited friends had inflicted on me the previous night.

“Tomorrows Rose Day da!”

“Ya I know… who’re we sending cards to?”

“Not decided… but we’re allowed proxy cards too…”

“Hmmm…”

“…”

Now, I’m not one of those early birds. I mean that figuratively, not like one of these crazy gits who maintain they’re mammals, not birds. I have my share of late night fun, the music, chatter and uncontrolled emotion. There’s something about the dark blue sky that’s so conducive to conversations. But I have my limits… and though generally of extremely tolerant temperament, I somehow took offence to hushed, conspirational tones floating over my half-asleep self. A couple of broken chairs and one broken conversation later, I had finally retired in peace.

Rose Day is a pretty neat idea. If ever an economy could run on overworked hormones and underworked brains, it would derive more than a little inspiration form this set-up. Simply put, you could, for a very nominal price, send a card and a coloured rose to anyone in college. Every colour indicated some emotion, like friendship-yellow, enemity-thorns, peace-white and the oh so wonderful, love-red. The catch was, however, that you could send it AS anyone. The importance of that is lost on any person who has not spent days and days thinking of ways to utterly humiliate the guy next to him. That, in any case, was not the kind of person you would find in Agate Hostel. The wails that had greeted me in the morning were from a poor soul who in turn had woken to a call from a very disturbed girl, demanding the meaning of the poem he had sent her. Ah, realization dawns.

The aforementioned poem was very peppy… written by a friend of mine, who went by the mysterious acronym PKG. There was this particularly nasty line, which went,

“Her beauty next to yours, is like a molecule besides an atom,

Why one would ever love you, is something I cannot fathom”

There was another, interesting card that Bolo received. It was generous in its praise, and signed off by “Rachael” and “Phoebe”. A more mature attempt at humour than most, I felt, though Bolo disagreed.

Around this time, I came up with an interesting plan to send a girl both a red rose and a yellow one, asking her to keep one and send the other back. The idea was foolproof, I thought, and went as far as to draw up a list, titled “The Lucky Ones”. I had originally written "The Hitlist" but then, you have to feed your ego every once in a while. However, my wallet seemed to lack enthusiasm, and quite surprisingly, its ‘empty’ threats carried some weight. Thus it is, that though anticlimactic, I did not receive a single card that day. But something of note did happen, amidst all the self-proxies, thinly veiled flirting and miffed friends. A couple of guys, NSK and Venky, got really beautiful cards from the girls in their class. It was very touching, and if not for my arrogance and opportunism, I would have admitted the same. As it were, the yellow roses that arrived had soon been dyed red, and by nightfall the gang had all but rechristened the duo as heartless flirts.