THE CALL OF THE WILD

You're waiting for the elevator to reach ZERO while hoping against hope that you're not locked out of the first class up on 601.

You’re not alone. nearly your entire batch is there, calming your senses, the former doing so with warm bodies pressing against warm bodies trying to be one the first to get into the lift.
The latter have never been so sharp.
you're somehow one of the first ones to get into the lift and you squeeze against the glass as more and more bodies come tumbling in all the time wondering which idiot thought having a metal rod in front of it helped anybody at all. Maybe they thought there would space enough in the lift all the time for a quick ballet practice before reaching class.
You get out and you're gasping in breath and running up the stairs because nobody had bothered to press the button for the sixth floor thinking about the poor people on the ground floor who'd be waiting helplessly for it...
the bell rings and you're in on time. The professor hasn't arrived yet and you grab one of the last benches, while you ease into the dull chatter of people who've woken up just minutes back. It was going to take some time before the usual loud professor-theory-defying voices would be heard. right now you're just trying to get behind the big guy so you can doodle in the notebook and if in the very unrare case of no possession of a notebook, on the already beyond recognisable vandalised desk of unidentifiable scribbles.
The professor walks in and your mind is slowly floating away...
finally, excitement.
adrenalin soaring, feet thumping into the unstained ground, their bags weighing their shoulders down, Eisenstein creased brows and fingers worn to the bone from too much camera-clicking, the roar of the arrival of the veterans of war is dismissed by their lowly newcomer counterparts as they yawn their professor's lecture away.
The veterans lumber into their classes defeated. They then carry on the legacy of vandalism.
The next class is with a lion.
The lion in the jungle moves with the grace and pride unemulatable by any animal not on top of the natural hierarchy. It’s only the natural order of things.
The lion glides into the classroom and purrs. Everyone shuts up to stare at it.
It passes along the attendance sheet and fiddles around with the technical equipment. It then starts to teach a bunch of terrified rabbits by growling softly and making expressive movements with his large retractable clawed paws.
The rabbits listen with their utmost attention. They remember the claws are only protractile till he wants them to be and the roar soft only to hide his sabre teeth.
The rabbits are fed knowledge from the fearsome predator. After they're fattened up can only he feed upon them.
His feeding hour is up. He glances around; he's never seen such thin rabbits. Even their tail puffs seem wilted. He growls under his breath as he collects the attendance sheet and glides out of the classroom. Maybe next time.
The bunny rabbits are visibly shaken. They do only what they know what to do best: they start to burrow into the ground.
They burrow till they reach the basement and they discover mess food, which is very unexplainably even worse than carrots.
They eat till they feel strong enough to peep out over the top of their burrows.
They can't stay in there forever.
Even if they try.

- Akanksha Srivastava