Goodbye

Tonight I bid farewell to a dream holiday. Tonight I bid farewell to 9 unbelievable days of fun juxtaposed right in the middle of an official leave. Tonight I bid farewell to 2 dear friends. I shall not summarise my Singapore trip. Please refer to the blog marked as The Globetrotter in my linked blogs for a far well-written account. Suffice to say, the trip had gambling, scorpions and snakes, starfishes we could touch, Hard Rock Cafes and Singapore discs and every conceivable animal, bird, fish or insect you can think of. Was it fun? An emphatic yes. Would it have been fun if Monkeyman & Chotu weren't there? An even more emphatic No..

Chotu has been a friend since a long time. I have known her for almost 5 years now. That's a long time for friends you make after school. In the 1st 3 years, we slaved for the Economics Society. We made telephone calls to zillions of politicians, diplomats and the likes to invite them for talks; most of who wouldn't even take our calls. We ran around to do the bidding of those who commanded us because they were a year senior. We brainstormed together, discussed eco, and thought of psychometric games for our dear sponsors. Pretty much an exhaustive list. We also fought bitterly at times over stuff I believed then to be extremely important; today I wouldn't fight with her even if you offered me a million dollars.

We began the next part of our journey together. Somehow, I guess we were meant to be friends even after college. We got through to all the same IIMs, didn't make it to the same IIM, got the same job, got through to the same university abroad. We almost landed up going to intern in the same company. If only things had turned out differently, she would have been around a little longer. But one doesn't always get what one wants.

This journey was carved out of paid leave at office - post entering the big bad corporate world :) Student life's never going to come back. Being apart from Chotu helped me realise how important she is in my life.

In IIM Chotu practically took care of me. If I came back to my room, a public common room really, and find the lights switched off I knew Chotu had been slinking around to use my Superslim mirror and had put an end to my criminal waste of electricity as she put it. She would take the pain of reading every stupid blog I wrote and leave a comment behind. Did I mention my b'day mail, my yearbook writeup and everything else? There are so many happy memories, I cannot begin to list down. I will give it a shot though. Chotu and I wandering around campus, right in the 1st week, looking for a fag (mine :) and I claim to be very good at directions. Needless to say, we got lost. Chotu painting my face in Unmaad. It was blue and red and it had a cobweb, a potential ecosoc cover in the past. Chotu being ah well pursued by over enthusiastic gentlemen in a particular L^2. Jooz and I till date shudder to think of how we almost changed our orientations that night. Chotu's b'day nite treasure hunt and I fail to get a shortlist from my summers company. I am heartbroken but only for an instant. The treasure hunt was on. Next morning, Chotu wakes up early and drives me out of my room to Attica's to talk to me. That memory shall be imprinted in my psyche forever.

Why is she so important? Because she watched over me when I went through the darkest phase of my life. I wish I had listened to her advice more. I wish I had heeded her word. I would be a far saner person if I had. I wish she was sitting by me this very instant.

And then there is Monkeyman, the most remarkable person i met in IIMB. He continues to amaze me each time I meet him. He's everything I want to be. He combines a unusually sharp intellect and a drive to commit to and work hard for whatever he thinks important with a complete absence of self-doubt. How can someone be so oblivious of failure? How can someone stand up with confidence each time, focusing only on his goal and not be afraid or scared? He has the determination of a child and he yet he is far wiser than me. And might I say he cares. I shall remember the first time we met. Watching a tsepak game and then we caught a movie early on a Sunday morning. He gave me this small image of Ganesh once in first term. Now I detest religion, I really do. And yet this gift was the most special thing I have received in a long time. I proudly display it in my room till date.

I believe I bonded with him first when we were both indicted together. When our fate was to be decided by authorities for a crime which was just a mistake. Our whole batch being intimated that we had sinned. I cannot erase that horrible day ever. I remember him strong, Chotu resourceful and me shattered. I remember him standing by me when most wouldn't. I remember him all brave and fearless. I remember him teaching me about mortgages, suggesting my CCS Topic, taking my interview for finals (the only one who did so), coming to my room everyday and ensuring I was strong, by me when I was going through the final placements. And yet everytime he was around I felt her presence. Her concern, her standing by my side. Even when she was miles away, I could sense the two of them by me. I still do...

My version of "..If I have no time to stand and stare..."

Are trains a forgotten pleasure?
Relics of a bygone era now removed
Far from the pages of a jetsetting age
Save for some unfortunate small-towners
Who need must travel by train
To get to warm food and bed

Trains move much like life
Unpredictable journeys with rank strangers
Some care enough to stay longer
To turn companions on a hidden fate
Some locales zip by like they never existed
Others consume mind and time

Some fleeting moments shared between stops
By people who may not share anything else
Can outlive even the length of the journey
We see sights which inflict our conscience
With burdens which must haunt us for long

And yet many a time we lose our way
For there is none who can drive us all way
The journey is only worth the wait
When the path matters more than our stop
All journeys however must end the same
In a place from where we cannot return

Must we care about where we are headed
And figuring out how fast we get there
Too hasty to make a new friend
Or even catch up with an old one
For a journey isn't worth much
If I have no time to stand and stare

Change

I will not dwell upon how ephemeral change is...Its' way too overrated. I would rather dwell upon my life because face it I can't help talking about myself, what with being narcisstic and all that. And writing here to get it out of my system is way better than to keep throwing it at my friends day in and out. There's one thing I live by. No one can understand you the way you do and to expect people to do that is plain foolhardy. No gf, parent or even the closest friend can ever really get to you. And to expect such a herculean task from anyone is self-delusional.

I guess I am now afraid to bare my soul to any individual apart from my two-dimensional screen. I can't really expect someone to sit with me 24x7 and take heed of every thought that springs to my mind. That would be selfish on my part and understanding this heralds understanding change...How often have people penned down in your slambook, "Never change - stay the same so that I can always love you like this". People change and they change a lot. An old friend will never get over his image of you when you had good times together. That's the hardest part of moving on as also of meeting the old friend again. Always disappointing for both chaps. Both coming to terms with the stranger standing in front of them, it breaks whatever old memories they shared.

So I went from being a nerdy oversized introverted kid to a hyperactive overdriven stick-thin workaholic to a work-hating alcoholic who would rather sit and dream in all day in a drunken stupor to more recently a cross between all three. I used to come back home and revise whatever I did in school each day. I would stay off all physical activity except for a few rounds of cricket and an occasional game of football. I still remember carrying fiction to the compulsory games break because i wanted to utilise my time. I remember my teens - awkward trying to make friends for the first time in my life; being aware of girls; being mortally terrified of them to the extent of shunning them. I remember my first brush with religion. Finding faith was beautiful. Honestly then, it was better than first love. It was the 90s. Economic growth, booming markets, IT jobs fresh all around - the days of the new Indian nuclear power. I guess that's when Americans started associating India with the still sleepy South Indian city of Bangalore and not the Cherokees and the Inuits. And I was lapping it up. Dreaming big for my country - dreaming big for myself.

I don't know where politics thurst in. But it did. The beginning of terrorism, the BJPs jingoism and the Kargil war had cemented my national pride. I identified with the right wing fundamentalist thought-process. One had to be a capitalist. One had to throw open our economy. One had to be strong against terrorists and to protect our fledgling economic miracle. And one identified with the men at the top. And then Gujarat happened. And I was disillusioned. I had championed faith, discipline and dreams not murder never murder. And how much more I racked my brains I could derive no semblance of reason for such divisive and reckless hate. My brief love affair with right-wing thought was over. I turned my back on public policy, my childhood heroes and my aspirations of a career in civil service, never to return. I would rather be a hypocrite and blame the random politician than join his ranks and taint my hands in blood or corruption. It was time to move on to a scarier place, St. Stephen's.

What happens when you snatch a gawky. awkward 17 year old from his books and push him into a world where glamour meets intellectualism? Either he changes his ways or he breaks and quits. I believed I was smarter than any who crossed my path in college. But I wasn't like most people around me in college. I wasn't used to making and keeping friends, or to co-exist in other people's spaces nor did I care enough to carry on a polite conversation with anyone around me. ...

To be continued

The mature one :)

Poetry is for flowers
So here follows a feeble saga
Of someone so becoming
Who mere prose cannot conjure
And yet a wondrous landscape
Needs no Michelangelo to paint it
Nor do truly mighty deeds
Need bards to sing verses
For it is the beauty of the subject
Which uplifts the literary product
Of a hastily construed imagination
Into truly everlasting poetry

So do I speak of a child
Who touched my life fleetingly
Her gracious and sweet smile
Lives still deep in my vivid memory
Or a girl whose star shone
So bright, she dazzled instantly
With an exceptionally diverse intellect
Was it her mighty pen which rescued
Many a hapless unacademic soul :)
Or the way she applies herself unflinchingly
To something she actually cares for

And yet I do no justice to the woman
Her features, manners and dainty graces
The power to love unquestioningly a rare one
But far rarer is to be loved and admired by many

Behind the pretty face though lurks
A tongue of steely sarcasm
I pause in silence for the unsuspecting
Might I say butchered souls :P
All I can wish from her this day
Is a promise to write again
May she wield the pen yet again
Though this time for a nobler cause
I wish the mature imp happy birthday
May she smile all life long