You don't know how painful it is when you disconnect my calls every day – day after day. I know it isn’t easy for you too but I fail to understand why you are doing this. And me, being me, will not reach out when I feel you are being illogical, even if it is you on the other end.
Sometimes I think the problem is with me. I should bow down to your decision and let you decide who I should spend my life with. But then I ask myself, “Why? What is wrong with the girl you have chosen? Why is it OK to let someone else decide whether she is good enough for you or not?” And I have no answer to these questions.
You keep telling me that you don't wish bad for me. And I know that. You would be the last person who would wish bad for me – mothers are like that. But that doesn't mean whatever you want me to do is the best way. There’s a difference between being good and being correct, and you are unable, rather unwilling, to understand the difference.
Then there are times when I think I shouldn't have been the ideal child from the start. I wonder if things would have turned out differently if I had been a rebellious kid and had thrown tantrums. But I knew, even then, that I should respect you and obey you. After all you are my mom and you have sacrificed so much for all of us. I know I owe you a lot but that doesn't mean I have no freedom of choice. When I was younger, I knew then that you are wiser and hence I should follow your decisions but that isn’t the case now. Agreed that you are still older than me – that's a gap no one can bridge – but that doesn't mean I can’t still take care of myself or that I can’t make my decisions for myself.
It hurts that you have been denying me the only thing I ever asked you for – the right to marry the person I love. For years, I’ve begged you to at least meet her for my sake but you refused to even think about meeting her before pronouncing your judgement that you didn’t like her. I see absolutely no reason for your refusal except for the fact that you wanted me to do just what you wished for and not considering what I wanted.
Frankly, I never understood the logic of arranged marriages. How can I decide whether I want to spend my entire life with someone else just by meeting her once? I agree that I would also know who her parents are, what her siblings do, where her fourth cousin on her mother’s side is working. But how can all that tell me whether I can live with that person or not?
Arranged marriages would have made sense earlier when a person of a particular caste did a particular job and his entire household was set up accordingly. In that case, it would have been very difficult for someone who has not grown up in that environment to adjust to it. Hence, it would have made sense to marry someone who has grown up in a similar environment. But that was a different age and a different time.
And if you are worried about relatives, how many of them came forward to help us when we needed them? Why should you, of all people, be scared of what they will have to say? I agree that your society still thinks the same way but mine doesn't. Moreover, what’s the advantage of an education which doesn’t liberate one from such foolish bonds.
I tried in vain to get you to come down and stay with me. You thought I want you to come to Bangalore so that I can force you to meet her. But that was never the case. In fact, she wasn't even in Bangalore when I asked you to come. I wanted you to see and experience the difference in our lives and understand how flimsy the excuses of caste and society are in a place where people who’ve spent years as neighbors wouldn’t recognize each-other on the street. But you wouldn’t listen to all that. And why would you? I cheated you out of your right to get me married by finding someone I love. And hence, I’ve broken your trust and can’t ever be trusted again, right?
I keep getting surprised by how you have nothing to talk to me about except for her. It is as if the entire world revolves around who I marry.
You will be glad to know that you've won. I’ve given up trying to get through to you. I’ve given up hope that I’ll ever have a happy life where my mom and my wife will stay together. I’ve given up hope that you will ever agree to meet your grandchildren. I also know that, on top of all this, everyone who hears of the story will irrevocably come to the conclusion that the son was a useless ungrateful bastard who didn’t listen to his mother.
But I’m willing to live with all this. Do you want to know why? It is because as long as I live, I’ll have the hope that you’ll come around.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Euthanasia
“There is a thin line between life and death… and it keeps getting thinner everyday.” With the advancement of life-support systems, the black-and-white of the living and the dead has been smudged with a lot of grey; we are daily pushing the limits of life. Conditions once considered indicative of death are now reversible. Proper help can revive, or at least stabilize, the most far gone cases. So, the same person who would be pronounced dead in a small town may be pronounced alive if taken to a good institute.
Ironically, the more improvements we make in the field of healthcare, the more difficult it gets to define the very basic foundation of healthcare: Life, and its opposite, Death. Death was earlier defined as the stopping of respiration but that got outdated by the introduction of ventilators and heart-lung machines. Death is now defined as the cessation of mental activities, for whatever reason it may be. It is also called brain death. But nowadays we have equipments that can keep a person far beyond our help lingering on to life by some feeble impulse of his brain. This is where euthanasia or ‘mercy killing’ comes into picture.
Only a few decades ago, mercy killing would have meant squishing an ant that was writhing in pain after tearing one of its legs but now, due to the advancement of technology, the same concept has to be applied to humans too.
Let’s face it, when a member of the family is in the hospital, the whole family is like in a limbo. Time is divided into visiting hours and non-visiting hours. If, on top of that, no one is sure whether the person is dead or alive or how long they will stay in the current state, it is even more difficult for the family. In that case, they can neither stay put nor move on. However cruel or heartless it may sound, I firmly believe that it is good for everyone if they are allowed to move on in such cases.
Moreover, if the patient himself is in terrible pain or discomfort with only a negligible chance of revival, is it not only human to try to relieve him of the suffering? How often have you said to yourself while reading about such cases – “It would have been better if he had died.” ? If we can’t deliver cure to a person why should we tie up our hands and sit silently listening to his cries of pain? It is an act of compassion, not brutality. Recently there was a case where a terminally ill patient travelled all the way from the UK to USA so that his son could pull the plug on him without it being a crime.
But there are lots of questions and lots of clarifications that will have to be addressed before any such thing can be implemented. Some of them being: Who will decide whether a person is dead or alive when even the doctors have not been able to agree on a definition of death and when the definition can be neutralized suddenly by another invention? Whose decision should it be to pull the plug when the time comes? Euthanasia can also lend itself to misuse very easily and there would have to be an extremely tight check so that no one is able to do so.
Despite all these drawbacks, euthanasia is a very humane concept and has been slowly gaining acceptance worldwide.
Ironically, the more improvements we make in the field of healthcare, the more difficult it gets to define the very basic foundation of healthcare: Life, and its opposite, Death. Death was earlier defined as the stopping of respiration but that got outdated by the introduction of ventilators and heart-lung machines. Death is now defined as the cessation of mental activities, for whatever reason it may be. It is also called brain death. But nowadays we have equipments that can keep a person far beyond our help lingering on to life by some feeble impulse of his brain. This is where euthanasia or ‘mercy killing’ comes into picture.
Only a few decades ago, mercy killing would have meant squishing an ant that was writhing in pain after tearing one of its legs but now, due to the advancement of technology, the same concept has to be applied to humans too.
Let’s face it, when a member of the family is in the hospital, the whole family is like in a limbo. Time is divided into visiting hours and non-visiting hours. If, on top of that, no one is sure whether the person is dead or alive or how long they will stay in the current state, it is even more difficult for the family. In that case, they can neither stay put nor move on. However cruel or heartless it may sound, I firmly believe that it is good for everyone if they are allowed to move on in such cases.
Moreover, if the patient himself is in terrible pain or discomfort with only a negligible chance of revival, is it not only human to try to relieve him of the suffering? How often have you said to yourself while reading about such cases – “It would have been better if he had died.” ? If we can’t deliver cure to a person why should we tie up our hands and sit silently listening to his cries of pain? It is an act of compassion, not brutality. Recently there was a case where a terminally ill patient travelled all the way from the UK to USA so that his son could pull the plug on him without it being a crime.
But there are lots of questions and lots of clarifications that will have to be addressed before any such thing can be implemented. Some of them being: Who will decide whether a person is dead or alive when even the doctors have not been able to agree on a definition of death and when the definition can be neutralized suddenly by another invention? Whose decision should it be to pull the plug when the time comes? Euthanasia can also lend itself to misuse very easily and there would have to be an extremely tight check so that no one is able to do so.
Despite all these drawbacks, euthanasia is a very humane concept and has been slowly gaining acceptance worldwide.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Random Ramblings
Staring up at the stars starts chains of thought that would surprise you if you caught yourself thinking of them. These are some of my thoughts while I was half-asleep on the bus journey from Manali to Delhi.
You know you are in a mountainous region when you can’t differentiate between a star and the light coming from a house at the top. We are supposed to have 3D eyes…i.e. we are supposed to be able to differentiate distances but still it is impossible to differentiate between these. Stars make us realize how insignificant we would be in front of a larger body. The stars - larger than the largest thing we can imagine, standing unimaginable distances apart from each-other – look so tiny to our eyes that our forefathers were able to imagine figures in the night sky, as if they were playing ‘Connect the Dots’ on a piece of paper. The astronomical sizes involved are just numbers to everyone, even to those who do these calculations everyday; no one ever could have possibly imagined the distance everyone knows as one lightyear, or even one lightsecond which itself in 3 lakh kilometers (again just a number). I remember it was something like 2,99,792 point something kilometers to be exact as I memorized it once upon a time to brag about it to my friends who, till then didn’t even know that light and sound also travel. Douglas Adams was right in Hitchhiker’s when he said that the most terrible torture invented was a machine (Total something something) that showed a person his place in the universe in proportion to his size. The sheer enormity would be enough to make you go mad. In fact, just 1 AU compared to the size of a person, if shown to scale, will be enough to make anyone go mad.
Why is it that we feel a vague sense of longing when we stare up at the stars or stare out to the sea? Is it the well-known restlessness that humans are famed to possess? Is it the mystery of the unknown and the unseen that beckons us? Or is it simply that we are so engrossed in our immediate surroundings that it takes an unchanging scene for us to realize that in this rapidly changing world there is a small part of us that yearns for stability? You suddenly start thinking about people and things that haven’t been around you in a long while. You remember the place that you grew up in, the field where you used to play with friends whom you have lost touch with. You think of the people you were close to once but have fallen out with now. You miss the sights and sounds that were a part of everyday life when you were young. You miss all those moments of life, all those small things that you never had really cared about.
This was when the bus started playing Om Shanti Om and my chain of thoughts got disturbed. :|
You know you are in a mountainous region when you can’t differentiate between a star and the light coming from a house at the top. We are supposed to have 3D eyes…i.e. we are supposed to be able to differentiate distances but still it is impossible to differentiate between these. Stars make us realize how insignificant we would be in front of a larger body. The stars - larger than the largest thing we can imagine, standing unimaginable distances apart from each-other – look so tiny to our eyes that our forefathers were able to imagine figures in the night sky, as if they were playing ‘Connect the Dots’ on a piece of paper. The astronomical sizes involved are just numbers to everyone, even to those who do these calculations everyday; no one ever could have possibly imagined the distance everyone knows as one lightyear, or even one lightsecond which itself in 3 lakh kilometers (again just a number). I remember it was something like 2,99,792 point something kilometers to be exact as I memorized it once upon a time to brag about it to my friends who, till then didn’t even know that light and sound also travel. Douglas Adams was right in Hitchhiker’s when he said that the most terrible torture invented was a machine (Total something something) that showed a person his place in the universe in proportion to his size. The sheer enormity would be enough to make you go mad. In fact, just 1 AU compared to the size of a person, if shown to scale, will be enough to make anyone go mad.
Why is it that we feel a vague sense of longing when we stare up at the stars or stare out to the sea? Is it the well-known restlessness that humans are famed to possess? Is it the mystery of the unknown and the unseen that beckons us? Or is it simply that we are so engrossed in our immediate surroundings that it takes an unchanging scene for us to realize that in this rapidly changing world there is a small part of us that yearns for stability? You suddenly start thinking about people and things that haven’t been around you in a long while. You remember the place that you grew up in, the field where you used to play with friends whom you have lost touch with. You think of the people you were close to once but have fallen out with now. You miss the sights and sounds that were a part of everyday life when you were young. You miss all those moments of life, all those small things that you never had really cared about.
This was when the bus started playing Om Shanti Om and my chain of thoughts got disturbed. :|
Monday, January 18, 2010
Shopping Travails
Today, I was at a cloth store buying a few clothes when I saw a girl smiling and waving at me from outside the shop. Now, it is never a good portent when you see a girl smiling and waving at you and you draw a blank when you try to remember who the hell she is and where you have seen her. This mischance was aggravated by the fact, as it turned out later, that she was alone.
I somehow managed to extract her name and the details of our last meeting by shadow-guessing. She concluded by saying that she had to buy some clothes and since I was doing the same we might as well do our shopping together. I, as a rule, do not go shopping with girls – something that used to make my ex pretty angry – but, having nothing to do (and as a way of punishing myself for forgetting people), I agreed. Before an hour was out, I was ruing this decision like anything.
These are some of the observations I made:
The first thing that irritated me was the continuous talking. Girls seem to have a more serious need for talking while shopping than that of breathing. Pretty soon she had overwhelmed me with all the information about every single friend that both of us seemed to have in common – a number which I drastically cut down when I realized that it would take me weeks to process all the data if I had acknowledged that I knew almost all of her friends. I counted at least five instances when she talked incessantly for more than 5 minutes without even glancing at the clothes that she was supposed to be buying.
Then comes the fact that nothing that the store had to offer seemed to match her expectations. If something was comfortable, it was either not fashionable enough or too fashionable by her standards. If something looked good, it was either too pricey to buy or too cheap to brag to her friends about. Every pair of jeans in the store was either too flashy or too plain.
It took her almost 2 hours and reviews of at least fifty pairs of jeans to zero in on 4 that she would try on (she had to buy only 1). Next came the trial phase (it took trials of my patience rather than the clothes).A sample excerpt of her discussion would be something like:
She: “Is it looking good on me? (This is something everybody asks, so no big deal.)
Me (hoping that she had made up her mind about this one): “Yeah…pretty good.”
She: “I guess that’s because I am wearing a light-colored shirt but most of my clothes are dark-colored. Would it go with a black top?”
Me (hoping against hope): “I guess so.”
She: “Should I tuck my shirt in? Will it look better that way?”
Me (trying to save time): “No, its OK.”
She (after spending 2 more minutes in tucking her shirt in): “Will a belt look good on this? Should I buy 1 to go along?”
By now, half of my mind was snoozing and the other half was telling me to run away from her sight as soon as possible and so I did not reply.
At the end of a very trying (pun unintended) hour she had come to a decision. That too mostly because I had told her that I would have to leave her alone because I had an important meeting. Then it turned out that the 25% discount that the store was showcasing was not applicable to The Chosen One. She bandied words with the salesman until I stepped in and promised her that I would take her to another store the next day so that she might get something she likes. The Chosen One was left lying at the counter when we departed – its destiny still in the shadows.
PS: I have absolutely no intentions of keeping my promise and I need a good excuse. PLEASE HELP!!
I somehow managed to extract her name and the details of our last meeting by shadow-guessing. She concluded by saying that she had to buy some clothes and since I was doing the same we might as well do our shopping together. I, as a rule, do not go shopping with girls – something that used to make my ex pretty angry – but, having nothing to do (and as a way of punishing myself for forgetting people), I agreed. Before an hour was out, I was ruing this decision like anything.
These are some of the observations I made:
The first thing that irritated me was the continuous talking. Girls seem to have a more serious need for talking while shopping than that of breathing. Pretty soon she had overwhelmed me with all the information about every single friend that both of us seemed to have in common – a number which I drastically cut down when I realized that it would take me weeks to process all the data if I had acknowledged that I knew almost all of her friends. I counted at least five instances when she talked incessantly for more than 5 minutes without even glancing at the clothes that she was supposed to be buying.
Then comes the fact that nothing that the store had to offer seemed to match her expectations. If something was comfortable, it was either not fashionable enough or too fashionable by her standards. If something looked good, it was either too pricey to buy or too cheap to brag to her friends about. Every pair of jeans in the store was either too flashy or too plain.
It took her almost 2 hours and reviews of at least fifty pairs of jeans to zero in on 4 that she would try on (she had to buy only 1). Next came the trial phase (it took trials of my patience rather than the clothes).A sample excerpt of her discussion would be something like:
She: “Is it looking good on me? (This is something everybody asks, so no big deal.)
Me (hoping that she had made up her mind about this one): “Yeah…pretty good.”
She: “I guess that’s because I am wearing a light-colored shirt but most of my clothes are dark-colored. Would it go with a black top?”
Me (hoping against hope): “I guess so.”
She: “Should I tuck my shirt in? Will it look better that way?”
Me (trying to save time): “No, its OK.”
She (after spending 2 more minutes in tucking her shirt in): “Will a belt look good on this? Should I buy 1 to go along?”
By now, half of my mind was snoozing and the other half was telling me to run away from her sight as soon as possible and so I did not reply.
At the end of a very trying (pun unintended) hour she had come to a decision. That too mostly because I had told her that I would have to leave her alone because I had an important meeting. Then it turned out that the 25% discount that the store was showcasing was not applicable to The Chosen One. She bandied words with the salesman until I stepped in and promised her that I would take her to another store the next day so that she might get something she likes. The Chosen One was left lying at the counter when we departed – its destiny still in the shadows.
PS: I have absolutely no intentions of keeping my promise and I need a good excuse. PLEASE HELP!!
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Dedicated to the person I love the most
I had never realized how much I needed her till that night. I called her up but the call was received by my neighbour who told me that she was gravely ill and had been admitted in the hospital with very low blood pressure. I had always taken her for granted, thinking – She’ll agree. I don’t need to ask her about this. What if she gets a little angry, I can always appease her...and similar things.
Someone once rightly said that you don’t know how important someone is to you unless they go out of your life. It was at that moment that I realized how much I had depended on her – for everything. A guy of my age generally considers himself quite unemotional; even considering it embarrassing to show his emotions in front of someone else. It was the same for me. Perhaps that is why, on listening to the news of her sickness and realizing that it had been almost a year since I saw her, my first reaction was of trying to remember what all had happened on my last trip home. The thing that I remembered distinctly was a quarrel with her. Although I had said sorry over the phone after I returned to college, it is never the same as meeting personally.
I was still regretting the moment and the reason of the quarrel while packing my bags when it struck me that she might not even be alive when I got there. The thought struck me like lightning and caused me to drop everything that I was trying to force into my bag. I somehow gathered the courage to pack my things and spent the rest of the time crying quietly, crouched on my bed. Though I am an atheist by choice, I distinctly remember praying to the nameless God to keep her well. Even though I don’t know which God I prayed to, I prayed for her well-being and for me to get a chance to say sorry.
The train journey was spent musing about everything that had happened, tears welling up in my eyes every now and then but I was forced to stop them from coming out – I am a guy and guys don’t cry, specially in a train full of unknown people. Although I had packed my iPod, by habit – without thinking, I didn’t even think of taking it out of my bag. It was in this reverie that the train reached Purulia and even then one of my co-passengers had to tell me that it was the last stop and that I should get going.
I caught the first bus I could in order to get home. Getting down at the bus stop, I took an auto straight to the hospital and ran the entire length of the ward to reach the bed she was on. There I saw her, lying peacefully with 3-4 tubes around her and an oxygen mask on her mouth. The doctor told me that she should be fine in a couple of days and that I might take her home after a week. I thanked all the Gods, even those of whom I had forgotten names, for keeping her away from danger.
She was able to open her eyes and look at me by the next day. When I went in front of her, she looked at me as if it was the first and only thing she had expected. She didn’t say a word when I broke down in her lap and cried my heart out. She was confused when I told her that I was sorry for what had happened on my last visit – she had forgiven me a long time ago and even forgotten the matter altogether. And she got angry when I told her that I would follow each and every thing she said from now onwards, her reaction being, “If you don’t show any stubbornness, how would I know that you are my son?”
And that was the moment of my life that I will never forget...
Someone once rightly said that you don’t know how important someone is to you unless they go out of your life. It was at that moment that I realized how much I had depended on her – for everything. A guy of my age generally considers himself quite unemotional; even considering it embarrassing to show his emotions in front of someone else. It was the same for me. Perhaps that is why, on listening to the news of her sickness and realizing that it had been almost a year since I saw her, my first reaction was of trying to remember what all had happened on my last trip home. The thing that I remembered distinctly was a quarrel with her. Although I had said sorry over the phone after I returned to college, it is never the same as meeting personally.
I was still regretting the moment and the reason of the quarrel while packing my bags when it struck me that she might not even be alive when I got there. The thought struck me like lightning and caused me to drop everything that I was trying to force into my bag. I somehow gathered the courage to pack my things and spent the rest of the time crying quietly, crouched on my bed. Though I am an atheist by choice, I distinctly remember praying to the nameless God to keep her well. Even though I don’t know which God I prayed to, I prayed for her well-being and for me to get a chance to say sorry.
The train journey was spent musing about everything that had happened, tears welling up in my eyes every now and then but I was forced to stop them from coming out – I am a guy and guys don’t cry, specially in a train full of unknown people. Although I had packed my iPod, by habit – without thinking, I didn’t even think of taking it out of my bag. It was in this reverie that the train reached Purulia and even then one of my co-passengers had to tell me that it was the last stop and that I should get going.
I caught the first bus I could in order to get home. Getting down at the bus stop, I took an auto straight to the hospital and ran the entire length of the ward to reach the bed she was on. There I saw her, lying peacefully with 3-4 tubes around her and an oxygen mask on her mouth. The doctor told me that she should be fine in a couple of days and that I might take her home after a week. I thanked all the Gods, even those of whom I had forgotten names, for keeping her away from danger.
She was able to open her eyes and look at me by the next day. When I went in front of her, she looked at me as if it was the first and only thing she had expected. She didn’t say a word when I broke down in her lap and cried my heart out. She was confused when I told her that I was sorry for what had happened on my last visit – she had forgiven me a long time ago and even forgotten the matter altogether. And she got angry when I told her that I would follow each and every thing she said from now onwards, her reaction being, “If you don’t show any stubbornness, how would I know that you are my son?”
And that was the moment of my life that I will never forget...
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
How to?
How do you get the over-excited four-year old kid you are traveling with to shut up and let you concentrate on chatting up the attractive girl sitting next to you in the train? (This was a question I faced recently during my vacations when I was traveling with my nephew.)
1)Tell him to shut up: If it was as simple as that, why would I have been asking this question at all?
2)Buy him something to eat: Anything you throw at him would be consumed before you get to say, “Hi,” and then you would have to drop your plans of starting a conversation because you see him swinging from the shelf. Plus, this would leave you poorer by a few bucks every time you try this.
3)Get him something to read: The most a four-year old kid knows is A B C D and a few rhymes and he would make such a loud noise reciting them that you would wish you hadn’t asked him to do it.
4)Give him your music player to listen to: As soon as he gets his hands on it, he would start trying to dismantle it rather than listening to it, forcing you to wrench it away for safe-keeping.
5)Smack him on the head: This will do the trick only if either he is scared enough to obey you or if he starts crying and goes to sleep thereafter. Since you do not know how hard to hit, the kid will most probably start crying – causing a lot of annoyance to you as well as your fellow passengers. Moreover, if he does not go to sleep it was a futile exercise. To top it all, hitting a kid would give a bad impression on the girl.
If any of you has any other ideas, please suggest.
1)Tell him to shut up: If it was as simple as that, why would I have been asking this question at all?
2)Buy him something to eat: Anything you throw at him would be consumed before you get to say, “Hi,” and then you would have to drop your plans of starting a conversation because you see him swinging from the shelf. Plus, this would leave you poorer by a few bucks every time you try this.
3)Get him something to read: The most a four-year old kid knows is A B C D and a few rhymes and he would make such a loud noise reciting them that you would wish you hadn’t asked him to do it.
4)Give him your music player to listen to: As soon as he gets his hands on it, he would start trying to dismantle it rather than listening to it, forcing you to wrench it away for safe-keeping.
5)Smack him on the head: This will do the trick only if either he is scared enough to obey you or if he starts crying and goes to sleep thereafter. Since you do not know how hard to hit, the kid will most probably start crying – causing a lot of annoyance to you as well as your fellow passengers. Moreover, if he does not go to sleep it was a futile exercise. To top it all, hitting a kid would give a bad impression on the girl.
If any of you has any other ideas, please suggest.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Love at first sight?
“Hi! I am Abhay. I didn’t get your name.”
“Hello! You are looking very beautiful in this blue dress, it suits you. By the way, I am Abhay.”
“Hi! I am sorry but I couldn’t stop admiring you from afar and so thought it would be proper if I introduced myself.”
These were some of the self-introductory lines that crossed my mind when I looked at you for the first time. Let me make myself clear, I do NOT believe in love at first sight and anyhow, a classroom filled with 50-60 people is hardly the right place to fall in love, but there is something in you that has been attracting me from the moment I saw you.
Initially I thought that this is because you are very beautiful (a rarity in my college). But my friends (the people you’ll see sitting beside me if you turn your head) have made it pretty clear that they don’t consider you beautiful, let alone the “very” part. Some said you are kind-of cute and a few of them – the more outspoken ones – told me to get my eyes checked and now they are making fun of me. But somehow, I can’t help staring at you, although – sitting at the last bench – I can only see a part of your face.
You seem intent on copying down each and everything that the prof is saying. You won’t even be aware that some guy on the last bench has been staring at you continuously for the last half an hour or so. I, on the other hand, have not written a single word since I started looking at you. I hope I’ll be able to gather enough courage till the end of the class to ask you your name.
And now, you are looking at me and I feel happy - I try to smile. But something’s wrong – the whole class is looking at me!! Seems the prof has asked me a question and I have no clue what it is… I can hear someone sniggering. Thankfully, one of my friends seems to have been following the prof. He is whispering the answer now and I am repeating it out aloud. My mind meanwhile is buzzing with the questions, “Did she or anyone else notice that I was staring at her? Is this why the prof asked me this question? Did he comment something too that I missed?”
Now my friend has stopped whispering, it seems the answer is complete. Thanks a lot man, I owe you one! Even the prof seems satisfied. Now you have turned towards the blackboard again and I can go back to staring at you.
But what is this! You are packing up!! Has the bell gone? Everyone else is also packing up, seems 1 hour is over already. Funny how this same prof used to be able to bore me to death in 1 hour till last sem and now I am hoping that we had a double lecture!!
You pick up your stuff and leave in a hurry – I presume you have another class somewhere else – and so my hopes of getting to talk to you after the class are dashed. Anyways, this was only the first class, I’ll be sure to attend all the classes of this course. I’ll also try to sit on the first bench so that we might get talking once your tempo of noting down everything wears off.
If, at some point in time, you read this and recognize yourself, just give me a call. My no is +919932574151.
-- The guy in a black Mind-Over-Matter t-shirt and faded black jeans sitting at the back of the class.
“Hello! You are looking very beautiful in this blue dress, it suits you. By the way, I am Abhay.”
“Hi! I am sorry but I couldn’t stop admiring you from afar and so thought it would be proper if I introduced myself.”
These were some of the self-introductory lines that crossed my mind when I looked at you for the first time. Let me make myself clear, I do NOT believe in love at first sight and anyhow, a classroom filled with 50-60 people is hardly the right place to fall in love, but there is something in you that has been attracting me from the moment I saw you.
Initially I thought that this is because you are very beautiful (a rarity in my college). But my friends (the people you’ll see sitting beside me if you turn your head) have made it pretty clear that they don’t consider you beautiful, let alone the “very” part. Some said you are kind-of cute and a few of them – the more outspoken ones – told me to get my eyes checked and now they are making fun of me. But somehow, I can’t help staring at you, although – sitting at the last bench – I can only see a part of your face.
You seem intent on copying down each and everything that the prof is saying. You won’t even be aware that some guy on the last bench has been staring at you continuously for the last half an hour or so. I, on the other hand, have not written a single word since I started looking at you. I hope I’ll be able to gather enough courage till the end of the class to ask you your name.
And now, you are looking at me and I feel happy - I try to smile. But something’s wrong – the whole class is looking at me!! Seems the prof has asked me a question and I have no clue what it is… I can hear someone sniggering. Thankfully, one of my friends seems to have been following the prof. He is whispering the answer now and I am repeating it out aloud. My mind meanwhile is buzzing with the questions, “Did she or anyone else notice that I was staring at her? Is this why the prof asked me this question? Did he comment something too that I missed?”
Now my friend has stopped whispering, it seems the answer is complete. Thanks a lot man, I owe you one! Even the prof seems satisfied. Now you have turned towards the blackboard again and I can go back to staring at you.
But what is this! You are packing up!! Has the bell gone? Everyone else is also packing up, seems 1 hour is over already. Funny how this same prof used to be able to bore me to death in 1 hour till last sem and now I am hoping that we had a double lecture!!
You pick up your stuff and leave in a hurry – I presume you have another class somewhere else – and so my hopes of getting to talk to you after the class are dashed. Anyways, this was only the first class, I’ll be sure to attend all the classes of this course. I’ll also try to sit on the first bench so that we might get talking once your tempo of noting down everything wears off.
If, at some point in time, you read this and recognize yourself, just give me a call. My no is +919932574151.
-- The guy in a black Mind-Over-Matter t-shirt and faded black jeans sitting at the back of the class.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Plan
I am very happy today. After pleading with her for so long, she finally agreed to go on a date with me so that I might make my stand clear. We ended up in my apartment – our apartment as we had used to call it earlier, that is, before she moved out. She agrees now that it was foolish and paranoid of her to leave me. I had been crushed by her leaving me - after all I had done for her, after the days I had spent beside her hospital bed waiting for her to regain consciousness so that I might know exactly what had happened on that fateful day.
I never came to know exactly what had happened that day. We were supposed to be going out for a spin on the freeway but I had to suddenly go to an unscheduled meeting with an important client and I didn’t even get the time to call her up. Angry at this, she took off alone. I got a call a few hours later that her car had been found at the bottom of a ditch near the freeway and that she was severely injured – barely alive. I, as expected, was too shocked on hearing this to react.
It was two whole weeks before she regained consciousness for a long enough time to tell everyone what had happened. Apparently someone had tampered heavily with her car and that caused the accident.
It must have been during her stay in the hospital that she started suspecting me - probably because I was the only guy who knew of our plans. She never asked me anything outright but she started trying to avoid me when I went to the hospital to meet her. She didn’t answer any of my questions directly. I was alarmed at this but I thought that I could handle it.
I was shocked when, on the day of her return from the hospital – something I had been looking forward to eagerly – she told me that she planned on moving out of our apartment the same day. I tried my best to convince her not to do so but she didn’t pay heed to anything. She didn’t even give a reason for leaving. I learned it much later from her so-called friends with whom she had talked about this. So, she moved out and I was left wondering where I had gone wrong.
I tried contacting her a lot of times to prove my innocence and now, 6 months after she left me, she is back with me. Last night, I managed to convince her that I was not involved with the accident in any way and that the reason I was not with her that day was not some cooked-up excuse but a genuine reason.
Now, everything is fine. She’ll be moving in back with me in our apartment in a few days’ time and everything will be just as it was earlier.
There will be just one difference:
I’ll have to devise a more fool-proof plan next time.
I never came to know exactly what had happened that day. We were supposed to be going out for a spin on the freeway but I had to suddenly go to an unscheduled meeting with an important client and I didn’t even get the time to call her up. Angry at this, she took off alone. I got a call a few hours later that her car had been found at the bottom of a ditch near the freeway and that she was severely injured – barely alive. I, as expected, was too shocked on hearing this to react.
It was two whole weeks before she regained consciousness for a long enough time to tell everyone what had happened. Apparently someone had tampered heavily with her car and that caused the accident.
It must have been during her stay in the hospital that she started suspecting me - probably because I was the only guy who knew of our plans. She never asked me anything outright but she started trying to avoid me when I went to the hospital to meet her. She didn’t answer any of my questions directly. I was alarmed at this but I thought that I could handle it.
I was shocked when, on the day of her return from the hospital – something I had been looking forward to eagerly – she told me that she planned on moving out of our apartment the same day. I tried my best to convince her not to do so but she didn’t pay heed to anything. She didn’t even give a reason for leaving. I learned it much later from her so-called friends with whom she had talked about this. So, she moved out and I was left wondering where I had gone wrong.
I tried contacting her a lot of times to prove my innocence and now, 6 months after she left me, she is back with me. Last night, I managed to convince her that I was not involved with the accident in any way and that the reason I was not with her that day was not some cooked-up excuse but a genuine reason.
Now, everything is fine. She’ll be moving in back with me in our apartment in a few days’ time and everything will be just as it was earlier.
There will be just one difference:
I’ll have to devise a more fool-proof plan next time.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Dib
This is just a narration of what all i have done in the last few years of my life - every part of which includes Dibyendu.
Abhay’s Part
Someone told me a few days ago: “You have been with him for 8-9 years and you can’t even write 4 lines about him?” I replied: “I can write a few pages but I can’t condense it to 4 lines.” So here is my attempt although it corresponds more to what all we have done together than to what he is as a person.
The first time I saw Dibyendu, he was leaning on the balcony of his first-floor quarter – a chubby kid with a square face. We were in 6th or 7th then. The person next to me said: “He is in your class. Don’t you know him?” and I replied: “I have seen him in school but we have never been in the same section.” Who knew then that we would be spending the next 9 years of our lives living close to each-other !
The next time I saw him was on our first day in std. 8/B when I realized that he was in the same section as me. We used to sit at almost opposite ends of the classroom and for the first 1-2 months we never even talked. Dibyendu used to be a quiet guy who generally wouldn’t start a discussion but would have a lot to say if you managed to make him join in. One day, I went over to his table once for some reason (I don’t remember what) and we started talking. I had lunch with his gang of friends that day because my gang was absent that day. This was how I came in contact with the others – Raj, Ravi, Drolia, Sid – to name a few. I came to know that Raj n Dib were friends from std. 1 and it made feel a tinge of jealousy.
Dib was a highly emotional person then. Even I made him cry once over something very trivial although I had not imagined the effect it would have on him. I felt guilty the whole day. We would hang out together during the breaks, used to play our version of squash (with our legs and a cosco ball) during lunches. We even used to gossip sometimes during class – by signaling each-other from the opposite ends of the classroom.
I started going to school with him, mostly because his house was on my way to school. Raj did the same because he practically lived next door to Dib. Dib was the quintessential late-latif. We would reach his home and call him so loudly that the whole block heard and after a delay of a few minutes Dib would come out: “Ruk,joota pehen rahe hain.” If we didn’t call him but went to his house in stead, he would invariably be having his breakfast and we would have to sit and watch his eat, coaxing him to eat quickly. Despite all this, we somehow managed to reach school in the nick of time, everytime. After school, we would cycle to his house and the three of us would stand there talking for a long time. Sometimes our discussions got so prolonged that my mom got worried about my safety.
We used to look forward to eating at Dib’s home because his mom is a wonderful cook. I still cheerfully accept any offers of eating at his place without even the requisite decency of saying: “Mummy gussa hongi. Unhone khana bana rakha hai.”
In std. 9/D even Raj was in the same section as us. We could be found sitting and talking in class throughout the year. Raj and Dib were always arguing about something and I mostly used to be the referee. This scenario is true even today. I was always the bookish guy who scored the best marks in class while Raj was the walking encyclopedia with a few facts and an opinion about any damn thing under the sun. Dib also had his opinions but they were not so rigid although he tried his best to defend them. None of us in 9/D will ever forget the day we were suspended and how much fun we had that day and the next. The first time I celebrated my birthday was in 9th, just because these guys used to celebrate theirs and I used to be invited.
In 10/A I was pleasantly surprised to find Dib by my side again, although we were sorry that Raj wasn’t. Dib seemed to be living in another world and his entirely misdirected statements at random moments of time gave him the nickname – Bewda( Drunkard) in 10th. He acquired this nick courtesy Mantosh during our geography project in 10th.The name stuck for the remaining time in school and some people still refer to him as Bewda. We used to play foolish games in our English class. One of them was to try and hold your breath for the maximum possible time. Others included Hangman and pen-fight. Then came our board exams. None of us knew exactly how important they were or how far they would help us in getting a good career. We just knew that we were supposed to take them very seriously. So during our winter vacations, we started joint studies – which continued upto our 1st year in Kgp and still take place if we have a common course. We would be sitting in Raj’s home most of the time and solving last year question papers (most of the time we simply talked) while Raj’s mom would bring us something to eat. Till 10th Dib had a bicycle that would break your back if you rode if for even 15 minutes. Dib was always looking for an opportunity to grab your bicycle and make you ride his.
We broke quite a lot of things at each-other’s place in those days. I remember breaking Raj’s spectacles twice and Dib’s watch once. Raj broke Dib’s magnet for which Dib is yet to forgive him. And the three of us together broke Raj’s old bed.
By the end of 10th we had decided that we would be pursuing mathematics with the aim of appearing for JEE and enrolled in tuitions for the same. We used to have physics tuition at 5 in the morning for about a month and Dib used to be late for that to, making us late as well. Even in those classes we used to talk a lot. Our physics sir still says that we were the most talkative people he had seen in his class who were able to clear JEE in their first attempt. We attended the same tuitions for those 2 years. We even had a single set of books from which we prepared for JEE. If a new book was to be bought, we would contribute equally to it and most probably all three of us would go to buy it and name it RAD !!
The travel to-and-fro tuitions needs some explaining. All three of us could drive a two-wheeler but the problem was that we had at most one two-wheeler among us at any given time (sometimes it was zero and we had to rely on our bicycles). So 2 of us would be sitting on the vehicle while the third would be on his bicycle, holding the hand of the pillion rider and going at the speed of the vehicle without pedaling. We did this for 2 whole years without any accidents and God only knows how many kilometers I have ridden that way. I remember once I was on the bicycle when Raj told me that we were going at 60+ kmph. Also, while returning from the tuition we would stop at the Ram Mandir (a nearby market) and have snacks like samosas, egg rolls, chowmein etc. This was an everyday event and soon all the vendors knew us by face and by name. Even now, when we have been out of Bokaro for about 4 years, they recognize us when we go to them.
Dib was in my section in 11th and 12th too and Raj again wasn’t. Those 2 years at school rank high among the most memorable times of my life. We had a lot of fun in school as well as outside school. We made many more good friends like Shanky, Roop, Nidhi, Payel, etc. We had a lot of parties in those 2 years – leaving home at 9 in the morning and reaching home at 5 or 6 or even 7 in the evening. Our moms used to have a field day scolding us. Dib and I used to sit side-by-side and we would be solving mathematics in physics class or physics in the english class or just sitting and talking – disturbing the others and the teacher. One of our teachers even scolded us, saying: “You are good students but it doesn’t mean that you have already secured seats in IIT. Behave properly.” We had a good laugh about him after that class. We took to playing badminton in the evenings with other friends from school and used to play late into the night, lingering around even after it was too dark to see the shuttle. We usually studied at Dib’s place because he had room for his own and spent many of our nights there too.
We wrote our JEE mains exam on the 22nd of May and the next two months passed in a haze of peace. With nothing else to do, we usually ended up sitting and chatting at Dib’s place. We had decided that we would join the same institute if all 3 of us qualified. When the results came, we decided that Kgp would be the best option for us because I could get a good department at this place only given my rank was much worse than Raj’s or Dib’s.
In the 1st year, Raj and Dib were allotted MMM while I was in MS. MMM didn’t have net or a mess at that time. So, these guys used to be at my room most of the time. Sometimes, when I entered my room I would find a total stranger sitting there and then Raj or Dib would come and introduce him as a friend of his. Dib and Raj started learning tennis and guitar while I did none of these. Dib seems to have outgrown the guitar now but his dedication to tennis is still intact, in fact it has increased. I did more work for MMM illu than I did for MS because of these guys.
In the 2nd year, Dib and I were allotted the same hall – Azad while Raj got RK. Naturally, we became roomies. Dib worked a lot in illu even in that year and the 3rd and 4th years although his statement after every illu is: “Agle baar to hum poora peace maarenge. Kuchh nahi karenge.” He worked so hard in the 2nd year that he fell ill on the day after Diwali and I had to get him admitted to BCRoy.
In the 3rd year we got separate rooms and he currently lives in the room beside mine. We have spent a lot of memorable times since then too.
Dib is always ready to help anyone. He cycled all the way to Gopali to confirm a rumor that a blood donation camp was going to be held there (although he has never managed to donate blood for different reasons). He was the most active guy in the group when we were collecting funds in the institute for a leukemia patient. He was with me whenever I needed help – from emotional to financial. If you are a friend of his, he will never let you down – whatever the circumstances. Even his judgment has improved over the years.
His favorite pastime at home is sleeping throughout the day. There has not been a single time when I reached his house in the afternoon and he was awake. (A note to would-be girlfriends: He sleeps with 4-5 pillows around him so unless you are as soft as a pillow, you might get kicked out.)
Now he has been placed in NTPC and has less than a month before he leaves Kgp. I have seen Dib grow from a chubby boy who was a little low on common sense to a grown-up with sincerity, determination and a way of accommodating himself to almost any circumstance. I have not only watched him grow, I have grown up with him and everything I am today owes a part to him.
Raj’s Part
Now reading all this by Abhay has made me a bit SENTO and though my English sucks in comparison to Abhay’s I will have to write something.
Now writing about Dib is a bit strange partly because I have never attempted this before and partly I cannot even think of a time when I was not with this guy. To make things clear I have been with this guy for last 16 years of my life !!! So what I am, who I am and what I do are all in some ways related to Dib.
I first knew this guy in standard 1 when I got admission in St. Xavier’s school, Bokaro. He used to live just next to my block in sector 1/C but we used to go school in different rickshaws in the beginning. So Dib was this chubby guy, looked very studious and was sincere and clean urban kid. I had come from a village recently, I was dirty, not good in English and an outspoken kid and evidently I was not very good in studies!! So I knew this guy, used to talk to him sometimes but we were not very close until we were in the standard 3. He lived so close to my house and we played together in the evenings and it so happened that he played in my block more than in his own place and also played cricket matches as a player from my block, so living near and playing together brought us quite close and by std 4 we used to spend all our time in school together. I remember in std 4 how I used to rush to his class every break time in school and we would eat together and the play together. By this time we were already the best of friends spending a lot of time together and influencing each-other , I think I started to study a bit because of him and my results dramatically improved from standard 4 .
I have so many thoughts when I think of him so many that I myself cannot recount all of them now. In middle school we spent time like this together - going to school together, playing together in breaks and them coming back and playing again together in my block or in the nearby fields. I went to his home regularly and ate in his home a lot of times and sometimes stayed whole day there and still we were so different in many respects and its true still, the main thing is that though we influenced each-other a lot we never tried to change each other, we always accepted the ways we were and accommodate to it. It was so simple to do this with him and now when I think of it it’s so amazing.
We were growing up together and thinking about talking about our dreams and aspirations and sharing all our thoughts. I started going to school on a cycle by end of std 6 and he joined in soon with his antique hero ranger. We formed our own cricket team in the school. He started taking more interest in sports and other outdoor activities with me and I was doing better in my studies. By the time we passed our Middle school we had been in the same section for last 3 years, we both were considered to be good in studies, we both were improving in sports and we both were closer than ever.
We entered High school in different sections but with same dreams of doing well in studies and achieving something in our life. Dib was always more moral than me , he always has had a sense of responsibility and his firm resolve to be correct and do good has always influenced me a lot. This guy was getting an imposing character with an imposing physique. He soon became one of the taller guys in our school and also one of the most respected. At this time we found some new friends who came as close as we already were, Abhay and Ravi. Ravi was different, very different. He had a charm about him, very sophisticated yet very humble, very intelligent and yet eager to learn more and more. Abhay was different from all of us , he is the most modest of us and yet the most intelligent , not very assertive yet very firm in his believes and his deeds. We became really good friends especially Abhay, Dib and me partly because we shared so much with each other, all our thoughts, all our feelings it was just amazing. High school was great. We had lots and lots of fun but strangely no girls were a part of this :P. Dib and me had decided that girls are just a distraction and waste of time so we hardly talked to any girls though lately I have come to known that a lot of our batch mates had crush on Dib. .
After this it’s now a Raj and Abhay story and my story would be same as been told by Abhay.
There are a few more aspects from my point of view.
After board exams we had just one goal and that was IIT and we were going to achieve it together. We started studying for it in just a few days after our board exams and I remember that we got the books together from Rita madam’s house and studying H.C.Verma in my house together. We took all our tuitions together, we went to school together; we ate in Ram Mandir together, we would hang around with our friends together, we went to buy books together and also studied together. It was just great, all the time spent were together it was so much fun. Even studying was fun and even in that we three were so different. Abhay was inarguably the sharpest among us, he would just do a problem Dib and I would be trying all that and get the answer but then Dib would question his about how he got the answer and always Abhay would fail to tell, and at last when we three would have spent a lot of time on it and broke our heads on the problem it would turnout that Abhay was correct, just that he was not able to explain :P . Group study was great, it combined the strength of the three of us and weeded out our shortcomings. I really think I would never had made it to IIT without them simply because I am so restless and cannot concentrate for long.
It was not only studies, we enjoyed our time in junior college a lot. I became the Vice-Captain of school and we made a lot of new friends. Actually we formed TTA and we are still good friends with a lot of them. I learned how to talk with girls and fell in love. We always kept each-other in balance and always complemented each other and Dib was like the most stable version of the three of us - would keep us grounded and focused and rarely was seen excited.
All the time that we spent together brings a smile to me and really makes me believe that till now I have had a good life because I had these friends. I certainly owe a lot to them and even now when we don’t spend much time together and will be separated soon I feel they are always near me because they are so close to my heart. I hope both my friends are successful in life and make me proud. Though we will be together for all our life.
Abhay’s Part
Someone told me a few days ago: “You have been with him for 8-9 years and you can’t even write 4 lines about him?” I replied: “I can write a few pages but I can’t condense it to 4 lines.” So here is my attempt although it corresponds more to what all we have done together than to what he is as a person.
The first time I saw Dibyendu, he was leaning on the balcony of his first-floor quarter – a chubby kid with a square face. We were in 6th or 7th then. The person next to me said: “He is in your class. Don’t you know him?” and I replied: “I have seen him in school but we have never been in the same section.” Who knew then that we would be spending the next 9 years of our lives living close to each-other !
The next time I saw him was on our first day in std. 8/B when I realized that he was in the same section as me. We used to sit at almost opposite ends of the classroom and for the first 1-2 months we never even talked. Dibyendu used to be a quiet guy who generally wouldn’t start a discussion but would have a lot to say if you managed to make him join in. One day, I went over to his table once for some reason (I don’t remember what) and we started talking. I had lunch with his gang of friends that day because my gang was absent that day. This was how I came in contact with the others – Raj, Ravi, Drolia, Sid – to name a few. I came to know that Raj n Dib were friends from std. 1 and it made feel a tinge of jealousy.
Dib was a highly emotional person then. Even I made him cry once over something very trivial although I had not imagined the effect it would have on him. I felt guilty the whole day. We would hang out together during the breaks, used to play our version of squash (with our legs and a cosco ball) during lunches. We even used to gossip sometimes during class – by signaling each-other from the opposite ends of the classroom.
I started going to school with him, mostly because his house was on my way to school. Raj did the same because he practically lived next door to Dib. Dib was the quintessential late-latif. We would reach his home and call him so loudly that the whole block heard and after a delay of a few minutes Dib would come out: “Ruk,joota pehen rahe hain.” If we didn’t call him but went to his house in stead, he would invariably be having his breakfast and we would have to sit and watch his eat, coaxing him to eat quickly. Despite all this, we somehow managed to reach school in the nick of time, everytime. After school, we would cycle to his house and the three of us would stand there talking for a long time. Sometimes our discussions got so prolonged that my mom got worried about my safety.
We used to look forward to eating at Dib’s home because his mom is a wonderful cook. I still cheerfully accept any offers of eating at his place without even the requisite decency of saying: “Mummy gussa hongi. Unhone khana bana rakha hai.”
In std. 9/D even Raj was in the same section as us. We could be found sitting and talking in class throughout the year. Raj and Dib were always arguing about something and I mostly used to be the referee. This scenario is true even today. I was always the bookish guy who scored the best marks in class while Raj was the walking encyclopedia with a few facts and an opinion about any damn thing under the sun. Dib also had his opinions but they were not so rigid although he tried his best to defend them. None of us in 9/D will ever forget the day we were suspended and how much fun we had that day and the next. The first time I celebrated my birthday was in 9th, just because these guys used to celebrate theirs and I used to be invited.
In 10/A I was pleasantly surprised to find Dib by my side again, although we were sorry that Raj wasn’t. Dib seemed to be living in another world and his entirely misdirected statements at random moments of time gave him the nickname – Bewda( Drunkard) in 10th. He acquired this nick courtesy Mantosh during our geography project in 10th.The name stuck for the remaining time in school and some people still refer to him as Bewda. We used to play foolish games in our English class. One of them was to try and hold your breath for the maximum possible time. Others included Hangman and pen-fight. Then came our board exams. None of us knew exactly how important they were or how far they would help us in getting a good career. We just knew that we were supposed to take them very seriously. So during our winter vacations, we started joint studies – which continued upto our 1st year in Kgp and still take place if we have a common course. We would be sitting in Raj’s home most of the time and solving last year question papers (most of the time we simply talked) while Raj’s mom would bring us something to eat. Till 10th Dib had a bicycle that would break your back if you rode if for even 15 minutes. Dib was always looking for an opportunity to grab your bicycle and make you ride his.
We broke quite a lot of things at each-other’s place in those days. I remember breaking Raj’s spectacles twice and Dib’s watch once. Raj broke Dib’s magnet for which Dib is yet to forgive him. And the three of us together broke Raj’s old bed.
By the end of 10th we had decided that we would be pursuing mathematics with the aim of appearing for JEE and enrolled in tuitions for the same. We used to have physics tuition at 5 in the morning for about a month and Dib used to be late for that to, making us late as well. Even in those classes we used to talk a lot. Our physics sir still says that we were the most talkative people he had seen in his class who were able to clear JEE in their first attempt. We attended the same tuitions for those 2 years. We even had a single set of books from which we prepared for JEE. If a new book was to be bought, we would contribute equally to it and most probably all three of us would go to buy it and name it RAD !!
The travel to-and-fro tuitions needs some explaining. All three of us could drive a two-wheeler but the problem was that we had at most one two-wheeler among us at any given time (sometimes it was zero and we had to rely on our bicycles). So 2 of us would be sitting on the vehicle while the third would be on his bicycle, holding the hand of the pillion rider and going at the speed of the vehicle without pedaling. We did this for 2 whole years without any accidents and God only knows how many kilometers I have ridden that way. I remember once I was on the bicycle when Raj told me that we were going at 60+ kmph. Also, while returning from the tuition we would stop at the Ram Mandir (a nearby market) and have snacks like samosas, egg rolls, chowmein etc. This was an everyday event and soon all the vendors knew us by face and by name. Even now, when we have been out of Bokaro for about 4 years, they recognize us when we go to them.
Dib was in my section in 11th and 12th too and Raj again wasn’t. Those 2 years at school rank high among the most memorable times of my life. We had a lot of fun in school as well as outside school. We made many more good friends like Shanky, Roop, Nidhi, Payel, etc. We had a lot of parties in those 2 years – leaving home at 9 in the morning and reaching home at 5 or 6 or even 7 in the evening. Our moms used to have a field day scolding us. Dib and I used to sit side-by-side and we would be solving mathematics in physics class or physics in the english class or just sitting and talking – disturbing the others and the teacher. One of our teachers even scolded us, saying: “You are good students but it doesn’t mean that you have already secured seats in IIT. Behave properly.” We had a good laugh about him after that class. We took to playing badminton in the evenings with other friends from school and used to play late into the night, lingering around even after it was too dark to see the shuttle. We usually studied at Dib’s place because he had room for his own and spent many of our nights there too.
We wrote our JEE mains exam on the 22nd of May and the next two months passed in a haze of peace. With nothing else to do, we usually ended up sitting and chatting at Dib’s place. We had decided that we would join the same institute if all 3 of us qualified. When the results came, we decided that Kgp would be the best option for us because I could get a good department at this place only given my rank was much worse than Raj’s or Dib’s.
In the 1st year, Raj and Dib were allotted MMM while I was in MS. MMM didn’t have net or a mess at that time. So, these guys used to be at my room most of the time. Sometimes, when I entered my room I would find a total stranger sitting there and then Raj or Dib would come and introduce him as a friend of his. Dib and Raj started learning tennis and guitar while I did none of these. Dib seems to have outgrown the guitar now but his dedication to tennis is still intact, in fact it has increased. I did more work for MMM illu than I did for MS because of these guys.
In the 2nd year, Dib and I were allotted the same hall – Azad while Raj got RK. Naturally, we became roomies. Dib worked a lot in illu even in that year and the 3rd and 4th years although his statement after every illu is: “Agle baar to hum poora peace maarenge. Kuchh nahi karenge.” He worked so hard in the 2nd year that he fell ill on the day after Diwali and I had to get him admitted to BCRoy.
In the 3rd year we got separate rooms and he currently lives in the room beside mine. We have spent a lot of memorable times since then too.
Dib is always ready to help anyone. He cycled all the way to Gopali to confirm a rumor that a blood donation camp was going to be held there (although he has never managed to donate blood for different reasons). He was the most active guy in the group when we were collecting funds in the institute for a leukemia patient. He was with me whenever I needed help – from emotional to financial. If you are a friend of his, he will never let you down – whatever the circumstances. Even his judgment has improved over the years.
His favorite pastime at home is sleeping throughout the day. There has not been a single time when I reached his house in the afternoon and he was awake. (A note to would-be girlfriends: He sleeps with 4-5 pillows around him so unless you are as soft as a pillow, you might get kicked out.)
Now he has been placed in NTPC and has less than a month before he leaves Kgp. I have seen Dib grow from a chubby boy who was a little low on common sense to a grown-up with sincerity, determination and a way of accommodating himself to almost any circumstance. I have not only watched him grow, I have grown up with him and everything I am today owes a part to him.
Raj’s Part
Now reading all this by Abhay has made me a bit SENTO and though my English sucks in comparison to Abhay’s I will have to write something.
Now writing about Dib is a bit strange partly because I have never attempted this before and partly I cannot even think of a time when I was not with this guy. To make things clear I have been with this guy for last 16 years of my life !!! So what I am, who I am and what I do are all in some ways related to Dib.
I first knew this guy in standard 1 when I got admission in St. Xavier’s school, Bokaro. He used to live just next to my block in sector 1/C but we used to go school in different rickshaws in the beginning. So Dib was this chubby guy, looked very studious and was sincere and clean urban kid. I had come from a village recently, I was dirty, not good in English and an outspoken kid and evidently I was not very good in studies!! So I knew this guy, used to talk to him sometimes but we were not very close until we were in the standard 3. He lived so close to my house and we played together in the evenings and it so happened that he played in my block more than in his own place and also played cricket matches as a player from my block, so living near and playing together brought us quite close and by std 4 we used to spend all our time in school together. I remember in std 4 how I used to rush to his class every break time in school and we would eat together and the play together. By this time we were already the best of friends spending a lot of time together and influencing each-other , I think I started to study a bit because of him and my results dramatically improved from standard 4 .
I have so many thoughts when I think of him so many that I myself cannot recount all of them now. In middle school we spent time like this together - going to school together, playing together in breaks and them coming back and playing again together in my block or in the nearby fields. I went to his home regularly and ate in his home a lot of times and sometimes stayed whole day there and still we were so different in many respects and its true still, the main thing is that though we influenced each-other a lot we never tried to change each other, we always accepted the ways we were and accommodate to it. It was so simple to do this with him and now when I think of it it’s so amazing.
We were growing up together and thinking about talking about our dreams and aspirations and sharing all our thoughts. I started going to school on a cycle by end of std 6 and he joined in soon with his antique hero ranger. We formed our own cricket team in the school. He started taking more interest in sports and other outdoor activities with me and I was doing better in my studies. By the time we passed our Middle school we had been in the same section for last 3 years, we both were considered to be good in studies, we both were improving in sports and we both were closer than ever.
We entered High school in different sections but with same dreams of doing well in studies and achieving something in our life. Dib was always more moral than me , he always has had a sense of responsibility and his firm resolve to be correct and do good has always influenced me a lot. This guy was getting an imposing character with an imposing physique. He soon became one of the taller guys in our school and also one of the most respected. At this time we found some new friends who came as close as we already were, Abhay and Ravi. Ravi was different, very different. He had a charm about him, very sophisticated yet very humble, very intelligent and yet eager to learn more and more. Abhay was different from all of us , he is the most modest of us and yet the most intelligent , not very assertive yet very firm in his believes and his deeds. We became really good friends especially Abhay, Dib and me partly because we shared so much with each other, all our thoughts, all our feelings it was just amazing. High school was great. We had lots and lots of fun but strangely no girls were a part of this :P. Dib and me had decided that girls are just a distraction and waste of time so we hardly talked to any girls though lately I have come to known that a lot of our batch mates had crush on Dib. .
After this it’s now a Raj and Abhay story and my story would be same as been told by Abhay.
There are a few more aspects from my point of view.
After board exams we had just one goal and that was IIT and we were going to achieve it together. We started studying for it in just a few days after our board exams and I remember that we got the books together from Rita madam’s house and studying H.C.Verma in my house together. We took all our tuitions together, we went to school together; we ate in Ram Mandir together, we would hang around with our friends together, we went to buy books together and also studied together. It was just great, all the time spent were together it was so much fun. Even studying was fun and even in that we three were so different. Abhay was inarguably the sharpest among us, he would just do a problem Dib and I would be trying all that and get the answer but then Dib would question his about how he got the answer and always Abhay would fail to tell, and at last when we three would have spent a lot of time on it and broke our heads on the problem it would turnout that Abhay was correct, just that he was not able to explain :P . Group study was great, it combined the strength of the three of us and weeded out our shortcomings. I really think I would never had made it to IIT without them simply because I am so restless and cannot concentrate for long.
It was not only studies, we enjoyed our time in junior college a lot. I became the Vice-Captain of school and we made a lot of new friends. Actually we formed TTA and we are still good friends with a lot of them. I learned how to talk with girls and fell in love. We always kept each-other in balance and always complemented each other and Dib was like the most stable version of the three of us - would keep us grounded and focused and rarely was seen excited.
All the time that we spent together brings a smile to me and really makes me believe that till now I have had a good life because I had these friends. I certainly owe a lot to them and even now when we don’t spend much time together and will be separated soon I feel they are always near me because they are so close to my heart. I hope both my friends are successful in life and make me proud. Though we will be together for all our life.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
For Rohit
I didn’t know you. I wouldn’t have known if you sat beside me sometime at Billoo’s or Chhedi’s. I wouldn’t have recognized you if I saw in the Insti or in the Dep – I wouldn’t even have noticed you. The only time I might have heard your name, I would have been booing at you – coz you would have been playing for LLR - against Azad.
But you were one of us. You belonged to this place, like I do. You were a person who would have spent 4-5 of the best years of your life in the god-forsaken place, just like me. You too would have bunked classes, just like me. You too would have murmured comments about Profs while sitting in class, just like me. You too would have wondered what you will do after you get out of this place, just like me. You too would have spent nights watching movies or in bhaatbaazi with friends, like I do. You too would have uttered abuses to seniors under your breath because they made you participate in events you wouldn’t have wanted to, just like me. And all this would have been sufficient to grow a bond between us if we had met at a future date.
And now you are not with us. All it took was a fall from a rickshaw to take you away from us. Everyone who knew how bad the system was and still didn’t do anything about it is a culprit – including me. I sincerely hope our reaction over the last two days will not peter out to a dead end but will continue till there really is a change in the system. Only then will I be able to redeem myself from the guilt of your untimely departure.
But you were one of us. You belonged to this place, like I do. You were a person who would have spent 4-5 of the best years of your life in the god-forsaken place, just like me. You too would have bunked classes, just like me. You too would have murmured comments about Profs while sitting in class, just like me. You too would have wondered what you will do after you get out of this place, just like me. You too would have spent nights watching movies or in bhaatbaazi with friends, like I do. You too would have uttered abuses to seniors under your breath because they made you participate in events you wouldn’t have wanted to, just like me. And all this would have been sufficient to grow a bond between us if we had met at a future date.
And now you are not with us. All it took was a fall from a rickshaw to take you away from us. Everyone who knew how bad the system was and still didn’t do anything about it is a culprit – including me. I sincerely hope our reaction over the last two days will not peter out to a dead end but will continue till there really is a change in the system. Only then will I be able to redeem myself from the guilt of your untimely departure.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Accident
I think I have borrowed this idea from some detective serial but since I don't remember which one, i won't hazard a guess.
It had been a good day at office and he was returning home with a smile on his face. His wife would be waiting for him, and his kids. It was past midnight, he had gotten late today but it had been worth the effort. So, now he was enjoying the empty roads at full speed on his bike with the wind in his face.
He was crossing an empty stretch with just trees and rocks on both sides when he saw the car coming from the opposite direction. It was coming straight at him and the driver showed no sign of giving him room to maneuver himself out of the way. The vehicles collided at full speed. The last thing he remembered was a feeling of flying through the air.
It was still dark when he woke up. He was not in pain. He simply felt as if he had gone numb. He tried to open his eyes. He was successful. He tried to move his head around. He found that it was possible to a small extent. But all his attempts failed when he tried to get up. He also found that he couldn’t even cry out for help. “Seems I will have to stay this way till someone finds me. Surely someone would come looking soon-my bike would be lying somewhere nearby. And what about the driver of the car? That bastard. If I see him I will kill him with my bare hands. Just having a car doesn’t give you ownership of the road.” he thought.
He was thinking in this vein when he thought he heard voices. The voices were coming towards him. On listening carefully, he could recognize two voices – a man and a woman. He thanked God that somebody had come to save him. So he lay as he was – listening to their conversation.
Man: Are you OK? Should I get you a doctor?
Woman: No, I am fine. What about you?
Man: I have escaped injuries too. But I guess that can’t be said about my car too. It is going to burn a hole in my pocket.
Woman: What about the guy on the bike? Where is he? How come he hit us? Didn’t you see him coming?
Man (chuckling): I was too busy kissing you to look towards the road.
Woman: You should have been more cautious. What if we had been seriously injured?
Man: Oh come on! It’s just a small accident. That guy might have been knocked unconscious. We’ll find him, wake him up, put him back on his bike and then go home.
It was the woman who found him. Now that he could see her, he realized that she was a quite young. They were a young couple, probably not even married yet. The girl was crying now. She was saying, “He isn’t moving. Is he seriously injured? Is he dead? Oh God! What shall we do?”
He saw the man point a light towards him. He looked at the light. The man heaved a sigh of relief. He said,”Hey, are you OK? Look I’m sorry. It was my fault. I’ll pay for the damage to your vehicle. Do you need help getting up? Come on, I’ll help you to your bike. It is still good enough to take you home. Why don’t you get up? Why don’t you say anything? “
He could imagine the man’s expression changing when, after trying to help him get up, he couldn’t elicit a single response. The man directed the light towards his face again to check if he really was alive. Meanwhile, the girl was sitting nearby and crying quietly. “We have a problem here.” the man said.
They went out of earshot. He could still see their silhouettes against the headlights of their car out of the corner of his eyes. He saw the girl gasp when, as he imagined, the man told her that he could not move. He could see that they were arguing about something. “Perhaps they are thinking which hospital would be nearest.” he thought.
Now the argument was taking longer than necessary – the girl had started crying again. “What are they doing? Don’t they know that if they do not take me to a hospital soon I might die? And then they will have a lot of trouble on their hands.” he thought. Finally, he saw them kiss – as if the man was trying to tell the girl that he would handle everything and that everything would be all right.
The man came back alone. The girl was still standing near the car. In a flash, he understood what was going to happen and the knowledge blinded him. He didn’t know why they were doing it but he realized that he was going to die very soon and that his death would be an accident. Even the blame for the accident would lie on him. And all he could do was plead with his eyes to a face that would not even look at him.
His eyes were saying, “No, I am not greatly injured. Leave me here and go away – I won’t tell anyone anything. I’ll just say that I hit something and fell. Or better, stay here and I’ll take responsibility for the accident. I’ll even pay for the damages to your car. But please don’t do this. Please don’t kill me. Don’t be afraid of me. I will not cause the two of you any harm.” But there was no one to listen to him or look into his eyes as the man lifted a heavy stone and brought it near his head.
In the last moments of his life, his prayer to the man of being left alone turned into a different prayer addressed to God. In the last moments of his life, he prayed for an intelligent inspector.
Inspector Singh, who was the first to reach the spot of the accident, was not very intelligent but he certainly wasn’t dumb. He looked at the dead body lying in a pool of blood and the rock, with blood on it, on which the person, now dead, had hit his head – the cause of death – when he had been thrown off the bike. He looked at the young couple who had called him up saying that they had met with an accident and that someone had died.
He said, addressing the girl, “Every rock that lies on the ground has two surfaces. One that is exposed to the weather and is generally clean. The other side is the one that lies facing the ground – gathering moss and mud. Now, can you tell me, in what way was this person thrown off so that he hit his head on the unexposed surface of the rock?”
It had been a good day at office and he was returning home with a smile on his face. His wife would be waiting for him, and his kids. It was past midnight, he had gotten late today but it had been worth the effort. So, now he was enjoying the empty roads at full speed on his bike with the wind in his face.
He was crossing an empty stretch with just trees and rocks on both sides when he saw the car coming from the opposite direction. It was coming straight at him and the driver showed no sign of giving him room to maneuver himself out of the way. The vehicles collided at full speed. The last thing he remembered was a feeling of flying through the air.
It was still dark when he woke up. He was not in pain. He simply felt as if he had gone numb. He tried to open his eyes. He was successful. He tried to move his head around. He found that it was possible to a small extent. But all his attempts failed when he tried to get up. He also found that he couldn’t even cry out for help. “Seems I will have to stay this way till someone finds me. Surely someone would come looking soon-my bike would be lying somewhere nearby. And what about the driver of the car? That bastard. If I see him I will kill him with my bare hands. Just having a car doesn’t give you ownership of the road.” he thought.
He was thinking in this vein when he thought he heard voices. The voices were coming towards him. On listening carefully, he could recognize two voices – a man and a woman. He thanked God that somebody had come to save him. So he lay as he was – listening to their conversation.
Man: Are you OK? Should I get you a doctor?
Woman: No, I am fine. What about you?
Man: I have escaped injuries too. But I guess that can’t be said about my car too. It is going to burn a hole in my pocket.
Woman: What about the guy on the bike? Where is he? How come he hit us? Didn’t you see him coming?
Man (chuckling): I was too busy kissing you to look towards the road.
Woman: You should have been more cautious. What if we had been seriously injured?
Man: Oh come on! It’s just a small accident. That guy might have been knocked unconscious. We’ll find him, wake him up, put him back on his bike and then go home.
It was the woman who found him. Now that he could see her, he realized that she was a quite young. They were a young couple, probably not even married yet. The girl was crying now. She was saying, “He isn’t moving. Is he seriously injured? Is he dead? Oh God! What shall we do?”
He saw the man point a light towards him. He looked at the light. The man heaved a sigh of relief. He said,”Hey, are you OK? Look I’m sorry. It was my fault. I’ll pay for the damage to your vehicle. Do you need help getting up? Come on, I’ll help you to your bike. It is still good enough to take you home. Why don’t you get up? Why don’t you say anything? “
He could imagine the man’s expression changing when, after trying to help him get up, he couldn’t elicit a single response. The man directed the light towards his face again to check if he really was alive. Meanwhile, the girl was sitting nearby and crying quietly. “We have a problem here.” the man said.
They went out of earshot. He could still see their silhouettes against the headlights of their car out of the corner of his eyes. He saw the girl gasp when, as he imagined, the man told her that he could not move. He could see that they were arguing about something. “Perhaps they are thinking which hospital would be nearest.” he thought.
Now the argument was taking longer than necessary – the girl had started crying again. “What are they doing? Don’t they know that if they do not take me to a hospital soon I might die? And then they will have a lot of trouble on their hands.” he thought. Finally, he saw them kiss – as if the man was trying to tell the girl that he would handle everything and that everything would be all right.
The man came back alone. The girl was still standing near the car. In a flash, he understood what was going to happen and the knowledge blinded him. He didn’t know why they were doing it but he realized that he was going to die very soon and that his death would be an accident. Even the blame for the accident would lie on him. And all he could do was plead with his eyes to a face that would not even look at him.
His eyes were saying, “No, I am not greatly injured. Leave me here and go away – I won’t tell anyone anything. I’ll just say that I hit something and fell. Or better, stay here and I’ll take responsibility for the accident. I’ll even pay for the damages to your car. But please don’t do this. Please don’t kill me. Don’t be afraid of me. I will not cause the two of you any harm.” But there was no one to listen to him or look into his eyes as the man lifted a heavy stone and brought it near his head.
In the last moments of his life, his prayer to the man of being left alone turned into a different prayer addressed to God. In the last moments of his life, he prayed for an intelligent inspector.
Inspector Singh, who was the first to reach the spot of the accident, was not very intelligent but he certainly wasn’t dumb. He looked at the dead body lying in a pool of blood and the rock, with blood on it, on which the person, now dead, had hit his head – the cause of death – when he had been thrown off the bike. He looked at the young couple who had called him up saying that they had met with an accident and that someone had died.
He said, addressing the girl, “Every rock that lies on the ground has two surfaces. One that is exposed to the weather and is generally clean. The other side is the one that lies facing the ground – gathering moss and mud. Now, can you tell me, in what way was this person thrown off so that he hit his head on the unexposed surface of the rock?”
Friday, February 27, 2009
Maybe Someday
Maybe someday I’ll forget you. And maybe someday I’ll forgive you. Forgive you for messing up my life. Forgive you for showing me love and joy and then leaving me mid-way – pining for you and all that you said would be ours. Forgive you for all the dreams that we shared. Forgive you for all the memories that I still have of you, which are like burning embers in my mind – giving me constant agony. Forgive you for all my unshed tears and unspoken words. Forgive you for all the solitary moments I’ve spent thinking of you. Forgive you for making me curse myself, thinking that it was entirely my fault.
Maybe someday I’ll be able to meet another girl and not compare her to you. Maybe someday I’ll not think of you when I see or read a love story. Maybe someday, when I want to share something, I won’t think of you. Maybe someday, if I want to speak my heart out, I won’t expect you to be the listener.
And maybe someday I’ll be able to look at you, talk to you and not feel something burning inside me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to ask you why you did this to me.
But, till that day my love, stay away from me.
Maybe someday I’ll be able to meet another girl and not compare her to you. Maybe someday I’ll not think of you when I see or read a love story. Maybe someday, when I want to share something, I won’t think of you. Maybe someday, if I want to speak my heart out, I won’t expect you to be the listener.
And maybe someday I’ll be able to look at you, talk to you and not feel something burning inside me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to ask you why you did this to me.
But, till that day my love, stay away from me.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Soul-Retriever
Let me tell you that working as a soul-retriever for the God of Death is not very fulfilling. The pay isn’t good and you have to stay at work 24X7 with no leaves. Moreover, it is a thankless job – you can’t expect a god to thank you, even if he is your immediate senior, and no human would ever thank you for snatching away his soul and bringing him to his not-so-heavenly abode. You might find the last part of my previous statement a little dubious given that I work in the Suicides Department. After all, these people have given up their souls voluntarily, so they should be happy when I arrive to fetch them – you would think, but let me tell you that it is not so. In fact, they are the people who rue being brought here the most. This is due to the standard procedure set by my predecessors in this department. I shall tell you an incident when I was just a trainee here for your better understanding.
First let me tell you that the soul that resides inside you is not “complete” in the exact sense of the term. It wasn’t complete even when you were born and has been broken into many fragments since. A fragment of your soul breaks apart when you find someone you love and who love you back and it goes to reside with that person’s soul. It is this fragment that makes that other person think of you and have goodwill towards you. So, since your parents loved you even before you were born, a fragment of your soul resides with them from before your birth. In fact, it has been residing in them since you were assigned a soul. I will talk about the details of soul-assigning some other time – let me concentrate on this part first. So, in short, the no. of fragments of your soul depends on how many lives you have affected in a positive way or how many people love you and the size of that fragment depends upon how much they love you.
When a person dies, we have to collect all the pieces of his soul before we can bring him back. Now, the standard procedure for our department is that we make the soul look for his fragments himself as a punishment for committing suicide (and increasing our workload).
It so happened that I was assigned the task of bringing back the soul of a young twenty-something guy. He had committed suicide by jumping off a tall building because he had been fired from his job for something which he didn’t consider to be his fault. The soul was sitting near the dead body when I reached. He was pretty happy to see me come. He said, “Now I can finally rest in peace.” and extended his hands towards me as if I was going to handcuff him.
“Not so soon son, we still have work to do.” I told him. Then I explained to him the standard procedure to be followed. He was unfazed at this. I took out my pack of cigarettes, handed him the device that we use to guide us to the fragments of any particular soul and told him to get on with his job while I sat and smoked. (I did not know then that I should go along with him – an oversight that almost cost me my training stipend.)
A full 24 hours and two packets of fags later, when he did not arrive I began to get worried. I got afraid because losing a soul on the way invites divine wrath, something I didn’t want to face. So I decided to look for him for a day before I contacted my guide.
To make a long story short (because this is not the important part) I found him weeping quietly in the attic of his parents’ home after a prolonged search. He got afraid when he saw me and started begging, saying, “I know I can’t run away from you. Please allow me to stay here as long as possible, I don’t want to go. I shouldn’t have committed suicide in the first place. Can you please give me life once again? I promise I won’t do anything of this sort again.” and so on. I had to shake him for a long time to get him out of his hysterics. Then I asked him what had happened that transformed him from a soul happy to leave to one that would like to bear the torments of earthly life once again. This is what he told me.
“The first place I went to was my girlfriend’s. She was asleep in her room. Entering that room reminded me of all the happy moments that we had spent there. She was sleeping with a book curled in her hand. I noticed that even while sleeping she doesn’t take out the necklace I had given her as a gift long ago. I also noticed, for the first time, that she has a picture of us tucked under her pillow. Using your device, I could see that she loves me a lot – much more than I had imagined. That was the first time I wondered whether I had made a mistake.”
“After that I went to my friends’ places. Although I found a few people who had only professed their friendship at my face, my friends on a whole liked me a lot. I also noticed that my school and college friends loved me more than my colleagues and this amazed me a lot, given that I had not tried a lot to keep in touch with them. It broke my heart to say goodbye to all of my friends one-by-one. I realized for the first time how much I had been loved and now I was sure that I had made a mistake by committing suicide. Still I would have gone with you if you had come there but you didn’t.”
“I arrived last at this place – partly because it is far from where I lived or rather, died, and partly because I had begun to realize how hard it would be for me to bid my parents farewell. When I arrived, my parents were still awake and they were talking about me. Mom was saying, “But what will he do now?” to which Dad replied, “Don’t you worry. Our son is very intelligent; he will find a better job pretty soon. “
Mom: “But what will he do in the meantime? How will he sustain himself? He is used to spending twenty-thirty thousand every month; he doesn’t have any savings worth mentioning.”
Dad: “Does he know that I get twenty thousand as my salary?”
Mom:”I don’t think so.”
Dad:”OK. Then we shall send him fifteen every month. I think he can manage with that much for the time being. If he asks how much I get, tell him that I get thirty so that he won’t feel guilty about it. We can live pretty comfortably with the remaining but he must stay there and look for a job. If he comes back to this small town, he will never find a job suitable to his qualifications and his talent will be wasted. I don’t want this to happen. We should do whatever it takes to keep him there.”
And with this Dad laid the matter to rest and my parents went to sleep. Mom looked as if a burden had been lifted from her head. None of them said one single word about how they would manage with a meager five thousand a month even when both of them know that half of it would have be spent for Mom’s medicines. It was at that moment that I realized how good it really is to be alive; to be loved and cared for by so many people who are ready to do anything for you; to have someone who will think of you no matter what happens or how low you stand on the social ladder; to breathe in the knowledge that, although it may not seem so, someone is thinking of you at this very moment; to have people ready to sacrifice their comforts for your own. Now I don’t want to die. I wish I had never taken this step. Can you please give me life back? I swear I won’t do anything so foolish again. Please….”
With this he broke into the most pitiable crying I had ever seen. Now, I can’t say I was not moved by his story but there was nothing to be done. I had to handcuff him and carry him all the way to my office while he kept on screaming and trying to persuade me to let him free all the time.
Can you guess why I told you this story? Obviously to help me decrease my workload. What else could the motive have been?
First let me tell you that the soul that resides inside you is not “complete” in the exact sense of the term. It wasn’t complete even when you were born and has been broken into many fragments since. A fragment of your soul breaks apart when you find someone you love and who love you back and it goes to reside with that person’s soul. It is this fragment that makes that other person think of you and have goodwill towards you. So, since your parents loved you even before you were born, a fragment of your soul resides with them from before your birth. In fact, it has been residing in them since you were assigned a soul. I will talk about the details of soul-assigning some other time – let me concentrate on this part first. So, in short, the no. of fragments of your soul depends on how many lives you have affected in a positive way or how many people love you and the size of that fragment depends upon how much they love you.
When a person dies, we have to collect all the pieces of his soul before we can bring him back. Now, the standard procedure for our department is that we make the soul look for his fragments himself as a punishment for committing suicide (and increasing our workload).
It so happened that I was assigned the task of bringing back the soul of a young twenty-something guy. He had committed suicide by jumping off a tall building because he had been fired from his job for something which he didn’t consider to be his fault. The soul was sitting near the dead body when I reached. He was pretty happy to see me come. He said, “Now I can finally rest in peace.” and extended his hands towards me as if I was going to handcuff him.
“Not so soon son, we still have work to do.” I told him. Then I explained to him the standard procedure to be followed. He was unfazed at this. I took out my pack of cigarettes, handed him the device that we use to guide us to the fragments of any particular soul and told him to get on with his job while I sat and smoked. (I did not know then that I should go along with him – an oversight that almost cost me my training stipend.)
A full 24 hours and two packets of fags later, when he did not arrive I began to get worried. I got afraid because losing a soul on the way invites divine wrath, something I didn’t want to face. So I decided to look for him for a day before I contacted my guide.
To make a long story short (because this is not the important part) I found him weeping quietly in the attic of his parents’ home after a prolonged search. He got afraid when he saw me and started begging, saying, “I know I can’t run away from you. Please allow me to stay here as long as possible, I don’t want to go. I shouldn’t have committed suicide in the first place. Can you please give me life once again? I promise I won’t do anything of this sort again.” and so on. I had to shake him for a long time to get him out of his hysterics. Then I asked him what had happened that transformed him from a soul happy to leave to one that would like to bear the torments of earthly life once again. This is what he told me.
“The first place I went to was my girlfriend’s. She was asleep in her room. Entering that room reminded me of all the happy moments that we had spent there. She was sleeping with a book curled in her hand. I noticed that even while sleeping she doesn’t take out the necklace I had given her as a gift long ago. I also noticed, for the first time, that she has a picture of us tucked under her pillow. Using your device, I could see that she loves me a lot – much more than I had imagined. That was the first time I wondered whether I had made a mistake.”
“After that I went to my friends’ places. Although I found a few people who had only professed their friendship at my face, my friends on a whole liked me a lot. I also noticed that my school and college friends loved me more than my colleagues and this amazed me a lot, given that I had not tried a lot to keep in touch with them. It broke my heart to say goodbye to all of my friends one-by-one. I realized for the first time how much I had been loved and now I was sure that I had made a mistake by committing suicide. Still I would have gone with you if you had come there but you didn’t.”
“I arrived last at this place – partly because it is far from where I lived or rather, died, and partly because I had begun to realize how hard it would be for me to bid my parents farewell. When I arrived, my parents were still awake and they were talking about me. Mom was saying, “But what will he do now?” to which Dad replied, “Don’t you worry. Our son is very intelligent; he will find a better job pretty soon. “
Mom: “But what will he do in the meantime? How will he sustain himself? He is used to spending twenty-thirty thousand every month; he doesn’t have any savings worth mentioning.”
Dad: “Does he know that I get twenty thousand as my salary?”
Mom:”I don’t think so.”
Dad:”OK. Then we shall send him fifteen every month. I think he can manage with that much for the time being. If he asks how much I get, tell him that I get thirty so that he won’t feel guilty about it. We can live pretty comfortably with the remaining but he must stay there and look for a job. If he comes back to this small town, he will never find a job suitable to his qualifications and his talent will be wasted. I don’t want this to happen. We should do whatever it takes to keep him there.”
And with this Dad laid the matter to rest and my parents went to sleep. Mom looked as if a burden had been lifted from her head. None of them said one single word about how they would manage with a meager five thousand a month even when both of them know that half of it would have be spent for Mom’s medicines. It was at that moment that I realized how good it really is to be alive; to be loved and cared for by so many people who are ready to do anything for you; to have someone who will think of you no matter what happens or how low you stand on the social ladder; to breathe in the knowledge that, although it may not seem so, someone is thinking of you at this very moment; to have people ready to sacrifice their comforts for your own. Now I don’t want to die. I wish I had never taken this step. Can you please give me life back? I swear I won’t do anything so foolish again. Please….”
With this he broke into the most pitiable crying I had ever seen. Now, I can’t say I was not moved by his story but there was nothing to be done. I had to handcuff him and carry him all the way to my office while he kept on screaming and trying to persuade me to let him free all the time.
Can you guess why I told you this story? Obviously to help me decrease my workload. What else could the motive have been?
Friday, December 5, 2008
My Happy Ending
“50 bucks for your thoughts” I said.
“You should say ‘A penny for your thoughts’. You’ll end up paying me too much” was the reply.
“Since you have been telling the most entertaining stories throughout this evening I won’t mind even if I have to cough up a bit. 50 bucks is anyway much lesser than what your thoughts deserve.”
We were sitting in a restaurant – me and a person I had met for the first time that very same evening on my way home from office. I don’t remember exactly how we ended up in the restaurant together. I simply remember that I had invited him for dinner and so the bill was on me. It was as if he was a professional who specialized in getting very close to a person in their first meeting. In fact, at the time of the above conversation I knew nothing about him except his name. He had been telling jokes and stories all the time. Somehow, he managed to weave all of his stories placing him as the central character. Now he had relapsed into a silence, prompting me to make the query.
His reply was, “I was thinking of another story. Let me tell you this one now.”
It wasn’t a very good story. It wasn’t even funny like his previous stories. The only way in which it was similar to the previous ones was that the protagonist was himself. It was the story of a guy (himself) and a girl who fell passionately in love with each-other. They were absolutely inseparable for a few years, the story went on to reveal, but slowly small misunderstandings started to creep into their relationship – too small to mention distinctly (He told me a few of them and they really were negligible.) and so these things were left unsaid, heaped at the bottom of their minds. However, this heap of unsaid things kept on growing until one day they realized that there was hardly anything left to say. Their parting was a mutual acceptance of the fact that they had let too much come in between them without realizing it or rather, realizing it too late to be able to do anything about it. They went their separate ways assuring themselves that they were still friends and that would be calling upon each-other in the future but, as usual, it didn’t turn out that way. However, somewhere at the bottom of their hearts they still loved each-other and would have liked to have a second shot at their relationship.
He took well over an hour in telling this story – describing all the events in vivid detail. So detailed were his accounts that he might even have told me the amount of traffic overlooking their window or the color of the curtains, for all I knew. He went through all the ups and downs of the relationship in the story as if he were living those events.
At the end of it my eyes were burning from staring at him continuously and I had forgotten all about the food, now getting cold. I asked him, “Where is she now?” and he told me. She was in the same city as we were.
The next day I took leave from my office and went looking for her. She was where he had told me she would be.
I tried a lot to meet him again but I couldn’t find him anywhere. To this day, neither I nor she knows who he was or how he knew our story better than either of us did at that time.
“You should say ‘A penny for your thoughts’. You’ll end up paying me too much” was the reply.
“Since you have been telling the most entertaining stories throughout this evening I won’t mind even if I have to cough up a bit. 50 bucks is anyway much lesser than what your thoughts deserve.”
We were sitting in a restaurant – me and a person I had met for the first time that very same evening on my way home from office. I don’t remember exactly how we ended up in the restaurant together. I simply remember that I had invited him for dinner and so the bill was on me. It was as if he was a professional who specialized in getting very close to a person in their first meeting. In fact, at the time of the above conversation I knew nothing about him except his name. He had been telling jokes and stories all the time. Somehow, he managed to weave all of his stories placing him as the central character. Now he had relapsed into a silence, prompting me to make the query.
His reply was, “I was thinking of another story. Let me tell you this one now.”
It wasn’t a very good story. It wasn’t even funny like his previous stories. The only way in which it was similar to the previous ones was that the protagonist was himself. It was the story of a guy (himself) and a girl who fell passionately in love with each-other. They were absolutely inseparable for a few years, the story went on to reveal, but slowly small misunderstandings started to creep into their relationship – too small to mention distinctly (He told me a few of them and they really were negligible.) and so these things were left unsaid, heaped at the bottom of their minds. However, this heap of unsaid things kept on growing until one day they realized that there was hardly anything left to say. Their parting was a mutual acceptance of the fact that they had let too much come in between them without realizing it or rather, realizing it too late to be able to do anything about it. They went their separate ways assuring themselves that they were still friends and that would be calling upon each-other in the future but, as usual, it didn’t turn out that way. However, somewhere at the bottom of their hearts they still loved each-other and would have liked to have a second shot at their relationship.
He took well over an hour in telling this story – describing all the events in vivid detail. So detailed were his accounts that he might even have told me the amount of traffic overlooking their window or the color of the curtains, for all I knew. He went through all the ups and downs of the relationship in the story as if he were living those events.
At the end of it my eyes were burning from staring at him continuously and I had forgotten all about the food, now getting cold. I asked him, “Where is she now?” and he told me. She was in the same city as we were.
The next day I took leave from my office and went looking for her. She was where he had told me she would be.
I tried a lot to meet him again but I couldn’t find him anywhere. To this day, neither I nor she knows who he was or how he knew our story better than either of us did at that time.
Monday, October 20, 2008
A Letter
She must have been quite pretty. I hadn’t noticed her much in the office but then, I had joined only a week ago. But I had seen her a few times. In fact, I had seen her only a few minutes ago-talking coquettishly to a colleague of mine. But now, all that I could see in her eyes was terror. That, and the reflected glow of the burning building behind my back. But I am getting incoherent again. I’ll try to start at the beginning.
I didn’t know what hit me, or rather, hit us when the fire started. One moment ago we were working peacefully in our cubicles and the next moment there was a fire alarm blaring at full volume, everyone was rushing towards the fire escape, blocks of burning plywood were falling all over the place – adding fuel to the already raging fire. It was a pandemonium I never thought possible. I wasn’t one of the first to get out. Considering my physical fitness, I was probably one of the last people who came out alive of that inferno.
Just when I reached the door, I heard a crash and a scream behind me. It was as if a bulky object had crashed on someone trying to get out. Instinctively, I turned around and looked in that direction. It was then that I saw her. That face will remain etched in my memory for ever.
Her hair was slightly burnt. Her face was black with soot. A pillar had fallen on her left leg and pinned her to the floor but otherwise she seemed unhurt. She was close enough for me to go there. I don’t know what it was that made me go near her-maybe it was my humanity to save a fellow being in distress, maybe it was pure curiosity – I don’t know what it was and never will.
She didn’t see me approach until I got very near. She was too busy trying to release herself from the pillar to notice me. When I reached her, she turned around and I could see the terror, panic and distress in her eyes. What I saw in that one moment can not be described even in a thousand words. It was then that I realized how much we fear death. But the next moment there was hope and joy in her eyes. She must have thought that I would rescue her. And it was exactly then that I suddenly became fully aware of the mortal danger I was in. As I turned to run away I imagined her eyes return from hopeful to panic-stricken. But now there was a new emotion mixed with panic-disgust.
I ran as fast as I could into the safe hands of the crowd and the fire-fighters, imagining the eyes following me and hoping against hope that someone would save her but it was not to be.
The fire that gutted our two-storied office building claimed five lives. She was one of the two women who died. She had been a secretary in the marketing department, fresh out of college. She had been barely twenty-two when she died. I came to know all this through the newspaper and my colleagues.
I frequently think of her. Was she an open-hearted kind person or was she a snob? Did she have some talents no one realized? Had she too hoped of making in big in the world like we all do in our youth? What did her parents do? Did she belong to a well-to-do family or had she joined this firm to sustain her economic condition? How would she have treated me if I had talked to her in the office? Did she have a boyfriend or a fiancé? And most importantly, how would she have reacted had she been in my place and I hers? Would she have run away like I did or would she have tried to rescue me? A thousand such questions keep running through my mind all day. They have driven me to distraction. I forget to have a shower, go to the office-the new office, and even to have food. I wish someday I might forget to breathe and then all my troubles will end, but that doesn’t seem to happen.
Why did this happen to me? Weren’t there other people who left her dying when they ran out to save their precious lives? Shouldn’t they have tried to help her? Is it not their fault also that she is dead? Then why is it me only who has these questions in his mind? Why is it me who is driven to distraction thinking of her? Why is it me who can feel her eyes following me wherever I go? Why? Oh, why?
This is why I have decided to end this. Whenever and whoever gets this letter, let him know that I was a coward who didn’t even try to save a person from death. Maybe I could have saved her and maybe not. But it is impossible to live with the feeling that I did not even try. That is why I am bringing death upon myself. No one other than me is responsible for my death and the girl now dead.
I hope to meet her once before I am consigned to burn forever in hell. I wish to tell her how sorry I am.
-- Abhay
Friday, August 15, 2008
The Wrenching Sadness of a Lullaby
Once again, its an article i read somewhere and liked.
There is something magical about a lullaby. It is almost impossible to listen to one without responding to it with an emotion that one never fully understands. Lullabies soothe, comfort and lull the awake into sleep. They help babies feel protected and cocooned as they slip away into the tender arms of sleep.
Mothers envelop their little ones with a musical translation of the overwhelming love they feel. Why then are lullabies almost always so sad? Why do lullabies tremble with some deep indefinable sense of liquid melancholy? Why do they ache with a nameless yearning for things lost and things that cannot be found? Think of any lullaby and you will be struck by the tinge of sweet sadness that accompanies it.
Think of a nanhi kali sone chali, dheere se aaja re ankhiyan mein, mere ghar aayi ek nanhi pari or Shubha Mudgal’s so ja and you will observe this recurring pattern. Often the words, too, like in the case of the all-time favourite “rock-a-bye-baby” are less than soothing. Across cultures, the lullaby carries traces of sorrow.
The purpose of the lullaby is anything but sad. The baby needs soothing and absolute protection from all sources of fear. The lullaby imitates the rocking motion of the cradle with simple repetitive phrases and a basic melody. But unlike the nursery rhyme where the melody produces little emotional effect, the lullaby infuses everyone listening with a powerful sense of longing. Why is this so universally true?
In some ways perhaps, the musical structure of lullabies in their desire to soothe, come close to those of dirges. The slowness and the tenderness of the tune makes it melancholic. In that sense, it could be argued that sadness is not really intrinsic to the lullaby but merely a musical by-product. The words are not important; just as martial tunes evoke parades and religious songs generate a sense of immersive piety, so do lullabies evoke a sense of quietude that overlaps with sadness.
As an explanation, however, this is not satisfying enough. There is something more at work here. Perhaps, the mother uses emotion to make a deeper connection with the baby; sadness deepens the bond between mother and child, and helps communicate her feelings better.
Or perhaps, the lullaby becomes a channel for the mother’s own sense of incompleteness. Often lullabies have words that talk about a husband who is away or of distance between mother and child and sometimes even about death.
The idea that sleep is a form of little death is a common enough one. The lullaby might be our way of playing with the idea of death. There is a sense of separation and the baby’s going away to distant lands that evokes a feeling of deep sadness that is all the more powerful because it is not real. It is a rehearsal of sadness that must eventually be ours. It allows us a foretaste of tragedy even as we celebrate the birth of the newborn.
But perhaps the strongest feeling evoked by lullabies is that of nostalgia. We yearn for something pure, tender and innocent when we listen to a lilting lullaby. We long for reaching a part of us we never can. It is this realization that perhaps is at the heart of a lullaby’s ineffable sadness. For the nostalgia we feel is the nostalgia for the womb. The mother gently pines for that sense of intact completeness when she sings melancholically for her little one.
As listeners, we long to be complete again but know that we cannot. The lullaby is nothing but the song of the baby being cast adrift ever so slowly on the painfully solitary journey called life. As adults when we hear this song, we are reminded of what we have lost in some nameless way. The lullaby tells us that what is most beautiful and what makes us feel the purest emotions is also the most transient. We see the magic of life only as it disappears slowly from our eyes. The lullaby is a gentle chronicle of a life told in reverse.
There is something magical about a lullaby. It is almost impossible to listen to one without responding to it with an emotion that one never fully understands. Lullabies soothe, comfort and lull the awake into sleep. They help babies feel protected and cocooned as they slip away into the tender arms of sleep.
Mothers envelop their little ones with a musical translation of the overwhelming love they feel. Why then are lullabies almost always so sad? Why do lullabies tremble with some deep indefinable sense of liquid melancholy? Why do they ache with a nameless yearning for things lost and things that cannot be found? Think of any lullaby and you will be struck by the tinge of sweet sadness that accompanies it.
Think of a nanhi kali sone chali, dheere se aaja re ankhiyan mein, mere ghar aayi ek nanhi pari or Shubha Mudgal’s so ja and you will observe this recurring pattern. Often the words, too, like in the case of the all-time favourite “rock-a-bye-baby” are less than soothing. Across cultures, the lullaby carries traces of sorrow.
The purpose of the lullaby is anything but sad. The baby needs soothing and absolute protection from all sources of fear. The lullaby imitates the rocking motion of the cradle with simple repetitive phrases and a basic melody. But unlike the nursery rhyme where the melody produces little emotional effect, the lullaby infuses everyone listening with a powerful sense of longing. Why is this so universally true?
In some ways perhaps, the musical structure of lullabies in their desire to soothe, come close to those of dirges. The slowness and the tenderness of the tune makes it melancholic. In that sense, it could be argued that sadness is not really intrinsic to the lullaby but merely a musical by-product. The words are not important; just as martial tunes evoke parades and religious songs generate a sense of immersive piety, so do lullabies evoke a sense of quietude that overlaps with sadness.
As an explanation, however, this is not satisfying enough. There is something more at work here. Perhaps, the mother uses emotion to make a deeper connection with the baby; sadness deepens the bond between mother and child, and helps communicate her feelings better.
Or perhaps, the lullaby becomes a channel for the mother’s own sense of incompleteness. Often lullabies have words that talk about a husband who is away or of distance between mother and child and sometimes even about death.
The idea that sleep is a form of little death is a common enough one. The lullaby might be our way of playing with the idea of death. There is a sense of separation and the baby’s going away to distant lands that evokes a feeling of deep sadness that is all the more powerful because it is not real. It is a rehearsal of sadness that must eventually be ours. It allows us a foretaste of tragedy even as we celebrate the birth of the newborn.
But perhaps the strongest feeling evoked by lullabies is that of nostalgia. We yearn for something pure, tender and innocent when we listen to a lilting lullaby. We long for reaching a part of us we never can. It is this realization that perhaps is at the heart of a lullaby’s ineffable sadness. For the nostalgia we feel is the nostalgia for the womb. The mother gently pines for that sense of intact completeness when she sings melancholically for her little one.
As listeners, we long to be complete again but know that we cannot. The lullaby is nothing but the song of the baby being cast adrift ever so slowly on the painfully solitary journey called life. As adults when we hear this song, we are reminded of what we have lost in some nameless way. The lullaby tells us that what is most beautiful and what makes us feel the purest emotions is also the most transient. We see the magic of life only as it disappears slowly from our eyes. The lullaby is a gentle chronicle of a life told in reverse.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Traffic Jam
This is the outcome of my boredom over the weekend , so gaali mat dena. :P
He was a rich businessman based in Mumbai. His motto throughout life had been – “Given sufficient money and the brains regarding where to use it, everything is possible.” And he considered himself lucky enough to have a sufficient supply of both. He attributed most of his success to this motto of his.
He had an only son whom he adored very much and he could go to any lengths for his happiness. However, his son didn’t agree to his motto. He believed that luck played a very important part too. Father and son had had many debates regarding this topic but none could bring the other to his point of view.
Now, it so happened that the son fell in love with a girl in his college. It seemed to him that she loved him too but he didn’t dare ask her for fear of rejection. His father knew about the girl and approved of his son’s choice.
After college, the girl was accepted in a renowned US university for higher studies while the son had planned of joining his father in business. The girl, on receiving the acceptance letter, called up the son and told him that she would be going to the US in two days. The son offered to drop her to the airport and she agreed. Later that night, the son told his father, “ If only I could have spent a few more hours with her, I would have professed my love to her and asked her if she loved me in return. But now it doesn’t seem possible. I don’t think that she’ll even remember me after spending 2 years in the US. I offered to take her to the airport just so that I might be able to see her for a few more minutes.”
The flight was at 10:00 a.m. At 08:28, the son asked his father for the car keys since it would take them about one hour to get to the airport. The father spent 2 minutes looking for the car keys before handing them over to his son. Then he went to his office where it was business as usual.
3 hours later, his son called him up. He was in a jubilant mood. He told his father, “She loves me too! We were on our way to the airport but got stuck in a traffic jam. There was some kind of accident just ahead of us and lorry behind us won’t budge an inch so that we might turn and take another route to the airport. Seeing that we were stuck there, I reasoned that God had provided me with this one last opportunity to get my love and I should not let this chance go in vain. So, I told her everything that was in my heart and she accepted that she loved me too! Her flight ticket had to be postponed for a week. That means I get 1 week to spend with my love! I am so happy! I always used to tell you that luck played an important part in our lives but you never agreed. Had we reached at that spot even one minute earlier, we would have been ahead of that crashed van and right now she would have been in a plane bound for California. Now I hope you will agree that I was right. “
The father smiled as he hung up.
A few minutes later, he received another call. The caller said, “Sir, your work was done without any hitches, correct to the minute. The van containing eggs overturned on the highway at exactly 9 o’clock and the lorry with faulty reverse gear was parked behind your car at exactly one minute past nine. You should have seen the mess we made. It was more than 2 hours before any vehicle could pass. I hope you are satisfied with our work. Please remember us the next time you need something of this sort done. Thank you.”
The father smiled again as he hung up.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
The Prince's Tale
A couple of thing I wanna clarify:
1> This is for Potter fans only, specifically those who have read the Deathly Hallows - waise baaki junta bhi padh sakti hai - u'll understand the sequences.
2> I have written this as, according to my imagination, Snape would have written in his personal diary, that is, if he ever kept one.
Before he told Lily that she was a witch:
I love her. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. And, she is a witch, although she doesn't know it yet. I have seen her perform magic. We will be going to Hogwarts together. I know Hogwarts will be much better than home. I hope they allow me to stay there during the holidays also. She doesn't know me - I am not sure whether she has even seen me yet, but soon she will know me. I will tell her that she is a witch and that she will be joining Hogwarts,just like me and I'll tell her everything that I know about Hogwarts. Maybe then, she'll like me.
On the day he tells Lily that she is a witch:
It couldn't have been worse. I told her that she was a witch but she didn't believe me. She and that Muggle sister of hers, looked at me as if I was some animal escaped from the zoo. I had been planning of this day for a long time but somehow everything went wrong, as it usually does in my life.She will realize that I was right when the letters from Hogwarts arrive. Then she'll know that I was speaking the truth all along. Maybe then, she'll like me.
On the day before leaving for Hogwarts:
She is angry with me again, and all because of that stupid Muggle sister of hers. Who told her to come sneaking around when I was talking to Lily? These stupid Muggles don't have brains. How was I supposed to react when she made fun of my clothes? I didn't mean to harm her but my anger burst forth and a twig fell on her head from the tree. And now Lily blames me for it and isn't talking to me anymore. However, soon we will be going to Hogwarts and everything will be fine again. I sincerely hope she is in Slytherine because that's where I am going. She MUST be in Slytherine.
Sometime during the 4th year:
That bastard James is showing too much attention towards Lily and maybe Lily likes him too, although she says that she despises him whenever I ask her. I can't hate anyone more than I hate him. Other than that, I am very happy with my life. I have made good friends. This Lord Voldemort seems to be getting powerful everyday - and he needs followers. I find the prospect of joining his ranks very attractive. From early childhood I have learnt that power is everything and we wizards should use our powers to take over the world from the Muggles. Why should we, the more powerful people, live hidden from the Muggles while they are free to do whatever they like? My friends share my feelings,although Lily doesn't understand me. She has lived a secluded and safe life till now,how can she be anything other than philosophical about good and bad. But I am practical and I am sure I'll be able to convince her that my path isn't wrong.
After he calls Lily Mudblood:
What have I done!! I shouldn't be allowed to live. I called Lily "Mudblood". And all because of that Potter and his despicable friends. It was so humiliating - hanging upside-down in mid-air, controlled by Potter. I was blinded by anger and I lost control of my mind. How could I have called her, the person I love, such a foul name!! What will I do now? I went to her later and asked for her forgiveness but I already knew that I had committed an unpardonable offence and any amount of pleading couldn't bring me in her good books again. She doesn't like my friends and nor the path I have chosen in my life. Seems the love of my life is lost forever.
After Lily's death:
HE KILLED HER !! The Dark Lord killed Lily !! My Lily DEAD...why am I still alive? After all I did to save her, I was unable to do so. I have no reason to live now. Even though she married Potter and I had no chance of getting her, I lived with the hope that maybe some day she will be mine, but now even that hope is gone. I have nothing left in life.I did all that I could. I had pleaded with the Dark Lord to spare her life. I told him that I don't care if Potter and his child die but please don't hurt Lily. I had even contacted Dumbledore, at great risk of the Dark Lord's getting to know this. I had told him of the Dark Lord's plans of visiting Godric's Hollow. I had asked him to somehow save Lily's life. I told him that I will do anything in return of his saving Lily's life - even though it means saving Potter and his child too but even the greatest wizard in the world wasn't able to save Lily from the Dark Lord. And my Lily is dead now. But how did the child survive? And what happened to the Dark Lord? Dumbledore says that his power is broken for now but soon he will return to full power - not that I am going to help him anymore, after he killed my Lily. But whenever he returns I will do my best to make sure that he is gone forever. I can't let the killer of Lily live on. Dumbledore says that my aim in life now should be to protect Potter's son. How can I care for the son of that bastard? But then, he is Lily's son too and she died protecting him. I can't let Lily die for a vain cause. Moreover, Dumbledore says that the child has Lily's eyes. I wish I could see them now. But she is gone forever, never to return. And I am left with this onerous burden of protecting the child she died protecting.
Sometime during Harry's first 5 years:
That Potter is just like his father. No regard for rules, insolent, hot-tempered. He seems to hate me as much as I hated his father. I hate him too but still I'll protect his life with mine if it comes to that. All this just because of you, Lily.
After Dumbledore tells him that Harry must die:
Potter Must Die!! Not that I have any kind of affection for him. All this while Dumbledore made me believe that he and I were protecting Potter for Lily's sake. But now I know that Dumbledore was raising him so that he could use him against the Dark Lord. Dumbledore never had any intention of letting Potter live. He just used me to protect Potter until protection was no longer required. I spied for him. I have put my life in danger every single day for the last 2 years just to keep Potter safe and now Dumbledore tells me that Potter must die. Still I'll follow Dumbledore's instructions because they will lead to the fall of the Dark Lord and I can't rest until I punish Lily's killer. Dumbledore himself will die soon, at my hands. I will have to commit this crime to save Draco's soul from damage - as Dumbledore put it. I have a long list of tasks ahead of me that Dumbledore has entrusted me with, will I be able to complete them successfully? Or will my life, that has been a failure till now, end in failure too?
The last entry:
The battle for Hogwarts has started. All that is left for me to do now is to somehow get to Potter and make him listen to everything I have to say. But this is the most difficult task. How will I find him amidst the chaos of the battle? And how will I, whom he considers to be his biggest enemy next only to the Dark Lord, make him believe me? Dumbledore, your instructions demand too much of me. But I will carry them out even if it costs me my life.
1> This is for Potter fans only, specifically those who have read the Deathly Hallows - waise baaki junta bhi padh sakti hai - u'll understand the sequences.
2> I have written this as, according to my imagination, Snape would have written in his personal diary, that is, if he ever kept one.
Before he told Lily that she was a witch:
I love her. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. And, she is a witch, although she doesn't know it yet. I have seen her perform magic. We will be going to Hogwarts together. I know Hogwarts will be much better than home. I hope they allow me to stay there during the holidays also. She doesn't know me - I am not sure whether she has even seen me yet, but soon she will know me. I will tell her that she is a witch and that she will be joining Hogwarts,just like me and I'll tell her everything that I know about Hogwarts. Maybe then, she'll like me.
On the day he tells Lily that she is a witch:
It couldn't have been worse. I told her that she was a witch but she didn't believe me. She and that Muggle sister of hers, looked at me as if I was some animal escaped from the zoo. I had been planning of this day for a long time but somehow everything went wrong, as it usually does in my life.She will realize that I was right when the letters from Hogwarts arrive. Then she'll know that I was speaking the truth all along. Maybe then, she'll like me.
On the day before leaving for Hogwarts:
She is angry with me again, and all because of that stupid Muggle sister of hers. Who told her to come sneaking around when I was talking to Lily? These stupid Muggles don't have brains. How was I supposed to react when she made fun of my clothes? I didn't mean to harm her but my anger burst forth and a twig fell on her head from the tree. And now Lily blames me for it and isn't talking to me anymore. However, soon we will be going to Hogwarts and everything will be fine again. I sincerely hope she is in Slytherine because that's where I am going. She MUST be in Slytherine.
Sometime during the 4th year:
That bastard James is showing too much attention towards Lily and maybe Lily likes him too, although she says that she despises him whenever I ask her. I can't hate anyone more than I hate him. Other than that, I am very happy with my life. I have made good friends. This Lord Voldemort seems to be getting powerful everyday - and he needs followers. I find the prospect of joining his ranks very attractive. From early childhood I have learnt that power is everything and we wizards should use our powers to take over the world from the Muggles. Why should we, the more powerful people, live hidden from the Muggles while they are free to do whatever they like? My friends share my feelings,although Lily doesn't understand me. She has lived a secluded and safe life till now,how can she be anything other than philosophical about good and bad. But I am practical and I am sure I'll be able to convince her that my path isn't wrong.
After he calls Lily Mudblood:
What have I done!! I shouldn't be allowed to live. I called Lily "Mudblood". And all because of that Potter and his despicable friends. It was so humiliating - hanging upside-down in mid-air, controlled by Potter. I was blinded by anger and I lost control of my mind. How could I have called her, the person I love, such a foul name!! What will I do now? I went to her later and asked for her forgiveness but I already knew that I had committed an unpardonable offence and any amount of pleading couldn't bring me in her good books again. She doesn't like my friends and nor the path I have chosen in my life. Seems the love of my life is lost forever.
After Lily's death:
HE KILLED HER !! The Dark Lord killed Lily !! My Lily DEAD...why am I still alive? After all I did to save her, I was unable to do so. I have no reason to live now. Even though she married Potter and I had no chance of getting her, I lived with the hope that maybe some day she will be mine, but now even that hope is gone. I have nothing left in life.I did all that I could. I had pleaded with the Dark Lord to spare her life. I told him that I don't care if Potter and his child die but please don't hurt Lily. I had even contacted Dumbledore, at great risk of the Dark Lord's getting to know this. I had told him of the Dark Lord's plans of visiting Godric's Hollow. I had asked him to somehow save Lily's life. I told him that I will do anything in return of his saving Lily's life - even though it means saving Potter and his child too but even the greatest wizard in the world wasn't able to save Lily from the Dark Lord. And my Lily is dead now. But how did the child survive? And what happened to the Dark Lord? Dumbledore says that his power is broken for now but soon he will return to full power - not that I am going to help him anymore, after he killed my Lily. But whenever he returns I will do my best to make sure that he is gone forever. I can't let the killer of Lily live on. Dumbledore says that my aim in life now should be to protect Potter's son. How can I care for the son of that bastard? But then, he is Lily's son too and she died protecting him. I can't let Lily die for a vain cause. Moreover, Dumbledore says that the child has Lily's eyes. I wish I could see them now. But she is gone forever, never to return. And I am left with this onerous burden of protecting the child she died protecting.
Sometime during Harry's first 5 years:
That Potter is just like his father. No regard for rules, insolent, hot-tempered. He seems to hate me as much as I hated his father. I hate him too but still I'll protect his life with mine if it comes to that. All this just because of you, Lily.
After Dumbledore tells him that Harry must die:
Potter Must Die!! Not that I have any kind of affection for him. All this while Dumbledore made me believe that he and I were protecting Potter for Lily's sake. But now I know that Dumbledore was raising him so that he could use him against the Dark Lord. Dumbledore never had any intention of letting Potter live. He just used me to protect Potter until protection was no longer required. I spied for him. I have put my life in danger every single day for the last 2 years just to keep Potter safe and now Dumbledore tells me that Potter must die. Still I'll follow Dumbledore's instructions because they will lead to the fall of the Dark Lord and I can't rest until I punish Lily's killer. Dumbledore himself will die soon, at my hands. I will have to commit this crime to save Draco's soul from damage - as Dumbledore put it. I have a long list of tasks ahead of me that Dumbledore has entrusted me with, will I be able to complete them successfully? Or will my life, that has been a failure till now, end in failure too?
The last entry:
The battle for Hogwarts has started. All that is left for me to do now is to somehow get to Potter and make him listen to everything I have to say. But this is the most difficult task. How will I find him amidst the chaos of the battle? And how will I, whom he considers to be his biggest enemy next only to the Dark Lord, make him believe me? Dumbledore, your instructions demand too much of me. But I will carry them out even if it costs me my life.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
My Many Indias
hmmm...this hasn't been written by me. I read it in The Times of India a few days ago.
On the eve of Republic Day a friend gifted Bunny and me a CD containing a haunting, goose-pimpling rendition of Jana Gana Mana as arranged and conducted by A R Rahman and featuring Shiv Kumar Sharma, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Amjad Ali Khan, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Pandit Jasraj, Jagjit Singh, Parveen Sultana, Bhupen Hazarika, Balasubrahmanyam, and a galaxy of other stars, from all over the country. I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly patriotic person (in its various manifestations, i cordially dislike the Indian state, as distinct from the India of its people) but that music, played against a backdrop ranging from Ladakh to Kanyakumari, moved me as few things have done: it were as though the country of which i am a part, and which is an inextricable part of me was singing of itself to me. What did i think of when i thought of India? What random impressions conjured my many Indias?
India is vast space; space to accommodate the clamour of giant cities, teeming with the seething energy of millions and the silence of empty solitudes. India is space; space to include the pilgrim and the politician, the poet and the revolutionary, the street urchin and the merchant prince, ahimsa and nuclear might, 3,000 years and the 21st century.
India is the express highway thundering with traffic and the slip road beside it with the sign ‘For camels, elephants and bullock carts’. India is mega dams and factories, call centres and shopping malls, and the voices raised in protest against all these and more.
India is a colour TV, garlanded with marigolds and a picture of Lakshmi on top, playing MTV while grandmother counts the beads of her mala and grandchildren dream of US green cards. India is the roar and tumult of democracy and the forgotten face of a forgotten neta on an election poster stuck on the crumbling mud wall of a village deserted by all but the ghost of hunger.
India is the faceless anonymity of cities where neighbours don’t know the names of neighbours and it is the ‘Ram, Ram’ of timeless greeting exchanged by strangers who pass each other on a lonely path.
India is the smell of incense and ancient stone, of parched earth when the first drops of rain fall, of the dust and sweat of rattletrap buses, of the sweet, milky tea served in an earthen bowl by a ‘chai, chaiwala!’ on the whistle-stop railway stations of night.
India is the crowded bazaar where two dozen languages and half a dozen faiths negotiate the day-to-day transactions of buying and selling, and haggling and cheating, and quarrelling, and, above all, always above all, living together.
India is the cadences of Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech, and India is the minimalist squiggle by the cartoonist Ranga which in a single unbroken line captures the iconic essence of the greatest Indian of modern times, and India is Husain’s portrait of the faceless face of a woman draped in a white, blue-bordered sari.
India is Awara hoon! playing on a scratchy, wind-up gramophone. Dev Anand in a rakishly tilted Jewel Thief cap, the carthorse’s hooves going clip-clop in rhythm with Dilip Kumar singing in Naya Daur, it is Madhubala and Nargis and Waheeda Rehman, and Guru Dutt and Madhuri Dixit and Shah Rukh Khan leading the women’s hockey team to victory and the Big B and the two-storey-high trafficstopping Bollywood poster in Trafalgar Square, London.
India is much more than a million mutinies now; it is a billion-plus narratives of itself, waiting to be told.
Not just once upon a time, but once upon a future ...
On the eve of Republic Day a friend gifted Bunny and me a CD containing a haunting, goose-pimpling rendition of Jana Gana Mana as arranged and conducted by A R Rahman and featuring Shiv Kumar Sharma, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Amjad Ali Khan, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Pandit Jasraj, Jagjit Singh, Parveen Sultana, Bhupen Hazarika, Balasubrahmanyam, and a galaxy of other stars, from all over the country. I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly patriotic person (in its various manifestations, i cordially dislike the Indian state, as distinct from the India of its people) but that music, played against a backdrop ranging from Ladakh to Kanyakumari, moved me as few things have done: it were as though the country of which i am a part, and which is an inextricable part of me was singing of itself to me. What did i think of when i thought of India? What random impressions conjured my many Indias?
India is vast space; space to accommodate the clamour of giant cities, teeming with the seething energy of millions and the silence of empty solitudes. India is space; space to include the pilgrim and the politician, the poet and the revolutionary, the street urchin and the merchant prince, ahimsa and nuclear might, 3,000 years and the 21st century.
India is the express highway thundering with traffic and the slip road beside it with the sign ‘For camels, elephants and bullock carts’. India is mega dams and factories, call centres and shopping malls, and the voices raised in protest against all these and more.
India is a colour TV, garlanded with marigolds and a picture of Lakshmi on top, playing MTV while grandmother counts the beads of her mala and grandchildren dream of US green cards. India is the roar and tumult of democracy and the forgotten face of a forgotten neta on an election poster stuck on the crumbling mud wall of a village deserted by all but the ghost of hunger.
India is the faceless anonymity of cities where neighbours don’t know the names of neighbours and it is the ‘Ram, Ram’ of timeless greeting exchanged by strangers who pass each other on a lonely path.
India is the smell of incense and ancient stone, of parched earth when the first drops of rain fall, of the dust and sweat of rattletrap buses, of the sweet, milky tea served in an earthen bowl by a ‘chai, chaiwala!’ on the whistle-stop railway stations of night.
India is the crowded bazaar where two dozen languages and half a dozen faiths negotiate the day-to-day transactions of buying and selling, and haggling and cheating, and quarrelling, and, above all, always above all, living together.
India is the cadences of Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech, and India is the minimalist squiggle by the cartoonist Ranga which in a single unbroken line captures the iconic essence of the greatest Indian of modern times, and India is Husain’s portrait of the faceless face of a woman draped in a white, blue-bordered sari.
India is Awara hoon! playing on a scratchy, wind-up gramophone. Dev Anand in a rakishly tilted Jewel Thief cap, the carthorse’s hooves going clip-clop in rhythm with Dilip Kumar singing in Naya Daur, it is Madhubala and Nargis and Waheeda Rehman, and Guru Dutt and Madhuri Dixit and Shah Rukh Khan leading the women’s hockey team to victory and the Big B and the two-storey-high trafficstopping Bollywood poster in Trafalgar Square, London.
India is much more than a million mutinies now; it is a billion-plus narratives of itself, waiting to be told.
Not just once upon a time, but once upon a future ...
Thursday, January 31, 2008
No Title
There she was - standing on the other side of the street.
I had known her once, in fact, more than just known her - I had
been friends with her once. I had even fallen in love with her
but before I could decide whether to tell her or not something
had happened that had caused me to compress all my feelings
into a corner of my mind and board them up - never to be
released again.
Now, few years later, I still didn't dare remove
those blockades - afraid of what I might find there. I had made
a decision of not talking to her and I didn't want to repent it.
"Anyhow", I thought," She won't even recognize me."
Lost in my thoughts, I hadn't seen her cross the street and
was startled when I heard her voice. "Hi! How are you? How've
you been? What are you doing in this city? ......" - the
usual barrage of questions people ask when they meet after a
long time.
I told her that I had been working in this city for the
last three years.She had assumed, quite rightly, that I recognized
her and, quite wrongly, that I hadn't known that she too lived
here.
We sat down for a coffee in a nearby cafe intending to
catch up with the last few years of each-other's life.Actually,
it was only she who talked - I was lost somewhere.After some
time when she paused, I asked her casually,"And how is your
boyfriend ?"
She was silent awhile and then she told me that they had
had a quarrel a few days ago and had not talked to each-other
ever since. Before parting she gave me her address(I had already
known her address but obviously I couldn't have told her that)
and asked me to drop in sometimes.
A few weeks later we were as close to each-other as we had
been in college - talking endlessly, going to movies every
weekend, drinking coffee together...... and although no news of
her boyfriend was good news for me, I realised that she seemed
to be getting quieter and more irritable with every passing day.
I knew the reason for it but didn't want to talk about it.
Finally, I couldn't bear to see her like this. I called on
her one evening and told her,"Why don't you talk to him in
stead of waiting for him to call you ? I don't know why the two
of you quarrelled but it is obvious that you miss him.So stop
being childish and call him up."
She looked up and said,"And what about you? Will you be
OK with it or will you again stop talking to me like you did
last time?"
"No," I said," I am absolutely fine with it." And I
boarded up all my emotions more securely than I had ever done
before.
I had known her once, in fact, more than just known her - I had
been friends with her once. I had even fallen in love with her
but before I could decide whether to tell her or not something
had happened that had caused me to compress all my feelings
into a corner of my mind and board them up - never to be
released again.
Now, few years later, I still didn't dare remove
those blockades - afraid of what I might find there. I had made
a decision of not talking to her and I didn't want to repent it.
"Anyhow", I thought," She won't even recognize me."
Lost in my thoughts, I hadn't seen her cross the street and
was startled when I heard her voice. "Hi! How are you? How've
you been? What are you doing in this city? ......" - the
usual barrage of questions people ask when they meet after a
long time.
I told her that I had been working in this city for the
last three years.She had assumed, quite rightly, that I recognized
her and, quite wrongly, that I hadn't known that she too lived
here.
We sat down for a coffee in a nearby cafe intending to
catch up with the last few years of each-other's life.Actually,
it was only she who talked - I was lost somewhere.After some
time when she paused, I asked her casually,"And how is your
boyfriend ?"
She was silent awhile and then she told me that they had
had a quarrel a few days ago and had not talked to each-other
ever since. Before parting she gave me her address(I had already
known her address but obviously I couldn't have told her that)
and asked me to drop in sometimes.
A few weeks later we were as close to each-other as we had
been in college - talking endlessly, going to movies every
weekend, drinking coffee together...... and although no news of
her boyfriend was good news for me, I realised that she seemed
to be getting quieter and more irritable with every passing day.
I knew the reason for it but didn't want to talk about it.
Finally, I couldn't bear to see her like this. I called on
her one evening and told her,"Why don't you talk to him in
stead of waiting for him to call you ? I don't know why the two
of you quarrelled but it is obvious that you miss him.So stop
being childish and call him up."
She looked up and said,"And what about you? Will you be
OK with it or will you again stop talking to me like you did
last time?"
"No," I said," I am absolutely fine with it." And I
boarded up all my emotions more securely than I had ever done
before.
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