The wheels just keep on turning

Five long years in R have made me see more than my fair share of goodbyes. No, not so much that I start personifying them as I'd once feared, but thankfully enough that I figured I must be inured to it all by now.

Or so I thought until this morning.

I think I should've said something wildly inappropriate, just to ensure I wouldn't be missed. But I guess that would be thinking too highly of myself. Wishful thinking, as she used to point out.

As it stands, another addition to Famous Last Words today reads- To Mango: See you soon. (between two coaches aboard the slowly moving Jan Shatabdi)

Why did my playlist just play Bookends?

In the wells of silence

It was the kind of time and place where saying "I'm a voracious reader" didn't make you popular among the ladies. But, I used to say it nevertheless; at least, it made my English teachers happy, and that meant more chances for me to point out to the rest of the class, nose high up, that the P in pterodactyl was silent. No one gave two archaeopteryx hoots.

It was in such a time and place where the Library period in school was one of the least popular, right alongside the compulsory Music/Dance/Art and Moral Science periods. Yours truly wasn't a huge fan either, but only because we only had less than forty minutes to ravage through the wealth of the library's bookshelves. Now, I might give the impression that I was this nerdy read-it-all type kid who'd assimilated all the masters' literature. That'd be more than slightly taking you off-track. I hated the Classics section. Call it bad timing, but trying to read The Tempest when I was six-and-a-half years old wasn't the most memorable experience (still no excuse for missing the Brave New World question in Gokhale's quiz the other day), neither was Little Women or Jane Eyre. The Hardy Boys got too predictable too soon, Nancy Drew was pretty gay even for third grade, school libraries don't nearly stack as much of Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan as they should, and the Tinkles, Amar Chitra Kathas and Champaks would barely last twenty minutes before you were done.

This meant an alternate job had to taken up often during library periods: make everyone else read. This meant critically analysing every kid's tastes, trying hopelessly to find that perfect romance for the girl whose roll number was right next to mine, keeping the class topper away from further academic reading, and generally taking a rap from the librarian for roaming around the library harrying everyone into reading, often too enthusiastically to her irritation.

So very often, I'd be shown through mime the Maintain Silence poster, but my low attention span would quickly take me to the one right alongside it. The first time I saw a Keep Calm and Carry On poster, I was immediately reminded of that old library, with its high, pasty, dull-yellow walls, the almost-ancient wall-clock, the Maintain Silence scream and the World Book Day poster alongside it. Celebrated across the world today as World Book and Copyright Day, it urged us into reading more. But to most heady seven and eight-year-olds of 1997, the day it was celebrated was more interesting, and ironically, it reminded them of one of the most critical reasons that took them away from reading. The 23rd of April was one day before one Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar's birthday.

Bad choice, United Nations. For India, at least. Happy 39th, Sachin. Thank you for everything, and it's only thanks to you, though, that at least I remember the other day I was talking about. Not too bad a choice, then, eh?

Twit

For reasons I'd rather not bother you with, this page has stagnated, with every post only serving to play catch-up with the events of the months passed since the last. Not too long ago though, I'd be serving dollops of unnecessary insights into the recesses of this insane mind, almost-senile reminiscences of a colourful childhood and imaginary plans of romances never to be. That wordiness hasn't died completely though, as unfortunate followers of my Twitter feed would tell you with some disdain.

These months of inactivity here have seen an inexplicable transformation on that other page where I bug the world; from incredibly nubile puns, via drooling over the occasional classic United performance and drawling over the state of Indian cricket, to remarkably unfounded theories of India's human development vis-a-vis China. The very formal turn of phrase that the previous sentence illustrates the change in state of mind I've been through. The interviews I'd been preparing for didn't go as well as dreamt, but they left a lad who barely touched the Sudoku and Sports page every morning, going through every news article and opinion on the Indian Budget over three newspapers, and what's more, giving his own two bits in 160 characters (Yes, Shreyas, I do notice the inherent anomaly in that!).

Thankfully, though, that lovely grant of eight grand a month from the HRD Ministry means I have an overflowing pending reading list. The Picador Book of Cricket, compiled by Ramachandra Guha (two more books of whose lie on the aforementioned list), is as romantic a book on cricket as it gets. I've barely reached the middle of the first volume in the book, which is all about the quarter of a century before and after Australia and England first locked horns in 1877. If I finish reading it soon enough, I guess I'll follow it up with The States of Indian Cricket by the same author. A shorter review for those who get it: these two look like perfect birthday gifts for dear Moh.

I'm yet to read two books I'd been gifted on my birthday this year – The Beatles: Stories Behind Their Songs from AP, and Gone With The Wind from the Angels. The former was a factual drag according to Ellen, but I guess I'll love the trivia. The latter should slightly lessen my regret of having not read too many classics, as much as I've consciously avoided them. It gives a warm fuzzy feeling, to see so many unread books in my room, although it's tough to keep them from catching dust. Not to mention, the prying eyes looking to borrow these (and never return until I harry them to death).

P.S.- Since I haven't told anyone, I'll have to tell you, at least: my love for the football field has increased manifold. And apart from that one goal I've scored there (which I keep telling myself to write about some time), that place will now be in my memory for a long, long time.

Veladrome

If I had any doubts that I'd still be sleepy after only a score of the proverbial forty winks, they were cleared emphatically in the first few seconds down the famous Amod Path slope. The morning, still in its winter slumber, seemed to throw a blast of icy wind across my unprotected face. Misty-eyed, I took it in my stride, puffing my cheeks in and out with warm air. A slight moment's hesitation forced me to check my right jacket-pocket: Haddu's Hershey's bar was safely locked in. Head down, hood up, I glided past the chirpy many as we reached the road by the canal...

It's the final semester, finally. The time I couldn't wait for ever since that first meal in the Rajendra Bhawan mess. But three years of watching one and many sing that cloying swansong has left me unsentimental. Five years is way too long anywhere, leave alone a hellhole like Roorkee. It'll be goodbye and good riddance, when the time comes. Until then, to paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd quite incorrectly, there's too many places I haven't been.

One of them's been that long misty stretch called the canal road at the stroke of dawn. Following the many faintly visible jerseys ahead of me, I forgo the familiar right turn across the bridge towards the railway station, and soldier on ahead in the now navy blue darkness. The road's full of speed breakers, and the many squirms of anguish and the hollow clanks of metal ahead forewarn me of their oncoming agony. A diversion's taken, and now on my left is a vast stretch of fields, only slowly growing back to life after the kharif harvest. On the right, an offshoot of the Solani aqueduct, a grey mist floating over its calm blue surface. And the two still dark sides, are seemingly seperated by an incredibly peeved wall of wind, that'd flipped my flimsy hood off long ago. The annual HEC Cycle Race could take a break- I stood up to soak it all in. It wasn't 5:15 a.m., like that Knopfler song I love, but in that cold pre-dawn haze of tranquility, I took those few breaths that I'll just hold in as long as I last.

Past the chaotic midway point, scything through the remaining heavy air from the night before, chest number 114 entered the portals of the campus at dawn. After an intriguing battle with number 126 ended in a comic defeat, I collapsed at the foot of a huge tamarind tree. 4^Th placed Nivedan and 6^th placed Ashwin were nice enough to keep me conscious enough to soak in the ecstasy of finishing the race, halved as the distance may have been from the original 36 kilometres. And after missing the year's annual b-plan contest, and the last DJ Springeezz, I finally had my first check off the bucket list.

P.S.- In the long hiatus between this post and the last, I missed out on a few things. In a short summary: there was one last sexual Nihilanth trip, a first New Year's Eve at home in five years and this little icky green blot on the face of the blogosphere turned four. Happy happy!

Bheegi Billi and other tales

I slowly, carefully slipped my hands through- the left one went first, to the chagrin of the pot-bellied Master Rasul, and then the right, and a few smoothing of creases later, he directed me to a mirror to take a look. The suit felt mighty fine, and unlike what I’d thought, almost weightless. I tried to stretch my arms out wide and had to stop at an unwieldy angle that made me look like an overdressed scarecrow. Ma had the now-ubiquitous “I wish was quick enough to take a photograph now” moment, as Big B started laughing out, too. The tailor was shaking his head when I enquired if I couldn’t stretch my hands beyond the point where I was. He replied through poorly controlled sniggers- “People in suits aren’t really expected to go beyond a shakehand”. That was probably the only dampener in an otherwise supremely satisfying two hundred seconds. As Big B and I concurred, Tashaniya.

While that tailor’s receipt says my abbreviated name will receive that suit two days from now, my name troubles will probably haunt me a day earlier. It’s that big feline day tomorrow, and stories are flowing in from all directions on how the organisers are very particular about identification details, with at least three different levels of frisking and checking. In that regard, it's piquing that my passport, college ID card and ATM card, the only three officially acceptable forms of identity verification I have here, all happen to be slightly different variations of the same 25-character name (without spaces). An identity crisis, indeed.

Talking of that catty event, the venue happens to be another of those million permutations for college names here in Hadduland that go like (random-alphabet)ITAM. Just to make sure, Big B and I did a recon of the venue yesterday. The morons have the only centre in Visakhapatnam a full thirty kilometres off the city. Thankfully, at least twenty-five of those are either on the highway or on a newly-constructed BRTS road. But once you take that dreaded diversion the college board demands, you’re into a sand-and-rocks quagmire in the middle of dense snake-infested forests, flanked ever-so-briefly by an almost out-of-place picturesque lake. I have a feeling Slartibartfast left some of his work over here, too.

***

Five months after the last visit, and more than twelve years after that first landing, I think I’m going to miss Visakhapatnam/Vizag/The city of destiny.

There. I got that out.

O Brother, where art thou?

It’s been over a month since I last gave abstruse hints about my romantic meanderings, dear reader, and to say that it has been just eventful would start a riot. All the attention of the avaricious atrocity that is the world’s largest democracy’s fourth estate has been on Anna, Arundhati and even everybody’s favourite cow, Arindam, has failed to think beyond it. Pardon the ill-advised amour with alliteration- don’t confuse it with acerbity, please- but being averse and apathetic through this succouring of angry acolytes has led to an accretion of... alright, I’ll end your misery before you go all apoplectic with rage. But, you get the idea.

The whole movement gave a mind with a comic bent of, err, mind, so much ammunition for jokes. Yet, for fear of being mobbed and lynched, I couldn’t release it all. Even after this great surge of democratic(?) anger has finally ended in a victory for civil society (refer this for perspective), one hopes it isn’t pyrrhic. And, I have to admit, assuming it’s safe now, that I was never party to it all. That enraged the jingoistic Matkas in Azad even more than my pleas for them to stop calling Jackie, “Kalu” (as Maya Sarabhai would surely aver, that’s so middle-class!). In fact, even through the deluge of Anna-related news all over print, news and Twitter, I looked for diversions. MSD’s boys were bleeding black and blue, the football season hadn’t started, and Blake Lively, Leighton Meester and company hadn’t made an entrance into my life. So what I was up to really?

If you are reading as a present student on campus, I’d probably have rubbed it in a thousand times already that I have no courses this semester. Which means no lectures, no tutorials, no practicals- no contact hours. None. Naught. Nothing. Nada!

It isn’t as rosy as that last word makes it sound, though. Twelve hours of sleep have become indispensable, while the only daily attendance I mark is to one balding Gujju I run into everyday at Nescafe, him not taking Architecture final year as seriously as the rest of that incestuous family. Then, there’s the moping around with the rest of the coffee gang, SMSing Mango to continue her education of the over-hyped Shangri-la that is 5^th year, and the tension-filled conversations at home about feline matters. Thanks to the amazing social anomaly called birthdays, though, I have at least six new novels to get through with. And did I tell you, we get paid eight grand a month for all this? Money for nothing, indeed.

The problem with having so much free time, though, is that you get time to think things over. As I was telling Dang the other day, time may be the best healer, but wounds without closure burn the most. And that is when you’d spot me walking about alone, shorts fluttering with the easy wind, eyes on the lookout for that speck of brilliance always lurking in the sky, and a heart still yearning for the girl with love in her eyes, andflowers in her hair. Did I tell you I was falling in love with Led Zeppelin, too? Anyway, this is the product of the past two months’ random walking. Trusty cell-phone camera earns the xoxo’s. (Mal, I really don’t see how x and o aren’t hugs and kisses, respectively.)

Of Pipers and reason

I was searching for his birthday, since he’s taken every possible measure to hide it, when I stumbled upon these wise words that PeeTeeVee shot at me in a chat. I was then cribbing about how I still had two and a half years to go before I quit this dump, and now as the sand quickly thins down with less than a year to go, it really makes me wonder.

“You know, I don't know if this will make much sense to you, but so many things pass us by when we keep looking forward to someplace else, sometime in the future.”

Random romantic epiphany strikes once again. I sigh, once again.

P.S.- Over the past month, I finally figured out what Stairway To Heaven means. As Plant says in one performance, this is a song about hope.