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.

Life and a box of chocolates

There are some things in a seven-year-old life which you know as facts but have absolutely no idea what the source of that ubiquitous truth is. For example, it is known to every benevolent soul who’s worn a ridiculously decorated conical hat that it’s Lord Ganesha who holds the world record for most puris eaten at a birthday party. Or that The Undertaker has more than one life.

One similarly gathered titbit that garnished a most filling childhood was that Toblerone was the best chocolate in the world. Many a Punjabi kid with relatives in the States would brag about how his cousins would brag about its all-conquering flavours. Taste buds located at least an hour’s drive from the nearest Nirula’s Nutty Buddy would long for a mere taste of those Swiss peaks. Even renditions of Kajol prancing about drunk beyond her wits on the highways of Zurich would only entice mouths hungry for that elusive ultimate cocoa delight.

A close-to-normal life - collecting Tazos, singing this song as the first one as soon as someone finished saying Bolo Ram Ram Ram on the bus back from school, and discussing the day’s Power Zone cartoons while playing cricket in the evening – was never to be the same once it acquired this one direction and purpose: to experience the taste of Toblerone.

It’s a great travesty to romantic justice that I don’t remember how that first pack of Swiss-made treats ended up in our corner of the fridge. But I don’t. And it did. We took almost a week to even touch it, scouring the calendars for an auspicious day to first lay our hands on the end-product of a long, arduous pilgrimage. Then we did, asking Ma to gently open the packaging- its golden foil and triangular top would make a perfect addition to my budding chocolate wrapper and foil collection, I thought. And after a gleaming glance into each other’s joyous eyes, my elder brother and I let one bejewelled piece into each of our gaping mouths. And we closed our eyes for a good few seconds...

Obtaining Toblerone isn’t much of a big deal today, with every other neighbourhood store selling its overpriced versions. Yet, as Pa gently opened another box brought with much excitement from Mumbai airport’s duty-free shops, I felt the same old rush. Perhaps it’s the part of me that refuses to accept growing up that makes eating that chocolate seem like a pilgrimage. Or maybe Toblerone is the best chocolate in the world.

These kids- 2

"Jealousy, like the flawed love that bears it, has no respect for time or space or wisely reasoned argument. Jealousy can raise the dead with a single spiteful taunt, or hate a perfect stranger for nothing more than the sound of his name."- Shantaram.

Sigh. Makes you wonder if it's your jealousy that's flawed, or your love.

Dekho baarish ho rahi hai

The huge huddle in Mishra’s room finally broke out with a collective sigh. While it was relief let out by some, exhaustion was also a part of the air around the Fifth Wing. Merva’s illegible scrawls lay Xeroxed in our hands, as Jynja, Mishra and I ambled around the corridor, filling in on minute details at the eleventh hour. My loose shirt swayed at the sides, as the others scrambled to keep a hold of their loose pages. Downstairs, Haddu joined another jolly bunch in lighting up and away the banalities and vagaries of four long years...

***

Almost proportionally, as the light from the window kept dimming, my chin, unstably resting on my slipping hands, went closer and closer to the books I was supposed to be studying. As I shook up from another unintentional catnap, the darkness outside told a story quite different from the wall clock’s. I got up and trudged that well-worn path to G-27, to find Dela strapping his sandals to reciprocate. Smiling, I asked the obvious question- Coffee, Dile? The weather's amazing outside. He didn’t crib about having a mountain of notes to copy and the usual rants about the insti’s affection for academic bulimia; the cool draft from the back door would barely allow anyone to.

***

While I was eagerly following Man Utd’s second-string’s demolition of Schalke in the Champions League semi-final on the phone, Mango texted that the lights had gone out in the Nightingale’s Nest too, putting her plans of finishing some vast syllabus over the course of the night in great jeopardy. Yet, her voice betrayed little concern for that business. The strong winds were making it difficult to walk, and the century-old tree in front of Ravindra danced in delight. Exams could take a backseat when the heavens were in such a generous mood.

***

Back in the corridor, Mishra was getting goose bumps. “It’s going to rain, I’m telling you. It’s unbelievable. It always rains, ever so slightly, every single time, during these exams. It’s...”
His voice melted away in the rapturous thunder from the sky. We took pictures to mark the occasion; their hair wavy and unrestrained. And it rained. One final time.

P.S.- Anu Malik’s solo albums were great entertainment, weren’t they?