New Slang

"Gold teeth and a curse for this town - were all in my mouth.

Only I don't know how, they got out, dear."

The Shins' most popular song played perfect background accompaniment to Natalie Portman's varying degrees of smiles. That scene from Garden State always tends to light me up. She passes him the headset predicting this song "will change your life". It's a magic pill, a suggestion that comes across as most ironical as they're both in the waiting line outside a psychiatrist's office. But in the moment that the headset's noise cancellation kicks in, blocking out the rest of the world's waves, the only sounds are of those acoustic guitars in harmony, and the overriding image of a most beautiful woman smiling nervously as she waits, hoping you like that song she just recommended.

***

"Turn me back into the pet; I was when we met.

I was happier then, with no mind-set."

Princess V (I don't choose all the names here) and I often looked back at Roorkee as a place where things were simpler. Despite hindsight being rose-tinted, I'd say it probably was easier then. For starters, I spent a majority of that time as a teenager, when making mistakes was not only welcome, it was encouraged. Thinking about the future usually meant deciding where to have dinner. And most of the time, placements was what many disagreed with one MS Dhoni on.

Ahmedabad was a bit more complicated - and the change came at you suddenly. Classmates fretted deeply over failed careers three months into a two-year course. Professors and alumni continuously reminded you of your ability to change the world if you wanted to, while some also sagely suggested you do only what makes you happy. And most of the time, placements decided who you were friends with.

Despite that, troubling questions of who you are and what you're meant to do prevailed more in R-land. It was the kind of place where you could spend days thinking about them - classes could be missed guilt-free, and you'd stay staring at your laptop screen all day until it was dark enough for you to consider getting up to switch the light on.

***

"And if you took to me like a gull takes to the wind,

I'd have jumped… and danced like the king of the eyesores."

It was in times like those that you needed Natalie Portman to light you up; her smile and James Mercer's voice telling you that you could do whatever you wanted, and the rest of our lives would've fared well. She never disappoints - even as Roorkee looks like heaven relative to Kolkata, and as the mall downstairs lit up for Christmas starts shining through the window. I know I have to stop typing, and get up to switch the light on now.

I love that song.

The End of Nothingness

Nihilanth is a part-Latin, part-Sanskrit word meaning "The end of nothingness". 

***

We waited with bated breath as Team No. 6 got into a huddle, the quizmaster broke into a brisk walk towards the one raised hand rising from their table - they were seemingly going for broke, and we had to trust them. For a stage which had 24 quizzers exclusively from IITs and IIMs, it was funny how only nine of them were doing the math at that point. Team No. 6 was obviously one of them, and Kitty, Samaadhi and I in team no. 3 had no choice but to metaphorically bite our fingernails and literally chew off the skin around them as our bated breath turned us blue. We found out later team no. 1 on the far right, with Nene among them, were the only others who realised the importance of that pounce. The smug championship leaders sitting in the audience, had no idea of the significance of the ten points earned by team no. 6, then languishing in 7th place out of 8.

The most joyous high-fives the three of us shared then were easily the quietest. The louder ones had been for when Samaadhi comfortably identified the story of how his home state of Mysore was renamed to Karnataka, and when I'd earlier just taken a look at an early 19th century bust of a lion across a canal to proudly scribble Solani aqueduct. High-fives were accompanied with awestruck bows towards St. Kitts, as she pulled out an outrageous guess on unheard-of sculptors who've made statues of Rabindranath Tagore. Now all we needed to do was to ensure this last question didn't go past us…

***

Missing out on qualifying for the Sports Quiz rankled deeply, even as I bravely ventured to quip misguidedly - "I think we're among the top 10-20 sports quizzers in the country." That first trip to Mumbai was memorable, though, as the run-up to it and the hope in the journey back elevated Nihilanth, the inter-IIT-IIM quiz festival, to Holy Grail status.

The next edition took us to Ahmedabad, when I first marvelled at the genius of Louis Kahn's work. After missing out on qualifying in the General Quiz on the first day, hopes of making it in the later quizzes were high once again. Those hopes were cruelly crushed by some callous decision-making (Cup noodles and figuring out what TANSTAAFL meant versus the Lone Wolf quiz prelims) and some high-quality teams making a mark tough to replicate.

I missed the trip to Calcutta, and in a severely depleted field in Lucknow, Battula was by my side as I qualified for the finals of a Nihilanth quiz for the first time. Messrs. Malhotra and Mateen pulled the contingent more points as we made it to more finals, but only two podium finishes - including a blazing performance from the Chemical Brothers in clinching the business quiz  - were what the contingent had to show in my final year representing Roorkee.

***

Sometime during that chaotic first month in A, Kitty and I were talking about "Why MBA?". This wasn't the usual "I'll change the world" discussion, but "Why, really?" was the question. I was pleasantly surprised to hear myself say without any prior thought - "Two more years of college quizzing, right?". I don't think we've ever agreed on anything more than that.

A little over five months to that day, we were stuck firmly to our perforated wooden seats, our breath only more bated as the last question went past us unanswered. As it passed, I couldn't think of the not-quite-there's in Lucknow 2012, or the nearly-there's of Ahmedabad 2010, or even that first lurch of disappointment in Mumbai 2008. We were here in Mumbai, December 2012, back where the quest had first begun for me. And team no. 8 had just passed.

On the last question of the India Quiz, team no. 3 were declared winners but we went straight to team no. 6, where Amith, Sapru and Talwai clinched 5th place and the extra points we needed to retain the Nihilanth championship in Ahmedabad. As the six of us joined Sachin, Chandu and Saranyan for a huddle, the Holy Grail was in our hands, and full to the brim.

Poetry and a lack of motion

I've spent a good part of the last five months complaining about how much I dislike Calcutta. While I've tried to channel some of that into a little comic routine about how the Bengali language probably originated, bitterness for the city of mishti shines through more than the creativity in another joke based on the Bengalis-are-lazy stereotype.

Dissatisfied with the present, I've had two choices - invest in an incrementally better future, or fall back on a cosier past. It's getting chilly here for a city this close to the coast, so I've shamelessly snuggled into the latter.

I've happened to have crossed paths with many poets over the past seven years in Roorkee and Ahmedabad. A loyal reader might remember the brooding Perusing Poet I haven't mentioned in a while (I don't harbour any illusions of a loyal readership, by the way - I'm just glad you're reading this). There's Kondy who's written his second novel now but will always be a poet to me. And back at A, cursing himself for wasting almost an entire weekend chatting with me about me must be young Minnu. Three that come first to my mind.

They're all very different people - the first probably a strong believer in Sylvia Plath's "no poetry without suffering" school of thought. The second argues over troubling questions about being and believing, but whose real themes are probably closer to love and longing. The third, easily the most prolific of the lot, is a painter of portraits so vast and intricate, that I fear my mind is too small for their size and depth.

But why I call them poets is not because they write verse - as a matter of fact, none of them writes in rhymes, the one form I find easiest to go through because I just sing it - but because of the sheer density they bring to each sentence. Each word is carefully chosen, and each line is like a twist in a complex-looking knot, which opens up with a little swoosh as you put them all together. In the world of words, they aren't so much architects or artists, as they are sailors - roaming the seas, picking up rare oysters, drinking to good health, brooding and suffering in storms, and making perfect knots.

In their world, I'm the dilettante. The architect who's tried a hand at building domes, and given up in the foundation pits. The painter who's bought the canvas and colours, but frets over the clothes he'll spill those colours on. The curious kid, who collects educational degrees on a coat hanger, sells some food for buying clothes to put on more hangers, but shivers in the cold room of missed opportunities. Their world is my world - words are the rope they anchor their thoughts with, and I'm still finding the words to tell my story to myself.