Tempus Fugit

I don't quite remember what car we were in; the trusty Maruti 800 doesn't fit as well into the mental picture I have as the hospital's Omni ambulance does. To be honest, I don't remember much at all – it was, after all, well past my bedtime, almost two decades back. What I haven't forgotten is being dazzled by the lights outside when Ma woke me up. We were about to reach the airport.

I rubbed my eyes vigorously, trying to wrest open my eyelids through sheer force of curiosity, as my mind sought to put an image to the roaring blast of airplanes taking off. One that had landed, though, was what we were waiting for, and the promise of Pa's invigorating hug got me out of my drowsiness. Plus the prospect of the amazing gifts he'd brought from the exotic foreign lands he was returning from, of course.

I don't remember most of the other gifts, but the second time I was to be dazzled that night was when my brother and I got our final presents – original Mickey Mouse and Goofy watches. My brother chose first, and I got Goofy.

***

The routineness of a school-going child's life had the effect of rendering the concept of keeping time redundant. Pre-recess, you'd wish teachers a good morning and the three 40-minute lessons after the noon's recess, you wished them… you get the idea. Cartoons for an hour after lunch at home were followed by playing in the parks outside till sundown. Catching up with parents when they got back from work passed time till dinner, which was swiftly followed by bedtime. So, it seemed only appropriate that we kids use the accessory of a wrist watch only when going out for special occasions – events that broke from the routine.

Watches were our ice-picks in the snow; tools a nifty turn of which would often be an invaluable way to get out of sticky situations, and dependable accessories in the wild terrain of unplanned events.

***

I almost never wore a watch to school – the few times I did, it lay pristine on my wrist till I had to stuff it into my bag before games. Ma gave me two, though, when dropping me off at Roorkee for the first year there. Use it well, and don't forget to take if off before you bathe, I was told. For the first month, it hung precariously on the hooks on the bathroom doors almost every day.

It was to prove invaluable, as the time I'd leave for breakfast before an 8 am class changed gradually from half past seven to not at all because I landed in class in my pyjamas a good ten minutes after it started. Various tunes like Violin Sonata No. 14 (by unknown), the Pirates of the Caribbean theme and Adele's Rolling in the Deep blasting away in the form of alarms ensured I saw the time every morning - or often afternoon - on a mobile screen first. But it was the watches I turned to surreptitiously in classes, dangerously on cycles, gingerly in the pouring rain, and as quickly as possible even in the unforgiving Roorkee winter.

***

The routine of work over the past few months, and my laziness to get those two old watches fixed meant I got used to going through days without the need to keep time again.

Yet, after I finally got new batteries for them, and wore one proudly last fortnight, I was horrified by myself when I instinctively lunged for my phone in the car to see if I was on time for a meeting. My mind slowly flashed to those early days in Roorkee, to those boring birthday party conversations I got out of by giving the watch a third glance, and, of course, to the magical night at the Delhi airport.

The wistful flick of the wrist that followed gave the watch a new, if only fleeting function, of time travel.

Calling the fall

I spent almost six months listening to Coldplay's The Hardest Part daily that year. Being the lunatic romantic that I was then, I didn't deem it just coincidental that I first heard its opening lines the night of the call.

… And the hardest part - was letting go, not taking part.

'Twas the hardest part.

***

A little under three years back, I sat at the top edge of a U-shaped classroom, on the precipice of an exciting new social milieu. The air was full of pre-emptive judgement - every single garment, hairstyle, word and activity was being fed into a mixer-grinder in each of those ninety-odd brains to churn out early opinions. For example, despite assertions of being a wanderlust-afflicted lover of philosophical discussions, the patch of hair dyed blonde above his forehead lent one man the stubborn, if not imaginative, nickname Blaundie. As an articulate gentleman earned awe by mere mention of his work with the government and a masterfully controlled motion of hands as he spoke, time flew before the spotlight came to my seat. The recently-oiled rotating chairs didn't creak, but I could feel every single turn of all those chairs as if they were tightening the knots in my stomach. I tried breaking the tension of the momentary silence by quickly narrating my funnily long full name, and then managed to muster just one more sentence - I like finding out the origins of words and phrases.

***

Editing sessions for the college literary magazine mostly didn't even bother pretending to be that - we'd traipse in well after the agreed meeting time, and proceed to chat about everything in the world save the stories, poems and book reviews nobody would read the next month. It was in one such meeting, staring into a ceiling dotted artistically with used teabags, that I wondered aloud - Why do you think the phrase falling in love came to be? The conversation swung wildly - from the physics of love as a gravitational force, to the semantics of love as a state of being, via countless crude jokes. We never reached a conclusion - even a couple of minutes of Googling didn't particularly help - but the armchair etymologists all seemed to agree on the presumption that much like love itself, the explanation would probably seem fairly irrational.

***

If the only words you've ever spoken to a girl are "That wasn't Barbie - I think it was Batman.", it's a real stretch to say you had fallen in love. But, as Chris Martin's voice achingly explained, falling is easy. Once you're in the act of it, the ground beneath your feet quickly disappearing, your body quickly passing control to a fickle force, and your eyes feeling the cold slap of flying time, letting go is the hardest part.

The call began the fall, so it was only poetic that an SMS was the dull thud that signalled its break. The real sign of progress, though, isn't just failing and falling, but being in a state to be back up for the next fall. Over another phone call a few years later, I was in love again. But that's fodder for another story…

P.S. - A batchmate from A has started an e-zine that intends to publish a bunch of articles every weekend. Do check it out here. I'm hoping this post should go up on that sometime this week or next.

Winter Nights

After an early winter sunset, our cab screamed past Gurgaon's towers and South Delhi's wide boulevards, hurtling through the capital's northern part's patchwork roads before emerging onto the smooth National Highway - 1. Kilometres of shimmering dew-covered fields and highway motels were covered in a few hundred seconds. I couldn't wait for a warm bed and the promise of a night's sleep far, far away from Kolkata.

The body wasn't prepared for winter in the northern plains, though, after more than half a year near the east coast. My feet froze even before I could locate my room on the windy tenth floor. The blanket felt colder than the floor, and as I wrapped myself like a mummy within it, I wondered what a long night it was going to be…

***

I hate this place. A scandalously overcharging rickshaw driver and a swindling cartel of a marketplace might have played their role in forming that opinion, but the few conversations I had had with what were to be people I'd have to see for the next 4-5 years firmed up that opinion. My parents reassured me that what I'd seen was definitely an unrepresentative sample - and like Visakhapatnam so warmly did, maybe Roorkee would grow on me, too.

A week of uninspiring lectures save one, mounting examples of administrative nincompoopery and a hostel full of late teenagers making the ugliest most of their new-found independence meant my daily calls home became ever more frantic. I can still make it to DCE's counselling! I'll write the JEE again, or just apply to DU like I first wanted to!

The rains came and went in a flash, and after a disastrous first set of exams and a brief trip home, winter was coming. The ceiling I stared at every night was no longer painted by a creaky fan whose rotations I counted to sleep - just three dusty blades Pa implored me to sweep clean every day. The trusty bedsheet I invariably knocked down to the floor each night was replaced by a fleece quilt I didn't trust to help me survive the sub-Himalayan plains.

But the cold was a common enemy. We bonded in the wing, our motley crew - crouching around that one hot-air blower, fighting for the last hot rotis, braving the icy winds for paranthas and Maggi and playing cricket in the corridor. Winter mornings got by faster, as I moved from the stationary fan to figure out ways to get the lizards off my ceiling.

In an extremely weird instance of camaraderie, many of us chose to forsake baths for as long as a week during the semester-ending NCC Camp, whose 6 a.m. aerobics sessions were a source of much comic relief. In the subsequent holidays back in Vizag, I was fed like a temple elephant to regain the 17-odd kilograms I'd shed. Waiting eagerly for the delicacies to come, I also thought of the serious writing I needed to get done to impress an Arbit Prat, and to maybe finally winning a quiz, that one connect from school. And, of course, rip that perfect off-break in the corridor…

***

Trucks with Bollywood tunes for horns honked away on the highway below, and a fancy, shiny, golden-coloured fan gleamed motionlessly above. I'd be getting up for some corporate mumbo-jumbo in a factory, instead of uninspiring lectures, 6 a.m. aerobics or corridor cricket. But I knew there were tougher winters I'd gotten through, and it was with warm thoughts about Roorkee winters that I fell dreamlessly asleep.

The next morning had paranthas for breakfast. Oh, it's good to be back!