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!

Things- Good, Bad, Pretty Young etc

As I begin typing awkwardly on the stone cold keys of my keyboard, dawn slowly breaks on R-land’s horizon, its steady ascent only disturbed by my phone’s cacophonous alarm. I’ve been up for the past three hours; the frigid air penetrated through every strand of fleece in my quilt to end uneasy dreams of being George Costanza’s business partner (or something like that). Feet propped up in front of the heat convector on the tea table, I look out of the window to see the night’s pitch black give way to the snowy blue of the morning, eliciting a bright response from the birds in the blanket of trees behind our wing. What I like most about dawn is how the changes are never too sudden, never too alarming. You get time to think about what's gone by, and get ready for what's up ahead. The darkest of the night soon seems a long way back, only in an hour, with the sounds of dreary slippers dragging on the corridor floor waking you up.

The rigours of academics, however, aren’t as accommodating. A first ever six (followed by three sweet zeroes) will sit next to the colon on my latest grade sheet’s SGPA column, its rotundity eerily irritating the eyes used to the more robust sevens, even as its inverted brother remains as elusive as a semblance of sense in Tees Maar Khan. A fourth consecutive New Year’s Eve in the insti didn’t help the saddened mind, itching to join the rest of the family watching another farcical orchestra crooning Daler Mehendi’s legendary Ho Gayi Teri Balle Balle as midnight strikes.

Yet, despite the insti’s most monstrous efforts over the past four years, that resilient bug of optimism fails to go with the (outrageously cold) wind. Ladies Luck and Love await, according to random quacks in the newspaper’s horoscope section but what really gets me cracking for the day and year ahead is the Quote of the Day from yesterday’s Hindustan Times.

“Everybody should believe in something. I believe I’ll have another coffee.”

– Anonymous.

365 days in 8 slices

Numbers are wonderful ornaments for speech. For instance, if I were to encapsulate most of the events of the past few days, I could do it all with just one jewel.

Four and a half months of painstaking care, and in four and a half minutes, the mane was off. A four and a half hour flight to the capital, four and a half hours in the train, and from Visakhapatnam’s coldest winter in four and a half decades at 18 degrees, I was to be rattled by the four and a half degrees in R, made even more deadly by the early morning drizzle I got caught in. Not to forget, there was last night’s four and a half thousand rupee bill, and the resulting four and a half hundred rupees a glutton.

***

Ever since I read supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, I knew that of the many heavy responsibilities bestowed upon me to better this world, one was to enrich dictionaries. Sadly, like many of the aforementioned responsibilities, I couldn’t pay enough attention to fully fulfill this one. Yet, I continue to take small steps towards making the reading world a better, more convenient place. Here’s last year’s creation.

relaze (v)- To relax lazily, and in the delightful process, expedite the dawning of crucial realisations.

Origin: From the proximity of the Z and X keys on the standard QWERTY keyboard.

More: Relazing, Relazer, Relazisation, among others.

Red Herrings: One of the common misconceptions regarding one of the noun forms of the word, relazisation, is that it is the American spelling for ‘relasisation’. That, as the origin and definition of the verb form clearly demonstrate, is a stupid accusation. Also, the word or any of its derivatives has no connection etymologically with the word ‘relaxative’ or its derivatives, apart from the fact that they share the same creator.

***

To recall one of the few enjoyable moments from last semester’s lectures, “Phoetry is not eejy... One of the hallmarks of a great phoet is suffering. If you have not suffered, you can never be a high-class poet.” Laughing it off like most other things in those classes, I couldn’t ever imagine how true those words would turn out to be. Staying true to my late learner qualifications, I only got an eight on ten in Creative Writing in English, and with thorough honesty, I aver I deserved it.

***

Finally, the fog has lifted off the grass outside my room to reveal bright yellow flowers blooming right on top of that little mound a little off the centre of the garden. It’s still the darkest, foggiest quarter to three in the afternoon I’ve seen for quite a while. If at all it requires any mention, the temperature is hovering around the ten-degree mark. My room’s tube light is still out of service, and the fan gathering more dust, leaving a musty damp smell beautifully hanging in the air. Without intending to demean the sheer beauty of the prevailing weather, I’d say this probably is an Orwellian dream. Tucked up on the edge of my bed in a neck-hugging sweater that makes me cringe even more for home, I look back at the year gone by- in pictures, phone calls, text messages, e-mails, and top of all, crystal-clear scenes from my eidetic memory. And what better song to give company, than one of the very few songs I loved from the school assemblies- Turn, Turn, Turn.

A new year, and the double-digit decade lies ahead, and for now, it is ­definitely a time to gather stones together.

***

P.S. - 18 = 4.5 + 4.5 + 4.5 + 4.5. I’m getting the feeling at least a couple of people will have noticed this. Oh, and don’t bother about the title.

P.P.S. - Years may come and decades may go, but I remain frugal with phone calls. Happy New Year!

P.P.P.S. - As cold as it is, and as lazy as I am, I'm sure I'll be forgiven for labelling this my second bloggiversary post.

Animals make strange sounds
As do a machine gun's 500 rounds
Coo-coo-coo, cock-a-doodle-doo
Ho ho ho, me blog has turned two!

Where’s the party? It’s your birthday!

Only a day into the new year, and the blogosphere is abuzz with activity. That’s given enough time for me to ruminate for this very very special post. Of course, it’s another fact that I rarely think for a post!

 

The last post of the last year had an interesting snippet about it- it could be shortened to HHH! That was posted, as you could see, in the wee hours of 31^st December. New Year’s eve it was, and the campus was slowly filling to capacity again. I only woke up at eleven, after wrestling down my alarm clock and giving the other alarm’s snooze button a stern test of its patience. After the essentials, minus the luxury of a bath, I finally went out on my way to the mess, and the sun had decided not to come out of its warm blanket of clouds, and the eddying cold winds continued to tease the mufflers and wind-cheaters. But, unlike most others around, I was in the mood for a stroll, and lazily braved the cold to go to the gaanv (village) for a phone recharge, and to meet up with the masters down there. After an impatient wait in his room, spent rummaging through his table to find friends’ indulgences, old colourful scrapbooks and trying to find a way to untangle three layers of sheets, Lefty, His Wordiness (official winner) and I set out for a walk in the pursuit of Happinezz. Along the way, we gobbled up sweets with glee (me with especial glee as I wasn’t paying!) and I wondered how those two were slimmer when they ate like they did. Later, though, we did find what we went out to seek, and it was in hot sandwiches full of delightfully melted cheese. Our appetites were good for one each only, though, as a long night was to follow for all of us.

 

After that, I headed back to my room, and sat down to greet anyone with a green dot beside their name, while mine remained grey (invisibility rocks!). After an hour of aimless chatting, I heard a DJ start playing in front of the canteen, with crowd favourites like Hat Ja Tao Jat Ja and Maar Suttiya blaring out loud into the rooms around. I could even hear inebriated shouts and laughs as the Matkas danced their way to the toilets, where they puked uncontrollably, as I was to discover later (not sadly, thankfully!). After re-installing that perennial favourite, FIFA08, time was whiled away rediscovering my touch and Joga Bonito. That was till the Perusing Poet knocked on my door, and, soon enough, we were out having dinner. After a long meal, interspersed with passionate arguments on Ghajini and the varying degrees of the word ‘voyeurism’, we got back to our respective rooms.

 

They say what you do first on New Year’s day defines your year- I definitely hope it doesn’t come true, as I welcomed 2009 very solemnly, alone in my room sitting invisible on Gmail. But, apart from the various calls, messages, e-mails, scraps, pokes, and hugs that followed, the bright spot was the fact that January 3 wasn’t too far, and this page would be celebrating a year in existence (putting many others at risk!). As jobless as I am, I spent the last three quarters of an hour looking up bloggiversary posts of those on my blog-list. (Different story that I found two, at most) As clichéd as it may sound, it’s been a roller-coaster ride of a year blog-wise, and as it always is with most wonderful things, I find it very ironic that one of favourite posts (which can be found here), has no comment on it (although it's a very first-yearish post). Shape-shifting my way from characteristically quirky to whining grumbler to grumbling moaner (as Kaka puts it) to an overly long-writing bore, I’ve realised the best way to one’s true self, is through self (not to be confused with a traitorous Homeland Security agent on a TV show). 363 days in the blogosphere, and my blog has brought out 30 ways to blow your head off without suffering from side-effects like lead poisoning. I’ve not gone far as a writer, as I spent dreaming countless number of nights. But, then, life’s like that. And, in a spurt of nostalgia, and as mark of respect to the page that has spilled the beans on almost everything about me, I shall revert to the old name, ‘cause the geek still speaks... or rather types! Cheers!

 

P.S.- Dela, you’re next! (Goldberg style! Ah, I still love brackets!)

 

P.P.S.- I was waiting for only one song through the whole DJ thingy, and I wasn’t to be robbed of that pleasure. Ta ta-na-na-na tandoori nights... tandoori nights! Btw, Emotional Atyachaar is the song to be heard this year!