the day it RAINed...

October 28, 1999

A normal day in the life of a nerdy kid with thick round glasses. The morning was as uneventful as it could be. I got up at 6:30 am (my sister was still sound asleep!), brushed my teeth and took my bath. My mom then gave me 25 rupees for the rickshaw fare after which I quietly walked up to Lewis Road, hailed a rickshaw and was off to school. School was business as usual - loads of homework, and the looming fear of unprecedented exams. Nothing that happened gave me a clue to what was coming next. I came back to my home at 4:30 pm - well actually it was 5 pm much to my annoyance - it was a Thursday, and "Duck Tales" screened on the Doordarshan channel from 4:30 pm - 5 pm. I actually didn't have cable tv at home so the default broadcast was all I could get - and if I missed something like "Duck Tales" it was as bad a bummer as it could ever get. The first sign of an impending doom was when my father came home at 11 pm and kept busy throughout the night answering frantic phone calls. The next morning was ushered by a mild drizzle - that meant raincoats! I hated my raincoat - it was yellow, made up of rubber and smelled funny. To worsen things, it had a tear along the lower half which meant that even when I endured the foul smell, the probability that my trousers got drenched was 1.

As I was leaving for school, my dad got up and asked me to stay home. I was intrigued - it was so unusual of dad to say such a thing. He said that there was some major storm headed our way and it was best to stay indoors. I was worried - actually it was a surprise class test that was on my mind. Usually at this time of the year, teachers in my school liked to catch us unprepared and barrage us with surprise exams. I really didn't want to be the only one who didn't turn up for such an exam due to some random storm and receive zero points. So, I decided to call up my school to find out whether they were open. No one answered. I tried 3 more times. Same result. Never mind! I decided to stay home. My sister was up by then and was very interested to know why I was bunking school. She could be so annoying, when she was a kid! I chose to ignore her.

By this time, dad had left for work. He looked very grim as he left. Mom was a little scared. I wasn't . We lived far away from the coast. There was no way a rogue storm would reach us. I dragged a chair to the patio outside my house and dug into my chemistry book - chemistry was the only subject for which we didn't yet have a "surprise test". It was still drizzling outside. The croaking of the frogs was so loud that I didn't notice how fast the foreground was changing. After I was done studying, I looked up. The sky was ominously grey. Was it night already? There was a flash of light and the sky sneezed as if it had been tickled by a rogue feather.  Then another flash - this time the lightning was so loud that it made me spill my morning tea over my book.

I went back inside - the power was off. I went back outside and discovered that my chair was lying on the ground upside down, probably blown away by the quickening winds. At this instant my mom came outside and hurriedly ushered me inside. She asked me to help her shut all the windows and doors in the house and then get the clothes which were drying up in the verandah. I began closing the windows - at this point, I noticed that the winds holding the windows open were much more forceful than a normal rainstorm. Finally with the help of my sister, I managed to close the windows and went out to fetch the clothes. To my horror, I saw my shirt hanging up on the papaya tree. I had no idea how it got up there. I tried to gather as many clothes I could - I even climbed the wall so that I could reach my shirt. By this time it was no longer drizzling - it was pouring elephants and tigers. I was drenched to the core but managed to round up all the clothes that were outside. Then something happened that scared me out of my wits. My house was one of the largest in my locality, surrounded by huge walls and what not. Within 10 seconds, I saw the walls collapse - the collapse cascaded from one wall to another. I went in, scared, to tell my mother about it. My mother pointed to the ceiling. Water was seeping in. It meant that my entire house could potentially collapse. We all huddled in my bedroom since that was the only one which didn't have a trace of water and stayed there for the remainder of the day. My mom called up our grandparents in the city to check if they were ok. They were safe although they were caught up in a similar predicament as us. Midway through the conversation, our telephone lines went dead.

Mom served us warm rice and lentils for lunch. We ate contently in silence - no one had any idea what had hit us. We couldn't reach dad and were worried about him. At about 6 pm, it was pitch dark - it was still raining with ferocity. All the doors and windows in our house were closed - nothing got in and nothing went out. I was getting tired of this sitting-still-thing and opened a window in my parents' room in the second floor to see what the situation outside looked like. As soon I opened the latch, I was hit with a blast of wind so bad that I was knocked back. Simultaneously the window hit the outer wall with a bang! Then I saw - I saw amidst the quickening rain drops and the disgruntled lightning that there was nothing outside - it was clean. There used to be many shops outside my house. A stationery shop, a junk food stall, a meat shop - all wiped out. Not a trace left. Our guava tree was uprooted there was water all around it. I shut the window to push that dreadful image out of my mind. I then realized that the window had a tiny hole in its side - probably a result of the collison with the wall. Not a word about it to mom!

7:30 pm: I started hearing a gloomy whistling sound. The whistling was gathering intensity. My first guess was that mom had been cooking and the noise emanated from the pressure cooker. I went to the kitchen - my mom wasn't there. In fact she was resting on the sofa in the living room. I went up again to my parents'room. The whistling sound came from inside. It was being caused by the wind which was blasting in through the small aperture in the window. I immediately shut the door that separated my parents' room from the rest of the house and stuffed newspaper under the door so that we could be insulated from the atrocious winds. The whistling abated somewhat.

10 pm...
11 pm......
12 am - where was dad? My mom and I braved the weather and went out to have a look- to see whether anyone was outside near our gate. We saw that the power lines were lying on the ground on a pool of water near the gate. It was very risky go closer to the gate - dangling power lines are never a good thing to approach! Close to 1 am in the night, we heard heavy chattering. It was my dad and his driver - they came in through the fence which had been torn apart. Dad then explained the magnitude of this catastrophe - it was being termed a "super" cyclone, equivalent to a category 5 hurricane with maximum wind speeds above 155 mph!  He told us that the eye of the cyclone had formed near the port of Paradip. The port was devastated - tens of thousands dead. I asked my dad how long it would be before the power supply and phone lines were restored. He didn't know, it'll be a while he said.

October 29, 1999

It had been a bad dream and I hoped as with all nightmares this would stop when the sun shone. The problem was the sky was exactly how I'd left it when I went to sleep. There was no sun. The rain didn't abate. It kept punishing the ground with an unrelenting fury. Even in this catastrophe, my mom observed her morning rituals - her pooja. She was very upset that there were no flowers to offer to the gods. I told her that I'd go check outside if any flowers could be located in our garden. She cringed at the prospect of me going out at first but later asked me not to fetch the flowers which had fallen onto the ground! So, I armed myself with a huge umbrella wore thick slippers and tried to make for my garden amidst mud, water and god-only-knows-what-else. To my utter surprise, I saw our hibiscus plant standing tall unscathed. Everything else was lying on the ground covered with mud. I got a couple of hibiscus flowers for my mom's puja - she was overjoyed! Now that the morning pooja was successfully done, we had another problem, we were running out of rations. We had no vegetables left. The only saving grace was that the phone line in our house was restored since dad was involved with the organization of the relief work.

For a week, we lived on warm rice and daal - we couldn't really afford luxuries in the face of this catastrophe. Also, the news of 15,000 people dying within 2 days of a natural disaster does dampen one's appetite. We didn't have supply of clean water either. Every morning two of us walked 3 blocks to fetch clean drinking water from a well. Our mornings began with the trip to the well, our noon started with rice and daal, our evenings with candlelight and molten wax. Our nights were restless and filled with the hope for the next day to show some improvement. The only thing constant throughout the week was - rain, thunder and unrelenting winds.

November 3, 1999

The winds finally stopped - the rains did not. I had gotten used to sweating profusely while sleeping since there was no power. Opening the windows was out of question - it was always raining hard. However this morning I was sweating more profusely than usual. I got up without any obvious sign of grogginess - how could you be groggy when you have been sleeping through perspiration. I opened the bedroom windows and for a moment couldn't believe my eyes. The sun was shining! I was overjoyed, I opened all the windows and for the first time in past week, I saw the sun shining bright and I breathed in cool, fresh air. The plants, the shops were all dead. However this was a start. A fresh start - the air itself said so. I could see a flicker of relief in my dad's face when we had tea together. It was fleeting but as I said, it was a start! I asked my dad - is the storm gone? He confirmed so. I asked the next pertinent question - when is power coming back? He said soon, he told me that the officers in the Forest park lane already had power restored hence it would be a matter of time before we had power. My grandparent's place had power restored as well. I was hopeful. I also got a message from my school that it was finally open and our schedule would be back to normal. For the next week, I waited patiently for power to come back, got up sweating profusely took a bath went to school and got back with loads of homework to work on. After school, I used to drink tea at home and then go to my room to get some homework done. I used to sit under candlelight trying to finish my homework and do some extra reading for my classes. My study table was full of candle wax and dead insects which got attracted to the candle flame and subsequently got burnt. It was the story of my evenings. At first, I was hopeful, at the end of the second week, I was cynical. End of third week, I was desperate for power. The only saving grace at this point was that we started going to my grandparent's house at night to get a good night's rest. In the first week of December, we finally had power. There were no more trips to the well, no more burning candle light for homework and exams, and no more disgruntled nights. I was finally at peace with myself.


Epilogue
Ironically, the rainy season is still my favorite part of the year. Whenever it rains, I make it a point to get wet. Rains for me is a great equalizer. When I first fell in love, it was raining. When I later broke up, it was still raining. In fact it is raining outside as I type out these words. It never deserts me - it never disappoints me. It is soothing, it is pleasant, it is refreshing. At times it is destructive and chaotic. It is something that makes me relax, it is something that makes me alert. Even now, when I am stressed out or when I run a fever, I log on to YouTube and turn on sounds of heavy rain, and within minutes I am calm if not fast asleep. The day, when it rained in the October of 1999, changed my life. The transition from fear to hope, from perseverance to relief has made me stronger. The whistling winds are still etched in my memory. They are symbolic of the day when everything went wrong and how we persevered through it. 

Gangtalk

It was 1:45 am on 22nd May 2008. Three of us ran out of R.K. Hall of residence looking for a taxi. No luck whatsoever! Lightning which was striking really hard seemed to be a precursor of things to come. We however chose to ignore the signs. Much to our relief we managed to locate Naaru. He was by no means a taxi, rather was an extremely resourceful guy. Within minutes he got us a taxi. We were off to Gangtok, no wait! We were off to Howrah, then Sealdah, finally to Jalpaiguri and then had to book a ride to Gangtok. Yay! Total travel time: 16 hours. Total enthusiasm: off the charts! We expected a very uneventful 2 hour journey to Howrah. However that wasn't to be. We were traveling without tickets in what seemed to be a reserved compartment (not because we were lazy it so happened that the train was highly convenient as per our itinerary and we didn't have time to book tickets). To our horror, 6 TTs (ticket inspectors) barged into our compartment and tried to wake us up. We feigned sleep - Chirag even tried to snore! After 5 minutes the TTs seemed to be chatting among themselves. Chom whispered, "Koi nahi uthega. Chup chaap so jao!". True to his word, 2 TTs came back and tried to wake us up again to no avail. Finally they gave up and we safely reached Kolkatta. We were supposed to catch a train to Jalpaiguri from Sealdah station. This time we did have tickets (reason: journey was 13 hours). However we were on the waiting list and as luck would have it, the train was fully booked. Wait that wasn't the end of it - we were not even on the waiting list. When we told the TT about our situation, he took kindly to us and offered us one seat - "the post" - his seat at the end of the compartment. It was highly uncomfortable and shabby. Only one of us was brave enough to man the post - Chirag! I and Chom finally located seats that we could share with a group and thankfully the rest of the journey was uneventful. On reaching Jalpaiguri we located a travel agency which was kind enough to offer us cold drinks and tea. We told the agent that we were students and would like to book the cheapest ride to Gangtok. He offered us a shared ride along with accommodation in some hotel. The price that he quoted seemed to be very high at that time - the hotel cost us 1000 a night. So we just took the shared ride. We were a little tired after the 13 hour long trip to Jalpaiguri and finally sought to relax. Suddenly our ride stopped - no biggie. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes - we finally asked the guy from the agency what the deal was. Turned out that one of the passengers was carrying poultry over to Gangtok and he didn't have the authorization for it nor were the birds cleared of "bird flu" which was looming over Eastern India at the time. So the border patrol at Gangtok stopped us. We got down from the jeep and tried to get some fresh air. We also bought some candies (about 50 of them) from a local shop.

After about an hour it had started raining. Just what we needed! We stood in the rain for about 2 hours and finally, miraculously the border patrol let our ride through. We were a little concerned at that point - we were supposed to reach Gangtok by 8:30 pm - still a decent time to look for hotels. Now after the 3 hour delay we were staring at midnight. Even our driver said that there was nothing much we could do - he gave us 3 to 4 phone numbers and left. At this point, we were starved, tired, tattered, standing with thin jackets amidst a cool breeze and a quickening drizzle. Chom was experiencing nausea and with each step we took, we were giving way to fatigue. Chirag and I tried the phone numbers but no one answered. Chirag tried knocking at someone's door. No answer, someone coughed from inside. Chirag told me, "Abe koi hai undar, uthao usko!" Under normal circumstances I would have deemed this statement ridiculous - harassing innocent people in their sleep but we had no choice. I knocked again. A man answered the door, uttered something illegible and closed the door on us! Chirag was irritated and suggested that we should hang-out outside with the security guards and play cards! That was out of question - we'd have frozen to death, We were wet and did not have nice warm clothes on. I told him that I was going to search for any hotel that was open at this godforsaken hour and would be back in a few. After running a few blocks, I found a light. It was our only hope that night. I ran up to see a group drinking and smoking heavily. When I arrived they seemed wary. I calmly explained our predicament and said that we desperately needed a place - any place - for the night and would be gone by morning. After a lot of discussion, one of the guys said that we could sleep till 6 am on his restaurant's floor. He supplied us warm blankets and said that it would cost us 600 bucks for the night. At this point, this seemed too good to be true. So I called Chirag who arrived with Chom moments later. Chirag is an awesome actor and immediately started rubbing his stomach, "Arrre bahut bhook laga hai! Kuch hai?". One the guys was apparently a cook and felt sorry for us, he said that there were some leftovers in the kitchen but he didn't have the heart to re-heat them. We contently ate the cold rice and daal. The daal was particularly awesome and we had multiple servings. Chirag suggested that we come to this place every night and eat the cold daal! Once we were covered by our blankets, we immediately drifted into the safe refuge of our dreams.

6:30 am 23rd May. The cook tried to wake me up. I got up and told him we'd vacate the restaurant soon. To my surprise I saw families eating breakfast next to where we were sleeping and two children were pulling at Chirag's hair. Laughing I slept off. It was 8 am when I finally felt awake and tried to wake Chirag and Chom up. Chirag got up first. His first reaction: "I saw a weird dream yesterday. I saw that there were kids around me and they were pestering me". Sure enough, he wasn't dreaming! We apologized to the manager for our delay. He was a kind soul and gave us a room till noon where we could shower and change our clothes. We were very grateful to him. We finally had a taste of civilization - a proper room with a shower and what not. At noon, we checked out and tried to find a lodge where we could stay. We realized that the agent wasn't kidding when he said Rs 1000 a night was cheap during this season. We were cursing ourselves to no end. Finally Chirag located a guest house. Upon enquiring, he said that he would charge us Rs 800 a night. This looked promising. We tried to bargain: "We are from IIT Kharagpur, we had a harassing trip here and are left with very little cash. Please help us!". It finally hit him. "You guys are from ITT?" We didn't know what ITT meant, but it sure sounded good and we nodded. He gave us a room with cable tv for Rs 600 a night and also arranged for our trip to Yumthang valley saying that he would book nice rooms for us there. We were excited that finally we had found some luck. The manager also asked us if we were planning to see the Changu Lake and the monasteries. We looked at each other. Chirag said matter-of-factly, "Arrre Buddhist monks toh raste pe dikhte hain, monastery jaa ke kya kar dalein". He also suggested that we should purchase monk costumes and show them off. Anyway, we decided to visit Yumthang Valley and adjoining places only.


We were picked up by our shared ride for Yumthang valley and waited for our fellow passengers. We spotted a group of 5-6 young college girls coming in our direction. Was mother luck finally shining on us? - we were super excited! While we were checking them out, 2 families - 3 aunties, 1 uncle and 1 guy (our age) boarded our ride! $#%@! The only bright spot was our driver - a short Nepali guy. He was awesome; as was his playlist. When one of the aunties complained that it was getting too loud, he increased the volume even higher. He was an adept driver but drove at a break-neck speed (literally - my neck hurt after the drive) throughout the journey. Mid-way, we saw an amazing waterfall. We asked the driver what this place was. He said this was a famous tourist spot and asked whether we wanted him to stop. Are you kidding me? The driver's only intent was to get us to valley and back as fast as possible. He could care less if we enjoyed the trip or not. The waterfall was really beautiful and we managed to click some snaps near it.


We stopped at a couple more places and the driver decided that was it - no more stops! When we reached our supposedly nice "hotel", all we saw was a hut! Technically not a hut but it had potential to be one. Anyway we tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. That night we saw "Hum" on my laptop, cheering wildly at "Jumma chumma de de" and memorizing Amitabh's dialogue on "Duniya mein do type ke keede hote hain". The next day we went to Yumthang; the valley was gorgeous - no other word for it. Chom was excited to see Yaks and tried to chase one of them. At this point the driver said that we had 2 options - to return or to pay 100 bucks each , so that he could take us near the Indo-China border. This sounded wicked and we instantly paid up for it. It was snowing heavily there and all we had were thin jackets and sneakers. We were excited to see snow and indulged in a snowball fight. Since we were close to the 10 km stretch of no man's land Chirag suggested we shout out "Yo Dalai Lama" and quickly run back. Chom replied that this was a bad idea as bullets from the other side wouldn't be even visible in the snow-covered backdrop. It suddenly dawned on us that we were freezing. Our initial excitement had slowly given way to fear since our hands were turning blue. Chom's mouth was frozen, so was my nose and so were Chirag's ears! We had to drink something warm.

We saw a camp nearby. We asked for tea - "30 rupees sir!". No way! Are you kidding me? Chom asked, "How about rum?". Same answer, "30 rupees sir!" It seemed that everything in that camp was priced at 30 rupees. We took the rum and drank it bottoms up. We looked at each other for a second ... and then burst out laughing at the stupidity of our predicament. We were utterly unprepared for this trip but we were having all-the-more fun from our jugaads. We asked the family that was traveling with us to snap a picture of us enjoying the life saving rum. One of the aunties sternly remarked that our families would be furious when they learnt of our drinking. We didn't care? It was life or death that day. And we chose life!

During our trip back to the guest house all of us experienced nausea. Chirag had come up with a novel idea that swiveling candies with your tongue helped relieve nausea. It actually worked. I tried to sleep off the entire journey back on Chirag's shoulder. Later I was told that my head was so localized with Chirag's shoulder that that it bounced up and down whenever we hit a bump but somehow managed to find back its way to his shoulder. Upon reaching our guest house, we decided to spend the next day doing nothing - shopping, booking our return tickets and hitting a karaoke bar. We were tight on cash. So our first priority was tickets - which we were able to book (however no reservations again!). We were hungry by the time we finished booking tickets. Chirag said that we should avoid family-restaurants and try something fancy, something different. So we tried this shady looking place. The first thing that we observed were curtains. As soon as the waitress brought food to the table the curtains were pulled back. The "red lights" started flashing in our heads. A haggard man came to us and asked what we wanted to order. Chom asked him for the menu. In reply he said - Roti, Sabji, Daal. When we asked him to elaborate, he asked us to look for some other place. It was pretty clear we were in the wrong place at the right time. That evening we went to the Mahatma Gandhi square and tried a great coffee place. Chirag wanted us to be innovative with our choices - he tried Irish coffee, to be safe I ordered a vanilla latte and Chom looked at us for suggestions. We suggested that he should try the Carribean coffee. Upon drinking the coffee, he winced and remarked that coffee tasted like horse piss.

We finally got him a smoothie and he was cheerful again. The karaoke bar was fun except that there was no karaoke that night! Nevertheless we had a good time that night and finally went back to see a 20-20 cricket match. All 3 of us were sleeping on a king size bed, with Chom in middle which wasn't a great idea geometrically. Chom used to gym regularly and was much stronger than me and Chirag put together. For the female readers, also note that he participated in the Mr. IIT contest. Anyway, in the middle of the night I heard a scream "Arreee Arree! mein mar gaya". Chom had apparently changed sides and his hand had fallen onto Chirag's chest with a dull thud. With some difficulty, I helped Chirag out of his misery. No matter how much adversity we faced on this trip, it dawned to us that we'd be returning at noon the following day. We left with a heavy heart. On reaching the railway station, Chirag received a phone call. It turned out to be a telephonic job interview from Lloyd Shipping. By that time it had started raining cats and dogs. To our surprise, Chirag chose to give his interview in this setting. After he was done, it was back to us in the train, not having a seat, sitting on newspaper eating mixture, Chirag manning the post and us toasting to one of the best trips we have had.

Epilogue:
On our way back to Kharagpur, it was really hot in the passenger train from Howrah. We were all sweating profusely. Chirag said that he was sweating from his head and tried to demonstrate the flow of sweat by touching his nose from the back of his head and dragging it all the way back to his spine.

After IIT, we all drifted apart. Life after college is tough. It chokes our innocence, drags us by the neck making us taste the bitter realities around us. It is in moments like these that happy memories of our past give us the will to go on. Three of us are in three different parts of the world battling life at different fronts - both professional and personal. This post is dedicated to all the good times we have had and to raise my glass to the best of my friends!

friENDs and lOVERs at KGP

It was July the 20th, around 9:30 pm, I had moved into Room A-201, R.K. Hall with two of the most atypical room-mates – Prem and Neeraj (better known as Chom). It was after our orientation meeting, an uneasy silence lay between the three of us, when Prem, who was listening to Avril’s Skater Boy, asked me, “Abe loud music se jyada load to nahi na”. In reply, I had to brag, “Haan be koi load nahi hai, my house was on the main road”. The two them burst out laughing and this was how we became the awesomest of friends.

Life without my friends wouldn’t have been easy, really. All of them pitched up when the going was tough, they all were there in the moments of rapture. I’ve had fights with them, gotten shouted at, not talked for days, sometimes even tried to cut them off. It was just not possible man! After all they were the ones who were there amused and all, when I was just a formals-donning, candy-eating guy who wore a watch to the mess table to time his meals and used scissors to put his Goodnight mats into the machine because he was scared of getting infected. After all they were the ones, who were there with me, when I got low scores in my exams, laughing and making me laugh at the stupidity of the entire getting-depressed-over-such-low-scores thing. I’ve had some huge fights over trivial matters like alarm clocks or whether to let the windows open at night, or whether to keep the lights on at night. Some fights were pretty serious when it came down to broken hearts, bruised relationships, torn egos. After all, we tend to get more judgmental about the people who are closest to our hearts. Some of them complained about my sense of humor that bombed (the legendary PJs), some of them(mostly of the opposite sex) disliked my incessant fascination for black tees and not the maroon ones! However all of them rejoiced when I rose to Institute Rank 1 in my second year at Kgp, and all of them stood by me, as I lost it later on, reassuring me that I was a stud in much larger ways. When I got a low score in GRE, and the whole world around me told me I would have to bid adieu to my dreams at Stanford, those were the people who asked me to keep my cool and go on. Those were the people who saw me feel awful for the not making it into MSR, Redmond, they were only ones who said “koi nahi be, kya karta jaake waise, Microsoft mein Linux install maarta :p Anyways, Microsoft sucks!” when the entire junta remarked sarcastically, “kya be Abhijeet, tera nahi hua MSR!” These are the very people whose support has carried me to Stanford eventually.

With them, I’ve seen it all. Seen these people break down when their high school sweethearts broke up with them. Seen them cry when their dreams shattered. Seen them writhe in considerable pain, yet have the guts to pick up the crutches and go on to win hearts. I’ve seen them quietly struggle with their temper and adversities and keep a pretty face on. I’ve seen the calmest of them lose their cool being frustrated over fixed campus placements. I’ve seen the most outgoing amongst them blush at being discovered receiving 7 missed calls in a span of like 10 minutes, later on picking up the missed call, when he was supposed to call back thereby eliciting a response, “abhi nahi! baad mein karo”. I’ve poked around the dudest of them just to hear them say, “Arre nahiii!”. I’ve seen the cutest of them play Metacafe games all throughout the day drinking sutta and boozing on whiskey. I’ve seen the strongest of them, sulk over the fact that his egoistic crush blocked him over “Gee-talk!” for having made a stupid joke over her status. I’ve seen the latter, run like Milkha Singh from the Nescafe, rapidly blushing, because I had cleverly planned for their paths to cross. I’ve seen the same, covering his face with a newspaper that too upside down, upon relentless leg-pulling ;)

I’ve jokingly spit water and gotten spat at waiting for dinner. I’ve spent night outs talking about imperfect relationships, confused minds, broken hearts, and growing passion. I’ve listened to how cute couples are imperfect underneath, and discovered how shallow love can be. Hell, I’ve even talked about penguins, world wars, cars that run at exponential speeds and what not. I’ve seen people lose their faith in love and make me do so. I’ve seen people making me relive the relationships that left them tattered and vengeful. Some of it left me feeling torn inside, and insecure. But what the hell really, some bruises are worth fighting for, some people are worth losing your heart to. Sometimes it’s hard to let someone go, someone you’ve felt one with, someone who has really looked into your depths and understood you, but life’s not about perfect happy endings. Sometimes, people don’t want to let you down, but they do, inspite of knowing how much it hurts. You know, it’s all well and good to talk about happy endings but if a person can’t deliver, if she/he keeps screwing up, well, eventually, you kind of just have to say ‘fuck you!’ or words to that effect.

I’ve seen the heart-broken, afraid to accept love again, go on to make a cricket squad of girls wanting them, of course, on being asked as to who had moved to the opener’s slot, I always got a well rehearsed “Naah yaar, I’m NOT INTERESTED” or “Sab chaman hai yeh log”. I’ve laughed with others on hearing the latter say, “Mein chaman ho gaya hoon. Jo bhi acchi bandi dikhti hai, woh mujhe pasand aane lag jaati hai!”. I’ve seen some of them, give their heart to basketball, taking layups in their sleep or bending their legs like a girl and then shooting! I’ve seen the coolest of them get his cheek bones toned as a result of constant blushing amidst numerous stares at the mess table. I’ve woken them up in their deep sleep to take a casual stroll to have Fried Maggi. Or because I needed someone to dump my worst fears, or my imploding self. When I was heartbroken myself, I have woken up the laziest of them, and accompanied him on a cold, cheerless, December night to have tea at 4 am in just pyjamas and a thin sweater.

I’ve heard them, amused at the description of their crushes – some were hot, some cute, some so cute that they had word cutie attached to their names, some were just awesome, some were good but a little fat, for some there were no feelings from down below, and some were just ‘bubbly’! Some of those crushes were Hindus, some Muslims, some Tams and even Buddhists. I’ve silently seen people fall apart and cry when we parted ways in our final years. I’ve seen people in the final year constantly update their blogs on nostalgia and French girlfriends. I’ve seen that excitement when we met each other again at the Convocation. I have finally given way to them, and let the impregnable heart of Abhijeet open up, keeping no secrets about love, pain and happiness. Sometimes the ravages of time do leave you too bruised to keep your pain to yourself. Sometimes, you just have to get it off your chest, although it doesn’t help the pain, the fact that someone knows what you are going through, gives you that extra push to make it through the bouts of anguish.

Sometimes it’s hard to forgo people who have made the ‘maa’, ‘behen’ curses sound like music to your ears. It’s hard to let go of people who’ve clung on to you in their sleep, after watching their first horror movie, and for whom you have to disregard the loud snores! It’s really painful to be distant from those with whom you’ve gotten wasted and ended up watching romantic movies as “Hum Aapke Hain Kaun”, and “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge”, telling each other teeny tiny secrets as to who clenched whose hand in fourth grade and all. You may try to portray yourself as a cold hardened guy, but sometimes the warmth around is so much that you’ve just have to agree that the Aunties’ daughter did look amazing in that weird hairstyle of hers and the salwaar. Kya latke jhatke the uske! Hai! mar jaawa! Sometimes it really doesn’t matter what you end up as – a scotch drinking, gun-toting Stanford graduate or a hardened individual whose personal life has taken the toll with similitude of a ping-pong ball. Sometimes life makes you hard enough to dry up your tears. However, moments of saying good-bye to your dearest buddies, drinking the last cup of tea together in campus, or hugging for the one last time in wing corridors, seeing the train go by with one of the awesomest individuals you’ve never learnt to live without, bidding adieu to some relationships to salvage your friendship and other stable relationships, brings you to the edge and just teeters you into that abyss of silent tears.

I’ve learnt its not important how we end up in relationships, the journey together as friends, as lovers, as sinners – it’s this that makes our lives delightful. Sometimes, the feel of someone’s palm on yours calms the fire raging within making the heart tranquil. Sometimes when the harsh rain strikes the earth unleashing all its fury, when the world around is submerged in a mirth of its own, suddenly time stops, the loud rock music gives way to a deep lull, and the world comes to a freeze around two lips that brush. The punches and the gpls that you receive, sometimes mean the world to you, the high fives and old-school lame handshakes bring on that innocent smile untouched by the abstruseness of the world around us. Sometimes it’s worth it to raise that glass once more to toast the journey together. Sometimes, it’s worth just to hold on to that last hug, the last handshake, not for the sake of remembering your friends but to relive your wildest days once again. Love you kgp!