vd13

15 years back in a nondescript girls college of the capital city of God’s own country a bunch of girls from totally different backgrounds end up in a common classroom. Little did they realise that the seeds of a lifelong friendship were being sown. At the end of the year they got separated depending on the streams of the Engineering disciplines they had chosen in spite of that their friendship remained intact. 

where it all started 

a valentine's day pic without any boys

I have always felt that the biggest misfortune that could happen to somebody in that age is to spend the most beautiful epochs of one's lives in the company of the same sex. I mean, which boy and girl wouldn’t love to walk alongside each other with an ice cream in hand through the picturesque college campus .But I was wrong, these folks enjoyed life  more than their co-ed counterparts. This fact was hardly considered a drawback for them in any given manner. It would be interesting to note that a couple of folks went on to have love marriages later in life.

Now before you start wondering how I fit into the picture let me explain. For starters I am only in the periphery of the picture with hardly any role to play in it. In 2014 I got married to one of the members of the group and 3 others of the group were the bridesmaids at our wedding. That is when I came to know about their existence and what they meant to my better half. Until then the only 13 I was interested in was the doctor character from House MD played by the sultry diva Olivia Wilde .Post that I have heard tales of their escapades from first hand accounts and also from the photos that crop up in facebook from time to time .

bridesmaids

Do you know the commonality of the girls doesn't end there; a good number of the members of the group became mothers almost around the same time. I mean what are the odds of that happening .During the time of pregnancy they had an in house self help group. How cool is that?

The other day both me and Ethan were awakened by some fast music early in the morning. It was quite a spectacle to witness Jeslin, someone with two left feet when it comes to dancing trying to keep up to the beat of the music blaring from the laptop. Turned out to be Zumba sessions meant exclusively for the members of the group. A couple of exceptional dancers from the group had taken up among themselves to teach the entire group so as to break the monotony of the unprecedented pandemic. From the remotest part of North eastern India to the other end of the globe in the US of A and Canada, the distance of thousands of miles has never been an impediment, but rather has brought them much closer together.

I also have noticed that be it a wedding or any other major milestone in their lives all of them would pool in together and buy a gift for the team member on behalf of the group. This proves that the group has withstood the test of time even after one and a half decades after coming into existence. 

Understandably the highly anticipated and meticulously planned get-togethers are few and far in between because of the fact that the members being scattered all across the world. But whenever they meet they make sure that it is special. 

Now let us take this a step further Ethan and Dakshith are classmates in kindergarten just like their mothers in college. They have never met in person but that doesn’t stop them from being thick friends. This is testimony to the fact that the friendship has indeed transcended generations. It doesn't end there Dakshith's mom Krishna was one of Jeslin's bridesmaids. The kids might part ways soon each creating their own world but undoubtedly would be an important chapter in the  story of “we the thirteen”. 

Take a bow.

Krishna and Jeslin are in the middle

vd13 with Ethan,the guest of honour in the latest  meetup 

official logo

School meet ups in transition

A few years ago get togethers in Bombay would mean coming together at a friend’s place mostly Sudheeendran’s. Kerala Parotta, beef, alcohol and Kerala chips would be our companions for the evening.The day will start off with mostly catching up since always there will be a couple of blokes meeting for the first time after school. After the first drink conversation would veer to what is happening back home. What is happening in our school etc. After the second drink conversation will veer towards the guys who we have not met in so many years. This is also when the MBA folks would throw in their Excel bullshit or something from their office powerpoints much to the chagrin of guys like me and the lawyer in the room. After the third drink is when it gets interesting because that is when the G-topic will rear its ugly head. There will be one guy pulling the other by asking him what his ex-flame from the popular girls school is doing right now. Another over enthusiastic guy would quickly run a search in facebook and confirm that she is now fat and ugly. One by one every guy in the room will be throwing in one name after the other to follow the same exercise until we are tired of it. After the fourth drink you lose track of the number of drinks. By this time the monsoons would be in full fury and 1 bloke would start crying for Clara the protagonist of the evergreen Malayalam movie “Thoovanathumbikal”. The next 1 hour we would be furiously discussing as to why Mohanlal should have married her rather than the seedhi saadhi ladki.

Fast forward 2021 we are in the midst of a pandemic. Most of us are in TVM we meet at badminton courts on a daily basis in the mornings. Understandably I am too lazy to go play my excuse being I would much rather go cycling for my cardio rather than making a fool of myself because let us face it I suck in the game. For the record I don’t cycle from a fitness perspective but to satiate my need of going back in time and being the boy of 13 whose most prized possession was this very cycle*(another post). Fitness is for the heartless freaks ,romantics like me would choose nostalgia any day over sweating it out in the gym.

All said and done but last week I managed to get myself cajoled for a game of cricket. I was naturally thrilled to be playing the game after quite some time. As a kid I always wanted to ball fast because that was glamorous. But being a scrawny kid right through school and college forget bowling fast I couldn’t even get the ball to travel from one end of the pitch to another. Nowadays, thanks to putting on a great deal of weight compared to my growing up years I have a strong upper body and expected to bowl a bit.          

True with every such meetup there were at least a couple of guys who I met for the first time after school. Even before the ice breaking session we started a game of cricket. We had an assortment of players, a few from Trivandrum, another few from other cities of the country and even an overseas player all the way from the US of A. The two games went in a jiffy at the end of which all of us were panting for breath. Yeah, I got to bowl a bit still not fast though. The last over of the 2nd match the opposition team needed a good 20 odd runs to win I was called to bowl because there was no other option. I managed to make the game exciting with the game going down to the wire with me ending up in the winning cause by a whisker. But nonetheless we enjoyed to the core for that 2 hours we were transformed to a bunch of old boys playing against each other just like in our school days. I am surprised that the bowling action of a few of them still is the same as in school. And yeah, we no more talk about random chicks anymore but we only talk about our wives and kids back home.

Meet ups then

Meet ups now

Author's note: It is the same guy in the centre for both the pics.

Let me sign off by trying to contrast the aftermath of both the above mentioned meetups. In the former one you only wake up with a headache the next day but in the latter you end up with your entire body paining for the next few days. I am still happy that we have transitioned seamlessly from one to another.

P.S: I am still pissed with the guys because they only got a picture of me getting bowled. who cares, I am only the chronicler here.

* Check out my blog post on The cycle

Memories #19-Anchoring

This is something I had written as an introduction to one of the events of the annual Tech fest  in college during my long forgotten anchoring days more than a decade back. Lately, I have accepted the fact that whatever I had written earlier in life is making me cringe today. I mean the short stories that I had penned in school and college make me wish that I had never written them in the first place. In all likelihood even what I am writing today may be something that I wouldn’t want to revisit 10 years down the line.

Today when I read the script I am deeply perturbed due to the casual negativity that  has made its way through into the content even without me realising about it.Let us step back for a moment and try and visualise the big bad world from the eyes of a happy go lucky college going kid. For starters I was pretty sorted in my head as to what my future was going to be, a career in the Indian civil services . So it was pointless for me to reach out to someone and try to understand what it meant to be working in a corporate environment. But I am surprised by the incorrect notion that had taken roots in me without any basis of rationality.

“Travails and challenges of the stress filled corporate world”, ”Perform under grueling circumstances” look like cheesy lines from a Shakespearean tragic play. Could this have been my perspective of the IT sector where I would eventually end up later in life. It would be worthwhile to find out as to what a current final year student thinks of this sector.. This will be an important yardstick to measure whether there is change in perception. 

Don’t even get me started on “the constant nagging of your boss”. Doesn’t the boss have other important things to do than keep nagging you . Again a careless observation from someone who has not much clue about what he is writing. I have had my share of demanding bosses over the years but none of them fit the bill. I should ask the folks who report to me on my current style of functioning.

All said and done this instance clearly demonstrates the pitfalls of the bias that clouds our judgement on topics that are outside our normal realm of existence. 

Now I think that I need to take a chill pill and wrap up the serious tone of this post and give the 20 year old me a break. The irony of the fact is that in the midst of a hectic day the moment I saw this chit I smiled to myself. And believe me guys that it is no mean task I don’t smile easily ask Jeslin. So it proves that I indeed did something worthwhile back then. Maybe, for a moment I was transformed to the young bloke who loved anchoring, who loved talking through the mike in a hall full of people, who loved writing scripts for such gigs, who would practice diligently along with the co presenter so that we are impeccable on the stage. In fact when I shared this with her now in WhatsApp she recollected those days with great fondness.

I still remember my internal project viva where I was being grilled on Matlab by my professor who was a Phd candidate in the same subject. Naturally I had a tough time but what she remarked at the end of it really cracked me up. She said that the cock and bull story that I used to invent whenever a conceptual question was posed to me was so convincing at times that she would wonder if her understanding of the concepts was incorrect. She wished me luck to get a professor for the final viva whose main subject was not  Digital Image Processing. She was kind enough to give me decent marks and true to her words I scored heavily in my final project presentation and viva.

At that point of time I would always be that guy in the project team who would be the one making the presentation and taking questions at the end even though there were far more scholarly peers in the group. My grades during engineering were dismal but I totally nailed it for my seminar where you have to present a topic and take questions on it. I hate to brag but that was the only time I topped the class in all of my 4 years in college .Back then I loved making presentations in class. A special feeling overcomes you when you are the cynosure of all eyes in a room. Moreover, you get to speak and your mates have no other option but to listen to you.It so happened that once a professor gave the class an option to either write an assignment or you have to prepare on a few topics from the syllabus and make a presentation to the class. This was an offer I couldn’t refuse and was the only one who picked the bait. These days I reminisce those moments whenever I have to give a big ass presentation to the client.

Ethan, who has just turned 3 years old would cook up stories about his time in Delhi and Bombay though he still can’t pronounce the name of our hometown properly(he calls it thirupuram).The fact of the matter is that we left Mumbai soon after he turned one and he has never been to Delhi in his life. I have no iota of doubt if he was talking to anyone other than his grandparents or the extended family they would totally buy his story. The apple indeed doesn’t fall far from the tree.