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.

 

Happy Holidays

Back in school, on the last working day of a term after the exam for the day the corridors of the school will reverberate with the chants of “Happy Holidays” . For the rest of world “Good morning teacher” evokes a lot of nostalgia but ask anyone who has walked the hallowed grounds of Loyola school Thiruvananthapuram would definitely recollect this scene vividly. At times it may often happen that a few classes would finish their last exams in the forenoon session of the last day itself. They would immediately break into the chants and while some of us would be trying to focus on revising for the upcoming  exams in the afternoon session. The feeling of enuii that we feel at that moment is incomparable to anything else in the world. The crescendo reaches its peak when the buses filled in with excited students are shouting at their top of their voices the anthem for the day. It is the final scene where the school is bidding farewell to its wards and going to miss them for the next few days. Quite often when you are going through the grind of preparing for the exams the imagery of throwing your bag on the last day of school to mark your first day of eternal bliss is played in a loop. This helps you to hang on to the roller coaster of exams that lays ahead of you.

Over the years even after school and college the holiday season is much anticipated. I recollect my first Christmas vividly in Bombay. I was not granted leaves and I had steeled myself for spending the Christmas holidays and New year away from home. At the last moment a couple of my colleagues cancelled their leaves. I saw a window of opportunity and  drew first blood. But alas since it was too late, the trains were fully overbooked. I was in a dilemma since I had lobbied hard for the holidays and didn’t want to spend them alone. The journey from Bombay to Trivandrum covering a distance of 1600 odd kms via train took somewhere around 28-30 hours journey in normal circumstances. There was indeed light at the end of the tunnel and I decided to break the journey into two. One from Mumbai to Mangalore(900 kms) and another from Mangalore to Trivandrum(700). The former was to be undertaken in a bus while the latter in a train. This meant that I had to spend an additional 15 hours that the normal because you had to account for a lag associated with each journey lest you miss your connecting train. Spending 4 days just for the to and fro journey severely cut short your time that you could spend at your home but nonetheless it was totally worth it.

Another memorable holiday season would be the winter of 2013 where we made our maiden road trip from Mumbai to Trivandrum in our very own Swift . It was an eventful journey with a number of detours including one to visit my maternal aunt and her family in Bangalore another one to Madurai for my best friend’s wedding and finally to a pilgrimage to Velankanni. It was quite a wonderful feeling when you started from your flat in Mumbai and rolled into your house in Trivandrum on the 7th day. This also coincided with the decade celebrations (10 years of passing out from school) comprising of the run up to the event the formal function at school and the afterparty thereafter. 

In 2020 amidst a pandemic I was grateful to have made it to the end of the year in one piece. This was the year when your personal and professional lives merged because of the fact that we had been in ‘work from home’ mode from the middle of March. So when it was time for the year end holidays it was a sense of enuii at play and nothing else. “The world doesn’t end with a bang but with a whimper’. But no, there was more to it Mindcurv, the organisation that I have been working for a good part of the last year and a half surprised us with a gift hamper delivered to our homes. There was no better sight than kiddo swooping down on it and with great aplomb unpacking each of the gifts while having a whale of a time. The grand finale couldn’t have been bigger than this I mean he deserved every bit of it. Looking through the eyes of a 3 year old how do you rationalise the fact that most of the time my father and mother are shut in a room without me for 5 days a week. After seeing the Christmas crib assembled Ethan asks me where are the laptops of the parents of the son of God kept and pensively adds that baby Jesus is very lucky he has the company of the animals when his dadda and mamma work from the manger. I feel sad on so many levels when I hear this because the pandemic also meant that he didn’t get to explore the joys of mingling with kids of his age. Come to think of it He would have atleast started play group/kindergarten if not for the times we live in.

That is curtains down to 2020.

Happy holidays!!  

Picture courtesy: Mindcurv

Home is where the heart is, part 2

As a 6 year old 

If you had met the the 11 year old me and posed me the question as to what you wanted to be in life without a blink of an eye I would have said an I.P.S officer*. In my teenage years when everyone around me was obsessing over Medical and Engineering I was finalising my optional for the UPSC civil services exam. Understandably I had no clue of medical/engineering. At that point of time I was too naïve to even think that once you cleared the entrance exam you are already a doctor or an engineer. But if you woke me up in the middle of the night I could explain to you in detail the 3 stages of one of the toughest competitive exams of the country the pattern, your strategy, your optionals and what not. That was the kind of single minded focus that I had on something that was really close to my heart. 

I.P.S-Indian Police Service

For those of you who have been reading my blog posts regularly would notice that I have extensively written about every stage of my life be it my childhood in Gwalior, my school/Engineering college days in Trivandrum and even about my work life to a certain extent. But there is one part of my life I have never even briefly touched upon and that would be my stint in Delhi. My housemates in Delhi quite often have asked me as to why I don’t write about my time with them. The prime reason being it was too emotional to even recollect the said time period. My point being I had invested a lot physically mentally as well as emotionally and at the end of it I couldn't deliver results.

For starters I was called “Benno” back  then, it was my father’s pet name which I had adopted for only that period of my life. Many summers ago I moved from the humidity of Chennai to the sauna of Delhi. Right at the onset I was ecstatic to be back to the northern part of the country after more than a decade.My first stop was at Dr Mukherjee nagar not very far from the Delhi University North campus. This place thrived from the income of the IAS aspirants from the length and breadth of the country who thronged the coaching centers in that area . I was put up in a house for a month which I ditched because of not so great housemates and an equally crappy landlady. As an answer to my prayers Eric makes an entry to the scene and we together start to look for a place to live. 

We finally zeroed down on a quaint little 2 BHK house where me and Eric shared a room on the first floor of a house. There was a hall and also a kitchen which was shared. We slowly set up the house with basic things, primarily a table and chair. We just brought 2 mattresses and would sleep on the floor with a mat thrown in. The days were very hectic because I had classes for both our optionals Geography and Public administration. My day started early in the morning at 6 AM with a jog at a nearby park.

Dr Mukherjee Nagar flanked by with Sid and Rohan

with Mathai and Eric

This was also when we ran into “The Mathai'' who would subsequently be our future house mate. Rohan from Bombay was another housemate who lived in the adjacent wing of the same floor. Quite often in the nights we would all congregate in the gali(bylane) in front of the house because the weather was pregnant with heat .

On sundays early in the morning I used to make my way through Nirankari* colony to attend the Sunday service. A walk of about 30 minutes right through where they would be having their own congregation . After the service we used to hang around the church premises and chit chat with a bunch of friends which included Benita from Delhi and Marymol from Thrissur . This was one of the most anticipated passages of time of the week that even Mathai and Eric also started to come to church for this rendezvous. After about 4 months it was time to bid adieu to Dr Mukherjee nagar. During the last week we planned for a farewell sort of a event at the Blues joint in Connaught Place. It was a good place with a live band For the record this was the first social event for all of us in the entire 4 month stint in Delhi. 

*The Sant Nirankari Mission (also known as a mission of Universal Brotherhood) is a spiritual organisation based out of Delhi, India(source: wikipedia).

 Blues Connaught place

The whole gang 

Our next stop was Karol Bagh the reason being a good number of us had to join the iconic Vajiram and Ravi* for our General studies classes. The new house was a 3 bhk, located at Rajendra Place at a walking distance from the coaching institute. Sambhu and Elvin classmates of Mathai in National Institute of Technology, Calicut were my housemates along with Eric. Now this period of time was much more eventful than the former period at Dr Mukherjee nagar. Since it had been a while since 3 of us were together there was a bonding and mutual understanding between Mathai, Eric and myself. Sambhu and Elvin also assimilated easily because of their familiarity with Mathai. Staying together was quite a unique experience, the reason being all five of us were as different as chalk and cheese. For instance I am a guy who is early to bed and early to rise. Moreover I had classes at Vajiram at 8 am in the morning. On the other hand the rest of the group were nocturnal beings who would be up late into the night sometimes even up till dawn and would sleep well into the next day.  Around midnight I was awakened by a commotion in the hall when I rushed out. To my discomfiture I found out that it was only the blokes having an animated discussion on the flawed reservation system of our country in the backdrop of the Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan. After telling them to tone it down a bit I went back to sleep. 

*Vajiram and Ravi-One of the most popular IAS coaching centers in the country

One fine day it so happened that everyone except me had to appear for the CAT* exam. The previous night as usual everyone was up until late .Before leaving for church I had to literally kick everyone out from their deep slumber swearing at everyone so that they don’t miss the exam. Thankfully everyone had left by the time I was back and no one missed the exam what is even more, everyone scored a 97+ percentile in the exam. It still beats me as to how they did it.  

CAT-Common Admission Test the entrance test in India to get into the top MBA colleges of the country

All smiles

Sambhu and Elvin were a bit hungover from their previous lives of working professionals and were taking a bit more time to settle down. Quite often after the classes they would come along with a group of friends back to our place and would be gossiping for sometime into the night. The decibel levels would be on the higher side because of a couple of girls in the group. This was severely hampering the others who were trying to focus on their studies. That is when me and Mathai the de facto patriarch and matriarch of the house took control and brought out a rule that this will not be allowed in the house after 8 PM. If you wanted to extend your sessions please feel free use to the bylanes in front of the house. Grudgingly both of them were sporting enough to accept our diktat.

The Christmas in the winter of 2008  would be forever etched in my memory. For starters I was on a 25 day fast from Dec 1 which effectively meant that I was a vegetarian during that time period. During this period the juvenile Eric used to taunt me with cuss words to test my resolve but I was steadfast throughout. On Christmas eve all of us went for the midnight mass even though the weather was chilling cold.

Christmas 2008,let the celebration begin

But the real fun started when we were back home. Mathai had procured a bottle of wine only for me so that I could also take part in the revelry(I had given up drinking at that time because of the notion that alcohol affected my memory). The moment I was back while biting into my kebabs to break the fast I directed a barrage of expletives to Eric to kickstart the proceedings. The night was still young and we had a problem at our hands because we didn’t know how to uncork the wine we tried every trick in the book, even watched youtube videos but to no avail. Finally we managed to knock the cork into the bottle. We spent the entire night drinking until dawn, for the record that was my first night out. The next day I missed my Economics classes again another first. I was deeply touched by the gesture of Mathai who got me wine. 

down but not out, the smile says it all

This was also the time when the girlfriends were getting married. One person in the group would get wind of it and inform the entire group, in the evening we would celebrate like crazy. In midst of the pandemonium when no one is watching the guest of honour would dab his eyes with a tissue and that was the end of it, you live to fight another day. As our preliminary exams were approaching everyone was getting stressed and to break the monotony we used to play cricket inside the house with a sponge ball. It was also during that time I screwed up my neck because of spending too much time hunched over a book. The pain was so bad that I had to wear a cervical collar for sometime to get over it. One night when I was writhing in pain in my bed I will never forget Eric coming to my rescue by applying a hot towel on my neck to ease my pain. If there is one thing that I have learned from my Delhi sojourn is that quite often we only focus on the destination but ignore the journey which is equally important. Though I failed in achieving my dream I will cherish these memories for the rest of my lifetime.

                                                                                                          (to be continued)

Click here for Part 1

Home is where your heart is, part 1

This was the theme of the latest online playback theater performance by the talented artist of First drop* which I had the pleasure of attending this sunday. The first question that was posed to the audience was how many of us were still living in our place of birth. A lion’s share of us responded in the negative. A few from the audience volunteered and shared their feelings on the topic subsequent to which the actors enacted them for us. My friend Srijith was on fire during the show. In response to a story of a childhood spent in mango trees, out of nowhere he came up with a branch of a mango tree to the screen. Similarly Thulasi came up with a mortar and pestle in response to another instance. Being a doubting Thomas I thought that  this was scripted but my friend clarified that it was indeed impromptu which made it all the more impressive. I had no reason to doubt him any further because this in a way explained as to why the leaves were wet when he was holding them as a prop since it was raining at that time in Kochi. The show made me reminiscent of the homes that I have lived in my lifetime and pangs of nostalgia hit me hard that I decided to pen down one by one the houses that I have lived in.

*First drop

Photo credits: First drop theatre

Photo credits: First Drop theatre

My first memory of a house is that of the SP*’s bungalow in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. The huge house comprised of a Garden with a variety of flowers, fields adjacent to the house were used to grow wheat and vegetables for our personal use, the sentry outpost at the entrance was always manned by armed policemen, the workers quarters at the back side, everything is a vague memory now. I learnt to cycle in my quaint little red Hero Hansa on the tarred roads that ran through the length and breadth of the property. It so happened that there was a concrete tank in which we stored water for the crops. Once I had gotten inside it to splash around since there was only water till my knees but alas I lost my footing and fell down. I hadn’t factored the moss that had accumulated at its bottom. Post that episode I remember getting berated for my recklessness by my father. Because of the vegetation around it was also a haunt for a variety of snakes. The moment a snake is spotted in the vicinity the shake charmer is summoned who would play his instrument and attract it to his basket. Another sight I will never forget is the dance of the peacock bang in the middle of the garden. The memories are quite vivid because I spent a considerable amount of time over there.

*SP-Superintendent of Police

My grandmother's palatial house named after her in a sleepy little coastal hamlet in Trivandrum was another place where I spent the rest of my childhood until my adolescence. For starters it was a mighty two storey house with huge ceilings with a kind of red sandstone used for its flooring. If you go to the terrace or the first floor you could see the sea a bit ahead of you. As a matter of fact, of all the houses that I have lived, this is the only place which has a dedicated prayer room, I mean a proper room reserved only for prayer. There was also a clock inside it which used to chime in different tunes for every quarter of an hour. The outdoors were equally majestic, there was a gooseberry tree and a  guava tree where you could climb up to pluck the fruit and consume to your heart’s delight. But for me the fond memory would be our game of cricket which we played among our cousins with great intensity for hours at end. Right in the front of the house you had ample space to play the gentleman's game. If you could not keep your shots down the ball would land at either the neighbour’s house or on the road outside which has got its set of travails when it comes to fetching the ball.

Then comes our very own house named after my father where I spent my teenage and early adult years right in the heart of the city of Trivandrum. We didn’t have much place to play so we ended up playing cricket on the terrace. This was too much of a hassle since quite often the ball would end up at the neighbour’s house. Ambrose jumping to the adjacent compound to fetch the ball started  becoming a routine affair and we used to get into a lot of trouble for it. Gradually we stopped playing cricket at our house altogether and it was played only when we visited our grandmother’s house during the summer holidays. I guess this was also the time that marked the end of my outdoor life. Slowly I started spending more time inside the house primarily because my father’s book collection was now unveiled. It was no longer stored in some iron trunk but was out in the open. That was the time when the world of reading opened itself to me with limitless possibility.Boy I was a prolific reader back then(another post:Reading). This was also roughly the time when I picked up writing as well. I used to write on full scap paper sheets and file it.Recently I came across the file with layers of dust accumulated over it with the passage of time. Guess what now when I read it I am deeply embarrassed by what I had written then. Come to think of it this was where I had my first crush this was where I had my first heartbreak. This was where I topped on my tenth boards, this was where I popped a sprite bottle in place of a champagne to announce that I had cleared my Engineering(we had a tough time cleaning the stains in the ceiling my brother’s 6 feet 4 inch frame came quite handy at that time). I hope you noticed how subtly I had mentioned about my fall from grace from being a topper in school to a first class holder in my Engineering college. Damn there are too many memories in that house. This was the place where I spent the most years of my life, Period.

The single room adjacent to the terrace at Adayar was the first place I lived after I left home. The effervescent Srijith, the very same guy I mentioned in the first paragraph, was my roommate then. The room just had a double bed and an attached bathroom. You did not require an aftershave and could save the money because your face would automatically sanitise when you sprinkle some tap water which incidentally was very salty. Srijith who cared very much for his vanity would go down to the hand pump in the road and carry a bucket of water 3 storeys up to wash his hair. I was too lazy to even do that and the results are there for you to see. Srijith still sports a full crown of hair while my head looks like a 5th day pitch of a test match in India. Irrespective of the frugal surroundings the company of each other made it all the more special. Come to think of it I poured Srijith his first ever drink in that very room. We celebrated wildly when our first ever salary was credited. For us it was nothing short of a penthouse. The single room that I mentioned was only our living room. The terrace was multipurpose it was there Srijith Ponnappan staged his one man shows back then, it is there I did my push ups, it is there Srijith did his Yoga, it is where we did our laundry minus the washing machine, it is there both of us used to hang out after a hard day's work and discuss our respective crushes under the stars, it is there that we used chill in case any of our friends visited. 

 

                                           (to be continued……….)

Click here for Part 2

In case you liked this post check out a similar post of mine Roomie

Memories #18 An ode to the daily journal

I was 10 when I came across for the very first time in my life small brown diaries among the multitude of books  at home which were the remnants from my early childhood in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. At that point of time I was quite overwhelmed when I realized that this was the daily journal maintained by the 16 year old self of my father who had passed away a couple of years ago. For me it was like Dadda was talking to me from beyond this world. My father’s premature demise quite early in my childhood had created a certain kind of halo around him. I was much in awe of his imposing personality when elders at that time would recount with great pride his academic brilliance and prowess in sports.

After overcoming the initial emotional turmoil I slowly started to get a drift of it. What struck me most was that he was like any other boy his age. The same travails, the same vulnerabilities, the same self doubts, the concerns of the future that every adolescent goes through at that age all along trying to navigate through everyday life. I also got a sneak peak into his upbringing. Understandably I had no recollection of my grandfather because he had passed away a few years before my birth. I began to see in a new light the times that I had spent with  my paternal grandmother in Jose Dale because where the journal was set on. My grandparents were like any other guardians of 4 brothers living in a house. This offered glimpses of my uncles as kids, their camaraderie, their sibling rivalry , their extended family meet ups and what not. There was a gap in these journals when at the age of 19 he travelled to Europe as part of the YMCA(Young Men's Christian Association). It was quite a let down that the journals explained in quite detail the run up to the trip and then went blank. Subsequently, it restarted from the time when he returned. 

I was very much moved by many of these incidents. A memorable one would be where my father was very rash when it came to riding his bicycle. One fine day he had a close call with a bus when he escaped by a whisker. Unfortunately one of our relatives was in that very bus and this information got relayed to my grandfather who berated him for his recklessness. Looking back this is exactly what Ambrose(my younger brother) was at that age; the apple indeed doesn’t fall far from the tree. These anecdotes were quite reassuring to me to say the least because I had been an average joe until then. Many a times I was skeptical if I could live up to the high benchmark set by my father. Case in point cracking the UPSC civil services exam at 21 is no small feat. These instances definitely steeled my resolve. Being an average student until my tenth board exams and topping the class was testimony to the fact that  I was indeed inspired by these journals.

All this prompted me to start writing a daily journal. My first journal entry was on my 11th birthday. The fact of the irony is that I am recounting my first journal entry two and a half decades post on that very same day. I wrote a bit in the first year but gradually fizzled out as I approached my pressure cooker years(grades 10 to 12) when I totally forgot about this activity. At that point of time it is a no brainer to note that I lacked discipline and focus. I had been a sporadic writer until I was in college. I restarted this habit and with a bit of earnestness followed it up until a couple of years after college; then the thread was broken.

There had been a paradigm shift after every break in the thread of journal writing. When I started off in school  it was on a day to day basis and emphasis was on chronology. In college it was about chronology on a week on week basis. In addition I used to reflect a bit about life in general giving insights into my thought process at that point of time. After college for the first couple of years it evolved to month on month before finally metamorphosing to year on year. Somewhere along the line chronology went for a toss and contemplation took prominence. There were a couple of exercises that I undertook to spruce it up for instance from 1996 till date every leap year there is an entry for Feb 29 just to get a feel as to how life has changed in the 4 years. Additionally most of the years towards the end I try to recap the entire year gone by on a month on month basis.

Off late I have felt the need to write about things that occurred in the near past rather than the present which has been quite invigorating. Last year my journal writing received a shot in the arm during my sojourn in Germany as part of an official assignment thanks to Minducrv. Suddenly after work(feierabend in German) I would have more ‘me time’. Rather than remain shut in the studio apartment I would visit the library within the complex and pen a few lines on a daily basis reminiscent of the time I started writing. In fact I had written more in these months than in the last 5 years. Incidentally it was 3 years back when I was on another official assignment to Hong Kong that I had restarted journal writing after a while. Believe me it is quite an exhilarating feeling to pen your thoughts overlooking the majestic Hong Kong harbour. I recollect that one of the cold Sundays I was closeted in that very room writing my journal for the entire day because of the inclement weather in the winter of 2015 .It was a strange coincidence that the diary that I started in Hong Kong was finished in Germany. I have no clue as to when or where the new diary that I had started in Germany will end. But it is quite a thrilling prospect just to think of the myriad possibilites.

view from my writing table in HK

I am a prolific writer whenever I am alone and in a reflective mood. You will be quite amused to know the kind of places where I feel like writing. It could range from the coffee shop in the Mumbai international airport or the airport hotel in Abudhabi. It has sort of become a routine now that I would pen something when I am waiting to board a flight be it in Dusseldorf, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Delhi, Trivandrum or Cochin. The key is to find a place where there is less crowd meaning less noise so that you can focus and let your thoughts rip. What is even more interesting is that I have penned lines even in moving trains during my solitary 30 hour trips between Mumbai and Trivandrum.

Just last week I was quite thrilled to lay my hands on the elusive journal of my dad from his time in Europe. I wish I had come across this earlier in life probably when I was in college which would have made it much more relatable. All said and done I have got a must visit place next time when I am in Europe. If only I had known a year back I could have got this off my bucket list already. Close to bedtime as I was engrossed on the experiences of my father in Taize, France my toddler walks in asking what I am reading. I pick him up in my arms and tell him that these lines were penned by his grandfather who he shares his name with.

Do you think that a circle has just been completed?

Well I definitely think so.

More similar posts

Memories #1