Sam

Its Sam’s turn now. He leaves on the 15th of this month for Cardiff to pursue his MBA. I called him a little while back to have one of those last pre-departure chats. A Trademark “Bol Bail-ke-Bulle” (I decline to translate that) greeted me from the other side and immediately an overwhelming pain welled up inside. Although the guy kept insisting he would come back after his course was done and take up a job at Pune, I know and I am sure he does too, that this probably was going be it. The point where Sam leaves the nest.
The process began with Babu leaving Pune in 2006, Karan Singh around the same time for Mumbai and then Jeetu, followed by Bikram who eventually came back and finally myself in 2008. Mayukh plans to leave in about a year or so. Although Jeetu keeps coming down from Aurangabad and catches up with Bikram and Mayukh da, Babu hasn’t been to Pune for a while.
I dare to think what would become of Pune in about two or three years from now. Bikram would be gone and so would Mayukh da. The city for me wouldn’t be complete without the rest of the seven. The city would be the same as what it was in the monsoon of 2003 when I first set foot in it as a lone stranger. There wouldn’t be much of a point visiting it alone.
Before hanging up I wished Sameer all the very best. I couldn’t tell him how much I would miss him, I wouldn’t be uncomfortable, but if you’re reading this Sam, Carpe Diem man! Get back soon, Ehsaas hasn’t played its best gig yet!

Palone in the rain

Last Saturday taught me that you can have fun irrespective of the company, place or situation, only if you want to. That day I was pretty sure a few places in Kolkata were on their way to getting completely submerged under water, the incessant rainfall accompanied by storm like winds made it impossible for anyone to have a Saturday night out. Every street in the city was flooded and it just wouldn't cease to rain.

I had been out earlier that afternoon to meet an old friend and have a drink with him but that plan went up the chimney when he showed up badly sozzled and apologetically begged me to call the plan off, reluctantly I obliged, put him in a taxi and sent him off silently cursing him under my breath for having made me wait for almost two and a half hours while he was at another party guzzling away....

With a heavy-ish heart I made off to meet another friend of mine who lived nearby to salvage whatever was left of my Saturday evening. The both of us were in need. He wasnt feeling well and needed someone to talk to and I needed a beer. By the time I had marched half way through his place the heavens had begun spraying the city with a renewed vengeance and the winds had gotten worse. My umbrella barely managed to protect my upper half while my lower half suffered punishing lashes of wind and rain. Walking like a maniac I reached his place in about fifteen minutes , wet and pretty mad at the sheer injustice of it all.

I hadnt reached the guy's doorstep when I heard his voice from the terrace above; "Dude, dont come in, lets go out for a walk instead!"

"...only if we're getting beer!"

Within seconds he was downstairs looking ridiculous in his see-through, plastic rain-coat, a huge picnic umbrella and a silly grin on his face.

A daunting task, walking a kilometer and a half to the nearest beer store, the odds were, getting fearfully wet because of the cyclonic conditions outside, drowning and ending up in some ditch, getting run over by a speeding car blinded by the wind and rain, stepping into a drain overflowing with the filthiest water mankind has ever seen and the likes. A silent prayer and off we were.

The tiny gullys that make inlets into neighbourhoods are the worst to tackle during such heavy rains as the levels of accumulated water could get very high, sometimes as high as your privates, maybe higher and there's no telling what could be floating around in the mucky water and the slightest of inadvertent exposure of that water to your precious-s to could have disastrous consequences. Yet, we delved into it like brave soldiers holding on to each other's shoulders for support. People stood huddled underneath parapets, on the pavements on either side and gaped at us, probably wondering what could have impelled such intrepidity.

After a few minutes of wading through the water, balancing ourselves with one arm on each other's shoulders and the other holding our respective umbrellas the blessed sight of the beer shack started to appear within visual range, but hold on, why was the owner standing near the exit fiddling with the lock?

My "Oooo bhai...darao, bondho koro na, amra aschi!" (Hey there, dont shut down, we're coming!!) fell to deaf ears and in an almost Bollywood-ish (actually more like Tollywood-ish) artistryI gunned ahead leaving my friend badly disbalanced who for a few seconds wobbled around for support , then submitting to the might of the water current let himself splash into the muck face down, his gigantic picnic-umbrella floated around happily. The shutter had almost come half way down when with an earth shattering cry I tossed my umbrella at the metal shutter that made a more than audible bang!! The shutter immediately went up and peeped out a slightly scared face....

Spitting out a mouthful of gooey water and gasping desperately for breath the greedy and suffering Gollum in me spoke..."Palone...my precious!"

We stood dripping wet underneath a tree that Saturday night, the two of us, sipping beer, talking and celebrating the fruits of human endeavour. Beer had never tasted better before.

Pearls of wisdom from Loserville

I am internet dependant to such an extent that just the other day, after my boss literally lost his voice screaming at me the entire afternoon after I made a horrendously dim-witted mistake in one of my tasks, I tottered back to my chamber and looked up, “Ways to get more intelligent” or “Why do bosses yell when they really need not?” and “How not to be a complete idiot” on Google.

Wonder of wonders Google had answers!

I discovered that there actually are a number of websites that offered solutions ranging from altering one's intelligence and perceptive abilities to real life suggestions and theories like; “10 ways to live you life if you are stupid!”, “The laws of human stupidity” and “So what if I thought differently..?”
Even Wiki answers offered some rather enlightening inputs on the question, “How to cure idiocy?”.

Well, that’s another day’s story…

This evening was the worst scream fest ever and better still, before clients and other lawyers, so I rushed back to Google “10 ways to go painlessly”, “Suicide made easy” and the works. Just for a broad idea;
On came,” A practical guide to suicide from a http://www.satanservice.org/”, “suicide methods”, “A ten minute suicide guide” and “Loner today goner tomorrow…”

Never mind the internet dependecy syndrome, my point is, be informed, there are more people out there who are like you than you know.
Life may be a bucketload of trash for the most part, with a bottle or two of leftover Scotch lying around in it for you to find (trust me to come up with the seemingly weirdest of analogies but if you are like me you'll get my point), remember everybody out there is getting their behinds wooped some way or the other.

Dont believe me? .....

Check out the number of co-members I have on the "Yes, I have a stammer...sometimes I slap my thigh red to speak!" Community on Orkut.

(Noteworthy point: Apparently Mr. Chetan Bhagat too Googled 'Ways to commit suicide'; Read '2 States; The story of my marriage' to find out more; Now I have famous friends!)

Dear Blog

This evening I was given a taste of my own insensitiveness. Taste, quite literally so;

Morning time for a litigating lawyer is the busiest part of his day. It requires shuttling between courts and office innumerable times, making frenzied phone calls to clients, counsels etc, making sure everybody reaches court on time, making sure the papers have reached the courtrooms and the counsels have been briefed on the day’s strategy, documents should be filed at their respective departments by 10.00 – 10.30 am with all the formalities, stamping, punching and affirmation immaculately carried out, in the lower courts if any previous orders are to be noted after filing, you have exactly around five minutes to do so before the clerks start getting cranky, I could go on! Often such overwhelming preoccupation spills over to lunchtime and beyond and by the time we get to have lunch, its tea time! So more often than never, the best way of catching up on lunch is to grab a bite on the go, a sandwich or a fruit.

This morning I jetted out to make for a tribunal about a kilometre away from office and I had approximately four and half minutes to cover the distance. I had a thick bundle of files tightly locked under my right arm and a banana clutched in my left hand. Breakfast! Now, I had to maintain near- blinding walking speed while make sure the files do not slip out and simultaneously peel my banana and eat it! With the bundle tightly clamped underneath my chin I managed to peel the banana. After eating I tossed the skin nonchalantly underneath a lamppost and walked off, who had the time to find a dustbin? Besides during monsoons the whole area looked like a big garbage dump I thought!

The rest of the day advanced like usual when around a couple of hours back my boss instructed me to jog down to the same tribunal and pick up some papers from a counsel. By this time the area around our office resembled a Tsunami hit village, there was knee deep water everywhere and rubbish floated around in it like little bath-tub duckies. I rolled up my trouser sleeves, grabbed my boots and wading through the water I made for the tribunal. Although the thought of the mega-dirty water passing between my fingers and leaving sticky goo all over my skin gave me goosebumps I felt secured that the upper half of my body was clean and dry…….

Before my face hit the reeking water I calmly uttered the four letter curse starting with an ‘f’……

The second I stepped on that slimy skin-like thing I knew it could only be a banana peel, little did I realise that it was THE banana peel until, on my way down I looked up at the lamp post, the very lamp post under which I had chucked the peel arrogantly a few hours back!

So blog, I headed back to office that evening, completely soaked and filthy, with a mouth full of dirt and a heart full of bitterness. It’s okay to be taught a lesson or two once in a while, we all could use a little bit of introspection and realisation from time to time, but going easy on the ‘methods’ could definitely make things better, more so, efficacious!

Karma, old friend, you listening?

Love
Master.

A Gimlet for you sir...?

I never knew they called Gin mixed with lime cordial and shaken with crushed ice, a 'Gimlet'. Untill last night it was good old 'Gin, lime cordial and tonic'. And Gimlets are rather expensive. Maybe its the little cherry they put on the glass. Cherries make things pricey, dont they?

Dry County

'Dry County' by Bon Jovi and his band holds a special place in my heart for more reasons than one. First, the video is brilliantly shot, tastefully edited to match the mood of the song note by note. Essentially a song meant to infuse optimism among it's listeners, it retains the classic elements of a Bon Jovi number, the overpowering presence of big guitars and long solos, the unabashedly loud and assertive drumming, great harmonization and deep lyrics.

But what gets me dragging the progess-bar on the media player back over and over again onto one particular part of the song is the explosive crescendo that storms in somewhere around the middle....

A short, melodic lull paves the way for a ripping guitar solo spanning around 15 and a half bars and 33 seconds where Sambora locks completely with Tico Torres on the drums creating a resultant sonic mayhem with the words "Lord didn't bring me this far to leave me now..!" flashing on the screen.

Highly recommended!

Little things that fight darkness

Darkness is an odd state of affairs. Sometimes it’s as endless and unremitting as the farthest depths of an ocean and sometimes the smallest of things hammer holes into its resonant walls projecting bright and much needed rays of hope through them.

Mom wasn’t around for almost three weeks, her trip to her maternal place cum vacation seemed to last for ages, but life carried on. I was surviving in a state of limbo, a vacuum, where things around me moved in hyper-speed and I drooped around and struggled, wading and drifting in ultra-slow motion. Days took weeks to pass and weeks, months. Frankly, mom’s absence did not so much as occupy one-tenth of my concerns, not that I did not miss her but because I knew she was around, I knew she would come home.

Last night, as mom walked out of the airport, I looked into her eyes and something magical happened, something transformed in me. As she walked towards dad and me, smiling, I realised I had actually never known how radiant her smile was and how beautiful she actually was. She hugged me and in a flash all the sadness was gone, a great hollow was filled and brimming. She ran her fingers through my hair and told me calmly that things would be fine and that the tough times wouldn’t last long and I transformed immediately, I straightened up, flashed my 32, picked up her bags and bounded along towards the car. Although my little sister was away in college, for once it felt good to be together as a family, rather two-third of it.

I guess, its nature’s way, every once in a while, of reminding everybody of the importance and meaning of family and the powers it holds, also that love is only for a precious few and it’s worthwhile to try not to take the ones that love you for granted.