Before you start reading, i would say thanks a lot to have prompted me to get my lazy butt on the writing chair and let the fingers do the talking! A very special ThEnk YoU to the guy who cleared all his tests in Infy finally and also a very very special ThEnk YoU to the one who narrated the Story of 5 planes..
Lets rewind...or should i say...Lets start...
Circa 2008, its April, the submissions are over, the vivas have screwed the last hopes of showing that ever popping middle finger to your project guide and since these are the last few days that you would be fed in the mess for a frugal amount of money, its become really hard to accept that you have to clear all the papers this time and complete your 'profound knowledge' (ha!) in engineering. Now what differed across the length and breadth of my circle of friends about these last few days, was just perception. For instance, let me take me for example, i loved it to approach the end of all these years in the gaga land of karadis (yuck even that sounds yucky!) with no patience whatsoever. And hence, irrespective of all the good times i spent (which included improving my marathi as a global language and understanding the red tapism and kiss ass-ing those in the position of power) there, i was a hell of an elated guy. I was like "Screw the nostalgia. Bring it on, Life!" which isn't exactly the attitude that a guy should have days before the FINAL exams. Still...as i said..it was me and so i cared little about writing all the mushy and senti stuff in the slam books and saying good byes to the last of all those walls and buildings that held my imagination and freedom captive for four consecutive years.
And then, there were Mandar and Shrikant, saala both the guys were feeling sad that their college life was all coming to an end so soon.(So soon?). Well, the guys had a deep sense of attachment to the college life which they had, and they wished that it could go on a for a little longer, but not in the literal sense. [:D] So when i talked to Mandar or Shrikant over the phone, we had a lot to talk about. They would talk about all the farewells and bye bye parties being arranged and attended which would be remembered and i would talk statistics on how many days more to go and how i would leave this electrical nonsense once and for all. I was overly elated and ecstatic and these guys were satisfied, yet a little gloomy, hopeful, yet a little insecure about the days that would be after they stepped out of the gates that once meant home. See? Perception...it was different.
Without going much into the details of what raas leela we did during the PL(which, by the way means Preparatory Leave and not the other kind which you double meaning dirtyheads want to think of and smile about), let me just make the statement that we delivered (:P) the results and got a stamp of a certified engineers on our once useless, suddenly vital a**es. We partied hard (which meant drinking coke and soya milk in the college parties where people got drunk and puked, eating the same kind of food in the same damned dim lit hotels and restaurants where we considered it our right to demand discounts, and raising a toast of the most popular cutting chai available on an udhaar basis on the mornings after these parties)...real hard..!
Somehow, these days passed, this time really quick, and sadly, the boriya bistar that once formed the identity of those to whom it belonged, went away in a mist, taking with it the persona which once had been a part of even your identity. But the dhinchak cheez was that once again, Mandar, me, shrikant, amit & pulkit could meet each other as and when we felt like moving our lazy bums and that also served as a good time to have the vada pavs or the samosas or the coke or the kachoris or any other junk food that could be bit onto. The discussions these times centered around topics such as "Chaar saal zindagi bita daali...fir bhi we just see each other's faces, talk to only each other....abe still single be...wo bhi collectively single..tch tch..kuch nahi ho sakta apna.." followed by "Is gham mein ek aur samosa ho jaye...top to bottom karte hai chal.."
We went to Anushakti to Amit's place once, then ummmnn..., shrikant came over to tarapur once, then....., we guys roamed around in mumbai once..i guess and so we kept meeting. Amit had us all a great 'microsoft' treat in 'subway' where we munched on these delicious wheat loaf sandwich babies, saw a weird movie at Gaiety in Bandra and went home to do what we were doing from what now was sadly becoming a long time - nothing!
Finally everyone experienced a day where we would get up, call any one amongst us, ask "Kya kar raha hai" to which "Kuch nahi be...wohi...roz ki tarah...paper padh raha hu/comp pe baitha hu/TV dekh raha hu" , "Kuch khaya kya?", "hmmnnn...haa khaya kuch to bhi...abhi yaad nahi aa raha kya khaaya...", "Chal chod baad me call karta hu" And while our brains were being programmed into a state of idleness, there was another news waiting for us...Recession! But anyhow, we managed to get into some firms which we thought were the gateway to either s/w development, morgan stanley, and free jacuzzis.
And slowly slowly the days spent at work materialized into weeks into months and so on and so forth. Time seemed all the same, the realization of doing things which did seem different initially, but all the same a little later, dawned upon us (at least on me) in a very gradual but assuring manner. We hunted around for topics to talk about when we called each other up, and when there were the silences which signified the lack of content to be exchanged with, we would hang up the phone.
"Kya haal hai?" "Bas yaar sab waisa hi hai...Chal raha hai." "hmmnn.." "Amit se baat waat hui?" "Haa...Online milta hai...Chhap raha hai..." "Sahi hai...Aur tu suna...what else...?" "Eh..Bas time pass...Chal raha hai kuch to bhi..." "Hmmnn.." "Mumbai/Pune aane ka koi plan wan hai?" "Pata nahi re...Dekhta hu.." "Hmmn...okay then..." "Haan...chal then bye.."
So while it seemed that we were making great progress in our professional lives, which i hopefully believe we still are, a certain specific very intangible thing called 'something' was missing. Now what the heck could that be? I dont know...May be you can put a word to it the way you define 'something'. We kept meeting each other as and when we could - in Pune, in Mumbai and hey..why the hell cant we skip a day at work and meet in Lonavala? Mast koi decent sa ek farmhouse jaisa kuch book karne ka...hammock laga ke, cold drinks in hand, may be a chikki in the mouth and a stereo/phone speakers playing songs that probably nobody understands amongst us, yet can listen to....we can just be lazy and sluggish and fat(a little :D) and happy! Day dreaming apart, the point is we still didn't spare a single thought to meet each other and have a good laugh together on the one who wasn't there but talked about the most! And its been going on this way since the last couple of months. A lot of transition has taken place over a period of time that can hardly be described as short.
Now since we have read this far, what question disturbs my tiny mind is 'Where do we go from here on?' Yeah...its become a little serious...ain't it?...But hey...i haven't written since a long time..Bear with me a little more now..So..Where do we go from here on? Now instead of releasing myself from the clutches of this awfully simple question by a dumb 'I don't know!', its time i deal with this head on. Let me see...I really feel great for folks who know it for sure that they are going to be doing only one very particular and specific thing in their life. Meaning?
Say Amit. He has always been a geek. Read Yashwant Kanetkar's Let Us C in a matter of days and made his own version of Paint in C - all this while in standard 9. He knew that if one day he woke up and saw no computer beside himself, he would probably feel that he has lost touch with the aliens from the outer space who had sent Rudra(kant) on earth as a proof of their existance.(Is he a soul reaper, Amit?).
Or say Bhushan Shinde. The guy is cool, compassionate, concise and clear about what and how to do what is to be done.
Shrikant? I really dont know whether he ever wanted or liked anything as bad. We did plan to enter the Navy and come to the TAPS colony as officers in the Indian Navy and be the centre of attraction, he'd even given the defence entrance after standard 12, but i guess after he got rejected did he discover that being a president of Rotoract wasn't also the most boring thing to do and that engineering was in his DNA (and not biology for which he gave the AIIMS entrance, AFMC, Maharashtra PMT etc etc... :D) What worked out for him? I would undoubtedly say that it must have been the optimitic outlook and the ability to spread that optimism to the people he came in close contact with!
Pulkit? The grand just gets grander and the lavishness just keeps on getting more lavish. He gets bed tea with breakfast early morning! The rooms get cleaned daily! Army canteen ka khaana! Designs all the freaking missiles! Works with DRDO !Isn't that what he had wanted? Or isn't that what we had thought he would be only comfortable in?
Mandar? Now this is my guy. He decided to change the stream from IT to Electrical when confronted during the counselling for engineering seats, hated electrical engineering with equal gusto and audacity as me, did a very high fundoo project in final year only to disappoint all the faculty members by declaring infront of all the psychics (the electrical engg profs) that he would be joining Infosys and not any core electrical company, plus after the joining, he ridicules the values and ethics of Infosys which pays him enough to sail through the recession and now he says that he wants to do his MBA as soon as he can. I love you man, i really do! What i also love about this guy is the madness with which he puts all his efforts into making things happen. Come rain or hail, he will sell you a cold drink if he desires to!
And then there is my very special Agony Aunt who has asked herself two questions so far and tried to figure out the answers. One - Is derivation and integration by any means of any consequence in the life that will be after one completes the std 12? Well, the answer was No and it was justified really well. Two - Is handling two crazy nuts saat samundar paar worth all the pain and risk that has been so far endured? I am still waiting for the answer and i sure hope that its a Yes. (For all those of you who thought of this last paragraph as something written in Korean - here is a suggestion - Learn Korean!).
So when i sit down and waste my office hours thinking about all this, i kind of envy myself when i think of the time i had in my college days. Now i finally get nostalgic.I think of the breakfast we had at a really shabby place in elan and leisure when i grab onto a thanda sandwich early morni ng while simultaneously finding my way through the swarming crowd to catch the 0804 Churc hgate Slow to reach the f**ked up work place on time! I think of the times when i bunked lectures and instead sat surfing the net or reading novels on the college corridors with no regard whatsoever to any passerby when i am made to make elaborate and dumb ppts in office. I think of the times we cooked dal fry and french toast and pulav and made buttermilk in our mess when i am left with the option of eating only dal khichdi every single day here! So - Coming back to the point, i miss my past and i want my future to be more satisfying than my past without thinking too much about the details at present! [Wow...That's 'something' now! ]
Reflecting too much into the past seems to be of not much use, apart from the fact that you can make yourself smile more often if you do so. The future definately is in a mist right now, but lets be an optimist like shrikant and hope that the mist is only there for you to hope very strongly for the best to happen, so that when you are done with your time in future, you can happily think of it as another of those things that had happened in the past and make yourself smile...once again!
Lets rewind...or should i say...Lets start...
Circa 2008, its April, the submissions are over, the vivas have screwed the last hopes of showing that ever popping middle finger to your project guide and since these are the last few days that you would be fed in the mess for a frugal amount of money, its become really hard to accept that you have to clear all the papers this time and complete your 'profound knowledge' (ha!) in engineering. Now what differed across the length and breadth of my circle of friends about these last few days, was just perception. For instance, let me take me for example, i loved it to approach the end of all these years in the gaga land of karadis (yuck even that sounds yucky!) with no patience whatsoever. And hence, irrespective of all the good times i spent (which included improving my marathi as a global language and understanding the red tapism and kiss ass-ing those in the position of power) there, i was a hell of an elated guy. I was like "Screw the nostalgia. Bring it on, Life!" which isn't exactly the attitude that a guy should have days before the FINAL exams. Still...as i said..it was me and so i cared little about writing all the mushy and senti stuff in the slam books and saying good byes to the last of all those walls and buildings that held my imagination and freedom captive for four consecutive years.
And then, there were Mandar and Shrikant, saala both the guys were feeling sad that their college life was all coming to an end so soon.(So soon?). Well, the guys had a deep sense of attachment to the college life which they had, and they wished that it could go on a for a little longer, but not in the literal sense. [:D] So when i talked to Mandar or Shrikant over the phone, we had a lot to talk about. They would talk about all the farewells and bye bye parties being arranged and attended which would be remembered and i would talk statistics on how many days more to go and how i would leave this electrical nonsense once and for all. I was overly elated and ecstatic and these guys were satisfied, yet a little gloomy, hopeful, yet a little insecure about the days that would be after they stepped out of the gates that once meant home. See? Perception...it was different.
Without going much into the details of what raas leela we did during the PL(which, by the way means Preparatory Leave and not the other kind which you double meaning dirtyheads want to think of and smile about), let me just make the statement that we delivered (:P) the results and got a stamp of a certified engineers on our once useless, suddenly vital a**es. We partied hard (which meant drinking coke and soya milk in the college parties where people got drunk and puked, eating the same kind of food in the same damned dim lit hotels and restaurants where we considered it our right to demand discounts, and raising a toast of the most popular cutting chai available on an udhaar basis on the mornings after these parties)...real hard..!
Somehow, these days passed, this time really quick, and sadly, the boriya bistar that once formed the identity of those to whom it belonged, went away in a mist, taking with it the persona which once had been a part of even your identity. But the dhinchak cheez was that once again, Mandar, me, shrikant, amit & pulkit could meet each other as and when we felt like moving our lazy bums and that also served as a good time to have the vada pavs or the samosas or the coke or the kachoris or any other junk food that could be bit onto. The discussions these times centered around topics such as "Chaar saal zindagi bita daali...fir bhi we just see each other's faces, talk to only each other....abe still single be...wo bhi collectively single..tch tch..kuch nahi ho sakta apna.." followed by "Is gham mein ek aur samosa ho jaye...top to bottom karte hai chal.."
We went to Anushakti to Amit's place once, then ummmnn..., shrikant came over to tarapur once, then....., we guys roamed around in mumbai once..i guess and so we kept meeting. Amit had us all a great 'microsoft' treat in 'subway' where we munched on these delicious wheat loaf sandwich babies, saw a weird movie at Gaiety in Bandra and went home to do what we were doing from what now was sadly becoming a long time - nothing!
Finally everyone experienced a day where we would get up, call any one amongst us, ask "Kya kar raha hai" to which "Kuch nahi be...wohi...roz ki tarah...paper padh raha hu/comp pe baitha hu/TV dekh raha hu" , "Kuch khaya kya?", "hmmnnn...haa khaya kuch to bhi...abhi yaad nahi aa raha kya khaaya...", "Chal chod baad me call karta hu" And while our brains were being programmed into a state of idleness, there was another news waiting for us...Recession! But anyhow, we managed to get into some firms which we thought were the gateway to either s/w development, morgan stanley, and free jacuzzis.
And slowly slowly the days spent at work materialized into weeks into months and so on and so forth. Time seemed all the same, the realization of doing things which did seem different initially, but all the same a little later, dawned upon us (at least on me) in a very gradual but assuring manner. We hunted around for topics to talk about when we called each other up, and when there were the silences which signified the lack of content to be exchanged with, we would hang up the phone.
"Kya haal hai?" "Bas yaar sab waisa hi hai...Chal raha hai." "hmmnn.." "Amit se baat waat hui?" "Haa...Online milta hai...Chhap raha hai..." "Sahi hai...Aur tu suna...what else...?" "Eh..Bas time pass...Chal raha hai kuch to bhi..." "Hmmnn.." "Mumbai/Pune aane ka koi plan wan hai?" "Pata nahi re...Dekhta hu.." "Hmmn...okay then..." "Haan...chal then bye.."
So while it seemed that we were making great progress in our professional lives, which i hopefully believe we still are, a certain specific very intangible thing called 'something' was missing. Now what the heck could that be? I dont know...May be you can put a word to it the way you define 'something'. We kept meeting each other as and when we could - in Pune, in Mumbai and hey..why the hell cant we skip a day at work and meet in Lonavala? Mast koi decent sa ek farmhouse jaisa kuch book karne ka...hammock laga ke, cold drinks in hand, may be a chikki in the mouth and a stereo/phone speakers playing songs that probably nobody understands amongst us, yet can listen to....we can just be lazy and sluggish and fat(a little :D) and happy! Day dreaming apart, the point is we still didn't spare a single thought to meet each other and have a good laugh together on the one who wasn't there but talked about the most! And its been going on this way since the last couple of months. A lot of transition has taken place over a period of time that can hardly be described as short.
Now since we have read this far, what question disturbs my tiny mind is 'Where do we go from here on?' Yeah...its become a little serious...ain't it?...But hey...i haven't written since a long time..Bear with me a little more now..So..Where do we go from here on? Now instead of releasing myself from the clutches of this awfully simple question by a dumb 'I don't know!', its time i deal with this head on. Let me see...I really feel great for folks who know it for sure that they are going to be doing only one very particular and specific thing in their life. Meaning?
Say Amit. He has always been a geek. Read Yashwant Kanetkar's Let Us C in a matter of days and made his own version of Paint in C - all this while in standard 9. He knew that if one day he woke up and saw no computer beside himself, he would probably feel that he has lost touch with the aliens from the outer space who had sent Rudra(kant) on earth as a proof of their existance.(Is he a soul reaper, Amit?).
Or say Bhushan Shinde. The guy is cool, compassionate, concise and clear about what and how to do what is to be done.
Shrikant? I really dont know whether he ever wanted or liked anything as bad. We did plan to enter the Navy and come to the TAPS colony as officers in the Indian Navy and be the centre of attraction, he'd even given the defence entrance after standard 12, but i guess after he got rejected did he discover that being a president of Rotoract wasn't also the most boring thing to do and that engineering was in his DNA (and not biology for which he gave the AIIMS entrance, AFMC, Maharashtra PMT etc etc... :D) What worked out for him? I would undoubtedly say that it must have been the optimitic outlook and the ability to spread that optimism to the people he came in close contact with!
Pulkit? The grand just gets grander and the lavishness just keeps on getting more lavish. He gets bed tea with breakfast early morning! The rooms get cleaned daily! Army canteen ka khaana! Designs all the freaking missiles! Works with DRDO !Isn't that what he had wanted? Or isn't that what we had thought he would be only comfortable in?
Mandar? Now this is my guy. He decided to change the stream from IT to Electrical when confronted during the counselling for engineering seats, hated electrical engineering with equal gusto and audacity as me, did a very high fundoo project in final year only to disappoint all the faculty members by declaring infront of all the psychics (the electrical engg profs) that he would be joining Infosys and not any core electrical company, plus after the joining, he ridicules the values and ethics of Infosys which pays him enough to sail through the recession and now he says that he wants to do his MBA as soon as he can. I love you man, i really do! What i also love about this guy is the madness with which he puts all his efforts into making things happen. Come rain or hail, he will sell you a cold drink if he desires to!
And then there is my very special Agony Aunt who has asked herself two questions so far and tried to figure out the answers. One - Is derivation and integration by any means of any consequence in the life that will be after one completes the std 12? Well, the answer was No and it was justified really well. Two - Is handling two crazy nuts saat samundar paar worth all the pain and risk that has been so far endured? I am still waiting for the answer and i sure hope that its a Yes. (For all those of you who thought of this last paragraph as something written in Korean - here is a suggestion - Learn Korean!).
So when i sit down and waste my office hours thinking about all this, i kind of envy myself when i think of the time i had in my college days. Now i finally get nostalgic.I think of the breakfast we had at a really shabby place in elan and leisure when i grab onto a thanda sandwich early morni ng while simultaneously finding my way through the swarming crowd to catch the 0804 Churc hgate Slow to reach the f**ked up work place on time! I think of the times when i bunked lectures and instead sat surfing the net or reading novels on the college corridors with no regard whatsoever to any passerby when i am made to make elaborate and dumb ppts in office. I think of the times we cooked dal fry and french toast and pulav and made buttermilk in our mess when i am left with the option of eating only dal khichdi every single day here! So - Coming back to the point, i miss my past and i want my future to be more satisfying than my past without thinking too much about the details at present! [Wow...That's 'something' now! ]
Reflecting too much into the past seems to be of not much use, apart from the fact that you can make yourself smile more often if you do so. The future definately is in a mist right now, but lets be an optimist like shrikant and hope that the mist is only there for you to hope very strongly for the best to happen, so that when you are done with your time in future, you can happily think of it as another of those things that had happened in the past and make yourself smile...once again!
