For Eli

Five months out of Kgp, five months away from my corner in heaven, five months away from my personal social mess, five months of unknowing.

And yet I am happy today, in a strange way. I am happy in closure, happy with the beginnings, happy with the end terms blowing with the wind chill, happy.

Because I have you, amidst all madness. Because I can cry for you laughing with you. Because it took me a world full of pain to know the pleasure in our miles, in our hours. Because like a hot cup of tea in a winter afternoon, you hold hold my flowing insanity in your steady hands.

In and Out

Kgp. Finally out of it. And how does it feel? Wonderful! Home made food, cooling system, reunion with lost wingies (errr...almost them), shopping, general pampering...whoa whoa whoa! Stop right there, because that is so much all that is there to it. Though I can sleep through the day and pore in to the computer all night with super fast broadband and no proxies killing me, there still isn't DC++ and the "general arbit bhaat" to keep it alive. So, after a lot of procastination, I decided to clean up the most scandalizing stuff from my one terabyte HDD (spent a lot of dough on it, so thats a must mention ;-) ). And half-way through, I was choked. Choked with the overwhelming urge to run back to F-306, SN Hall of Residence.

The dirty, almost sickeningly so, stripped and scribbled with crayons walls, where the reassuarance of known names welcomed me after the rare excruciating vivas or intoxicatingly frequent beautiful night outs, are so not replacable by bright and clean walls of my room at home. Not that I am that averse to cleanliness, I just loved the names on them :-|

So... Hall

The first thing that comes to mind when I say SN, or think SN, is the buzzing common room. Way before it had that huge expensive television, and ages before they got that new TT table, there were sofas, we used invariably in our plays. The black covers with yellow flowers, the glass table, the broken dressing table, drawers, chart papers, paint brushes, dust, seniors screaming at me for not getting it right, followed by me screaming at juniors for not getting it right.

The lights practice, jumping around almost aimlessly barefoot on Netaji, the stinking sponge used by Abhiram da to paint us white and pink, and oh! the pricking moustaches.

Thank you seniors for the haranguing lectures and the tempo building sento sessions and ofcourse the treats that followed. Thank you juniors for the inexhaustible supply of paranthas an d chai.

The butterflies in my stomach, I still remember, never felt before exams, but almost everytime I stepped in Raman Auditorium. The cat-calls, the desk slapping (a deformed tell-tale gold ring still adorns), the utter disappointment at losing, and the consequent sniffing at possible poltu, and the exhilarating shrieks on wins, publically smirking at friends from other halls and later having chai/ scotch with those very mates, every day in the soc-cult calendar exhausted and rejuvenated at the same time.

Thank you SN, for keeping the vigour of competetion going every passing day, for making me more of a soc-cult scholar than a science student, for the tiny bit of tech, for the immense love and camaraderie, a dash of bitchiness and a heartful five years.

Dept

Seriously? Friends. And the most wonderful ones at them. The place where I refused to study for four years got me friends in the unlikeliest of people. What labs? Nescafe, not just the one right in front of the dept, all round the insti. And in case, it was a particularly soporific meter gauging experiment, it was nimbu chai all the way down to the old building.

And when the climax hit the rock bottom, it was those four years of friends who stood by, and literally so.

And we parted in parts, a day of a bright red key chain, gin-vodka shots with a thence teetotaller, pretty coffee mugs, vanilla twist, a glass idol of a playful God, and memories of playing in the sand and sea.

And yes, the ice-creams too.

Thanks Sriku, Balu, Subho, Breeta, Dhol, Varun, Ajit, Mangu and everybody else.

Kgp

I found love here, I found jealousy here, I found everything one constitutes for a life here. I lost my heart too many times, to too many things and I found madness in everything I did. The best of 2.2s, endless chai at Champa's , eating at Bala's expense at Shantanu's, Vodka in jungle, sneaky village trips, bitching on IG terrace, pretending to be heartless at freshers' in the mess, feigning arrogance at the hot-shots, trying best at being a girlie-girl on getting roses or chocolates, learning the use of make-up and also how to climb trees, hall days and the perfection at being a snob, walking tirelessly in the fog and stopping only to do a twist, singing emosanal attyachar in front of security gaurds in drunken stupor, playing monkey-kick, Poker and every possible flash game before exams, extorting treats from seniors and juniors alike (totally unbrazen in either deeds), cramming bengali dialogues whose meanings I still haven't understood, having square meals at harry's/tikka's and still not wanting to go back, being overtly mean to people I never got along with (sorry for the huge number of them), being a perfect bitch to one and willing to cross mountains for another, Kgp.

I always thought I cried a lot. Summing up Kgp, I know I laughed as much, I loved even more.

Thanks Froggie, Amrita, Mona, Doggie, Servo, Mallu, Ban, Beeps for putting up with me. And the dues for the last couple of months, for holding me up and keeping me high and dancing, thanks Jadda, Rathee and Abhas.

Kgp

Logged Out.

Catharsis

Of yore and fore I write hence...

I am constantly amazed by the ostentatious diligence with which stubborn change proves its permanence. Gliding through things I never thought I could manage to pass, I am left wondering how much more could I, would I change. I wonder if I may enumerate all that I scrambled, stumbled up on, volatile it may be.
I have confused all desires with needs, the desire of a confidant tangled with the need of an anchor.
Recently, I was "celebrating" a weekend, the "weekend" way. High and not dry I watched Dev D, the epic of eternal love of the quintessential bacchanalian at heart, tempered with optimism. Dev, the lover, the protagonist, the antagonist, the loser does not die bleeding at his lover's door in this novel rendition of the story of love and punishment that I grew up to idolize. The idea is not to punish unrequited love, but to question why love went unrequited in the first place. We have all loved and lost at some point in life, not necessarily a love of romantic kind.
My mother, who happened to watch Dev D the very night I did in a humongous drunken revelry, called me the next day to restate to me the newly fangled idea of "optimism". Climax! My heart does not really go out for Dev, it cries for Paro, the other lover, the other protagonist, the other antagonist, the other loser. The egotists cry in their own names, sing in their pain and throw complicated nonsense in the name of family, society, onlookers. Paro gets to nowhere, to a marriage which cannot be consummated, step-children almost her own age and ofcourse she has to tear her heart with the thoughts of decadence of Dev.
My thoughts have no Chandramukhi, for I know not her, neither do I know if she walks in beauty and talks in sugar. But I want not Dev D, if Paro must cry, so will have to Chandramukhi and not bag Dev, the lover, the loser.

Played ambiguosly by "हसरतों की दिल्लगी " (Farce of Desires) my heart says to
You, I wish I could say 'rot in hell', but then I wrote your name in sand and let the waves wash it away;
To the other You: The piper plays.