100 posts (few unpublished) : A reflection

CA has stayed in US since 2003. He went to do his MS and subsequently a PhD. He dropped the PhD plans midway took a job and stayed there. He has switched just one job since then and now could be somewhere in Texas. We have known each other since we came together in 6 B. After a shuffling we were forced to on graduating from the fifth standard to the sixth. We were promised a shuffling once in 3 years, but in my 10 years at school it happened just once. New principal, new rules once he assumes office, status quo after a few months.

I got merely 2 annual days in those 10 years, once when I was in the second standard, where I was forced to dance on stage with a lady who was in first standard (Incidentally I met her on orkut, she still remembers me, though for what reasons I am not sure, she is also in US) and the other I guess somewhere in my 9^th standard. Being a prefect, I had to do the monitoring of primary school kids and operate the curtains for the stage, sitting on a machan next to the stage. The rope killed me every time I had to pull or let it loose. It was a proper 1000 seater auditorium and we controlled the curtains.  

So I chatted with CA somewhere in Dec 08 and he landed here in March, to spend one whole month with his family after 3 years of work in US. He is interested in NGO stuff, and works for AID, India. So he had this plans of either going to Dharwad in Karnataka or some village in Orissa where the NGO is running some development project. I haven’t been to either places, but stated my preference for Orissa, as I have never stepped in that state. He planned to come to Bangalore and we decided to take it from there.

( After getting back to US, he asked me to participate in some Brinjal event at Lalbag, to discourage some artificial production of brinjal, being organized by Aid, India. I hope Vandana Shiva wasn’t around. I have heard her once, she yells more, speaks less. )

CA came, went to Madras for his VISA stamping and fell ill. Dysentery and consequential weakness in knees. Now, what is to be expected when one inhales an Indian air after 3 years, and eats homemade food after the same duration? So, after Madras, rather than Bangalore, Hyderabad happened for him. I cursed him no end and implored him to show some zest for life. He remains the cool headed, lazy ass that he was. He refused movement. No Orissa, No Dharwad and No Bangalore. He said, I am ill you see. I saw.

So I had to myself make plans to return to Hyderabad after a year to meet that ass after 6 years. The last time I had met him was when I saw him off at the Mumbai airport in2003. In a rare moment of uncharacteristic exuberance I had gifted him a 200 bucks tantra T shirt.

Initially I booked a bus ticket on Makemytrip as they were offering a 20% cash back, but when I realized even Tatkal is available, I used Tatkal, railgadi. There was no 20 % cash back on cancelled bus tickets though.

I was there for a couple of days. We went to our Alma matter and met teachers. The new principal wanted us to put our names on a piece of paper and tell him what we were doing so that he could put that on the alumni website, we said, yes yes , why not and them gave him a slip. CA felt a tinge of remorse and remarked, he was using us no, I said, so what, he is a good salesman. We also went to tank bund, two of the three places where we had lived, my dad’s office, and saw Into the wild on DVD. When I saw the tallest building we knew in those days, it suddenly occurred to me that somebody had knocked it into half. I continued to hold that view in my mind, till I realized that my sense of building heights has drastically changed since those days. In those days a three story building was huge. Now it is a pygmy.

We spoke about thousand things, Chomsky and how he had missed a Chomsky talk in his university, Bill Maher and his movie, Religulous, How I thought Russell Peter was a great comedian and he said he liked Bill Maher better, ( BTW somebody the other day asked me, if Russell Peter is a spiritual speaker, I paused, and said yeah, in a way)  my family, his family, a couple of girls he had gone to see to get married etc. He said, they don’t have a choice, if I say yes, they will marry me, if I say no, they won’t.  Not fair.

We had irani chai in an Irani restaurant and nobody asked us to leave even when we were just sitting there and taking and not consuming anything, in Bangalore the waiter burns you alive if you attempt this.

The evening I was leaving, I took a nap in the afternoon and when I woke up I did not find CA around, I asked his mom, where is he, and she said, he has gone to see some relatives. I called him and wanted to blast him, but let it go. I then visited a family friend in Ramanthapur and departed for kachiguda station, only to take the train in nick of time.

It is ironic that the friends with whom we spend our childhood or college days, we only meet a few times, later in life.