Ok, so lets first get the obvious out of the way. The blog has died.
Not a pleasant state of affairs, I know. But then there are few things unpleasanter than a chance glance upon a once closely-clasped-to-your-bosom thingy revealing the last entry dated December 25, 2008. An accurate description of the state of affairs would be, I believe, forlorn and woebegone.
So here then, is an attempt at resurrection. No clue, really, if it will work. Sometime in the past 373.25 days, I think I managed to lose the writing habit entirely. And in a little corner of my head lurks the fear that these things, once lost, don't really return. But I guess that's a matter beyond me. I'll do what I have to, and leave the rest in the capable hands of the Woman Upstairs. (been trying shed the male chauvinist part of the MCP image for some time now)
One of the things I've been thinking about off late, is the meetings with the DAV gang. Going into flashback mode, I was one of those kids that completed my entire schooling in a single place, the D.A.V. Public School, Hyderabad, and was fortunate enough to have a vast majority of classmates who also did the same. And in retrospect, there can be few things more fun than spending your formative years with the same bunch of folks. To discuss manly, grownup things like girls and porn with the same kid into whose behind you once tried to shove a sharpened pencil.
And while we scattered like corn once released from the confines of the school, a few of us managed to stay in touch over the years. And then some trickled in slowly the past year, some more Returned From Foreign and so on, and we finally had two reunions of sorts in the previous month.
It was, well, different than I expected. Whenever you envision these things, you always think the back-slapping, bear-hugging, oh you've grown a moustache kind of scenarios. You're not really thinking about meeting a group of adults from different backgrounds, each with their own independent lives. In your head, you're just looking forward to see the grown-up avatar of the kid whose tiffin you shared. So it was a little unexpected to be looking a bunch of somewhat polite, sober adults sitting around a restaurant sipping soup. And even more unexpected was the realization that I was one of those polite sober adults myself, and not the schoolkid in shorts that I imagined.
But that was just the initial mental feedback. Once the intros were done, once we settled in and were done with the polite "Oh so where do you work" questions, things started to happen. There started the talk of the exploits in school, the childhood crushes, the teacher troubles and the tyranny of Uncle Sir (to give a brief character background, this guy was part van driver - hence the "uncle", part vice-principal - hence the "Sir", and all fearsome, twisted, fire-breathing dragon - hence the "tyranny"). And once this happened, the kids in us overcame the adult restrictions. I wish I could say it was like in the movies...a nice CGI-aided shimmering effect later, the baritone handsome adult is magically replaced by a squeaky kid with braces...but no, it wasn't like that.
Just that, well, from being adults with independent lives, we became folks who had a common childhood. And there came the common realization we cherished those childhood memories, that those memories were more important than the current us. So perhaps in a way, cheesy special effects aside, it was like in the movies. The suave 6-footer with a Canadian accent became the snot-nosed kid with the half-tucked shirt and tie askew (he was a 6-footer even then, but that's a different story), the dignified banker was once again the class bully, the guy who was just now worried about his job in Satyam was once again the Glorious Boy Wonder of our youth, and so forth.
And, as is inevitable when you spend 10 years being jointly persecuted by teachers and van drivers and other assorted creatures, a colourful walk down memory lane lay in store. From the inspired poetry in English class ("Chuk chuk goes the train, like Sai's empty brain"), which by the way, I still think is a work of creative genius, to being punished in assembly because we didn't oil our hair enough, to fighting over whether our principal's prized vintage car was a Ford or a Dodge, to our miserable (well, mostly) attempts at wooing girls, to the Glorious Boy Wonder's solitary scolding in 10 years because he was always raising his hand when a question was asked, to the clandestine (or so they hoped) affair between the maths and history teachers, to poking fun at the boy (while, perhaps, secretly envying his status) who always roamed around with a bunch of the hottest girls, we didn't really have a shortage of stories to tell.
And the other thing is, regardless of the conversations, or the anecdotes or childhood jokes, or perhaps because of them, this sort of heartwarming feeling starts to creep in. Hard to describe it, but it's not dissimilar to the feeling you have after several pegs of rum. No, I don't mean the drowsy, head-spinning, desperate to puke feeling, but the one that comes about 120 ml before that (or 90 if you're a regular...but I'm deviating here). The fact is, you get that feeling, and its nice. So, while on the outside we just look like a bunch of crazy adults swapping stories about poking pencils in backsides, in reality we're a bunch of overgrown kids who feel like we're about to be smashed. (Hmmmm...that was not quite the picture I had in mind...but hey, I told you I was out of practice!) And for those of you that don't drink...shame on you...the feeling is not far from the one you get from listening to a favorite song...say of Mohit Chauhan or Mozart or Himesh or whatever. Bottom line, it's a heartwarming feeling.
And you can't really ask for much more in life. A heartwarming meeting with childhood buddies. Seeing a guy with kids perform the same matchstick tricks that held us spellbound as kids, hearing folks talk about their first attempt at watching a porn movie, introducing my wife to the girl I had a secret crush on (but who, as I sadly learnt, failed to have a crush on me simply because I didn't lend her a Sanskrit book. Damn it...why did I have to be such a goddamn geek!!),laughing together, sharing stories, forgetting who we were for those few brief moments.
So well, on the whole, it was excellent. And I would love to do it again. The thing to watch out for, though, in these things, is that we try not to let our current adult (well, relatively speaking) minds, with all of our worries and opinions and egos and responsibilities and what not, overshadow our childhood selves. I mean, I would always love to meet the kid who trashed my ass in school. And it would be shame not to do it just because I might not have much in common with a conservative, hard-working banker. You get the drift.
Not a pleasant state of affairs, I know. But then there are few things unpleasanter than a chance glance upon a once closely-clasped-to-your-bosom thingy revealing the last entry dated December 25, 2008. An accurate description of the state of affairs would be, I believe, forlorn and woebegone.
So here then, is an attempt at resurrection. No clue, really, if it will work. Sometime in the past 373.25 days, I think I managed to lose the writing habit entirely. And in a little corner of my head lurks the fear that these things, once lost, don't really return. But I guess that's a matter beyond me. I'll do what I have to, and leave the rest in the capable hands of the Woman Upstairs. (been trying shed the male chauvinist part of the MCP image for some time now)
One of the things I've been thinking about off late, is the meetings with the DAV gang. Going into flashback mode, I was one of those kids that completed my entire schooling in a single place, the D.A.V. Public School, Hyderabad, and was fortunate enough to have a vast majority of classmates who also did the same. And in retrospect, there can be few things more fun than spending your formative years with the same bunch of folks. To discuss manly, grownup things like girls and porn with the same kid into whose behind you once tried to shove a sharpened pencil.
And while we scattered like corn once released from the confines of the school, a few of us managed to stay in touch over the years. And then some trickled in slowly the past year, some more Returned From Foreign and so on, and we finally had two reunions of sorts in the previous month.
It was, well, different than I expected. Whenever you envision these things, you always think the back-slapping, bear-hugging, oh you've grown a moustache kind of scenarios. You're not really thinking about meeting a group of adults from different backgrounds, each with their own independent lives. In your head, you're just looking forward to see the grown-up avatar of the kid whose tiffin you shared. So it was a little unexpected to be looking a bunch of somewhat polite, sober adults sitting around a restaurant sipping soup. And even more unexpected was the realization that I was one of those polite sober adults myself, and not the schoolkid in shorts that I imagined.
But that was just the initial mental feedback. Once the intros were done, once we settled in and were done with the polite "Oh so where do you work" questions, things started to happen. There started the talk of the exploits in school, the childhood crushes, the teacher troubles and the tyranny of Uncle Sir (to give a brief character background, this guy was part van driver - hence the "uncle", part vice-principal - hence the "Sir", and all fearsome, twisted, fire-breathing dragon - hence the "tyranny"). And once this happened, the kids in us overcame the adult restrictions. I wish I could say it was like in the movies...a nice CGI-aided shimmering effect later, the baritone handsome adult is magically replaced by a squeaky kid with braces...but no, it wasn't like that.
Just that, well, from being adults with independent lives, we became folks who had a common childhood. And there came the common realization we cherished those childhood memories, that those memories were more important than the current us. So perhaps in a way, cheesy special effects aside, it was like in the movies. The suave 6-footer with a Canadian accent became the snot-nosed kid with the half-tucked shirt and tie askew (he was a 6-footer even then, but that's a different story), the dignified banker was once again the class bully, the guy who was just now worried about his job in Satyam was once again the Glorious Boy Wonder of our youth, and so forth.
And, as is inevitable when you spend 10 years being jointly persecuted by teachers and van drivers and other assorted creatures, a colourful walk down memory lane lay in store. From the inspired poetry in English class ("Chuk chuk goes the train, like Sai's empty brain"), which by the way, I still think is a work of creative genius, to being punished in assembly because we didn't oil our hair enough, to fighting over whether our principal's prized vintage car was a Ford or a Dodge, to our miserable (well, mostly) attempts at wooing girls, to the Glorious Boy Wonder's solitary scolding in 10 years because he was always raising his hand when a question was asked, to the clandestine (or so they hoped) affair between the maths and history teachers, to poking fun at the boy (while, perhaps, secretly envying his status) who always roamed around with a bunch of the hottest girls, we didn't really have a shortage of stories to tell.
And the other thing is, regardless of the conversations, or the anecdotes or childhood jokes, or perhaps because of them, this sort of heartwarming feeling starts to creep in. Hard to describe it, but it's not dissimilar to the feeling you have after several pegs of rum. No, I don't mean the drowsy, head-spinning, desperate to puke feeling, but the one that comes about 120 ml before that (or 90 if you're a regular...but I'm deviating here). The fact is, you get that feeling, and its nice. So, while on the outside we just look like a bunch of crazy adults swapping stories about poking pencils in backsides, in reality we're a bunch of overgrown kids who feel like we're about to be smashed. (Hmmmm...that was not quite the picture I had in mind...but hey, I told you I was out of practice!) And for those of you that don't drink...shame on you...the feeling is not far from the one you get from listening to a favorite song...say of Mohit Chauhan or Mozart or Himesh or whatever. Bottom line, it's a heartwarming feeling.
And you can't really ask for much more in life. A heartwarming meeting with childhood buddies. Seeing a guy with kids perform the same matchstick tricks that held us spellbound as kids, hearing folks talk about their first attempt at watching a porn movie, introducing my wife to the girl I had a secret crush on (but who, as I sadly learnt, failed to have a crush on me simply because I didn't lend her a Sanskrit book. Damn it...why did I have to be such a goddamn geek!!),laughing together, sharing stories, forgetting who we were for those few brief moments.
So well, on the whole, it was excellent. And I would love to do it again. The thing to watch out for, though, in these things, is that we try not to let our current adult (well, relatively speaking) minds, with all of our worries and opinions and egos and responsibilities and what not, overshadow our childhood selves. I mean, I would always love to meet the kid who trashed my ass in school. And it would be shame not to do it just because I might not have much in common with a conservative, hard-working banker. You get the drift.
Comments
About the post, I actually envy you guys for having gotten the chance to meet and catch up once again, makes me want to get into facebook to dig out all long lost shool friends and arrange a gathering!
Registeration of our marriage is high on my priority list.
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