Past Revisited..!! (Or Alma Mater Revisited)

Funny thing memory is!

It can be good or bad and sometimes both simultaneously depending on how you want to remember it. And sometimes it can just be simply forgetful (not to be confused with forgettable, cause nothing here ought to be forgettable)!

I glanced at the big gate everytime I passed the impressive structure that was once my school. "This time I'll go see it from the inside!", I promised myself like I had a million times. Promises we make to ourselves are the ones that we break more often. But then Orkut Fortune did it for me. Orkut - one of those things in life that is just there for the heck of it. It serves no purpose and it's fortunes don't make much sense most of the times and when they do make sense - they're hardly accurate, but then again they're hardly supposed to make sense. There is no free lunch in the Universe. There are no free prophecies either for everything has its price. But lets not get side-tracked. Its hard not to get side-tracked, but we do our bit not to! "Promise Only What You Can Deliver!" it said. It had told that to me on occassions before this one too, but this one seemed appropriately time (and about time too!)

The day before yesterday, there was this occassion when my nephew was crying for his wishes weren't being fulfilled. So I took him for a walk. It was about 6 in the evening, but unusually dark for this time of the day. Not unusual for this place though, a little unusual for me. It was dark at this time of the day here for the sun set early here. First rays of the sunlight hit the horizon early too (about 5 O'clock)! And because he was still sobbing, I decided to take his mind off of his worries (no matter how trivial - worries are worries afterall)

"देखो बेटा, मैं यहाँ पढता था बचपन में। बहुत साल पहले।"

"Hmmm.."

I didn't take him inside then. I just promised him I'd take him there the next day. The marriage had been officially over, although a few rituals still remained but I had enough idle time at hand to do this stuff. In fact, I had nothing to do at all, barring a few chores here and there - I was officially the "Indian Idle"

I did take him inside the school yesterday in the evening at about quarter to 9. Told him a few anecdotes. Some funny and some not so funny, but he enjoyed all of them. Or atleast I hope he did.

Will share them here some other time.

Gotta go bathe now.

**corrections impending**

Panem et Circences..!!

It was just about half past five in the evening and I had just come back from college. Of course this was the summer of 2000. Although it seems like it was yesterday, but we know it wasn't.
The weather had been really pleasant all afternoon. Light dust-storm, and a drizzle followed. It was the most wonderful sight specially because our college had this really huge ground right in front of it. The ground wasn't levelled all over, so it kinda gave it the mountainous feel, only without rocks or greenery. But because this particular evening had had a drizzle, the dust that usually swirled 15-20 meters high, was hardly there although the breeze that caused the tornado like scenes wes very much still there. The adventure-loving people that me and my best pal were (are), we couldn't resist the open arms of the weather and what it had in store for us, apparently.
We walked together talking very little as we basked in the beauty of this thing we call nature! And how!! I still recollect he was wearing his dark-blue T-shirt and I was in my (the then) favourite blue shirt. And strangely enough some portions of the ground was still dry (I still wonder why) causing localised dust-storms hardly as big as we'd become used to, but even then it made a great sight. It was, I recall, the afternoon which saw us appear for the Chemistry-II exams in the 1st Year of Engineering (reason why it felt all the more beautiful). So we meandered across the ground like a cloud over some mountain, not knowing which way to go! Only in our case, we weren't sure which way to go first!
Then after about an hour and a half of mooching around, we went to the nearby juice-bar. There I had my favourite "Cold-Coffee" (like only those guys made). We got back and strangely enough I don't recall anything about the conversation we had, but whatever little of it there was - I must have enjoyed for I still recall the day! & was definitely one of the best 'talks' I've had with anyone ever! :D

When Mankind Has Enough Helicoptors To Shoot Down Mosquitoes!!!

Well atleast that is possible when guys with absolutely nothing to think of try and kill time because that is the only reasonable thing they can think of doing!
Still feels like a day or two ago (and it still makes my jaws ache when i think how very frustrated we'd get). Back in the hostel when we had absolutely no pressure (usually the beginning of the semester of people & almost the whole of the semester for guys like me ;)) our mind was like a horse that had no tethers (fortunately or unfortunately that state of mind would invariably carry forward to till the very end - even on nights before the exams). Oops, sorry i've been constantly using the word we/us and the likes and i havent 'introduced' him to you - Meet my room-mate, Amit (better known as Time pass - T.P. for short). . I don't know if i'm authorised to say this but i guess i brought out the best in him!! Together we were the most notorious room-mates in our hostel, so much so that our room had messages written on the door warning trespassers to watch out or they'd be sucked into the eye of the storm (or something vaguely implying that atleast)!!! The other members of the discussion were generally people who did get sucked in the eye of the storm! Anyway lets get our helicoptors back on the 'mission route' ;)
At night when we would just go to our beds to doze off (or during times when we got really frustrated after having spent all our patience on trying to comprehend some abstruse subject that we had to study in order to get through with our engineering!) we'd suddenly realise the place was a 'jungle' with mosquitoes prowling all over the place. And the T.P that Amit was, he'd suddenly blurt out, "i wish i could shoot them with missiles!" and i would join in like the Chemical Engineer that i was soon to be, "we could shoot them with sodium needles! and just before they were on the collision course, we'll spray a little water so the explosion is fatal!!" But after further mulling over we ask of the other, "but how can we track them down??" "I guess we'll just have to have helicoptors chasing them all over the room." We'd discuss the 'battle plan' for a good 45 minutes or till the time one of us would think it was time we got back to slogging it out for the exams again.

One particular syndrome that we'd infected during the 3rd year of our engineering was to make the worlds most sophisticated (paper) Fighter Plane. All care was taken to make the 'lift', wings and tail perfect - which infact improved with each new attempt. From where would we find such large volumes of paper? (i'm sure you'll find yourself asking this). What use were the journals - it would hardly be of any use once the oral exams were over (as was the case here!). We (me and my roomies) would make around 5-6 planes a minute! (Lockheed-Martin are you listening??). The test 'air-strip' would be from our room's window to the road leading to the canteen (our room was on the 1st floor then and later on the 2nd floor). (Too many brackets here - don't you think..??) We had tried all the available models from the MiG-21s to the Su-30MKIs, MiG-27s to the Jaguars! (atleast in speech, if not practice). One piece of machine (or paper should i say) that we were really proud of was our very own production - The "kick'em ass" planes! They were designed to conquer enemy territory and return back - ofcourse they never made it. Damn those stupid japanese kamikazi pilots!
And the funniest part was we would'nt give a damn who was walking on the road - professors, teachers, students -- we would just make them take-off on their 'scheduled time'. During these days we got a high by doing a very strange thing - passing a 'comment' (if it qualifies as one) to all the girls (all the 'local' (ghaati) girls i.e.) "Oh Local Ladkiyon!" we would shout at the top of our voices and then take shelter behind the curtains
Oh what great days we had back then...
Why can't we go back in time and relive these moments all over again??
Oh Life seems so cruel (specially when you got nothing to do all day long!!)