ISB's 8 - A thought to all those fests...

Yup. 2nd December was the actual 8th birthday of my present school - ISB. And today, we celebrated her birthday. Much like how it happens in the west, where irrespective of when your birthday or anniversary falls, you celebrate/party on that subsequent weekend! And celebrate we did indeed!

So, on Wednesday, the 2nd, we hoisted the ISB flag, and cut a cake! Well, in traditional ISB fashion, we should have had a dunking as well, but then we skipped arbit dunking for want of a dunkee!!! Besides, of late, on birthdays people feign colds and coughs - since it is frightfully cold in Hyderabad these days! And today, we had a cultural fest, with professors, staff and students putting up a gala show. Noteworthy was not just the quality of the show, but actually the enthusiasm shown by everyone. Now, all of us are hard pressed for time, caught up in a jungle of assignments and coursework. But today, all of that actually took a hike, as ISBians settled down to some serious fun.

While all this was fun, on my walk back home, I was reminded of my time in school and undergrad. Our annual days and college fests respectively were gala events for which people prepared for weeks. The enthusiasm would be huge! We used to bunk class under the pretext of practice. Well, of course we'd practise, but for 40% of the bunked time! In school it used to be all the more fun. All of us were kids and I vividly remember one girl in my class had the best dancing skills in the world! She single-handed choreographed all dance performances for our batch almost every year! And then in undergrad, during our inter-college fest, we used to have colleges visiting to participate. The mood would be nothing short of a Whyteleafe in a home lacrosse match mood. (Enid Blyton's Naughtiest Girl - for the uninitiated). The show stealer used to be the fashion show - where the best looking people of the college would take center stage. The clothes would be designed by us, the walk, the show would be choreographed by us, the props, lights and everything needed to pull off a visual extravaganza would be arranged! The fashion show would not just be a ramp walk, but a themed show. I remember the first one was themed 'attitude' and actually had our show stopper bite an apple and throw it into the crowds as a sign of 'attitude'! Coming of age? Well yeah I guess! And then of course - the college chant and the benign sledging when competition would come on stage - 'Ek Do Ek Do XYZ ko phenk do!' Man, the sound still reverberates in my head!

Good old days of college and school, and with today, I have yet another bookmark of a college event that I will cherish for life.

A CHILDHOOD LOST

The other day, I happened to hear Jagjit Singh’s ‘Who Kaagaz Ki Kashti’, a beautiful ghazal whose essence is a reminiscence of one’s childhood. The first few lines of the song go thus

Ye Daulat Bhi Le Lo,
Ye Shohrat Bhi Le Lo
Bhale Cheen Lo Mujhse Meri Jawaani
Magar Mujhko Lauta Do Bachchpan Ka Saawan
Wo Kaagaz Ki Kashti Wo Baarish Ka Paani

And I was transported back in time to the good old days where the only worry in life was to figure out how to get the first turn on the swing in the evening at the park! Memories of childhood are made for those rainy days where you sit by the window and watch the water cascade down the panes. And far off in the distance you hear the squeals of laughter as kids of various shapes, sizes and colors, run outside in the pouring rain, and get wet, unmindful of their mothers who literally scream themselves hoarse trying to get their kids back to shelter. That sweet aroma of wet mud, the fun in jumping in those puddles and splashing water on the kids nearby… those good old days…. The monsoon then had a totally different meaning. Every morning we’d wake up and look at the sky. If it looked grey and cloudy, we’d all be happy and cheerful. If mom would tell us that it had been raining all night, all the better. We’d go to school, clean and neat, and get back home in an hour all soiled and murky. School’s closed, let the party begin!!!!

The song goes on to describe an old lady in the area, a grand motherly person for all the kids.

Mohalle Ki Sabse Nishaani Purani
Wo Budhiya Jise Bachche Kehte The Naani
Wo Naani Kee Baaton Mein Pariyon Ka Dera
Wo Chehre Ke Jhuriyon Mein Sadiyon Ka Phera
Bhulaaye Nahin Bhool Saqta Hai Koi
Wo Choti See Raaten Wo Lambi Kahaani

Well, we had our own ‘Ba’ too. She was a grumpy old lady who lived on the ground floor of our apartment building. She never liked kids, since they made too much noise and always broke her windows. And somehow, as kids, we followed Gandhian laws, Gandhigiri, much before Munnabhai could teach us how it’s done. We believed in ‘Love thy enemy’. And somehow, Ba and we had an unending love affair! She’d hate us peeking into her house, and we would ensure that we do just that. Once when she got so angry and walked up to the window in a huff, we very meekly pointed to the clock and said, “Time dekh rahe they auntie. Homework karne jaana hai na” and scampered off laughing. But mind you, this was not a one sided hate game. She had totally destroyed our effort of making our building premises environmentally rich! She had heartlessly pulled out the seed of the plant that we had tried to grow. It is a different thing that we had planted a mango seed in her pot, without her knowledge, and poured too much water in it. So when she saw two heads bobbing up and down outside her house and came to investigate, we were busy throwing away the excess water. Now who had expected her to stand in the path of the water’s projectile motion???!!!????

And just as these memories were streaming through my head; I remembered the morbid pictures of the Virginia shootout, the news piece about a certain twelve year old ‘terrorist’ beheading a captive! At 12 years of age, I didn’t even know who a terrorist was! That won’t hold true in today’s world anyway, since today every toddler, never mind whether he knows how to say ‘mamma’ certainly knows how to say Osama and Al Qaeda! Kids are killing other kids, other people. Such violence, hatred, qualities so uncharacteristic of children!

All of us would have seen the commercial on television that showed a poor child peeping through the fence as two kids fought for a ‘scholarship-bearing’ soiled cloth. What most of us didn’t see is the fact that those longing eyes find a place on practically every child at the traffic signal. Every child that is made to carry its smaller sibling and beg for money using the infant as an object of pity. What most of us fail to notice are the dreams of the children who work as hired help in houses, tea stalls, and small restaurants.

Most of us at least get a smile on our faces as we think of the time years ago when we were kids. By the time these children can begin to think of playing in the rainwater, they have been robbed of their worriless innocent existence. Many of them reconcile to the fact that their life will always remain on this side of the fence, while some others pick up a weapon, as a means to vent out their anguish. There is a very thin line that separates the oppressed from the violent. The sapping point is seldom, if ever noticed by anyone. And more often than not, it takes a Bastille for people to stand up and take notice…..

A WALK TO REMEMBER

They say scents or smells are the most evocative in nature. But on that front I beg to differ, because according to me, the juxtaposition of a place and a certain kind of weather have the propensity to throw the mind so heavily into a retrograde that it is difficult to shake away the wave of emotion that overpowers one at the time. I say this as I had the good fortune of experiencing a similar emotion just yesterday. I was to go to Bandra, Hill Road to be precise in order to pick up a receipt. That such a trifling incident would trigger such a reaction as to provide me the opportunity to experience unalloyed joy for the remainder of the evening was something I had not expected as I boarded the train that was to take me from my workplace to Bandra. But the moment I saw the diamond-shaped board that read BANDRA, I was reminded of a friend who once told me that that I could lose weight if I managed to cover the distance from my college to Bandra station in 7 minutes flat. I was tempted to try the 7 minute exercise again, but refrained from doing so as my goals were different today. I stepped out of the station only to cross the booking counter, where I saw a girl standing with a college bag slung across her shoulder, glancing fervently at her watch and at the exit point of the station. It looked like time had frozen for me. The same scene 4 years ago, the same cloudy sky, the same fervent look, the same crowd billowing out of the rather narrow exit arches at Bandra station; just the person was different as I was then waiting for one of my friends who was to accompany me on the then 15 minute walk to college.

I walked across the road, heading towards Hill road, crossed the familiar Bandra bus depot and saw the ever crowded 505 bus stop, as crowded as ever. Some things never change! I finished my task and came back to the road, to find the clouds intact, yet not a drop of rain. The sunlight permeated through the grey clouds and lent an orange hue to the environs. My heart was in ecstasy looking at the mellow appearance of the surroundings as I started walking back towards the station to get home. I reached the cross roads near the most important landmark of our time, more crucial than even the Gateway of India, the point of Journal and Assignment exchange…. Lucky restaurant. I waited a good 2 minutes there and ultimately decided to take the 7 minute joyride! I started walking along the all-so-familiar road, that all-so-frequently-traversed road, that oh-how-I-wish-I-could-come-back-here road, that led to the one place that will remain etched in my memory forever…. Thadomal Shahani Engg College….. MY COLLEGE!!!

I crossed the familiar yellow boards with black writing that declared ‘XEROX’ in different spellings and 3 different languages, and I went back to the time when my team mates and I went from pleading to threatening one of those shopkeepers to insert a missed page in our project report 12 hours before submission!!! I then crossed the lane that led to yet another of our favorite hangouts, the lane that led to the G7 multiplex. I had lost count of the number of crappy and good movies I had seen there. The multiplex was still there, one of the screens was showing the Da Vinci Code today, but that squabbling over which movie to go to till 20 minutes before the show, ditching the idea of walking for want of time and then hurriedly dividing ourselves into groups of 3, squeezing into a rickshaw like sardines, exhorting the driver to go fast through bumper-to-bumper traffic and ultimately encountering a ‘house-full’ board…. Those times were gone! And all of a sudden, I could hear myself humming Aqua’s ‘turn back time’. Heaving a sigh I walked on. I then crossed over to Linking road, and came across the towering edifice of Shopper’s Stop. People who were walking by might have laughed looking at a girl staring and smiling at a tall building! Little did they know that one monsoon, in pouring rains, I had trooped to the same mall with a bunch of friends curious to know what was happening at an ‘Ethnic India’ festival! And what did I take back from there? Around 20 miniature unbaked pots, made by own hands and scores of memories of how we got drenched but prevented the pots from getting wet, taking turns at holding them and covering them with our wind-cheaters, laughing and giggling all the way back, thoroughly unmindful of the surroundings. ‘If only I could turn back time… If only I could…..’

I was nearing the place that served as my mainstay for a good 20% of my life till date, when to my left was the Barista of Linking Road. This was the place that made me fall in love with coffee places, (though I had been initiated into the scintillating world of coffee long before Barista burst into the urban Indian scene, thanks to my being a south Indian who loves my home brewed filter coffee). This was where we hung out. This was where we completed our assignments. This was where a bunch of 7 of us had spent an hour and a half talking about nothing and everything across two rather distant tables, (much to the chagrin and discreet disapproval of the amiable staff there). This was where our previously planned project group disbanded over a solemn cuppa and this was the exact same spot where the new one was formed. Again over another hot cuppa. This was where my sister waited as I went in to college to hear the result of my first campus recruitment interview and this was where we celebrated soon after. As I crossed the road that took me into the lane that led to TSEC, I was rather surprised at the flutter I felt within. I entered the college building and saw the plinth against the far wall, the Katta as we used to call it. It still had a couple of crumpled note-sheet papers. There was still the one empty coke bottle lying on its side. There was still the odd paper cup in a corner. But what was not there was something that could never come back the way it was. It came back to me morphed into something different and started peeking through the vitreous edifice of my mind. I remembered the time I had hugged my friend upon seeing our first year, first semester result. I remembered the time when I had consoled a distressed friend who was sad that she had lost a year on account of the folly of someone else. The paper ribbons and vibrant balloons, remnants of the year’s festival were still dangling precariously on a thin strand of cello tape. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the typical TSEC cry, ‘TEE….SEC…TSEC…’ and three claps. I heard the roars of joy that used to go up when we used to see our college team up on stage dancing or walking the ‘ramp’ for our fashion show. And somewhere, Bryan Adams screamed ‘Those were the best days of my life!!’ and I heard the auditorium scream with him.

I gazed into the distance and saw the grey clouds still there, yet not a drop of rain. I suddenly started to feel extremely happy, the memories were flitting in and out like butterflies and each memory added that bit of color to my thoughts! I stepped out of the college verandah and started my walk back, determined that this time I will complete the walk to the station in 7 minutes, and not in the 45 minutes I had taken while coming here. As I started walking back, I noticed the grey clouds turn even more dark, and the sudden silent raindrop came gently down. And I was left thinking, ‘ Is this a walk to remember or is this a walk to remember’………