Rono spoke...

when i used to read the words 'with a heavy heart' i never really got it. but on ocassion, i have had to do things which made me sad, and a strange, continual heaviness in the pith of my stomach accompanied such doings. i guess that comes close enough. this post was one of those times...

it's that time again. it keeps coming every now and then, and it hurts like hell. one of those times when you have to bid farewell to a close friend. but what if you had never really given a thought to ever saying goodbye. you knew it would happen sooner or later, you just never thought about it. and all of a sudden you realise that the light will turn green, the whistle will blow and the train will take rono away for good. another one.. gone.

first it was the babu. i'll never forget that evening when he chose to lose control. babu was more than my senior. he was one of the people i could always count on to be there whenever i wanted him. there was a whole stretch when i was hanging only with babu in college. him n me, all the time, everyday. over endless cups of chai and smokes, breaking our heads creating connection quizzes, or lyrics to our rap songs (hehehehe), or bitching about the world, or me taking his case. whatever it was, it made life worth living. i couldn't imagine college life without him, and if it weren't for the guys, i'd probably have just crouched into a shell after the babu left. but whether anybody liked it or not, he left. and as the train pulled away, a part of me left with it.

then came (or went) the freak. the reason for such a big change in the lives of most of us. truly, if i hadn't met the freak, none of us would probably have really met at all. it all started with the freak n i. his drunken goodbye in his farewell party remains vivid in my memory. "Da, don't let Ehsaas die..." (followed by an unnecessarily wet one on one cheek, followed by an even more unnecessarily hard slap on the other. clarification: i'm referring to the cheeks on my face.). for once, someone saw me off, so to speak. the freak and jeetu came to see us off at the station as we were leaving for kashmir. i faked a loud teary goodbye on the platform.. hehe, it was funny, i was loudly howling on the freak's chest, and from the corner of my eye i could tell that everyone was staring at us!! one of our friends even came to us, crying herself, and tried to console me!!!! hehehehe... but the tears did come.. the next morning on the train, early on when everyone was sleeping, and no one was around. Oh, the tears did come...

and then jeetu. it's strange, i can't really remember when he left. it's like he went home after his exams, and just didn't come back. our universal 'phone laga' guy would now have to be called and spoked to when he had the time. one of his many lovely statements: "saalon, tum log har wakt kehte the 'jeetu, phone laga'. ab bhenchod main phone ka dukaan hi khol baitha!!!" after babu, jeetu's the one rarely seen nowadays.

and now, it's rono's turn to wave goodbye. goddammit!!! if babu finds it so difficult to come here from delhi, how much fuckin harder will it be to see rono again. he's off to bongland!!! and though he says he's thinking of trying out working in bombay in a couple of years, i doubt he'll be able to just pack up and leave home like that on impulse. the 7 have dwindled to 4, and the 4th one if gone in 3 days!!!!! sam, mayukhda n i remain...

the pain is slowly sinking in. as i come to realise that those people who have been my life in the past 5 years are slowly but surely fading away, i feel a lonliness that i had forgotten years back. i know they're there, they'll always be there. but we all know it's not the same. the question is, will it ever be the same again? will we ever be who we are now? will rono be the same insane fuck when i next see him? will i be whatever i am to him when he next sees me?

I guess another one of jeetu's gems would have to suffice here. he sms-ed this one to me when i was leaving pune, after i sent a senti msg to a bunch of people:

"Dude, are you gonna die? bitch, i agree life's changed a lil. but has it affected you so badly? chill man. we're where we were, just that we aren't together. all da best"

Take me Home, Alfred...

it's been a while since my last post. so much has happened since the last time i posted anything... suffice it to say that i'm in a happy state of mind right now. that's probably why i haven't posted anything for so long. but due to some recent prodding by one or two people, i've put this one up. it's kinda self-pitying, which pisses me off. but it's all that came out after a considerable attempt at making myself write something. i still haven't recovered fully from the mumbai experience, so i guess it'll be a while before i can write again as of old. but for now, guess we'll just have to make do with this...

It has been 3 months since the virus hastened my retreat from the city they call the land of dreams. The irony is amusing as always; dreams are born and lost perpetually in the city that never sleeps. Like so many others, I too walked along its heathen shores and gazed at the Queen’s necklace, as I had never done as a child growing up in that city, feeling back then that I belonged, that it was my home. Ten years after I bid goodbye to Mumbai, I realized that it was never mine, that I was nothing more than one of the drones in a mammoth ant hill. Life was a grind, one interminable, mechanical cycle. It was such that even when I had to meet the Faithless Freak, I would inevitably find myself doing a full sprint behind a BEST bus for the better part of a kilometer, just so that I could save some cash for the mandatory coffee, smokes and chicken masala fry with roti, the only escape from the mundane routine. Working for human rights isn’t lucrative for the little guy. And Dad has done enough for me, gotta start living off my own living sometime right?

Thus I spent over 6 blurry months of my miniscule, irrelevant existence in Mumbai. Or perhaps it wasn’t all that irrelevant. At least a handful of people were somewhat gratified that I had come into their lives, however briefly. Of course, most of them were in jail at the time, and most anyone on the outside proffering aid might seem like a messiah to them. Beyond that, the only other people for whom my presence in the city meant anything at all were my Brother and Bhabi, my landlord (well, naturally) and the Freak.

And then, I had to leave. My first foray into ‘independence’ had gone horribly wrong. A proverbial job from hell, a city on a perpetual adrenaline overdrive, and finally a hospital bill that I would have to spend some three years repaying had I continued being the pseudo-activist lawyer. Perhaps it is fortunate that I fell as ill as I did. At the risk of exaggeration, I guess the only way I could get my life back on track was if I nearly lost it. So it was back to Pune, to the city that most certainly does sleep. Amidst the goodbyes from Dada and Bhabi, and the echo of the Freak’s voice singing “Goodbye my friend, this is the end” over and over, I left Mumbai.

The effects of coming home were damn near immediate and quite miraculous. Within no time at all, my smile became genuine again, Euphoria’s “Sone de Maa” no longer made me want to break down and cry, and the fog finally began to clear in my head. I started hanging out with the guys again, MUNA happened, my job in Pune took off on a great note. Life’s good today.

But I am mindful of the fact that I have lost the first battle. This is the first time I have slunk away in defeat, the first time I have cowered under the protective hood of the familiar. And naturally, in a way, I feel like crap. When I was leaving Mumbai, I spoke to Dada, expressing my anguish and shame at running away. His curt reply was instructive, “Yes, you are running away. Come back and fight again when you’re stronger.” In his own way, Dada was expressing his hope that I should not forget who I am and where I come from (as he has said on numerous occasions before), but that I should realize that the fight has only just begun, that it was never gonna be easy, and that any modicum of superiority that I might have enjoyed in the past over any of my peers is passé. Sticking to any notions that at this point I am no more than an inexperienced idiot would be an utter exhibition of naiveté. He wanted me to remember that I must always be ready for the fight, and that I must never give up in the long run. And, in his own way, he let me know that he is waiting for my return.
It seems he is not alone. In a moving comment to an earlier post in these writings, the Freak has expressed his desire to see me come back. To join him again in the war to claim our destiny, whatever the hell that means. I am gratified to know that even the faithless has faith in me. I do not intend to disappoint.

But I need time… I need time…

Guess I should start dreaming again…