Freakishly Faithful - Chapter 4 : From Dawn to Dusk

Part 2

"With every silver lining comes a black cloud of despair"

Archie Andrews

Karan had often spoken of Akruti. From that very first day when we met after the MUNA training session, and throughout our continued association, if Akruti’s name wasn’t at the tip of his tongue, it would most certainly be at the back of his mind. He had often described his impression of her when he’d first seen her. On such occasions, he would sit back with a dreamy look in his eyes, and the suggestion of a beautiful memory or two would descend around his face like a luminescent mist. He would tell me, speaking more to himself than to me, perhaps, about how she had seemed to be a woman with just the right level of attitude, arrogance, solidity, stolidity, strength and femininity. Of how he had once told her that her red bandana made her look like a pretentious ‘wannabe’, and how she would be so much cooler if she’d just be herself. Of how they spent several months seeing each other without seeing each other, and how he could never really have time alone with her because either Rose (name changed) or Mo would be hanging around like some kind of chastity and propriety ensuring neo-Nazi chaperone.

But Karan was in pain. I could well empathise, for I knew how harrowing it could be to love fruitlessly. For more than half a decade I had often found myself in a melancholy reverie of my intense and largely unexpressed feelings for Ruksana, the unhappy circumstances that led to our fallout, the innumerable occasions when my heart was bursting to tell her so much! Perhaps that is why Karan and I felt so comfortable together. I’ll lay it down as an axiom right now – the leading cause of male bonding is women.

With the background of his stop-go deal with Akruti and the toll it used to take on him, I was quite happy to see Karan’s nascent interest in MJ beginning to grow into a full fledged ‘thing’. There was a new glow to his usual cheerfulness, and his brimming energy found excellent expression in his interactions with her. There was something indescribably cute about the two of them, and most everybody who knew either of them (and between the two of them that meant nearly everybody in the Arts and Commerce college) were abuzz with the gossip that Karan is totally hitting on MJ. For the most part, the news spread with smiles galore, and even one or two other admirers of MJ resigned to their fate and congratulated Karan for being the closest to the ‘chosen one’ in her life then. Frequent references to MJ’s hanging out in the RSI Club and Karan’s oft expressed desire to be her slow-dance-in-the-spotlight partner became a favoured topic of discussion. Many people eyed me curiously, wondering who exactly I was, sitting on the same table as Karan and MJ. In the process, my popularity as ‘the unknown quantity’ made its own small place in the scheme of things, and I was often prodded by complete strangers on the latest goings-on of the ‘couple’.

But with the crest there comes the trough. Isn’t it so typical? Just when we thought things could only get better from then on, Karan’s cell phone rang. His expression betrayed some little confusion as he looked at the flashing name on the screen and answered, “Hello?”

“Karan? It’s me, Mo. Listen… I don’t know how to say this… It’s Akruti… She’s… You’d better see me right away.”

Freakishly Faithful : Chapter 2 (contd.) - Aarambh : The Beginning

These writings are, as far as possible, chronological. I am not planning to go for a day-by-day account, of course, but I do intend to capture as many incidents, events, happenings and the like as possible which occur to me in my recollections while writing these posts. This next post is a continuation of Chapter 2, and I’ve indulged my imagination in this one, because Rono had requested something earlier. Let’s see how this turns out.
By the way, I haven’t posted anything here in sometime because I’m on vacation. Did you miss me?? ;)

Part 3

“Dude… Rono… don’t play the drums for this song. It doesn’t have any drumming man,” I say to Rono, while we are getting set to practice what I hope will be our best number in the show. “Ok Da,” he says, drumsticks in hand, but I suspect he’s planning on giving it a go anyway. I have to dissuade him; he’s much too excited now that Shaunak’s asked him to play for us. Obviously he hasn’t had a chance to play a drumkit for a bit too long; his hands are itching to whack it for a while. I notice the matka lying around, and it hits me that a matka in addition to the tablas might produce an interesting percussive effect. I put it by him; after all, he knows percussion a lot better than me. He goes for it, and I’m relieved to see the drumsticks leave his hand. The kid’s great, but if he keeps playing those drums that loud, the singers will scream themselves hoarse trying to hear themselves singing. Can’t have the singers losing their voices before the show.
I strum the first chord on JD’s purple Ibanez electric guitar, and Sam takes off with the intro verse. Midway, I suddenly hear the crash of cymbals, and Rono starts off a rocking beat, something I’d never imagined we can do to the song. It sounds amazing, and we’ve all begun to lose ourselves into it. We reach a crescendo point in the song, and it happens. A loud and hardly melodic “twwooiing” sound reverberates in the amplifier to which my guitar is connected, and everybody stops singing / playing. I can feel everybody looking at me as I look down at the guitar and see my fear confirmed. The G-string, broken, again!!
Goddamit, why? Why, every bloody time? Why does it have to happen in front of everyone? We were all sounding so great, and now it’s all wasted, because of me!!
JD’s pissed of course. He comes to me, looking at his beautiful Ibanez missing a string and he asks, “Why do you have to play it so hard?!” I try to sound nonchalant about it in my reply, “Sorry man. This song gets me all josh-ed up. I feel I can’t play nearly as good if I don’t give it my all”
“Guitar ki to maa chud jaati hai na, mamu!” he says.
God, what if it happens on stage! What if, when I’m up there for the first time ever, my string breaks??!! God, we’ll have just one electric... no replacements!! I can’t let the show be wasted because I play uncontrollably hard!! I can’t let it be ruined!! I.. I…

I woke up with a gasp. It had all seemed too real, but then, it had happened. I remembered that day in the Vishwabhavan garage. I remembered Shaunak’s firefighting, telling JD he’d get him another string. I remembered feeling like crap.
I sat up on my bed, stunned for a few minutes, feeling a cold sweat envelope me. In about 5 minutes, the alarm on my cell phone went off. It was 6:30 a.m., already. I’d had a late night, having had dinner with Karan at Chaitanya’s. MUNA had ended the previous evening, but in my early morning fuzziness, it already seemed like some distant dreamy recollection. Today was a new challenge: Aarambh. I had to pull myself together if I was gonna play in a few hours. I slid off the bed and headed off to the bathroom. As I looked at myself in the mirror, with the brush building up a furious froth of toothpaste in my mouth, one line kept ringing in my ears – “Guitar ki to maa chud jaati hai na, mamu…”

Freakish Faithful: Chapter 3 - RCPNE MUNA

People tell me that on my blog, I have the freedom to say what I want, how I want to. That may be so for general and random posts, but one becomes a little cautious and far less contemptuous of the perceived inadequacies of others when one is writing a story in the nature of the one in my recent posts. When I thought of this next part, my first impulse was to jump into the proceeding conversation and show the female character herein in the light that she appeared to me in my mind then, which, I say with some regret, was not very positive. But, given the background that she had won an award in my Council for a reason I am as yet to understand, and I had won no personal award myself in MUNA that year, my initial disdainful thoughts of her are neither warranted nor fair. The conversation that occurs in this post did indeed substantively happen, but I urge my readers not to pass judgement on the girl in the manner that I did. Do remember, that in the end, neither you nor I know her beyond the ambit of the following post…

PART 2

I remember noticing Sadia on only two occasions throughout MUNA. The first was in my Council, when I had thwarted an attempt by her to speak by raising a motion to close the debate (I wanted to move on to the next part of the proceedings, which was favourable to me). The second was in the bus ride from AIT to the drop-point at Null Stop.

I had chosen a seat at the front of the bus for some reason. I guess on that evening I was, shall we say comfortably numb. An awesome euphoric lightness had enveloped me, and in the darkness of the bus ride the vision of the awards and closing ceremony of MUNA kept flashing in my head again and again. I could see it then, as vividly as I see it now; the impish grin on the announcer’s face, the swelling tension among the delegates, the calls for guesses as to the winners of the event, the gratifying suggestions of team North Korea by so many delegates, the sound of my heartbeat growing louder, the encouragingly expectant looks from Karan, the announcement, the standing ovation, Merin’s ecstatic congratulations, Sairakha’s dramatic declaration that if Nikhil, Ray and I hadn’t won, she would have cried, Kuldeep uncle’s hawk-like countenance breaking into a warm smile, Harsh’s cryptic suggestion that next year I would be on the ‘other side’. In between these dizzy scenes, I kept looking around at the delegates in the bus, pretending to take in their evident awe with dismissive carefreeness. It was truly a high, one that I’d heretofore never experienced. An in the midst of one of my sweeping glances, my eyes once again fell on Sadia.

In the Council she had worn a hijab as part of her costume, which, in the manner of most Islamic nations, had been decidedly unflattering. But tonight, with her hair let down, her restrained delegate-ish manner having dissolved back into the energetic animation of a student, the moon shining on her face and her natural smile restored, Sadiya Bahidi was beautiful. My evaluation was evidently echoed by Karan, who had decided to take a break from smoking at the back of the bus, where the Best Team Trophy was unceremoniously serving as an ashtray. He joined me at the front, and sometime in between our conversation, he overheard Sadia mention that she was from Welham. His interest was immediately piqued, and, as I was to understand and often be reminded of thereafter, there was a deep chemistry between Welham Girls and Doon School, Dehradun, where Karan had done his schooling.

The mention of Doon School had a curious effect on Sadia. The name had only to be uttered by Karan and all of a sudden, it was as if the world had disappeared for the both of them. Her friends looked towards me, and I looked towards them, and we both realized that we had been discarded by the hoity-toity Public School society. In the course of the preliminary chatter between them certain facts stood established: her name was Sadia Bahidi of Sahrangpur and she had graduated from Welham Girls about the same time as Karan had graduated from Doon. Whatever else was spoken initially was lost on me. And then came the faithless freak’s bullshitting streak.

After a good long discussion, Karan suddenly exclaimed, “Hey! Hold on! You’re Sadia?”
“Yeah?” she replied with a curious look.
“Sadia Bahidi form Sahrangpur?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said with wide-eyed amazement, as if a gypsy had just told her a fundamental truth from a crystal ball.
“Oh my God!!!!” went Karan, “Oh my God!!! I can’t believe this!!! Sadiya Bahidi of Welham’s!!! Right here in this bus, talking to me??? This is unbelievable!!!”

What was unbelievable was her response – “But how did you know I’m from Sahrangpur??”

I have to hand it to Karan, he was certainly putting on quite a show.

“Arre, who doesn’t know you, ya??” he continued, “You were like the most sought after female in Doon!!”

Eureka!! The gates had fallen and the horse was through. Gameplay basics: Lesson 1 – if you want to get her attention, you tell her that she’s a centre of attention (women, correct me if I’m wrong here). And he didn’t stop there. He pulled me into the conversation.
”Dude, do you know who this is??” said he with an expression of total amazement, and I almost felt like clapping at his performance.
“Um… Sadiya Bahidi of Sahrangpur??” I said with a hint of sarcasm. But the sarcasm had quite the opposite effect. Her eyes grew even wider when I said her name and named her native place, and any doubts about her supposed popularity completely vanished at the mention of these details by another total stranger. Gameplay basics : Lesson 2 – after successfully attracting her attention, you rivet her attention and arouse her fascination by spreading the word on her supposed stardom and evoke favourable responses from unlikely quarters (women, don’t bother here).

And so it continued, with Karan saying that he would email the Doon School students newspaper and all online Doon school e-groups that Sadiya Bahidi had been found, and all kinds of other things. We got off the bus at Null Stop, and Sadiya said that her friends were heading off to F.C. Road for dinner. Karan and I decided to have dinner at Chaitanya’s, evidently to the joy of Sadiya, who celebrated by suggesting that we walk from the drop-point to our respective destinations. Outside Chaitanya, Sadiya turned to say goodbye to Karan, with overt indications that she would have loved to stay and continue their most fascinating conversation but for her friends. Numbers were exchanged, and as she walked away, she gave the clichéd glance back at Karan with the suggestion of lovely possibilities.

Karan turned to me and said, “Well, dude?” I said, “Dude, you sure as hell can bullshit!!” And then we burst out laughing…

Freakishly Faithful : CHAPTER 3 – RCPNE MUNA

From this point on, things have begun to get tricky. The original Chapter 3 went straight into another phase of Karan and my lives, but it bypassed a lot of events that happened in between. Karan messaged me today about how these little recollections of mine are catching on in terms of reader-base. I was even surprised to see a comment from one of the incidental characters in my post which was Part 2 of Chapter 2 (thanks Yudi!!). Karan wants me to go into a lot more detail about several more events than I had originally planned. That might be an interesting thought. Also, these writings might be incomplete without a somewhat greater tribute to MUNA. So, here goes nothing…

PART 1

By February 2005, my life had taken a thorough turn-around. I was going to play the guitar on stage for the first time ever at Aarambh, and I was about to participate in what had to be the biggest debating event in Pune, the Rotary Club of Pune North East’s Model United Nations Assembly. What was interesting was that I now had trouble with adjusting my schedule. Hold on, now I actually had a schedule!

The concept of Aarambh, as it then was, was that it was to happen on two days. The whole programme would happen on one day for a portion of the Arts & Commerce Colleges, and would be repeated for the remaining students on another day. The Vishwabhavan auditorium wasn’t big enough to accommodate all faculties, which was just as well. I remember that Aarambh day 1 was to happen on 5th February, 2005, and Day 2 was on 7th February. Unfortunately, MUNA was happening on the weekend of 5-6th February. So the issue was that Karan and I would be missing day 1 of Aarambh. We weren’t too kicked about that, but I was pretty excited about MUNA.

On a moderately frigid Saturday morning on the 5th of February, KS Nikhil Kumar, Abhishek Ray and I, Team North Korea, reached the Pizza Hut opposite Balgandharva on J.M. Road for the 6.30 a.m. pickup. As the sun began to creep over the buildings and peep at us in between the leaves of the trees, the rays glistened off my well gelled spiked hair, the fruits of a then relatively expensive haircut at a fancy-ish men’s saloon (by 2005 generic Pune standards) on the previous evening. Karan had gotten a hair cut there too, and a shave that gave him an interesting upmarket Waziristan look. Dressed in his cream coloured pathani salwar jhabba suit this morning with his half-smoked Classic regular in hand, Karan, the delegate of Pakistan, was ready to go.

The venue: AIT College of Engineering. The time: 9.30 a.m. The mission: Stay awake through the Chief Guest’s speech. The ammunition: Pretty women and a comparative analysis of Karan’s and my tastes thereof. In costumes no less! Fortunately, the sights were pleasing enough, and our Secretary General, the venerable (soon to be reverend) Merin Mathew Zacchariah (spell-check requested) gave an inspirational speech and opened the MUNA. The seating arrangement revealed that Pakistan was to be seated right behind North Korea, which was good since Karan and I were to be in the same Council. Felt good to have some backup of sorts.

The debating was fantastic and well worth the effort Nikhil, Ray and I had put in into our preparation for the event. But a lot of interesting things happened outside the Councils as well. The participants, or delegates, were all charged up in their roles as diplomats and would almost continually discuss issues, resolutions, operative clauses, treaties, and each other. A truly inspired Press Corps kept publishing some hilarious Bulletins which were as amusing as the deep discussions on foreign policy by delegates at the urinals. The tension levels were high, and every recess in between the sessions found several of the delegates at the designated pantry area negotiating with the coffee and chai machine. Unfortunately, the Nescafe dispenser seemed to have its own agenda and revolted against the representatives of the comity of nations by spewing cup after cup of coloured semi-heated water in the name of tea. Several of the delegates lost their role-playing composure and adopted the uniquely Indian solution of banging the machine into submission, to no avail, however. There wasn’t much left for it, and after watching his third cup of muddy water fill to the brim, Karan rendered the final verdict on the machinations of the infidel West by declaring Jihad on the coffee machine! May the vengeance of a thousand screeching PMS-ridden wenches rain down upon that bilious beverage brewer!!
Despite his usual garrulous nature, Karan had been rather silent throughout the event. His most vocal responses had been limited to his outburst at the coffee machine, and a fitting censure of the Chairpersons in our Council because they had dared to read a message chit sent by him to Lenold, the Chairperson of another Council. His frequent threats of Holy War had earned him the (till date lasting) nickname of ‘the Jihadi’, and his enthusiasm on the dance floor in the social evening on day 1 had in all probability attracted some female attention. But it was the bus journey from AIT to Null Stop which saw Karan in his true talkative element. And the catalyst of his renewed enthusiasm was a girl named Sadia Bahidi (name changed to a badly masqueraded alternative), of Welham Girls, Dehradun.

Freakishly Faithful - Chapter 1

For new readers, there is a prologue that comes before this chapter. for continuity's sake, please read that first and then read this post. also, i'd like to start an interactive exchange with my readers. if you feel that any particular part of these posts can be better expressed otherwise, please give me your suggestions in your comments. the suggestions have to fit into the subject matter seamlessly. if i don't accept your suggestion, it's only cuz i feel that it may not be appropriate or not in tune with my way of writing. but if i like it, i'll put it in and credit you. i'd love it if you can be a part of his endeavour, by giving me your comments, and recording them on this blog instead of giving me your feedback over a chat or email...

“I smoke to kill time; and because I’ve met a lot of interesting people over a cigarette.”
- An oft repeated line of mine

Fest ‘O Comm 2004 was over. I’d had a decent run in it. I’d won ‘Best Speaker – Against’ in the purely moronic excuse for a parliamentary debate that was one of the events in the fest. I daresay I made a fan or two in that competition. Specifically, there was Neha, from Symbi Arts & Commerce. She informed me about the Model United Nations Assembly, or MUNA for short. Training sessions for MUNA were on from December. I went for my first session on a Saturday in January. It was fun, and totally different from what I’d grown used to in terms of debates. I even met Ruksana (name changed to protect identity) there. It was the most I’d seen of her in four years. She’ll figure in the scheme of things later in these writings. But for now, I’d like to talk about what happened in my second training session.

On a cold Sunday morning, I once again rode to the BMCC College, the venue of the training sessions, for another round of frenetic debating, wada pav and chai. Any thought of the seasonal chill thoroughly dissipated in the heat of the arguments, and finally, four hours later, we were done. While the place was clearing out, I overheard a guy speaking to Neha. He was talking about getting a smoke. I was eager to make some new friends in MUNA, so I worked up my courage and did something completely uncharacteristic of me – I spoke to someone I did not know, without being spoken to first.

“Hey man,” I said, “you smoke?” “Yeah,” he replied. “Great, I could use one myself.” “Arre great! There’s a tapir outside campus. Bye Neha!”

I started walking alongside my new companion, feeling pretty good about myself at the fruitful negotiation of interests, so to speak. Turning around to wave goodbye, I almost didn’t notice the slight look of disapproval in Neha’s eyes. I barely knew her, but a woman’s instinct is a powerful thing. It was impossible to tell whether it was the thought of smoking that she disapproved of, or my companion. With not a few misgivings over my hasty attempt at being affable, I sighed inwardly, looked to my new companion and said, “By the way, I’m Bikram.” “Karan Singh,” came the reply. We shook hands, and there it began.

Within the next two hours, I knew all about Karan’s past drug problems, rehab, Akruti (name changed to protect my hide), the works. He in turn came to know of my recent break-up with Maya (name changed to what I wish it would have been), and the old chestnut about Ruksana back in school. We found ourselves in quite a comfort zone, two strangers confiding in each other, finding unity in the sorrows of our miserable pasts. A connection, often loosely termed as male-bonding, was formed, and I could sense that this conversation was a prelude to much more. So when he got a call at around 3:30 p.m., asking him to go for band practice, I didn’t hesitate to ask if I could watch. “Yeah, sure dude,” came the reply, and off we rode into a new phase of my life.