Three Futures Past

It was a normal morning. The one where I typically wake up at 5 in the morning, imagining myself running because somewhere far away, a sniper is gunning for my head.. And as usual, I woke up, looked at the clock, and kept an alarm for 5:15, and dozed off again... only to wake up at 8:50. (I have a 9 am class..)
These are the thoughts that flashed around in my head..
8:50- Yuk! I feel sick in my mouth.
8:51- Oh, it's 8:50..
8:51- OH!!! IT'S 8:50!!!! OH SHIT! OH SHIT!
8:51- Damn!! Where's my brush!!?? @£*#  +*&^%$£!!!
8:53- @£*# !!! *&^%$£!!! What the ****!! Damn!! Where's my brush!!??
8:55- Ahh...there you are, Brushy! Come to daddy!
8:57- (Brushing) Hanuman Chalisa playing in my head- “Mahaaveer bikram bajrangi.....”
8:59- Hell!! I'm missing breakfast...Again!! Noooo!!!(Gurgling sounds from the belly...)
9:03- “May I some in, Sir??”... (My first vocalized thought for the day...)

I sat on the second bench. There was no one sitting on the first bench. How awesome! 5 minutes into the class... I look around.. “Dude, are you getting a word this chap's yapping for the past one hour??”
I get this weird look from the Dude...
10 minutes into the class, my head is jerking back and forth with sleep... “Huh?? Yes sir, I understood..”
It felt as if the 'Sir' was talking to my Hand.. I felt like the Terminator!
Around 9:35- Zzzz....Zzzz...
At 9:55, Someone prods me.. “Abey!! Utthh! Wake up! You arsehole! He's taking attendance!!”
Somewhere, I hear my name being called out . I automatically blurt out “Present, Sir!!”.
The next class was at 10:15. So I had sufficient time to fix my 'fresh-out-of-bed' look.  Mind you, the 'fresh-out-of-bed' look only suited Rapunzel, that too only when she did not have a bad-hair-day!!
After 10:15, things improved a bit. My comprehension skills were on the rise, at least to the point that I could make out the language being spoken by the teacher. Somehow, two lectures went by and it was 12:28 on my watch! Given that my watch is 13 minutes fast, it was time for LUNCH!!
While getting out of my department building, for some reason, I looked behind. I saw this girl, Nemo, whom I knew, maybe not very well.. but I knew she was a sprinter. The next day, trials for the college athletics team were going to be held. I thought I'd tell her about it, even though we weren't exactly at talking terms with each other. But then I thought what do I lose if I try and talk to her? Worst case, she'd ignore me. And then I said to myself “Chuck it! Why bother...”
The next thing I realized was I waking up at 9:55... “Abey!! Utthh! Wake up! You arsehole! He's taking attendance!!”
I was a bit shaken. What the hell just happened? Hell! Was that a dream?
Again, I heard the professor call out my name. I was still feeling shaky, but I just managed to blurt out the magical words “Present, Sir!” just on time.
After that, it was pretty much the same as the last time. I was happy to see 12:28 on my watch again. This time too, while getting out of the department, for some reason, I looked behind. Yeah, this time too, I saw Nemo. This time, I was determined to tell her about the trials, wondering why I didn't tell her the first time. Although I did manage to inform her about the trials, she showed her usual indifference. But then, I never had a thing to lose in the first place.
Thankfully, I didn't wake up at 9:55. It was almost as if the universe was conspiring to make me to do something very specific. And I had no clue what it was.
After that, I went for lunch. After shoving down all I could manage to, as fast as I could, I was left with about half an hour before my 1 o' clock class started. I had to meet a professor for some work. After that was done, I was still left with about 20 minutes to myself. I felt like getting something to drink.
In my college, there's a coffee shop, very close to the library. The shop sells something called 'Chocolate coffee', basically a common man's mocha, just without the fancy jargon.
As I walked towards the coffee shop, some stingy miser part of my brain got switched on. So instead of getting myself this 'Chocolate coffee', I just guzzled 3 glasses of ice cold water from the first cooler I ran into. And I got a Brain-Freeze! I started walking back to my department. Just then, this thought came into my head.... “Oh hell! There was good chance that SHE had been there at the coffee shop while I was freezing my brain!!”
By the way, the 'SHE' here is this beautiful lady, whom I managed to piss off really badly. It's really easy to piss someone off. Just stop talking to them in the middle of a conversation for reasons even unknown to you. Voila! You just got someone really ticked off!
Anyway, the moment I had the realization about the possibility of SHE having been at the coffee shop, I looked at the watch for some reason. It was showing 12:57 pm. That's the last thing I remembered before waking up again. This time, I woke up at 9:45 instead of 9:55. Now, that was odd.
I tried making as much sense out of what the professor was saying. Just that this time, since I had already heard twice, what he had been saying things started to make sense.
This was like my life's version of 'Groundhog day'.
By the way, Groundhog Day is a movie, which came out somewhere in the early 90s, where the protagonist, a NEWS channel correspondent/news reader's finds himself living the same day over and over again.
Okay, so third time around, everything went pretty much the same way. The two classes after 10:15 really saw a soar in my attention and comprehension, which by the way, felt absolutely amazing! On my way out of my department, I informed Nemo about the try-outs for the college athletics team, to which, she still remained cold and indifferent, nevertheless.
I quickly headed for my lunch, finished it off as fast as I could, and then, went straight to the professor, with whom, I had to discuss regarding an event my team and I plan to organize.
For some more unexplained reasons, my conviction regarding SHE being at the coffee shop had grown pretty strong. Thankfully, I managed to curb my miserly urge to quench my thirst with the cooler-water. I walked to the coffee shop as fast as I could. There was a small crowd at the coffee shop. I asked for a 'Chocolate coffee' and began looking around to get a glimpse of her. For a moment, I was almost disappointed with my stupid inaccurate 6th sense. But just then, I saw her standing exactly to my right! I hadn't seen her, because she was facing away chatting with a few of her fiends, and I never bother looking at things near me. But her silhouette was unmistakable.from where I was standing.
For a change, I blurted out “What's up??”, Which was pretty stupid a thing to say to thin air... But somehow, magically, she turned around, probably having recognized my voice, or rather wondering who would be stupid enough to start a conversation with such a remark... Either way, lucky for me, she turned around. She looked a bit hesitant to see me at first, specially since she was pissed off with me. But she's very polite, I must say.
I was almost afraid she'd kick me for having pissed her off earlier. I kind of deserved a kick. But again, lucky me. We actually stood around and chatted after over a week. There was a lot more I wanted to tell her back then, but I'd probably leave a bit of it for some other Future Past.....

Lit for Life # 1- Chennai Expressed (Part 2)

My nap didn't come easily. Right after we got back on the road, someone put on a movie . And who wants to miss a movie for a nap?? The movie was 'Godfather'. Not the Marlon Brando one! That one would have surely put me to sleep, no offense to the great movie it was/is. This 'Godfather' was a Malayalam comedy movie. It's probably been remade in every Indian language by this director called Priyadarshan. It was a comedy flick. So it kept most of us up for it's whole length. I was about 1 in the morning when the movie got over. I felt my eyes drooping. The next thing I remember is waking up with a start, somewhere at 2:30 am. I looked around to see everyone dozing off. From somewhere, I saw 'Beautiful' getting her 'beauty sleep'. Some sight to watch! I almost giggled like a 6 year old girl after watching her sleep. She looked like a well-fed baby sleeping, despite the fact none of us was exactly well fed. It was cute, albeit in a very 'awkward' manner. I was like "Eh! Chuck it! Let's doze off!".

Somewhere at 4, I was awakened by another bunch of monkeys monkeying around.. actually singing songs. The night was cold, as it is, and now, the noise!

So sleep jumped right out of the window(quite literally).

Here's how I had pictured my journey to Chennai. Had I been left to my own devices, I'd have gotten a train ticket in a General compartment(as all seats would have been booked on a Friday night), had a terrible night, most certainly without a seat to park my arse all throughout. In the morning, on getting down at Chennai, I would have looked and felt like a zombie. But then, somewhere, sense prevailed. I left my devices behind and got into the bus a few friends from the college had organized.

Finally, at around 7 in the morning, we halted to wash our faces. We were on National Highway 45, which looked like it was in the middle of nowhere. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was all up and shining. It all felt vey warm and cozy. Somehow, we all managed to clean our pearly whites and flash it around. I went to get some water to drink, and ran into 'Beautiful', brushing her teeth in all her glory. I hadn't noticed till then that she had dimples when she smiled. Okkkayy!! Moving on! 

Sometime ago, when we got down, some senior bloke put all his 120 kilogram weight on his wrong foot in the wrong way while getting down from the bus, and fractured his leg. Ammmmazing!! After we were all done cleaning up all we could, the seniors started discussing about the nearest clinic we could get to.. Well, that meant a delay in my scheme of things, specially as I had to go a bit further than the gang I was accompanying.

The fellows and ladies from my year were all loitering around the place, unaware that we had to get moving ASAP! I was looking around to tell everyone to get back into the bus. Just then, I caught Beautiful's glance. She was with all the remaining ladies. I gestured her to get them all into the bus. And you know what?? This is how I felt for doing that

Just before 'Beautiful' got into the bus, we had this meek chat about how I would figure out my way to my place after getting down at IIT. Frankly, I had no clue. But I put up a brave face and said something like "Eh! It's easy. I'll figure out a way anyway."

"Confidence is a good thing...Specially when you get to show it off in front of ladies at a time when you have no clue what you're going to do."-Me(Of course.....)

So off we were again, this time taking a detour in search of a clinic to fix the broken senior. And we found a clinic somewhere not far from where we began

looking. It was another hour before we saw any new road. It was about 11 in the morning by now. Strangely, none of us felt hungry. Thankfully I had a book with me. So were I to die, it would surely not be out of boredom. That being specially because even if I didn't have the book, there was a circus going on in the bus any

way, with all the singing and chatting. There were of course many among us who decided to doze off, after failing to get any shut eye last night. The side-boards on the road indicated another 100 km between us and Chennai. So it was going to be a long wait, or so I thought. Thankfully, it wasn't long before we saw the city's outskirts. Except for this dude who was really shouting right into my ear, everything was going fine. I was sitting on a window seat, I managed to finish off more than half the book since I started it in the morning. All of it despite this loud arse sitting right next to me. By the way, he belonged to the 'Over-Zealous' party.... Actually, he was the party leader. And it felt great to know how much untapped patience I had within me.

Entering Chennai, it felt like Mumbai, the place I call home. Not that Chennai had the same hustle-and-bustle, but there was something that got me to admire the city. In the beginning, I credited my admiration for the city to it being a Satuday that we landed in Chennai. But the following days that I had the fortune to spend my time there just deepened my love for the place. We crossed the Chennai airport, very reminiscent of the Hyderabad and Bangalore airports. Same design philosophy shared by all three of them. Simple 'V' shaped Wishbone-like members holding the roof up.

The roads reminded me of Delhi, or whatever little I remember of Delhi from my visit about 5 years ago. No clue what it was, but the city connected with you in a strange manner.

Any way, by the time I was done admiring the city, we had reached IIT Madras. I got my bag, got ready to get off the bus, and just then, brushed my shoulder with 'Beautiful'.... And I mention stupid mentioning this. She was probably the only lady I knew well in the whole bus.What I blurted out to her sounded like "Catch you later!". I am not sure if she understood a word of what I blurted. Getting out through the IIT Madras main gate, I felt miserable for not even telling a 'goodbye' to my friend Shree, who had been around with me throughout.

But then I had a whole day ahead of me, and I was getting late to get to my 'Final Destination', and all my worries got left behind the main gate, though I would return to it that night.

I was in Chennai for the Literary festival organized by The Hindu.

I was there to be 'Lit for Life'....

Lit for life # 1- Chennai Expressed (Part 1)

This was about a week ago...

It was a Friday evening. The bus was supposed to roll out at 6.30 in the evening. But then everyone knows exactly how plans unfold. And how they never do so on time. Okay, so by the time the bus starts in this story, let's just give a brief intro to what the bus trip was all about. 

The bus was heading for Chennai. The gang from my college I was about to travel with was going to check out Saarang, the cultural festival of IIT Madras. More than checking it out, we were off to comparing how much better Saarang was from Raagam, our college's cultural festival. As for my case, my destination was in Chennai, it was a while from IIT Madras. Any way, more on my destination a bit later.

As for now, we, a strength of 50 (at least for the next 45 minutes to come) were mad at the seniors for having delayed the whole trip by over 45 minutes already. So the wait was on. 

This being my first bus trip with a gang, specially a gang whose members I barely knew, it was a whole new experience. Thankfully there were a few fellows whom I call close friends, who happened to be around me, specially Shree(who convinced me to catch the bus), to keep me from feeling like a Martian.

Finally, the seniors arrived, punch-drunk, huffing, and more so puffing... if you know what I mean. And suddenly, this loud noise erupted from the bus. No, it wasn't that a bomb exploded somewhere inside it. It was just all the fellows shouting out of happiness, or rather out of gratitude to the seniors for having turned up, err... nevertheless 45 minutes late.

Before we get moving with the whole bus ride, there was something that struck me that day. Suppose you are sitting in a stalled bus, and it's been a while.... a really long while... There's no wind, WHATSOEVER. It is just this one suffocating seat you have to yourself and all the relentless chatter coming from the monkeys you are about to travel with, (that is, iff the bus starts moving). Now, from somewhere, someone announces that the bus is about to start. Somehow, before the bus even moves an inch, you feel a breeze magically blowing from nowhere, on your face. Mind you, this is even before the bus has started moving. It's probably the relief you feel at the mere thought of the bus moving. It totally brings back all the optimism you ever had in life.

And yes!! We were rolling!!

By the way, we were yet to pick up the girls.. Yes, you surely read the last line right. It is strange, although in a very good kind of way, that girls show their trust in us and accompany us with the belief that we guys will be there to keep them from harm of any sort, while they are with us around them. It reinforces your faith in the goodness of mankind, just the fact that they trust us. 

But here too, I was in for a surprise. And not one I liked a lot at first..

There's this beautiful lady I had been talking to for a few weeks. Let's call her 'Beautiful'. We had mentioned to each other about going to Chennai, separately although...(Yeah, really sucks..). And guess who popped up when we picked up the girls. My head....Sorry!! Sorry!! my heart skipped a beat for some very strange reason up on seeing her.

She probably didn't notice me, but by some stroke of luck(or whatever one may call it), actually, more because of an over-zealous friend of hers, she came and sat on the seat right in front of mine. And just before she sat, she probably saw some part of my face...or imagined seeing it. Her face looked like Tweety's(the yellow cartoon Canary), the time when Tweety says "I think I saw a Phushhykhat(pussycat)... I did!! I did saw a phushhykhat!!". As far as my face was concerned, the way I think I smiled at her, I must have looked like Hector (the pussycat).... Brilliant! She asked me about my trip(again), about which, we had already discussed at length, and I happily told most of what she already knew. Suddenly, some bugger came along saying we guys had to adjust around as there were two more ladies to join us. And yeah... for the gentleman I am not, I agreed to move to another seat make some space. Thankfully, I managed to get another window seat... Hmmm... No more 'Beautiful' in the seat ahead of me... Sad..

Little did I know that the bus was a Discotheque in itself! It all started after a brief pit-stop for some water and some snacks. All the lights and sound and stuff. The bus had that colorful rotating light 'thingy'. It was all psychedelic, noisy and stuffy. With all the blokes on one side, all the ladies on the other side, a few over-zealous fellows in the middle with their elbows hitting everywhere...barely missing some poor lady's head or shoulder, it was a scene to watch! 

I never really got myself to break a leg. I've fractured it once, but I was not dancing while I fractured my leg.

I was looking into the world outside. It was pleasant outside. The wind hitting the face, the full moon above, the vehicles whizzing past. It was a complete contradiction to what was on the other side of the window. Wasih, a friend of mine probably saw me sitting, lost somewhere. It was when he tugged at my hand, calling me to join the frenzy, that I realized how long I'd been sitting, looking outside. I politely refused. But thereon, I watched the whole monkey-pack bounce around the bus. After sitting around, watching all the commotion for another half an hour, we halted to stuff our bellies for the night. Now, there was something uneventful! For some inexplicable reason, at least till now, I was feeling very strange and uneasy. And No! I wasn't feeling sick from the bus ride! Whatever it was, I was sure that it would be all right after a night's nap. It's like 

"You get to see the brighter side of things after a night's nap anyway."

Love thy runners!

On the day that I write this, I haven't run a single mile. But there are folks I have around me, close friends, who have gone that mile, maybe even that extra mile.

But first, a bit on running. 

As Jason Statham says in the movie Lock, Stock and two smoking barrels,

"Squeeze in if you can. Left leg, right leg, your body will follow. They call it walking.", just hasten the whole process a bit and 'they' will call it running!(whoever 'they' are)

Running is one of the most simple things that a human body has been made for. As a sport, it didn't even have to be consciously 'invented' as such. And it is probably the most beautiful thing our bodies can do, obviously apart from all the 'other' beautiful things the body can do.

Now, coming to the runners....

They are a separate breed among us. They have definitely not been rare. Go out on the street early in the morning. Be it any village, any town, any city anywhere on the planet where humans are residing, one is bound to find a few pair of legs moving faster than the others. And they are a sight to watch!

These folks come in all shapes, all sizes, all age groups and move a wide range of distances on land. Some do it to reach somewhere early. Some do it to lose weight. Some do it to socialize. Some do it for a cause. Some do it without one. Some do it just to find out how hard, how fast and how far you can go till you can't anymore. And they are all over the place. In the gym, on the treadmill. In the garden, on the road, on the beach, on hilly roads, on rocky roads, in the wilderness, in the desert, on snow and every possible turf this earth can throw at us! Sometimes when you pass by them, you feel a strange sense of kinship with the fellow. Well, that's only if you are in a vehicle and they are huffing and puffing. 

But what if they are in your way?? "Eh! Chuck the brother/lady...I'm overtakin' !"

They do their thing irrespective of the weather. They do it when people are laughing at them, specially when they look a tad bit flabby. They do it when their legs are screaming in agony. And they do it so that they could fly for a moment before their next foot came down.

And they know they are in love with what they are doing. Then we ask "Why love them??". It is because running takes effort. And anything that takes effort is completely worth appreciating. Maybe the end result is not beautiful. Maybe it is not as graceful as it should/could be. But hauling one's arse takes determination. A lot more than sitting around and watching other run. 

More than everything, what excites a runner is the last leg. There's always this restlessness inside a runner the moment the Finish line is visible. There is an extremely apparent change in their body language. Everything about them gets progressively faster. In the runner's head, this is the time when Bill Conti's track "Gonna fly now", the song in Rocky, starts to play. The runner visualizes him/self as Rocky Balboa (Or whatever a Female 'Rocky Balboi' may look like), and they gun it!! All the way to the end!!!! "Flyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!"

And at the finish line, they raise both their hands, as they would in victory. A small victory, before the next bigger one tomorrow.....

Fighting to get close

Two people who apparently have nothing common between them at first can go a long way, for some very strange reason. Logically speaking, each friend one makes is a stranger before he/she becomes a friend. But then there are a few specimens in your friend-list, (not the Facebook friend-list....) whose presence is somehow inexplicable in life.. After reading the last sentence, I realized that 'this' part of my life is what I call 'overdoing'.

Two years ago...

It was  my freshman year. I was sitting jobless in my room, when a very close friend of mine(No.. I won't mention the fellow's name) walked into my room. We chatted and yapped for a while and everything was going fine, just that five minutes into our conversation, we both knew we were dead bored. We gave each other this blank look, both thinking "So what to do now?". This friend of mine can be annoying at times. He had collected the numbers of  'many a ladies' from all over the freshman year, some by asking the girls, some..... by hook or crook. He said "Let's prank the girls by calling them.". I still remember the twinkle in his eyes when he said that. I didn't exactly feel any emotion till the time it was my turn to make a call to a girl. If I remember correctly, at the time, there was this controversy around one of the teachers leaving the college for some very strange reasons. There were rumors all around about the same, but no body knew exactly what was happening.. Okay, that's my way of saying that I was probably the only one around who had absolutely no idea of what was going on.

Moving on.....

So, looking into the 'contact list', it was  a matter of pure 'eenie-meenie-minie-mo' to choose any one number, dial it, and press the 'Green phone button'. So that is exactly what I did. After I pressed the dialing button, I got this very strange feeling in my belly. But I couldn't exactly connect the 'strange feeling in my belly' to the weird feeling I was getting all over my body. I could specially not understand my sudden urge to fart. Hmm.. not good!

Suddenly, someone picked up on the other end.. SHIT!!! SHIT!! I sort of scrambled for words for the first five seconds. Then I managed to pull off my 'Robert-Downey-Jr.-baritone', which would have made me sound something like.... err... Mila Kunis... Never mind, it's all in the head. So I blabbered something.. Not sure I remember what it was I said... Oh yeah!! I asked her for her name. She told me hers. She asked me for mine, I told a fake one... but you see, not that it mattered(or so I thought...) and I asked her if she knew what the controversy about the soon-to-be-leaving-teacher was. I don't remember what she said about what she knew. She sounded a bit skeptical about who the oerson was on the other end, I suppose. She asked me who I was again... This time, I said who I was....or at least who I thought I was in my dreams....

"I am BATMAN!". I was planning on saying the whole thing "I am VENGEANCE, I am the KNIGHT, I am BATMAN!!!". But then, even back then I had the smarts to understand that would be a bit too much for her to handle.

So I kept it short, and pressed the 'red phone' button as fast as I could with my almost frozen fingers.. Somehow, I managed to not fart. So that way, I saved two people. Guess who? One's my friend(Duh!). The second one's the girl. She too would have died of the smell perhaps. So I really was a super hero on the day it turns out... Eh! Chuck it!

After my turn, my friend called another number and did his part of the bargain.

Somehow, I felt miserable for losing my time making that call. It did give a rush of a strange kind. But the excitement got killed at the end of the first call, and I decided not to do it any more. But the next thing I was planning on was a suicide mission. I decided to apologize to the girl I had called. But I wasn't up for doing that over phone. That would have just made things a bit too 'Phoney'. So I found out which class she was in, and decided to go to her the next day.

Come the next morning.....

I waited for the break session at 10 o'clock.  I was slightly hesitant about the whole 'apology' gig. For all you know, you never know when it's your chance to get pulverized to pulp at the hands of a lovely lady. After I saw who I had meddled with the previous night over phone, I was certain about that day being my turn to get pulverized at the hands of a lovely lady, To the extent, that I actually decided to flee from the place. It wasn't anything about her looks or anything. As a matter of fact, there was something extremely endearing about the way she looked.But it was probably my preparedness to get beaten up that helped me stand my ground. Strange thing was, she was nothing like imagined.

Here's what I had imagined: The person would be this fire breathing dragoness, who, if given a choice, would burn me to ash with her fiery eyes... I know that not a word of that sentence makes sense, but at the time, nothing made sense to me either. So we just started to talk... err... or rather, I just tried to apologize and get my sorry-ass out of there as soon as I possibly could, before she turned into the lady dragon I was afraid she would turn into. But she started smiling and talking back, and it all went fine. Maybe it wasn't all that big a deal. ORRR I was already in hell, sleeping, tied to a big log of wood, dreaming for the last time,  before those puny being in hell burned me in my sleep!!

Thankfully, it wasn't all that big a deal, it turned out. I even told her my real name after that.....!

And hence, the two of us parted ways smiling, I specifically smiling because I came out of it miraculously unscathed!

Two years hence......

There's this atrocious process called a pre-registration that my college subjects us to, each semester, without fail. And it would be absolutely frivolous to describe to anyone what the pre-registration is all about. Each and every student goes around the college to-and-fro about 2-3 times, just by chance if all formalities fall in place on time. Otherwise, forget your pre-registration

So, somewhere about 3 months ago, in my last semester, while I was running around the college to get my pre-registration done, I walked into a girl and asked her for what time it was... When the girl turned her face to me for replying, a current ran through my spine....

I forgot what time it was she told me. And then, she looked at me, squinted at my face and said "Hari, right?".

After taking five more seconds to register what she'd said, only one picture can describe how I felt at that moment.....

She remembers my name! Yeah!! Beat that!

 But then I realized that as a proof of how big a joke I would have made of myself in the Ladies-Hostel..... just because of a single phone-call...

Over the next few days, we kept running into each other at random. It's kind of cool to still realize that I am still alive, given that she has had sufficient chances to make a pulp out of me, but so far, has gracefully shown restraint to any such behavior that would be a cause of great humiliation to me. I mean, what will my friends say?? "Look at that chap! He got beaten up by a girl! Ha... Ha... Ha...".