I have been feeling a good amount of depression of late. Well, depression might be the wrong word to use, feeling low is more like it. This is not even remotely connected to my previous post on depression.
Remember those TV commercials in the good old days when a woman draped in a black sari would want to tell you something with that surreptitious look on her face and the I-wanna-tell-you-a-secret look in her eyes?
Mujhe aapse kuch kehna hai. Kaise kahoon? Un dino mujhe bahut dard hota tha. Bahut pareshaani hoti thi........
Mujhe to in dino bhi pareshaani ho rahi hai. Before you start getting ideas about the dard I am referring to, let me explain.
Aajkal ke zamaane mein?Of course I know aajkal ke zamaane mein being in touch is not a problem. Email and phone zindabad, and being net savvy, I am very much in touch with people, though they live in all parts of India and abroad.
But can anything compensate for getting to meet them and having a cuppa coffee or hanging out in the favorite food joints, with endless hours of senseless, itsy-bitsy talks about anything and everything?
It’s not that I would get to meet them everyday, or even every month. There aren’t many things I regret not having done in life. The one single thing that I do regret is that I did never get to experience hostel life. Of course I have been deriving a certain level of vicarious pleasure from friends who actually do/did, including my wife but that is beside the point. In hostels, you spend some 2-5 years together with hundreds of people, depending on the type of course you are into. You get close to a few, depending on the type of person you are. The level of doing-everything-together gets such that they become second family for you. And then one day your course gets over, you pack your bags, attend a few farewell parties, hug each other, and go your own way in life.
How many times do you get to see these friends again? Once? Twice? May be a handful of times? Assuming that they live in the same city that you do. How many times even then?
That is the way of life, that is how the world goes- that could be your logic. True. But that doesn’t dull the pain you feel to see your friends go away. It just can’t.
So when these people are all busy with their placements and getting their suits made and shopping for their new job and stuffs, I wonder if the pain would be worse than it was the last time?
For these are the friends I have laughed and cried with. I enter a certain restaurant to be reminded of the number of times I had been there in the past and had fought over who would pay for the food. I enter a certain station, to be reminded of the endless cups of coffee I had shared, debating on everything under the sun and seeing the trains leave one by one. I walk down certain streets, go to certain stores, and it all comes back to me again and again. I see the faces of my friends, smiling at me, waving at me, and it is then that I feel the loneliness.
And trust me, it is worse than seeing your beloved go away from you forever. For you know that your beloved loves you no more, and is gone forever, for good.
But these friends love you all the same, and stay in touch with you. You chat with them, email them, call them up, and this brings back the pain all the more.
Especially if you are in a cribbing mood like I am in today.
It is craziness to expect them to stay with you forever. Both you and I know that the world doesn’t work that way. But in their short sojourn, they leave behind millions of memories that make you so nostalgic.
Remember those TV commercials in the good old days when a woman draped in a black sari would want to tell you something with that surreptitious look on her face and the I-wanna-tell-you-a-secret look in her eyes?
Mujhe aapse kuch kehna hai. Kaise kahoon? Un dino mujhe bahut dard hota tha. Bahut pareshaani hoti thi........
Mujhe to in dino bhi pareshaani ho rahi hai. Before you start getting ideas about the dard I am referring to, let me explain.
Aajkal ke zamaane mein?Of course I know aajkal ke zamaane mein being in touch is not a problem. Email and phone zindabad, and being net savvy, I am very much in touch with people, though they live in all parts of India and abroad.
But can anything compensate for getting to meet them and having a cuppa coffee or hanging out in the favorite food joints, with endless hours of senseless, itsy-bitsy talks about anything and everything?
It’s not that I would get to meet them everyday, or even every month. There aren’t many things I regret not having done in life. The one single thing that I do regret is that I did never get to experience hostel life. Of course I have been deriving a certain level of vicarious pleasure from friends who actually do/did, including my wife but that is beside the point. In hostels, you spend some 2-5 years together with hundreds of people, depending on the type of course you are into. You get close to a few, depending on the type of person you are. The level of doing-everything-together gets such that they become second family for you. And then one day your course gets over, you pack your bags, attend a few farewell parties, hug each other, and go your own way in life.
How many times do you get to see these friends again? Once? Twice? May be a handful of times? Assuming that they live in the same city that you do. How many times even then?
That is the way of life, that is how the world goes- that could be your logic. True. But that doesn’t dull the pain you feel to see your friends go away. It just can’t.
So when these people are all busy with their placements and getting their suits made and shopping for their new job and stuffs, I wonder if the pain would be worse than it was the last time?
For these are the friends I have laughed and cried with. I enter a certain restaurant to be reminded of the number of times I had been there in the past and had fought over who would pay for the food. I enter a certain station, to be reminded of the endless cups of coffee I had shared, debating on everything under the sun and seeing the trains leave one by one. I walk down certain streets, go to certain stores, and it all comes back to me again and again. I see the faces of my friends, smiling at me, waving at me, and it is then that I feel the loneliness.
And trust me, it is worse than seeing your beloved go away from you forever. For you know that your beloved loves you no more, and is gone forever, for good.
But these friends love you all the same, and stay in touch with you. You chat with them, email them, call them up, and this brings back the pain all the more.
Especially if you are in a cribbing mood like I am in today.
It is craziness to expect them to stay with you forever. Both you and I know that the world doesn’t work that way. But in their short sojourn, they leave behind millions of memories that make you so nostalgic.
I still remember how I used to get late in Purohit's Cafe and how I would be undecided about what to eat (which usually would be a Masala Dosa). I still remember how I and my friends would make plans for the forest trips, which did happen twice.
Lots of memories. Fights about who would pay (actually not pay) the restaurant bills, cribbing about low mobile phone balances, bitching about the coevals and the profs, and of course the unanimous view of everyone that Udaipur is a very boring place to be in.
I hope that they are happy, now that they are gone from this city as I've too, where people take a siesta with as much of seriousness and regularity as Malaika Arora Khan does with her fitness and beauty regime, the place also being the quintessential example of bundhs and raasta jam and chaos and disorder.
Of course life goes on and you learn to live with everything. You go out and make new friends. And the cycle is repeated, you seeing them go away again and again. But that is the way the world works, isn’t it?
I know these are some of the best buddies I have had and they will be with me, no matter what. I can talk to them, meet them once in a while, email them and emaul them with the pathetic jokes I crack (okay, that was a poor one). But I can never threaten them with dire consequences if they cannot make it to the local food joint or the shopping mall at least once a week.
I still remember the day when I had been to see them off.
"You know what’s so good about marketing jobs? You get to travel to a lot many places. So you never know, by this time the next year, I might be in the same city once again."
It’s almost been fifteen long years.
Not that I blame people or end up feeling morose. I have learnt to take these things into my stride and appear unperturbed. Aakhir jaana to ek din sabhi ko hai, hai na?
Lots of memories. Fights about who would pay (actually not pay) the restaurant bills, cribbing about low mobile phone balances, bitching about the coevals and the profs, and of course the unanimous view of everyone that Udaipur is a very boring place to be in.
I hope that they are happy, now that they are gone from this city as I've too, where people take a siesta with as much of seriousness and regularity as Malaika Arora Khan does with her fitness and beauty regime, the place also being the quintessential example of bundhs and raasta jam and chaos and disorder.
Of course life goes on and you learn to live with everything. You go out and make new friends. And the cycle is repeated, you seeing them go away again and again. But that is the way the world works, isn’t it?
I know these are some of the best buddies I have had and they will be with me, no matter what. I can talk to them, meet them once in a while, email them and emaul them with the pathetic jokes I crack (okay, that was a poor one). But I can never threaten them with dire consequences if they cannot make it to the local food joint or the shopping mall at least once a week.
I still remember the day when I had been to see them off.
"You know what’s so good about marketing jobs? You get to travel to a lot many places. So you never know, by this time the next year, I might be in the same city once again."
It’s almost been fifteen long years.
Not that I blame people or end up feeling morose. I have learnt to take these things into my stride and appear unperturbed. Aakhir jaana to ek din sabhi ko hai, hai na?
And naah, I am not crying like that baby in the pic. It is just the thought of that injection tomorrow that’s causing the tears to flow.
