Prologue:
Our gang was a large one, 4 girls, 7 boys, the eldest just finishing school, while the youngest had just stepped into class one. I was in the fifth standard then, and so were most of us, around 10-11 years old. Being kids, obviously, we did not think that boys and girls are much different apart from the fact that girls can wear shirts and pants but boys cannot keep long hair or wear a skirt. From cricket to lock and key, from football to hide and seek, from kho-kho to WWF simulation fights, we did all together as a group. And perhaps, the most valuable time spent together was around half an hour every evening on a yellow bench, sitting and chatting about all the things important to a 10 year old.

Things, however, were drastically different from our parents viewpoints. Call it generation gap, conditioning of the mind, upholdment of Indian values, whatever, boys and girls were as different as chalk and cheese for them. Yes, they thought the 'modern thought'; did the 'correct things'; but still they could not fathom friendship between 'grown-up' girls and 'grown-up' boys.

Most girls 'grow-up' more quickly than most boys, and our group was not the 'exception' that proves the rule. However, from the 'predujiced' lenses of our parents, it was blasphemy. Quite words with the daughters (who given the changes they were growing through, unquestioningly followed their mothers), a stiff warning to the boys, broke the spine of the gang. The elder boys understood the deal and gave us half cooked stories to our queries like -'You know, she thinks we are all stupid fools since she came first in her class', 'blah-blah'. But then, none of us were convinced.


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So it was, leading to the Durga puja of 1996. The joint games played by the gang had turned into a more 'rough' boys only games, while the girls played whatever it was that they played with dolls and mini kitchen sets.

It was the second Durga puja being celebrated in the apartments, and each of us had our pockets full of excitement, eager to be present everywhere all the time, eager to show off new clothes, roam the neighborhood. Also, for the first time we were given more 'responsibilities' during the pooja. Decorate the pandal, the stage, make announcements, serve the prasad etc. All in all, we were geared up for an exciting 4 days of Durga puja.

Also, by then, if not sworn enimity , there was some spite between the 'boys-group' and the 'girls-group', for the then foggy reasons, whatever that was, to us.

The girls had decided that they will come down to participate in the festivities at 9AM, but we boys, lazy as ever, decided 11 AM, just before the 'pushpanjali', was an earthly time to go down. However, amma, unaware of the separate plans, made us both (my sister and me), go down by 9:30AM. So, there I was, in a awkward position, so to say, but I had been friends, not long ago with these girls, and so thinking quite objectively (and unemotionally), and it being Durga puja, I pulled up a chair and joined the 'girls-circle', and started chatting with them.

Over the years, as we grow up, we develop 'layers' of 'shell' around us, impermeable to certain feelings. Though, they are not unbreakable, they are good defence mechanisms to protect our feelings, emotions etc...
However, to a small 10 year old kid, her greatest strength and her biggest weaknes is her innocence, the shell is yet to be made.

By the evening, I had become quite comfortable with the 'girls-group' again. Probably, realizing that they have not turned into blood-sucking devils, and more so, given everything, we had been good friends just 6 months back, I spent more time seated on 'my' chair in the 'girls-circle', rather than on 'my' chair on the 'boys-circle'. Early into the evening, I refused a trip, gallivanting into the bylanes of the neighborhood, 'pandal' hopping, with the 'boys-group', deciding to spend that time with the girls-group.

All boys gangs make serious rules, especially about prioritizing 'girls' before group events. My punishment, was that 'my' chair from the boys-cirlce will be removed.

New friends or not, I was eager to return to my flock (Also, I was getting a 'trifle' bored with the antakshari). As soon as the boys returnded, I took 'my' chair to join the 'boys-circle', but I was refuese my place. Confused, I stood there for a minute extra, trying to understand the 'joke', when one of the boys quipped -'Hey, you cannot sit here anymore- you are a girl'.

Thus began a particular half hour in my life, forever fresh in my memories.

Shocked, shattered, desperately trying to hold my tears in public, I tugged amma's sari, demanding to go home. As soon as I entered, I started crying uncontrollably. When I finished unfolding the story of my day to amma, she stormed down to confront the 'boys-group', to make them apologise to me.

As the boys came up, my sister also came up, followed by the girls. It was a short time before the mothers of all the kids were also in our drawing room.

I was sitting on the sofa crying. As the boy, who actually made the remark, came up to me to apologise, he also burst into tears, explaining how I had angered everyone else, by spending the whole day with the girls, who had not as much as bothered to tell the boys a 'hi' during the past six months. Girls are never the ones to be left out, especially when it comes to a contest of tears. My sister, always cries whenever I cry, but her tears, bought along tears of the other girls, unknowingly sorry for the past six months. The other boys, being boysm did not cry, but were uncharacteristically quiet,

Among all the innocent tears, all the mothers also realized the folly of essentially separating a bunch of innocent friends. Moist eyed, they knew that they had been prejudiced, parochial, narrow minded, ambigious to the problem, not forthright with their answers.

All's well that ends well. A new set of rules (avoid contact sports), formulated then and there, withour as much as a word being spoken, restored the 'gang' again.

We happily trotted out of the house, myself redeemed again as a member of the male gender, the girls and the boys mingling with eachother again. Yet, we were still unaware of the actual reasons for the drama that unfolded. Ensconsed in our innocence, we returned back to the pandal. But back in the house, elders learnt a lesson from innocent children.

Within no time, in a bigger circle of chairs, another game of antakshari started, only this time, it was boys v/s girls...

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Epilogue
'To kill a mocking bird' is my favorite novel, because it beautifully captures the magic of innocence and highlights the heavy price of years of prejudice has to pay.
Today, as I sit watching 'Puja-pandals' on TV, my mind drifts to the gang. People have changed, enimities have been made, but still from among the 11 of us, 5-6 are still as good friends as ever.

this character is quite regular on my blog... my friend shriram!
so he finally got his call to sail on friday in the most weird circumstances.

Feeling toatlly bored that he was not getting a call for his first sail for a couple of months now, he calls up the company to remind them that he is on their list. the company reprsentative inturn asks him "when are you ready to join". Shriram, in order to impress upon the restlessness with which he is waiting for the call, replies "Anytime you say, infact, i am ready to come tomorrow even". The company representative however, takes the figure of speech quite literally, and calls him to join the next day.

So the poor fellow, packs in a hurry, gets himself a air ticket to mumbai in the last minute, and leaves home without getting enough time to say goodbye to family and friends.

On friday he finds out that he has to fly to Dalian, a port in china to join his ship.

Travelling abroad is quite frightening, even if you are well prepared mentally, have a good idea of the country you will be visiting. I am a case of "nearly there". I was supposed to be on a flight to new york, sometime this time last year, but opted out for a masters at IIT. I sure felt the jitters of planning a trip so far from home, because finally, home is after all home.

Last year, i went to the airport to see of a friend, who was going to washington for his PhD. At the airport, I just glanced at the faces of the people travelling. It was not a tough task to point out the faces that was going out of india for the first time, a delicate mixture of eagerness, excitement, anticipation of the new place, with a fear, sadness of leaving home was clearly visible. But even among the seasoned visitors abroa, according to my face reading abilities, i could sense a little fear and a sense of holding back. Infact, to me the whole atmosphere at the international departures terminal was a mixture of fear and sadness. I did not glimpse a single face that was extremely happy, nor a send off group that was laughing and merrying.

Anyways, coming back to my friend, this was his first trip abroad. After collecting his tickets, we changed whatever money he had to USD and started for the airport. This is where, my trusted bag, that which has travelled with me to home and back weekends,to matheran , to madras and tirupati, to hyderabad and bangalore got lucky and flew to Dalian, China. Shriram in his hurry had forgotten to get a smaller cabin luggage bag to keep important documents and toileteries and a change shirt or two!


The whole day was fun and happy mood for me. But, in the evening on the way back home in the local train, parry called up to give news that shattered all the happy mood that i was in in the evening.


He called up to say that a batchmate of ours from RVCE, a fellow hostellite, AP, passed away in the evening, crushed by a bus as he slipped from his bike.

Initially, as dozens of calls started coming to me, informing me of the news, I hardly could not feel a thing.

A hostel is like a big joint family, close friends are your brothers and sister, and then you have a gang of friends, like your first cousins, and then there are fellow hostelites, people you exchange a pleasant hi-bye with, people you hug in joy when they/ you get good results/goof jobs etc, the equivalent of distant cousins, related yet not close. To me AP was in the last category, and thus a certain ambivalence in my feeligs. A part of me felt sad, but another part wanted to remain happy, wanted my brain to file the whole day of fun that i had!

But later in the night, as i tried to sleep, the whole enormity of the unfortunate incident stuck me. AP, had been a part of my life.

For two weeks, in our second week on engineering, we had to stay in our first year hostels as the second year hostel was still being renovated. AP, was my room mate for those 15-20 days. He was our team captain for our night cricket team in my final year, and we were "FEst-Hos" team-mates in our second year cricket team.
As such short burst of closeness that we spent circulated in my memory, i really started to feel that I am going to miss this person in my life, so what if we had not really spoken since we graduated from college. Tears did not come, but the heart became heavy...

It is at times like this the one comes to question faith, relegion and GOD et al.
He was most certainly like any other 20 yr old, chasing his dreams, first in an engineering college and later in a software firm, living his life, working hard, studying hard, partying hard...there was no reason that he should not live his bright future, have his share of the pie...
in some cases, he was little unlike many of us. His job meant a lot not only for him, but for his family too. The money he sent back home, was used to pay back some loans that his parents had incurred.

And afterall, he was young, with his whole life ahead...

I spent a small time, in the shoes of his mother. What trauma must she be going through...

Why GOD why??????????????

I have a stock dialogue for unfortunate events, "Whatever happens, happens for the good"...and two days ago, all I had was nothing!

Hydrangalore? = Hyderabad + Bangalore
Hyderabad + Bangalore? = Reunion trip to meet friends
The best? = The best trip ever!

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Chat as much as you want on Yahoo messenger, feel as close as possible with your friends on Skype, talk for hours on the phone without bothering about your phone bill, scrap as much as you want on Orkut,
but NOTHING beats the fun, happiness, contenment of meeting your friends in person!



A trip long planned materialized last weekend, with two days in Hyderabad, for a reunion of the first year gang ( and quite literally, reunion after first year of all four of us!), and then a 10 hour trip to Bangalore on Monday to meet my foreign bound and foreign returned classmates.

For such a wonderful trip, it started on the wrong note, horrible Hutch, refused to activate my roaming for some reason (demanding a security deposit at the last possible moment), and long draawn verbal fight over the phone ended with me getting a semi- roaming activated where I can recieve only incoming calls.


I was more than excited to go to Hyderabad, as it is the first time I was going there and was very very eager to see the city, and complete my list of having seen all the metro's of India!
Reached Hyd at 5 AM in the morning, and then waited for 3 hours for Anshu to reach. Suku and Bhavani were our gracious hosts. But all my plans for site-seeing was flushed down the drain, when lazy suku and anshu decided that the best way to spend the weekend was by eating and lazing around at home.

There was a time, not so much in the past, when this lazing around was the only thing we did. Firstly there was the canteen at college, where all the four of us would, eat and chat incessantly about all the mundane things possible (like assigning each-other characters from Harry potter, friends etc, like discussing who has lived in more number of cities, blah blah), and then in the evenings, after dinner, where we lazily walked to our other 'hangout' - the research and development block of RVCE, for our research into life and subsequent developments as a result of that research!)

Back to Hyderabad, Anshu's treat at a place named 'Our place', turned out a amazing treat, and the heavy feast virtually closed the lids on a afternoon trip to Golconda fort. Hence, the evening emulated our walks. And for the first time ( or maybe the second, but i would prefer to forget the actual first), the whole gang (all four of us) went for a 'walk' (all other possible combinations of going for a walk had been realized).
Nothing special but really special.



Dinner was at 'Bawarchi', and each of us tucked into lots and lots of biriyani.

Sunday was guys day out. Bhavani had to go to meet her cousins. And, not surprisingly, the day was spent typical guys style, beer and F1 and football and Fedrer v/s Nadal.




One year has passed since we passed out. This one year has seen all of us change so much. The phrase 'moving on with life' has accuired so much meaning, when only a year ago, it was just a cliched phrase to be used as a consolation. You know that the past is behind, that you are not living in the shadows of your past, you have patched up the holes in your sweater and feel 'warm ' now, when you are infact,in a position to laugh at a your younger self.



The last hour in Hyderabad, will forever be etched in my memory for precisely the same reason. Engineering days, these issues were matters of life and death, warranting hours and hours of discussion, advice, introspection, 'walks to the R n D', midnight calls, etc etc to be solved/ Understood, but in that final few minutes in hyderabad, those exact, the 'then-life-changing' events in our lifes were dismissed amongst so much laughter, dismissed as jokes from the past, dismissed as our naivety, dismissed so that we start a new chapter to our friendship.

Parting was really hard, especially with Anshu, who will be 'flying' away to the desert lands of Arizona in August.

All I hope is that, opportunites to meet again come again. ( I wanted to write something really senti here.....but am woefuly short of words!)


Moday dawned in Bangalore, and I felt I was back home!
My first stop was my first visit to Forum, where I met a friend from school, Sashi. 10 hours is too short, and I had to push, and hence, spoke for just one hour. Sashi, I just hope that you finally plan a trip to Bombay when Shriram comes here, to complete a 'school-gang' reunion.

Sendhil is flying to Florida.
DJ is going to go to Scotland.
Abijit plans to go to UK.
Avinash is already in Florida for the past year, and had made a quick visit back to motherland.

They were a part of the 'chemical- brothers', college mates, source of 'infinite' masti during engineering, especially the totally outrageous ways we enjoyed the final few days of the eighth semester, last year, a few weeks etched in each of our memories, for the unforgettable fun.
We had lunch at 'Samarkhand', and revived the magic of the last year.

As a surprise gift, I awarded myself, I took time out to meet my grandmother for an hour. Made both of us immensly happy. Poor granny, cannot travel to meet us in Bombay, was virtually crying when she saw me (after again! 1 year). As, usual, granny started of with advice for me. ( This time it was, not quite surprisingly altogether, not about the need to study hard, score good marks and get a good job etc, but about "THINKING" of the future, marriage, family, kids etc, and about planning all these 'events' in life). Somehow, I just love when patti gives me advice ( not so much with parents, I argue then).

12th June 2005, Bangalore City Railway station.
Firstly Avinash and then Parry, went back home as engineers. 'Chemical-brothers' gang was there in the station to see them off. The station witnessed a wild scene then.

Coincidentally ( I should ask Parry to write about imortance of coincidence in life, he can fill pages!), 12th June 2006, I was on my way back to Bangalore, and the remaining brothers of 'Chemical Brothers', those staying in Bangalore recreated the scenes at Bangalore railway station. Dj, Gunjan, Sendhil, RP, Zimba and Anshu were there.


Now, I am back to the monotonous, dry, listless life of Bombay. But, the happiness, contenment and 'life' of my friends in Hyd and Bang has caught on too, and the days here do not seem so long now!

Back in Bombay, I got another gift, quite accidentally, in a freakish way, I was contacted by an old - old, childhood friend. Called her up, and memories flowed.

Sometimes I just wish, that Time, not be so precious, that we get to plan really long holidays.
I just wish that I have Hermoinee's time turner.
I just wish that there is a Galt's gulch, where we take a month long holiday from everything every year.
I just wish that Everyone were here!


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Photos (from top-down):
(L2R) Anshu, Bhavani and Myself at 'Our-Place'
(L2R) Suku, Anshu and Myself at Charminar
Anshu imitating my posture
Lazing around on sunday afternoon at Suku's place (suku's roomie suresh is in there too!)

Bangalore photos will be uploaded shortly. Sendhil is 'BUSY' and will probably send it over this weekend.