Monday, June 26, 2006

Living in the Past

I move down the steps, open the gates, move to the car, put on my goggles, put on the songs and slowly move out on to the beautiful and butter-like road. All the ingredients of a normal college day. The time is over 9.00 A.M so I am, as usual, going to miss the first lecture.

The goggles are a bit hazy, so I remove them to rub on my T shirt ..Tie.. why am I wearing a tie on my T shirt?

I park my car, sway the bag over my shoulders and move towards the building.

There are high chances that the Prof. was 5 minutes late, as it is the case with first lectures especially on Monday mornings. And 5 minutes is too much time for the whole class to get out of the lecture room, make it to the canteen and have our own attendance there. Some brave souls would be sent to the get the ‘absentees’ from the lecture room.

As I enter the building, I expectedly find a Pin drop silence. Yet another mass Cut. But wait. No one is absent. Everyone is there. But no one is shouting or throwing chalks or paper planes. I get a wry smile before a sit and open my mail box.

A pop up informs me of the meeting. I collect my notepad and pen and move towards the conference room.

“Only 1 bat. Where’s the heavier one?”.

“Which ground today?”

“Where are the Damn Hostellers. Still in bed?”

“Bedi, you will come 1 down!!”


“Sidharth, make sure you close all the bugs by 1.00 today”


“No! I want to open today”


Lunch Time. I am sitting at a dirty table and half broken chair devouring the tandoori aloo parantha with a bucketful of butter on it. It doesn’t satisfy me, so I shout at the top of my voice and call for another one.

I wave at my colleague standing 20 meters away but He doesn’t see me. So I call him on his mobile to show where I am.


Its 5.00 PM. My gang tells me the evening plan. We will be gathering at the usual meeting place – which incidentally is my house. Then a visit to the plaza on the bikes, a round at the ‘Geri Route’ on my car, then going for some gapp-shapp(chit chat) at lake, finally a chilled thick chocolate and night out as my friends’ parents are out of town.

A sudden requirement has come and I will have to complete it by EOD (End Of Day)


My mother calls asking about when I will be home.

“It will be a night out”, I tell her.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Breaking the Inertia..

Inertia in simple terms is tendency of a body to be in a state of rest or motion unless and until an external force acts on it.
We all experience such kind of inertias everyday. Inertia in the sense we are part of a schedule – getting up, going to office, coming back, TV, Sleeping – I have covered a normal day and its major components.
A weekend is a holiday for the purpose of breaking this inertia and replenish ourselves. But in many cases, it seldom is. It also follows a similar routine – getting up late and TV being the major part of it.
How can this inertia be disrupted? What happens when this is done? What are the after effects?
Lots to ponder about..
Well, it happens when you are working at a place X. and you decide to head to a place Y, where it takes time and effort to go. Where you plan and look forward to go. It may be you are heading home after 4 -5 months or it may happen that you visit some special friends after say a year.
This weekend was a break in inertia for me. I decided to break the normal day mould and be cast into some old form of living in a place where we had started this life – life outside the college where life makes us dance to its tunes.. tim lak a lak…yes, it was a trip down memory lane to Hyderabad.. meeting friends – some after years, doing things which we had forgotten – like playing dumb shards, roaming from 1 mall to another despite being tired to the limit, talking about the Punjabi rasoi’s and catch 22’s (which had served our tummy’s for most part of the 4 months in Hyd), eating paranthas in breakfast (it was only at home where I had last eaten them), trying unsuccessfully to get movie tickets etc etc. I can go on and on…
Coming back to the thing called inertia; it is strange that how quickly it can change sides. A day ago, I was in a different set of inertia, living normally and suddenly, unknowingly I had transformed into another one. And as is usually the case with inertia, it is really tough to get out of it. The fact that proves it: while coming, I had reached the Bus stand an hour earlier and while going it were merely 15 - 20 minutes early (not usually the case with me)
The long, zeal less journey back acted as a sponge to counter the forces that were acting to change the state of constant fun and masti. Had a last look at the around 100 fotos clicked on the fone, put on the head phones and slept.
As the morning light peeked through the curtains of the Volvo, I had reached Mysore. And then since then it was business as usual. Feels so strange – last evening I was chatting to a person sitting in front of me and next morning I am some 700 kms away – still chatting but with help of some satellite.
One thing I have noted: it happens with only some set of people – no matter how many days, months or years after you are meeting them, it seems it was only a few minutes or hours ago that you had seen them. Though you hug and shake hands but even if you don’t, it doesn’t seem odd. May be, they have become so integrated and woven into your being that distances don’t matter.