Why I miss my own love story

I was reading the book – 2 States- by Chetan Bhagat. Really a nice read!

The good thing is that it captures the stereotypes of the North-South divide in a really funny manner, yet it never wavers away from the facts. Many a time I will be reading a certain piece of para and I realized, “arey bhai ye to mere saath bhi ho chukka hai.”

The Tam-Brahm dude I was talking to last week was behaving in the same manner as mentioned in this novel. Or the Punjabi Aunty I met last Sunday was exactly the same as the Bobby Aunty of the novel.

This post of mine is neither a review of the novel; neither is it a lecture on perfect Indian behaviour. The simple fact is; after reading this novel, I am starting to miss my own love story.

Don’t be startled! First hear my side of the story.

“Yaar badi plain and simple bita di. Kabhie gharwalo ko koi tension hi nahi di...” :P 

It would have been really nice, if I took a South Indian girl to my mother and said, “ye le maa teri hone wali bahu.”

Just imagining her next expression is giving me fits of laughter. And add to that my other relatives, my millions of nose-poking uncles and aunties and their zillions of offspring – who will henceforth be known as my cousins.

You might call me a sadist bastard; yes that is what I am. And I really don’t care about the snoot society. I enjoy the misery of people around me. And so does everybody else. Do you really believe that your friend care for you when he enquires about your recent breakup. Or your uncle and aunty really are worried for you when they console you during your period of unemployment. Feasting on other people misery has been the favourite past time of everyone. And I am pretty sure that jealousy was the first emotion humans experienced, much before love or hate. So yes I am a sadist bastard.

It all started with my cousin getting married to a non-Marwari girl. Nothing special about it or so I thought. Then suddenly I realized the growing concern of everyone around me to teach me about values, traditions, demerits of love marriage, problems of inter-caste relationships, etcetera, etcetera!

It didn’t help the matter that the idiot cousin has been the closest to what I call a friend since childhood. We practically discuss every small matter between us.

The scene became so comical that now only you have to say my name and a girl’s name in one complete sentence together. It was enough to get everyone charged up and come rushing to me.

You might think, “I would be pissed off at all this scepticism and mistrust.” On the contrary I was enjoying all this. To make the matter spicier I would add some random names to the discussion as if I spelt the name by mistake.

Aah! Those were the golden days.

“Per abhi kuch nahi hai naa yaar, gharwalo ko pareshan karne ko...”

That is why I thought, “how about an original tale instead of all the fake rumours.” And not just any tale, but a proper filmy one complete with the north-south divide. I am ready to throw in the rich-poor divide as well. But the problem is with my IIM salary, I am left neither rich nor poor. So I have to forgo this twist.

In all this thoughts I really pity my friends who had a love relationship and were married happily and effortlessly. Do you really know what you missed?

Yaar thoda struggle karte, ghar wale nahi mante, thoda tum unhe manate, thoda wo tumhe samjhate, is beech ladki ki shaadi kahi aur fix ho jati, tab to life mein twist aata.

My love hate relationship

I was in the middle of writing a perfectly normal post, and there I spot her again.

Oh man! Come on!

Just a few days back I drove her out of my room. How shameless can she be? Can’t she notice, that I don’t like her? In addition to that, there is nothing in my 'perfectly clean' room for her.

Then I realized I not only ‘don’t like’ her, I am also afraid of her.

Yes, I admit, the fearless Tarun Goyal is afraid of lizard and for that matter, I am afraid of anything and everything that creeps. I just can’t stand them. And to add to my woe, none of my friends share my emotions. Just plain emotionless bastards!

They are perfectly okay about sharing their rooms with some complete stranger. They don’t mind if she is just crawling on the wall of their room or creeping on their floor. Not me, though! I tried to do this a lot of times, acting all cool, as if I don’t care, if it is in my room or not. But the longest I was able to do so was for 30 seconds.

So this time also I have to drive her out.

By now, I have more or less perfected the art of driving a lizard out of my room. The path was never easy, it was full of obstacles, and I learnt a lot by committing mistakes. With my lizard-repellant art, I went on to drive her out. Again!

After my inevitable victory, I thought this is becoming too much of a regular affair. So I turned to the great Google to help me out. Googled: “How to keep lizards out?”

I got nothing substantial. Too rub salt on my wounds, every search result will start with "most of the women are afraid of...". Come on you sexist pigs. Men are not always supposed to be brave. I also have the right to be afraid. I only got this little piece of crap. I have no idea whether it works or not. I don’t care, because I am not going to try it.

So I don’t know how to keep lizard out. What I do know is how to effectively drive lizard out of your room, once it gets in.

1. Keep a long stick/broom/pole handy with you. For me, it is always the curtain bar.
2. Close every almirah doors, drawers, dustbin covers and any other such things. I learned this lesson, a very hard way. It is a very tragic story, but some other day.
3. Identify the current location of your target.
4. Open all the windows and doors of your room. It might backfire sometimes though, because as you drive this creepy character from one exit, another one can take entry from the other side. But “risk to spiderman ko bhi lena padta hai, fir tum to ‘whatever’ ho”
5. Based on the current location of the target, identify an exit option for your unwanted guest.
6. Using your weapon (curtain bar in my case), tap on the opposite side, to where you want the guest to go. It means the guest should always be between, the door and the pole. As it will not like to run towards the pole, so it will run towards the door.
7. As soon as she goes out of the door, shut the door quickly. Shut all windows, and take a deep breathe, relax, you are safe now. Nothing can happen to you.

Some words of caution:

1. Always try to position yourself on an elevated place, like your bed, or table or chair. You never know the creep might want to take a stroll on the floor.
2. Always maintain a distance of minimum of one meter. Otherwise, in case, if it jumps towards your side, you might die of heart attack. I was almost on the verge on one, and now I am more cautious.

Even after all these, she manages to get hold of you, God be with you. ☹
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Why changes are so hard to accept?

Just another dream, Sharma jee aur unki ek aur Sabha, Neta and me. We are listening to some weird stuff and ideas from Sharma Jee-the great director, thinker and the ultimate doer. We are discussing something very intently like most of our after-tea evening talks sitting in front of Sharma’s computer. The computer which has produced such geniuses in terms of Sharma production videos, taken on the might of Rohit Vats in the intense battles of AOE and sometimes a dear friend for Sharma in his private moment. Just another lazy evening in a city in northern India…

Suddenly I woke up, its 10:15 am. Oh shit! I have a class and I can’t afford to miss it otherwise a grade cut awaits me in SBM. Its funny when I reflect how I have managed to reach in an IIM. In engineering if it was Kapil, now its Axat who has taken the responsibility of waking me up!

Just to give some statistics, I have missed some three odd classes; all of them had class timings different than that of Axat. To add to that, I missed another whole day of lectures to just watch Sehwag bat. So I can’t afford to miss this class. Defying all the kinematics I brushed my hair, wore the jeans and Tee and rushed towards the class. It is on times like this when I really utilize my height and long strides. Only five minutes late for the 10:15 class, not bad I would say.

Today, the date is December 09, 2009. After ten minutes of listening to the lecture (or basically pretending to do so), I relax a bit, the cool AC air above me helping a lot in the cause. Today seems like a different day; I want to remain awake in the class. I am not feeling like playing cards as well and my laptop is also not with me. So inadvertently my thoughts wander towards the dream I was having before rushing to the class. A series of thoughts rush in my mind... The Raman hostel inner circle, Limbdi corner, bills running to more than Rs. 100 in a Rs. 2-chai-stall, Raj-corner’s chole-kachauri. Amid all these my thoughts rush towards the most important part of them all- my batch-mates and college friends.

Today, the date is December 09, 2009. Some 30 months past my college days. But in this jet-age a lot has changed in this 30 odd months. People have left jobs, people have changes jobs, some went to Belgium, and some just returned from a foreign assignment in the States, others have decided to settle in the States. Some have joined another college for higher learning; some have just completed their two-year courses and landed themselves in classy jobs. Neta is having a party at Murti’s place. And Sharma, well Sharma, and the enigma he is; he is living the dream with a nice pay-cheque every month.

In all these tumultuous and chaotic period with so many transformations nothing remains same. Once upon a time all the night-outs were not sufficient to spend time with one another. When the unit of time was measured not in minutes or hours but the number of beer bottle still left to finish. The pace of life was as smooth and obstacle-free as the free-flowing Ganga at Shivala Ghat. Now the online community posts have dried and catching up means an occasional ‘Hi’ on messenger. So much has changed when one never thought in all those four years that life would ever evolve in any other form.

Today, the date is September 21, 2009. I have just de-boarded the flight coming from New Delhi and hired a taxi to my hostel. The phone rings. I was actually expecting a call from Jhansi (not place Jhansi but my friend Jhansi, yes that is his name). So finally I am going to meet the Civilians, some of them for the first time after college life. Just to make sure I won’t miss the meet I scheduled and rescheduled and then again scheduled my travel plan to be in Indore on the morning of Sep 21. This was the kind of start I was looking for my second-term, and what a start it is. The occasion: Jhansi’s engagement and as usual we have a blast.

In retrospect I think what if Baba and Munnu were not there in the wedding. As in all these I must admit one thing, Baba has not lost any of his charm and antics. It’s a pity that I was not able to attend his wedding. So he kept us quite engaged with his trademark statements and his self-proclaimed dada-giri to say.

I never thought it would be this way. Probably I was being a bit irrational when I thought it would continue in the same manner. I thought that all would always remain the same, wherever they might be, the situation will remain same. I could not have been much wrong. Probably I had taken those four years too seriously. A phase comes when things drift apart.

Today, it is some random Saturday evening: In a flat in Salt Lake, Kolkata, and the year is 2007 or 2008, I don’t remember exactly. Fourteen IT-BHU guys in one single room, surprisingly none of them drunk, because it’s the Adarsh meet. The image flashes like a recently taken photograph.

Another Saturday night, the landlord calls me:

“Tarun, please ask your friend to not make so much so much noise.”

I am too intoxicated to make any meaning of what he is saying but still I am in his good books, and I have to maintain that. So I come back to explain my predicament to Mangal. In the meantime Bhaiya is puffing away his Chilam filled with Bhole Baba’s Prasad.

If you got to do something, do it right. That seems to be the motto for Bhaiya.

He has been on a diet of Ganja since the time anyone remembers so he can put to shame all of us taken together with just his single puff. Mangal, Barood and Gaur are again involved in some seemingly serious discussion, about the person who lives inside our brain. He, who manages the plates! Plates, which separate one thought from another, good from bad, evil from angel.

Talk about globe-championship, give me a chilam filled with Ganja and I can give you the OB toppers.

Meanwhile Bihari has just puked for the nineteenth time, without realizing it and he is content in his own world. Kholu, unaware of all this is wandering around, talking over his cell-phone, the mannerism truly indicating a girl on the other end.

Another random evening, all of us have returned from the office frustrated and happy to see each other’s faces. So the beer bottles open and the suit of cards are arranged. It is one of those days I am going to remember for my entire life. This is going to be the day when I will enforce a score of 2 on my opponents at the game of 29 in cards. A historic day for me, a great victory for me, so Mangal and I rejoice, not so much in our victory, but at the audacious idiocy of our opponent.

Today, the date is December 09, 2009. I am sitting in the class, not dozing off surprisingly, because I have been thinking. So, really, was there any purpose at all, of the entire dream. Why is it that life moves on? Why is it that changes are so hard to accept?

I am yet to find the answers.

For the uninitiated: Sharma, Neta, Jhansi, Baba, Munnu, Murti, Barood, Mangal, Gaur etc are the actual names of some of my friends. I don’t know what had these people done to their parents to deserve such fate…