The Road I Travel....

Nothing lasts forever, so life it up, drink it down, laugh it off, avoid the bullshit, take chances, and NEVER have regrets, because at one point, what you did was exactly what you wanted.  - Anonymous

Life is all about the choices we make, this is a cliched opening line for my blog, but its true. We become what we choose to become, be it in your personal life or in your professional life. We all would have encountered a crossroad at some point of time in our life, we stand on the edge and ponder over which road to choose, we weigh the pros and cons, consult with our friends and family and try to make a decision thats best. Growing up as an adolescent is a time where you are burdened by the expectations of your family, songs like "papa kehte hain bada naam karega..." best suit our situation. They all want us to become big in life, they dream of us becoming doctors and engineers, just because our neighbour's child is one or maybe because they think that it is the only two "respectable" professions in our community. And fresh out of school, how many of us are really sure of what we want? How many of us can truly define what a "Dream Job" is at that point of time?

I had the same experience, and I said "yes" to enrolling in an engineering college thinking that becoming an engineer is the end all and be all of everything. Clearly, I was not thinking, I was walking down the road laid down by my family. By the end of 1st semester I realized that its not as easy as it sounds, a washout in all my subjects made me realize that. One of the toughest things I've done in my life is telling my folks that "I cant do it anymore". I may sound like I had taken the easy way out, but spending another 3yrs in that dump studying calculus, thermo-fuckin-dynamics, fluid mechanics and other subjects whose name makes no sense to me, all the while feeling alienated was clearly a waste of my youth. But it is painful to see your folks' dreams come crashing down. Had I told em in the first place that Iam not interested in Engineering, atleast I would not have given them a hope of them seeing me as an Engineer. It may have been a selfish decision that I took, but its one I don't regret. I was at an all- time low in the initial few months. Getting adjusted to the fact that I wasted a year and had broken my parents' dream took some time, but as they say "Time is a great healer".

It was that one decision that had changed the course of my direction. I met new people, made some really great friends, fell in love with my high school crush, wooed her and had my heart broken, learned to let go and move on, did an MBA, met even better people there, had a lot of breath taking moments, inspired a few, was inspired by a few. The path I took taught me a lot about what I was, something which any reputed college or any glossy degree would never teach you. Now I have started my career, and I will have to make decisions which may not be of the same magnitude, but are vital decisions nonetheless for they will shape up my future. I may make bad decisions owing to rashness, inexperience, and greed.I will experiment with my job, my lifestyle, the people around me, for Iam young !! If it works out, good for me, if it doesn't atleast I wouldn't die wondering. 

"In youth we learn; in age we understand" goes a saying, it is now that I realize what it really means.

The Lost Boys

I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother and I found all three. ~Author Unknown

It is a weird feeling when you come to hear that your elder brother is getting married. The first thing that struck me was “Damn! How did he grow up so fast?”. I remember a sizeable portion of my childhood and adolescent years spending with him, he was my cousin, but we were more like best friends. Friends around whom we grow up, play an essential part in giving us some memorable instances of our childhood, and whenever I think about some of my deeds and misdeeds while growing up, it has always been my brother who would be my partner in crime. We were probably the more Iyengar version of Joey and Chandler (I Joey and he Chandler, because Joey was younger to Chandler, and the similarity between the TV characters ended there)

We were quite notorious within the family, for our low grades, raunchy sense of humour and fetish for late night TV shows. He had been my architect for every skill (read vice) that a boy has to master to have a reputation among his peers, he had been my tutor on subjects ranging from “How to hold the bat” to “How to subtly check out a chick” (on which I’m still working) to “What breath freshener to have after consuming alcohol”, and I had been his staunch supporter for whatever he did. I praised him to the skies when he had a blink-and-miss role in a school play where his only line was to cry “Pitaji!” (Father) in anger, I even took sides with him when he was graded low scores for class test, and I’ve even admired him for doing the most lowly of jobs with utmost sincerity. There were times when I was even scoffed at for having a poor taste in looking upto someone who was traveling in the same boat as I was, but now even I am amazed at how much he has grown since having started his career. He started his career with a mediocre pay and within the next few years he had taken some giant strides in his professional life. Now at a very young age he has already toured quite a few exotic locations and rubbed shoulders with quite a few high flyers. (Honestly speaking, I still can’t figure how he did it!)

We very rarely get a chance to meet each other these days, even in the family gatherings I feel as if I’m in the midst of strangers searching for that friendly face. And when we do meet, our talk revolves around serious stuffs such as job, earnings and responsibilities, a far cry from all the usual stuff when a couple of testosterone- charged/ hormones raging teenagers would talk about. And with him getting married in another few months, he would have started a new innings with a new partner and I will be left all alone at the crease. We have come a long way from being two boys who used to play cricket in the scorching heat, breaking windows and flowerpots, waking up neighbours from their mid morning siesta, two boys who looked out for each other, two boys who used to ping each other whenever something naughty was running on TV. He may have grown on from being a boy to a man, but I am still stuck somewhere in between, refusing to grow up, hating to have responsibilities, craving to remain that pimple- faced boy who loved hanging out with his brother, his best bud, indulging in shenanigans. Those days are gone, and the Lost Boys will remain lost…..

Bro, if by accident you are reading this, I wish you a great life ahead, hope you go for a sensible and pretty wife who wont stop you from hanging out occasionally with me, and thanks for all the cool stuffs you have taught me over the years, you shall remain my Gurucool. I have kept out the other little but vital details that were a part of our childhood, and your escapades in the Rainbow Nation shall remain a secret, so breathe easy.

Its Never Too Late to Apologize

Few weeks back on a lazy Saturday…

I said: Hey what happened? What did I say?

She said: u said enough!!

I: that’s it, I don’t need this attitude from u, u do wat u want wid ur life, I give a rat’s ass

She: thanks, and don’t again poke ur nose in my business.

I signed out of G-talk, “ hmpf! Women- you seen one, you seen em all” I said to myself…. Disgusted with myself for trying to be a good friend by listening to her troubles. I realized that I was harsh with her, but I did not want to tell her that I was sorry for that, why should I? I felt what I did was right; don’t friends have the liberty of being harsh on their buddies, just a kick on their backsides so that they stay in line? Until that day I had considered her to be a girl sans attitude, it’s hard to find such a breed these days, and before that day, I imagined her to be the last girl I would have a fiery argument with.

She is very down to earth, quite pretty, bad at cracking jokes, dumb sometimes, brilliant most of the times, sensible, and the kinda girl you will want your mom to meet (hope my mom doesn’t read this, but with the number of relatives going through my blog these days, she is gonna get to know about it anyway). Funny thing with relationships is that you never know when it moves onto a new level, and the next thing you know, you start making decisions for them. You give them career advice, counsel them when things go wrong in their love life, tell them what book is a must read and which movie is a must watch, and you end up ridiculing the life they live when they do not follow your “words of advice”. Amidst all this, what you fail to realize is that you are not they, and they know what is best for them. and when you are rudely awoken you feel hurt and you ask yourself “I felt what I did was right, don’t friends have the liberty of being harsh on their buddies? I was just helping her out”.

I spent my weekend living in a state of denial, unable to concentrate on my chores, finding fault with everything around me except myself. I made a solemn decision of not talking to her again, “Who needs her, Iam better off without her” I told myself, but I knew I was lying. We all need someone to talk to, a friend, a friend who would listen to our ramblings on how hard it is to find a seat in a train, a friend who listens patiently to how dull our day at the office was, a friend who listens to the bitching of a non-existent love life- she was that kind of a friend, and I blew it all away. I spent Sunday evening thinking of “replacing” her with someone else, but none could take her spot, I shared that connection with no one else. No one else was that patient.

Monday morning came and I sleepwalked through the routine of getting ready to work, thinking of how dull a week it will be without her, “I should apologise to her” a part of me said, “even if she doesn’t forgive me I could go to sleep knowing that I tried to make amends”. But the arrogant side of me countered, “Why should you apologise? It’s not your fault, don’t lose your dignity maaan”.  But you don’t lose dignity by apologizing to a friend, do you?

I sent her an sms, that cheap messenger who conveys our deepest desires to fears; it has been a faithful carrier of my emotions from apologies to anger to mush, and gracefully did she accept my apology. I may have sounded selfish here, you may feel that I apologized only because I needed someone to talk to, but the fact is we all need someone to talk to, someone who doesn’t just hear us, but listens to us. I also learnt that you should respect your friends for who they are; they may not take up our advice all the time, our tastes may not match, our temperaments may differ, our opinions may not be the same, but being together inspite of all the differences is the hallmark of a good relationship.

Its never too late to apologize to someone who is worth it.  

Flashbacks of a Fool - Missing my Wonder Years

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
- Anais Nin

I knew I would go through this phase, no matter how much I tried running away from this. For the past three months I would wake up from my deep slumber and go through the drill of getting ready to work in a state of drowsiness. Today as I was getting ready to work , a sense of emptiness hit me, something I’ve been avoiding for the past one month, the feeling that Iam starting to miss my college life. My college was shitty, it was nothing like the “B-School” that it claimed to be in its brochure, though it was a far from perfect "B-school" it was its rustic self  that I missed . There are some times in life when you are meant to follow a path, it’s part of a destiny that you can’t fight. And when you choose this path, your life collides with a person who makes a huge impact on your life. Now when I look back, I feel like I was meant to take this route, I was meant to study in this college, for I didn’t meet one, but I met a dozen people to whom I owe some really wonderful moments of my life.

My college life was a roller-coaster ride of emotions, there were times when I felt like I was living a soap opera, hell, it can even be made into a movie, and if written as a book it would be a best seller, “Five Point Someone” will be made to look like a "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip in front of it. We may have captured lots of moments in the camera, but some of the best moments in life can never be captured in camera. There were the secret crushes, the not-so-secret crushes(for which I did get an earful), the Trip (that changed things forever), the jealousies, the heartbreaks, the shocking revelations, the bitter confrontations, the back stabbings, the forgivings, the redemption, the touching moments, the late night sms-es, the group studies, the college events, the seminars, the surprises, the birthday treats, the canteen gapshap, the cold shoulder treatments, the pranks, the advices, the “I’ll be there for you” moments, the triumphs, the failures, the gossips (and a lot of em!!) Whew!! And all this happened with semester exams in the corner and in between boring and dull class lectures !!

There were a dozen different people who have entered my life and have carved a special place of their own. They were a dozen different characters, with differing temperaments, there were times when they have been a shoulder to lean onto, and times when they would slap me to show me that the path Iam taking is wrong. I’ve jabbered on from dusk till dawn with some of them, I’ve even shown the darker side of mine to some of them, whereas in the company of a few I just preferred to sit back and listen to them talk, not because I had nothing to say, but because just listening to them chattering on would make me feel complete, and drown all my worries away. All of them have stuck with me inspite of what I was, I was moody at times, hard to approach, acid tongued on some days, down and out on other days, but they had always stuck beside me, always offering me a kind word or two even when I was in no mood to hear it.

Come semester exams we all would get busy getting photocopies of notes, textbooks and pieces of info from the Internet that would constitute as our “study material”, there were the occasional fights on study materials not being passed around to other members of the pack. There would be advices passed via sms on the night before the exam on what to study, and how to study, answers would be marked from question papers and diligently passed along to my friends. The most irritating part was the way answers were discussed after the exam was written, that was the time of the day where I would plug my ears and nod along to whatever was being said.  

Its all changed now, forget meeting them, even catching up with them over the phone would seem impossible. At the end of the day, the plush office, the unlimited coffees, the pay, the security that comes with having a job will never be a substitute for the completeness you get when you are in the company of friends, for getting your dreams this is the price we pay. I guess its a part of growing up, coming to terms with a changing life sucks, people change, our priorities change,and the next thing we know we will be married and will have no time for reminiscing our good ol' days, but those two years will be the best days of my life, where few guys and gals met as empty- handed individuals, and left as friends carrying something of each other - memories. This piece is a salute to my group of dirty dozen, Geek, Chatterbox, Big Brother, Paan, Beets, Vaikyam, Ratwoman, and Lady Kong, (now people pls don’t fight over the order) thanks for spreading some light and some fireworks in my life.