Stuff we forget sometimes #2

Sometimes Life is just like a jigsaw puzzle. You have all the pieces there, you just need to find out what fits where and how to get the perfect picture.

Stuff we forget sometimes #1

Some people will hate you for the same reasons others love you. Don't worry about it.

The Chat House

I thought about my friends, all their phone numbers, all the dates, all the distances. I didn’t need to worry about that any more. After all there were so many of them; So many of them and so little time. It would save time and it would save money. Larry and Brin had announced their great invention. It was pure genius. I did not know how it could be described to those who had just written letters all their life and never seen a telephone. I found it more difficult to describe it to the generation stuck with the telephone. The future was here. People knew it various names and forms. In conglomeration, I thought of it as: “The Chat House”. It was a place where friends could get together. Get together and Talk. Talk at once to many. Many for hours. Hours for no price. Almost no price. And it was real. Almost real.

Thanks to the Chat House, gone were the days when you would lose a friend because they had moved to other town. Gone were the days when you would not know where your best friend in class 2 was vacationing this summer. No more losing touch because you are too busy to call. The Chat House provided a place where you could enter any time and find your friends waiting for you. To share their life. Sindhu and I had known each other for 2 years. When I left for Delhi for my college, we both made an unsaid promise to stay in touch. We both thought we would call each other often. We both knew we were lying to ourselves. Friendship isn’t forever, Love is. But then there came the Chat House. We talked often. I felt she was sitting in front of me, almost. We smiled. We laughed. We winked. I could feel her there, almost. We shared as always. Sometimes less sometimes more. Sometimes she would not be there when I came but she would leave me a message. Sometimes she would ask if was there and I would not reply but I knew that she would understand that I am busy. Or hoped she did. Sometimes she would not talk to me even when she was there, but atleast I knew she was there. She would always be there. As would all other the people. With their smiling faces, changing with every passing occasion. The House had become grand. Grand with more friends to share. Share every moment. Moments captured in pictures. Pictures lined on the walls. The Walls echoing with comments. Comments filling the House.

The House could bring random strangers from random places together. Strangers were becoming friends. It began an era of belief. Such was the power of the House. They would tell about their life to a stranger sitting miles away thinking he could help or at least he could care. And may be they did. People trusted in people they had never met and would never meet but in them they found solace. I never understood why. May be deep inside they knew that destiny worked through chance or may be because in the House you get a chance to paint a life-like canvas and had poetry written on it. Some did not believe in the Chat House. They said Faces could be masks. Smiles could be faked. Grief could be concealed. Grief could faked. And so could any other emotion. But those who believe do not need reason. Or listen to it.

Years had passed. Life had got busier and Chat House had become a staple. Sindhu and I would look for each other in the house. Searching in the crowd, the pile of faces. She would leave a message when she didn’t find me. Sometimes I would. Sometimes we did find each other and we talked. I could predict and recognize her overstretched Hi anywhere. Her short forms. Her final bye. Her three course Good bye routine. I would know she was sitting right infront of me and yet sometimes I was not sure if she was listening to me all the time. At times I felt I was sharing my time with her with the entire world. I knew something was missing. I just didn’t realize it. What I missed was her presence. Her complete presence. Her presence as if my time with her was just my time with her. Unshared. Uninterrupted. Real. And I missed her voice. The crispness of the hello, the stutter before the lie, the coolness of the don’t worry and the warmth of the good night. I just didn’t realize it then. Such was the power of the House.

We got more used to being in the crowd at the House. Just knowing that we were there in the celebration of red, green and orange lights and decorated walls, We could see the exhibitions of the pictures in the corridors and heard the chatters echoing through the walls but we did not call out. Did not call to hear her voice because she would always be there. Because Life had got busier. And Friends were becoming strangers.

Of all things God created, Time is the most complex – if we can assume God did create Time. Its relation with events is complex. Its relation with emotion is that of unconcern. A day came when Sindhu left. Left all worlds – real and otherwise. I would look for her among the pile of faces and hers would be grey forever. The Walls of the House echoed with a requiem for days and then faded in the corridor of time. I wished I could break the chat House and see her for real for one last time. In skin and flesh. In scent and voice. In smile and sigh. But the relation of time with emotion is that of unconcern. I didn’t break away from the Chat House. I needed the sea of faces to believe that she was lost somewhere. People would ask questions. Friends would ask questions. I tried Silence. Friends understand Silence but in the House silence meant absence. But I could face them because I know now. In the Chat House, Grief could be concealed, Smile could be faked, Faces could be masks. In the Chat House, Strangers could be Friends and Friends could be Strangers.

Seven reasons why KGP hates 2008-2009

Kgp rocks! Yeah, hell it does … but, not so much in the year 2008 -09. The passing out batch would have loved to have cherished memories of their last year at kgp, but ended up missing on what could have been an unforgettable year due to few unprecedented events, some enforced circumstances and a few decisions made from our own side. Here is looking back at 2008 -09 – few reasons kgp hates the last academic year.

1. Yucky number Eleven: If some hall had actually executed the idea of designing the main chatai with “11 PM” written on it with the two middle fingers making the “1”s, it would have at least won the KGP-most-popular-chatai award. What with the campus taking the face of a deserted ghost town, no Pappu going to Bhaski at midnight, no matkeys (read: M.Techs, pardon me for my bad spelling ) coming out of the library at 1 PM, no couples saying sweet goodbyes at 2AM, signing for entering my own hall! The no-entry to the campus post 11 PM, meant goodbye to late nights at dear GIH, TP and Sher-e-Punjab. We did learn the art of staying out till morning but only after few enthusiastic men had the glory of sitting in a DC. Not to forget the concerns of the professors: “How would someone go to the lab if they wanted to work on their project late night!”. Yes Sir, that’s the thing we are actually worried about.


2. Ye illu illu kya hai, ye illu illu? This is what the kgpians might be singing every Diwali this year onwards. As a riposte to the “Eleven PM rule” or whatever, illu got canceled/ postponed and with it has set in the disease that might kill off the sacred, most unique event of kgp. For many ‘illu’ is not a mere competition but a festival which imbues Diwali with a completely new meaning. Of course no one loves the sweat, the oil, the grime, the sleeplessness, the “jab tak ye chatai nahin ho rahi, koi nahin so raha”, the “koi 2nd yr room me mila to *****..”, the “rangoli room me koi AC lagwao” etc, but nonetheless the night outs are priceless. The juniors get the kgp funde, no OP can ever teach and seniors share like no other time. For some the bonding with the fellow hall-mates makes it worth it, but for an equal number it means staying pin drop silent under a blanket in a locked room and wondering if the seniors actually break the door, or taking late night trips to the nearby Balarampur village. Either ways illu was always fun and memorable and only left with more stories to tell. As the debate continued – “Which is better : hundreds of students covered in oil and sweat, sulking over their defeat in illu at the night of Diwali; or killing off an age old tradition, memories of which we all cherish?”, the people of kgp chose not to go with it this year. Many missed illu, many not so much. As a major chunk of illu-funda passes out with the passing out batch, the fate of the next year’s illu hangs in a balance.


3. The Great Depression: No not the one in 1930s, but the one which is here, clear and present, alive and breathing. Don’t you feel like hitting someone when they comment about the great paying jobs the IITians crack or read articles on how every IITian creates a hundred job etc. We understand that the most important thing (and most probably the only thing) that the IIT life has taught us is that no matter how much things get messed up, we will persevere and end up winners. I am sure we all would but the present situation sucks, the thrilling four year long saga has ended in an unprecedented anticlimax for many. As one wonders if the decision of those who chose to switch to a 5year dual degree course from B.Tech course in IITK was for better or for worse, keep your fingers crossed for things to come.


4. The Black Sunday: Lets not talk about it and for once not let bygones be bygones.


5. What does ‘Vice’ mean as in “YO V.P.”? Kudos to the two very deserving candidates for the post of ‘Vice’ President. That was a real close fight they gave with a margin of just 19 votes. Such a close competition can only mean that the candidates were almost equally good, but one might wonder if only the pacts and the king-makers are getting better instead of the competition itself. We hope that someday the people of kgp actually think of going to the ‘Vice’ President who they have themselves elected for the responsible post, before they break into some administrator’s bungalow (or break his head, for that matter).... Did anyone say “fraility”. (For the records “Jai Matah Di” :) and .. next time, hope we have all the options available on the election choice list).


6. Hole day: Hall day left hole in the life of poor Pappu (read: common kgpian) whose sole interest in Campus Elections was Hall-days and the major reason he waits for hall days is his annual ritual of getting all his stuff out and getting the cob webs removed by an in-huge-demand hall sweeper. For the rest, Hall-day is one more occasion to get together and bhaat (which all kgpians just looove to do and cherish every moment of it) and then you get it all in the comfort of someone’s hospitable clean room. Not to mention the once-in-a-year-time opportunity of showing your special guests (read: SNites), how clean and organized you like to keep your heavenly abode, getting a few comments here and there on the walls to show off all year while keeping a mental count of the increase in the number of special guests (again read: SNites), over the year. No hall-day means less reason to celebrate or rather 8 reasons less to celebrate and Pappu is sad and is still sitting in a cob-webbed room.


7. No ‘Zig-zag-zig-zag’ – GC getting scrapped. AAaargh No! This means no – “ Humare final year me Soc-cult GC aayi thi bhai!” and no “drams cup 3 saal se hum utha rahe hain” and no “ **** ki leli, zig-zag-zig-zag” etc. The year is totally incomplete without the year end excitement of GC. (P.S. Azad was leading in Soc cult :))

If someone thinks the year wasn’t the worst thing possible maybe that’s because their transcript never reached home.