Speed of Light

Sometimes, I wonder if all our best relationships happen in transit, often with people we may never ever meet or meet again. All that is beautiful is ephemeral and most of what is ephemeral acquires a beauty of near-preternatural intensity.

Ye tumhaari meri baatein

As the absolute last and final day of college draws inexorably closer, it seems everyone is feeling this bittersweet sensation of an era drawing to an end. A senior had once told me I would do well only to make business contacts in medical college and that I won't have made any real friends by the end of it. I just wish he'd stuck around to see how wrong he was.

We're all loving each other a little bit more than we ever have done in the last five and a half years. I guess we've all got our 'graduation goggles' on and the campus suddenly feels like a wistfully beautiful place to hang around with all the people you wish you had just a little more time to get to know better.

I've spent the last few weeks having this same conversation over and over and over with different people, "I wish I'd known you like this in second year. We'd have been better friends." or "Why didn't we hang out more? You're awesome!"

I was talking to T. about this last night and he was rather philosophical about it. He said we were like logs of wood carried downstream by the river-current, to draw close and then drift apart, buffeted by the force of the water. He said this was a metaphor the Geeta offered up about the transient nature of all relationships in life.

Wherever he managed to glean a Geeta to read through I may never know, but he did have a point. Such was life.

I told him I had this dreadfully forlorn sense of something important slipping away from me, a sense I'd never had in school or junior college. Back then, we'd all stay close by. Of course, we'd bump into each other we thought. But not this time. People will go off to different cities in different states or even different countries on different continents.

This was a real parting of ways. We are all done growing up now. Real life starts here on. There will always be a twinge of sadness for friends lost and friendships not mended. Even that idea of a real what-if for that one person who got away.

But it doesn't matter. We've got our lives stretching out in front of us still. And maybe the future has some real pleasant surprises in store for us.

And for what it's worth, there are always new friends to be made and old friends to be rediscovered.

Speaking of new friends, Astha of the charming letter in the previous post has just passed along a lovely blog-award which I am very grateful indeed to receive. Her post here has already led me to discover more blogs and through them, peek into more lives and perhaps make some new friends.

For that, I owe her great thanks. And from me, here's to all that could have been, all that was and most importantly, all that will be! :)

For a funky fifteen-year-old!

So last week, I read Astha's blogpost here which was a charming letter to her fifteen-year old self, full of pieces of advice and warnings and some much-needed reassurance. Quite frankly I loved the idea of writing to a younger version of me, and so if one of you is boarding your time machine any time soon, please deliver it for me, won't you?

So here goes.

Dear Cookie (that's what they call you in school I believe),

Before you ask me that question that you've been pondering so much recently, let me tell you the answer is 'yes'. Yes, you are going to, it'll take you seven years to figure it out but it will happen for you.

Also, let me get the answers to your other questions out of the way first. No, you do not make it into the state merit list. You miss it by three marks. And no, it doesn't matter eventually. Yes, you do get into that junior college your grandpa's been telling you so much about and yes, you do meet some pretty special people there.

No, you do not hook up with M. and trust me, he is sooo not the right guy for you. Three months into junior college, he'll give you a hilarious speech about how he thinks he should only date girls with straight hair because curly hair indicate 'wild' type genes and they'd be bad to mix into his straight-haired 'recessive' gene-pool. Yeah, he'll really say that to you. See, he's not as bright as Sarla teacher tells the class he is. Not nearly.

But you know what? You do meet a very nice and extremely interesting guy that year. I'll give you a hint now. Join the film club and attend their Iranian movie screenings on the weekends. Oh, and sit in the third row on the left. Smile at the tall guy with the thick glasses who'll sit down beside you. He'll tell you your smile is his favourite thing about you. However, don't try to delude yourself into thinking he is The One. There is no such thing in real life. Nevertheless, you'll have a lot of fun and he will teach you many life-lessons. Like how to let go of someone you love when it's time.

There's your questions answered. Now, time for some advice. Your team-mates on the Science Quiz team will be your best buds. One of them will go to MIT. But try and be nice to them both.

Keep writing that poetry. It's not as brilliant as you think it is sometimes but it's not as pointless as you think it is at other times, either.

Be especially nice to Chaitanya. He's going to move out of the house in two years and you'll have that room and those Asterix comics to yourself. And yes, despite what you suspect right now, you're going to miss him badly and it's going to hurt like hell to have him leave home and settle down in another country.

And here are the reassurances. You're good at science and maths and you like to read English. Don't worry. You'll still remember everything when you're in your twenties. You're going to pick a career path that requires both your intellect and your empathy. So, don't fret over over-developing one and ignoring the other. It'll work out. Trust me on this one.

Try and enjoy yourself this year, although I know it's hard what with exams and classes and all that, but it's your last school year. And once it's done, you're going to miss school and spend the next few years getting all nostalgic about the memories you're making now.

What? More questions? Okay. No, the Backstreet Boys are not that popular any more and Britney Spears isn't either. MTV will look very different in seven years. But hold on, Justin Timberlake - yeah, he's going to surprise you one day. Yes, Friends will end in two years but you'll watch it over and over for the next five years and you'll still believe you're channeling Phoebe a lot.

Also, the Harry Potter books will end. Yes, the movies, too. No, he won't die. Yes, Voldemort will.

Cut down on those romantic comedies you watch every weekend, will you? Of course, you'll fall in love, albeit more than once. But remember to hold out for the one who can recite Keats. Oh, and you know, Sherlock Holmes, whom we absolutely adore and remain ever utterly in awe of? There's going to be an awesome new incarnation of him on BBC and an absolutely fabulous guy will tell you about it. Watch out for them both.

Oh, and that "internet" thing they keep telling you about in computer class. It's going to figure hugely in your life soon. So pay attention there, okay?

Are you wondering why I'm not giving you anything too profound to live your life by? Yeah, that's because you'll want to concentrate on the little things. Those are what will one day turn you into me. Until then, you'll just have to follow the good advice Piyu's yellow tee gives you. "Be yourself. Because no one else will. " Seriously, there's some damn good advice floating around on a lot of T-shirts in the world.

Why? Still don't think I've imparted enough wisdom, eh? That's alright. You'll make it up as you go along. Of course, things won't be perfect, you may not win the Nobel prize but you will work hard and make a difference in people's lives. And that will be enough to make you very happy.

Oh yeah, and about Piyu, she's going to bail you out of many, many hopeless situations. Buy her her favourite imli candy every day from that roadside store. That's the least you could do for your soul sister.

So long, kiddo! I think you're one helluva gal. Fare thee well!

P.S. If you ever hear from the seventy-five year old version of us, do give me some heads-up, won't you?

P.P.S. Yes, I know you can spot the temporal paradox in that request. But you know what I mean. ;)

Bright Star

Have you ever had this feeling? Looking at an old photograph of someone you know and love and wondering who they used to be before you ever knew them.

I tell myself he's essentially the same person - those same beloved features that can be traced now with the mind's eye. But the familiar crinkles at the corners of his eyes are missing from the still carefree smile that he's carried over into adulthood. The intent look in his dark eyes with his luxuriant eyelashes that gives him his mildly Byronic, unintentionally serious air, which was the first thing that I ever noticed about him, is already present in this photograph. The hair is almost a golden brown in this evening light, and there's more of it. The posture is one thing that's remarkably different. That ramrod straight back I am so accustomed to seeing slouches ever-so-slightly forward in the photo. The shoulders seem to have become rounded as they so often do with tall people trying to shrink themselves when photographed around considerably shorter people.

What I love most about this photograph is his hands. He clasps them together in a gesture rather frequently seen in school pictures - it's something I remember Chaitanya used to do in class photos, too. To me, it's my favourite thing about him here. This familiar quirk that my brother and this boy from half a world away have in common.

He is impatient for the picture to be taken perhaps. He's probably waiting to go back to play with his friends. In the background is a field of green grass and far off, a mountain. A school picnic in all probability.

I wonder what he must've been like at that age, more than fifteen years ago. I wonder if we'd have been friends had we met then. Likely not. What would we have talked about? At that age, a seven year age difference is unconquerable conversation-wise.

He looks like someone unfinished to my eyes. Like a pencil drawing waiting to be coloured in with crayons. And I marvel at how time sculpts us and we continually morph into different people who are too engrossed to notice its effect until much later. I tell him this and he smiles. The same smile from the photograph in my hands. I want to touch his face and tell him how glad I am for things that time doesn't change. But I can't muster enough courage yet, it would be too intimate too early I think. I decide to look some more at the old photograph instead.

"Look how tall I was at thirteen!" he exclaims. I nod. Outside it looks like the rain has stopped. "Would you like to go get some chai?" he asks. It's almost dawn. The sky is still overcast. But I can see the brightest star in the sky. "I used to look at it from the roof of my house in the summertime." he whispers in my ear. "Me too. It's always there when you look up. Even in Bombay." I whisper back.

I want to tell him what an amazing night I've had talking to him. But the tea is too hot and I scald my tongue. I need to get started with my morning collections. I say goodbye and start to walk away. "Hey Kari!" he calls behind me. "Good morning!" and he smiles. I laugh at that greeting and think to myself that this is a moment I shall always hold in my mind, much like that old photograph that I realise I've forgotten to return to him.

P.S. This was written on 15th July 2011 at 10:38 AM and thought of as too sentimental to put up on the blog. But I suppose tonight I'm too overwhelmed by the memory to care about the sentimentality.

When we were young

"I divide my life into two parts, not really a Before and After, more as if they are bookends, holding together flaccid years of empty musings, years of the late adolescent or the twentysomething whose coat of adulthood simply does not fit."

- from When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman.

A big thank-you to the Book Florist for this quote. And cheers to all those out there like us! :)

In the still of the night

Sometimes it really pisses me off that I'm a person whose defining characteristics include a tendency to vacillate supremely. Every decision seems to be taken impulsively and then overthrown by second thoughts. Certainty is something that can be very elusive.

I realised I am more afraid of success than I am of failure. Failure is more comfortable because it will maintain status quo. It will be an excuse to try again. Try again to do something which would have been easily achieved the first time around if it was not for a weakness of resolve.

I have done this many times before and each time, I've managed to rationalise and intellectualise it till it didn't feel like an internal defect any more. Till I had convinced myself it was a matter of bad luck and unfavourable circumstances. Clearly, I am responsible for this, atleast in part, mostly in whole.

It is not a lack of ambition, it is clearly a trepidation of walking the difficult path ambition urges one to follow.

It will not do to hope to reach the light at the end of the tunnel while secretly wishing it's an oncoming train.

I wonder if accusing oneself of self-sabotage is just another way to sabotage oneself. But I think maybe recognising the problem is the first step towards fixing it.

And the grass won't pay no mind!

Note to self: If you like the poetry, buy the book. Try not to fall in love with the poet.

Dancing with Myself

I can't shake the feeling of slight disorientation when I try to take into account how much we've actually grown up. K. was telling me tonight that she was likely to become engaged to her boyfriend of three years in July. The fact that K. used the word 'affianced' to indicate the engagement was an even stronger sign that we weren't the teenage schoolgirls who thought up lists of songs to dance to at our respective weddings.

She sounded appropriately excited and delighted that I didn't want to interrupt her with my "I've got an exam next week" shtick. "You're always studying for exams!" is what she would say, I was certain.

Surprisingly, she wanted to know my opinion on the subject of marriage for some reason. I told her that I quite frankly didn't feel equipped to discuss the topic.

Truthfully, in my head I'm not really a twenty-three year old "woman", I think I'm still stuck being a little kid mostly. I still live at home with mum and dad, I can cook but only barely, my experience of romantic love is not very extensive to put it mildly and I really, really don't think I'm even capable of managing an entire household as a wife and later, mother.

Maybe this is just a lack of maturity on my part, or maybe it's a manufacturing defect. My friends insist I'll always stay baby-faced and child-like my whole life but then they also insist that's actually a good thing so I'm not sure if I can believe them.

M. was telling me that that's maybe just because I'm a late bloomer or probably because of my rather pampered cloistered upbringing.

I really don't know anything for certain apart from the fact that the very idea of being married to someone for the rest of my life, or even for a short time (you never know these days) fills me with a sort of alarm and a vague sense of panic.

Piyu thinks I'm a commitment-phobe. I don't "follow through" on these things, supposedly. I agree. Also I'm pretty sure I'm not a very maternal, or even a very feminine type of girl/woman. But I had hope that I could make up for that by being extra-warm or extra-generous.

I don't think anyone except my mum can really tell me these things with any authority. So I asked her. Her simple reply was that she wasn't a born mother-figure either, she was kinda thrown in at the deep-end after her reasonably late wedding and when she had kids to bring up without an experienced elder in the house, she simply made it up as she went along.

"You can't read a book about how to be a mother," she said, "Your kids teach you all about it." I am guessing acquiring a husband is also the only way to learn to be a wife.

And since, I'm not likely to do either any time soon, since being a medical student mostly takes care of my life priorities up until my early thirties atleast, I think I should tell K. that I'll get back to her on that question in about a decade's time.

Beyond the Fog of Time

My new year's weekend was rather uneventful in a sense. I've never been much of a party person really, nor do I know anyone who is a party person or rather someone who is one and would actually invite me to a party. So I did the old-fashioned dinner and a movie thing, once with family and once with friends.

The odd thing was the two movies I saw could not have been more different from each other. Saturday night was earmarked for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, followed by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on Sunday afternoon. In fact, after I was done watching the latter movie I couldn't help thinking they were calling the wrong movie A Game of Shadows.

What was even odder, however, is that two days later, I'm starting to see some similarities. And I'm not talking about the obviously British setting, in fact, both movies also travel half-way across Europe.

Most importantly, both exist in a world now swallowed by the past and astonishingly both evoke that lost world with such delicate and adroit detail, so much so that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is continuously suffused with a sense of nostalgia and intense yearning.

What they both have in common is also the intrigue, the game of cat-and-mouse, the outwitting of an ideological enemy coupled with a sense of respect, even awe for that enemy's abilities.

While the character embodied by Robert Downey, Jr. is a far cry from the original man with the violin, tobacco pipe, deerstalker and steel-trap mind, there is in parts a trace of the science of deduction that Holmes applied with such finesse. However, I must say I preferred the actor who played Moriarty with such a perfect cold sneer behind an erudite veneer.

On the other hand, Gary Oldman's unsmiling George Smiley is a tired and semi-retired spy turned detective, hunting down a mole planted by his 'arch-enemy', the enigmatic Soviet spymaster Karla.

In a sense, both men are more-or-less singlehandedly trying to stall the outbreak of a world war, though the anachronistic bomb explosions in the Sherlock movie are nowhere near as scary as the leaky cauldron of secrets that is the British intelligence agency in the face of the Cold War.

And while Holmes has his loyal companion and best friend in Dr. Watson played by a genuinely funny Jude Law reluctantly tagging along 'one last time', the banter between the two characters and the chemistry between the two actors accounting for most of the entertainment the film provides, Smiley has his dependably sharp and intrepid young protege, Peter Guillam portrayed with a callow vulnerability by the excellent Benedict Cumberbatch who I'm justifiably beginning to have a major crush on.

I also spent a lot of time admiring the languorous beauty of the Victorian world that Holmes and Watson traipse around in. This smoky, overcast, almost dingy vision of London is so beautifully and painstakingly rendered that I can't help but determine that this is to be the exact setting for the stories in my mind when I next read them.

Sadly, the movie is only a fraction of what it could have been. I sat through it the whole time thinking what it would have been like without the naughty innuendo and the grating slow motion fisticuffs and well, the surprising lack of suspense.

At the diametrically opposite end of the spectrum lay Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Now, this film builds up suspense like no spy thriller you've ever seen. Unlike other stylised spy movies, this one has effectively three gunshots and one made me flinch as the blood splattered the grubby wall covered with flowery wallpaper while another underlined who loved whom and who betrayed whom.

It's a film you watch with your body and mind on high alert. This is a world of secrets and lies, illusions and half-truths, misplaced loyalties and unexpected betrayals. Here spies aren't flashy like James Bond or Ethan Hunt, but deceptively quiet watchers and whisperers, their espionage involving coded telegrams and tapped telephones rather than car-chases and hand-to-hand combat.

I can almost imagine Holmes nodding his head in approval of the inobtrusively stolid and cerebral mystery-solving Smiley, an infinitely better successor to Holmes than the brawling wisecracking ruffian that Downey plays. I have absolutely no doubt which movie Holmes himself would choose to watch.

After coming out of the cinema hall on Sunday afternoon, stepping into the cheerful winter sunlight, I shivered a little certainly not from the cold weather, mostly thankful that I wasn't around in the days of the Cold War.

While the idea that history repeats itself lies at the muddled core of the Sherlockian adventure, a lesson that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy chillingly imparts inspite of its gentle nostalgia is that the past really is a foreign country, and one should explore it carefully.

Voices at the door

Not much evokes the passage of time as effectively as a birthday or a new year's day. For me, like for most other people, time is an odd thing to deal with, it lingers at times, it flees at others. It dilates and contracts to suit our states of mind.

For me, the last year was a truly good one. It showed me the due importance of having a purpose in life, the knowledge of being on the right path in life, the indescribable joy of having found the right sort of people to love, the strength of friendships forged in times of duress, and the kindness of strangers.

I wonder what this one has in store. I wonder which way this crossroads of mixed directions has in mind for me. At this point, the best I can do is wonder.

Exams are drawing inexorably close. I can't decide if I have given them more importance than they deserve or less and which is worse.

Every year's end for almost twelve years now, Ishatai sends me a letter - a real letter in an envelope delivered by the postman and she ends it with a resolution from a proverb or a quote.

I like the one she sent this year and maybe I can borrow it as my resolution, too and if I am very lucky maybe I can keep it.

"To the dreams of thy youth, stay true." - Schiller

Happy New Year, folks!