hum senti ho gaye

I am slumped in my chair, headache and cold pounding away at my brain, and I cant get sleep. I know I need the sleep, but I’ve spent the last 40 mins tossing and turning in bed. Thing is, I’ve been sleeping from 4 to 9 pm today. And even yours truly cant manage to catch any shuteye after such a sleepathon.

I’m basically prepping you for the fact that this post would suck even more than the usual fare.

So why am I braving this fever alone on campus, instead of packing for home half an hour away? Coz there’s last minute work to do here, and it has to be done by tomm, coz day after, I’m headed to Bangalore for 2 solid months. Mom’s prolly playing that “I told you so” tape at home. She’d asked me to come home to decent food, a lovely pillow, some working Crocin, and some good old mothering. I’m now sitting in my room here, hungry, delirious and trying to fall asleep. So its your turn to get tortured too.

At least there were the movies here. Saw 2 brilliant films back to back…one being Rang De Basanti, and the other this gem called 21 grams. Aamir Khan and Sean Penn should do a movie together sometime. Uhh no wait..they shouldnt, if u think about it.

The thought of leaving scares me. I’ve been too used to this city, the people, the net here, my home close by…. And my Gokhale buddies have gone through this really emotional farewell party. Whenever I needed a break, or a reason to celebrate, or any other excuse to take off to Ashish and his pals…I’d catch the first bus and head over to Pune to meet them…now when I come back from the project, they’d all have left.

Parting ways with some1 who’s a real buddy isn’t as much of a bitch to me as it should be. I blame my NRI parents, waltzing in and out of India, for a month a year, for 16 years now. After a while, you just learn to say your goodbyes at the airport and take a cab home. Of course…this only works on the premise that they’d be back next year…and the phone calls every week continue.

But this business of looking for a job, going where your company takes you, looking for a US degree…its something else. When neither of you know when you’d meet next…when places like the school canteen, or the ledges & last benches in my junior college, the 7th floor balcony overlooking the Arabian Sea in Fr. Agnels, or even the pondside and the mess ataria in NITIE turn from here and now to “aaah…those days”.

I’ve gone through these “Ok, it’s moving day now” moments way too many times. And the fucked up part is, its not going to stop. 6 months from now…I’ll be in some arbit company in some arbit city. Family has plans to move to the States. People are going to fall in love with their new cities / jobs…or even fall in love, get married and buy a house there.

The beauty of this all is that it never really makes a difference. I’d walked out of school in Muscat, convinced that I’ll never see my buddies again. Email and yahoo would only be a waste of time…wtf is the point if u cant ever meet the dude again. We’re going to grow, change, and the less we think about the memories we’ve shared, the less it hurts when we revisit them.

Well…school buddies did meet up. Lots of times, amongst themselves….they then came over in December to Mumbai, and I was assigned the job of arranging for their 4 day stay here.
7 blooming years, since we last saw each other…and not a thing’s changed. They’ve grown thinner / taller / fatter…but still…it’s like we’d met half an hour ago at PT class.
It happened again, 2 weeks later, when Anish hit town. The 3 of us indulged in that patented indolence, with a speed like we’d been practicing all of last month

That realization has made life a lot easier to live…the fact that ur dudes remain the same…and that you get to meet new ones too. Maybe you could be lucky to get them to meet up someplacesomewhere, but yup....absence does make the heart grow fonder.

No I aint gay. Thank you. This post is probably going to come back and haunt me.

Currently listening

It’s probably me - Sting & Eric Clapton. Scary song...it inspired this post.