Last Nights

We were at D’s place in Cal. The night before she left for Bombay. It was coming to an end. The lights were turned out. The music played slowly on the Sony sound system. We hadn’t started smoking yet. We started only a year later. We were high on alcohol. The door which led to the open terrace besides D’s room was open. The fragrance of jasmine flowers, planted in pots, strong and intoxicating, wafted in the humid summer breeze. The three of us, D, P and I lay under the whirring ceiling fan. Silent. Listening to the Anjan’s ‘Bondhu’. Finally P spoke.

So, this is it. This is how it ends. Our last night together. 15 years, and this is what remains.

It was difficult. Difficult, to accept that it would not be the same again. The times that we had left behind. The times spent in dingy classrooms of our school. Times, when we bunked tuitions and ate at cheap restaurants... when we roamed the streets of South Calcutta, singing newly learnt tunes from Bengali Rock Bands... the movies at the Lighthouse theatre... eating beef rolls at Nizam’s... Drinking old monk at Olypub... Our culinary misadventures at P’s place... the delightful fried rice and chicken at D’s place... The nights spend in ‘beckoning the spirits’... The musical endeavours on the brightly lit second floor of Barista at Park Street. This was life, as we knew it. This was our world. And now, D was leaving for Bombay... and the night was all we had.

Jump cut to three years later. And things hadn’t changed much. Sure, we had started smoking. Cigarette and other stuff. We were drinking Teacher’s instead of old Monk. The music, playing on the iPod was different. And yes, the city too. We were in the sleepless city. On the second floor of a bungalow called ‘West Virginia’, belonging to an irksome Christian family. But, well apart from that nothing much had changed. The three of us were still together. And it was the last night, one more time. D was leaving the sleepless city, and going back to Calcutta. The room was dark, barring the mellow yellow light streaming out of the rectangular Fab-India lamp. P sat slouching back on the cushion, fiddling with the guitar.

The last two years went exactly as we had planned... well almost. Our suburban existence, our own place, 1503, 800 square feet with a view of the Arabian Sea. It came with its ups and downs. Well ups mostly... with the stray, Bombay rains... train blasts... D getting lost... S meeting with an accident... friends walking out... financial crisis... you know the regular day to day stuff. We were out of our comfortable cocoons. We had grown up. But we didn’t outgrow each other. And so we smiled, sat back and talked about the good old times, raised a toast. But this time it was different. Because we had that this was not the end. There were more last nights to come.

Afterthought: I don’t know, how would life be without D and P. I guess I don’t want to know either. I just know that they will be there no matter what, thick and thin. And knowing this makes life a lot easier... makes me a happy person.

Sleep

This post is a result of deep agony, a state of acute ‘sleeplessness’, and a burning desire to call it a day and crash... but I’m not giving in yet... I’m going to fight it, and I’m going to write...

Let’s start out by doing some basic math. Don’t worry. I’m getting to my point.

So they say that you can go without food for a week at a stretch and still be breathing (if not more)... but one week without a wink of sleep, and chances are that you’ll be lulled into sleep forever.

Normal people, sleep for 8 hours a day.
If 8 hours of sleep= alive and kicking
And 0 hour of sleep= fatality
Then well, you know, mathematically, I’m half dead.

Some six months back, when I started this blog, I didn’t realise the tremendous power of foresight that I posses. I thought ‘Memoirs of a sleepless city’ was a harmless title, a nostalgic whiff of fragrance, a thing of the past. But take it from me, and hear me out carefully, when I say- there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, romantic about being sleepless. If I knew the title would back fire on me, like this, I’d think twice. Alas... It’s too late...





This is how it happened...

The first seven days are exciting. Yes, this is how life in a b-school is supposed to be, isn’t it? Going down to the all night cafeteria, at 2’o clock, sneaking a smoke in the loo, and pre-reading the first chapters of Kotler.

Week three comes, and the situation is a little different. The classes from 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening have started taking a teeny-weenie toll on you. You are struggling to finish your case study assignment, and you don’t have the slightest clue about what ‘Cooper Fabrics should be doing to get their sales up’, leave apart a contingency plan. Before you could get Cooper Fabrics out of the mess, you realise it’s four o’clock.

Enter second month, and you are well into the methodical madness. Now, you have a new problem on hand. This thing called an FCQ (Don’t bother about the full form). So, it’s this weekly test. But like every other thing in a b-school, this one too, comes with a twist. You don’t know out of the 17 odd subjects (Yes, 17 it is... it’s not a typo), which test you are going to take tomorrow morning. So, you try and do some methodical guessing, some furious elimination and finally a few coin tosses, and boil it down to 5 subjects, for the night. By the time, you finish with all this, it’s already 10’o clock and your eyes are screaming for some rest. But mind over matter. So, you smoke profusely, stay awake, juggle with 3 subjects, fail to understand all three of them and turn to the fourth for refuge, only to realise its 6’0 clock. An hour later you sit in the exam hall and watch the 10th subject on your well-educated guess list, sitting pretty in form of a question paper. You curse yourself, not for not studying, but because you stayed up all night... But Alas! It’s too late.

And so I say, and I beg, and plead, and scream out in my head for some sleep. I can do with some. Okay, perhaps, a lot. A whole day... or a whole week... Yes... I’ll settle for a week.
But then, when you’re in a place like, where I’m right now, you know that your plead/ prayer/ demand is falling on deaf ears. You know, that after finishing this post, you have to get back to doing your FinAcc assignment.

And so I resign, give up, surrender. And a couple of lines from one of my favourite song play out in my head.

This one’s dedicated to her... The ever elusive enchantress, the one who can take away all your worries, the one who comes to bed every night, the one I miss so badly that it hurts...

Sleight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nail, she makes me wait
And I’ll wait without you....
With or Without You...

Rain

Imagine yourself high up in the sky, gliding around lazily. A bird’s eye view of the city. Come down in concentric circles. The tiny dots acquire shape- regular and geometric… irregular and chaotic. Rooftops of high rises, serpentine roads, patches of greenery, shimmering water bodies. Further descending, you notice newer colourful specs appearing… cars, billboards, trains like millipedes crisscrossing the city. The August sky is pregnant with dark rolling monsoon clouds. The city looks a dangerous shade of grey. The wind picks up. Open your wings and let the coil take control of you. You are being tossed around like a weightless plastic bag. Dust from the street kicks up and blurs your vision. And then the water breaks.

Inside, the windows are open. The orange Fab-India curtains flap witlessly, in the gusty wet wind. The raindrops arranged like sheets of sleet change direction with the squall. Ravishankar plays the Malhar raga on the iPod. Let’s say it’s a Wednesday afternoon. The guilty pleasure of skipping office spreads through the body, like a shot of cocaine. There’s no milk at home. So, they cut a thick piece of lemon and squish it into the freshly prepared tea. In another half an hour, they’d go back to bed… hold each other… watch the raindrops trickling down the window pane, as they make love. Waking up, they would take a walk to the nearby beach… the wet sand touching their feet, the wispy drizzle caressing their bodies.

And so the August afternoon, turns into an inky monsoon evening. Orange street lights reflect off the wet street… black umbrellas everywhere, as the crowd returns home… the Bhuttawala roasting sweet corn on the earthen kiln… street kids play in the grimy water of the roadside pothole.

Start ascending… follow the same helical pattern. First the umbrellas will become mere black dots, then the orange neons will turn into an illuminated pearl necklace… the cars with their headlights like urban fireflies… rise further, until the whole city looks like a glittering electronic circuit board… then further up… and further… until darkness engulfs you…

Coming back to Life

I don’t know how to start this post.

It’s like that awkward feeling that resides in your gut when you go to your workplace after a long break. Nervous smile... piled up work, out-of –touch friends greeting you on a lazy Monday morning. Yes, I’ve been absent from the blog scene for quite some time... and so much has happened in between, that I’m a little lost.

It has taken me

· almost three months,
· a trip back to the sleepless city,
· my favourite cane sofa and
· a couple of pegs of Bacardi,
to pen down my comeback post.

Quite a tall order for 500 words, eh? But, truth is I’ve tried and I couldn’t come up with the first line. It’s always the hardest part. I knew, once I was able to get past that illusive opening line, the rest would follow, but I could not make it happen. Everything that I was living, was too sharp and too clear, so I could never tell where to start- like a map that shows too much sometimes can be useless.

To put it in a nutshell ‘I’m living a different life’.
· From a plush Bombay apartment, to sharing a room with two other guys.
· From making a decent living for myself to thinking every time I buy a pack of cigarettes.
· From comfortable ‘wake up at 11o’ clock and go to office’ to ‘run half asleep to attend lectures at 8 in the morning’
· From a horizontal learning curve to a vertical one
· From scrumptious cuisine at fancy restaurants to the bland mess food (which is vegetarian, and this has got NOTHING to do with my previous post [except for it being a cruel joke played out by fate])
· From late night shows to late night ‘group-study’ sessions
· From ‘cut-throat’ to ‘I wanna take your spleen out’ competition
· From living in the ‘sleepless city’ to living in the memories of the place.
Life has surely changed for me.

I’m back to school, a b-school to be more precise. For people, who have gone through this hell hole, I don’t need to explain, what it is like. And for people who haven’t, no amount of explanation will suffice. But I refuse to go through this alone, and therefore will be torturing you regularly with the accounts of insanity from my life.

For the times, that I’ve lost, I will make up for it. Yes, I promise. I cannot deny you the sadistic pleasure that you will experience once you read about my life in the last two months. But, now is not the time.

Now, it’s time for me to enjoy my well deserved holiday and pour myself another drink...