D’jango and I go for our regular break in the evening up to the canteen, we yak about the this-and-that’s of our ever ionized lives. The conversation ends like this:
N: I am little worried about the final appraisal meeting with Carol (The Editor). You know how intimidating and loud that woman is, I mean how caustic and crass she behaves, she is nice and all of that, but dear me, she is annoyingly loud. I think I will have to carry ear plugs to avoid the strain on my ears….Lord save me!
D’j: Ahhh no worries man. It simple you see- the process and outcome of the appraisals is mysterious and why break your head over an overrated mystery. It will unfold by itself…no worries over a mystery…
N: (smile) you bet D’jango. You have a point. This is going on my blog onight.
D’ jingo flashes her toothy grin and we disappear in the crowd.
Met Karishma in the evening, after an age, so I feel. It’s a wholesome feeling to meet her, takes me back to my being when life had began to shape up in what I still think were/are my formative years. Catching up with her, gets me connected to the decade I left behind, to the person I was then, to the person I have eventually become and will evolve further. K says that its been nearly 10 years since we have been together, seen the weathers change and settle-together and today we both stand at a point where we more or less face similar crisis, similar turmoil. Before leaving K says, “Don’t change, be yourself, forever.” Its only a friend like her who can say this, one of the few people who added years to her life at the same time and pace as I, who saw me crude, still watching me refine…
Take a rickshaw back home and the driver narrates his tale of how he lost his son. Not the first time I heard of someone dying on the railway tracks, hit by the train and it has always irked me no end at their carelessness of crossing the tracks and not taking the footover bridge instead. But this tale was not of a careless act. His son tried to be safe, he ran off, he dodged the gutter while the train was right behind him, no horn was honked, he ran, chasing his life, he thought he saved himself, he thought the train passed, he thought there were only eight compartments, while the ninth one knocked him down, he thought he will survive, people surround him, ask him his name, he gives it out all-every detail related to his dwindling life, no one rushes him to the hospital, no call for his parents. The doctor says he would have survived had he been admitted just five minutes earlier. The run for life ended, parents hope crushed, the moment ended to linger on forever. I reach home, his story ends, I shake his hand with alump in my throat.
In the lighter vein- I discovered that Subhs and I share the same fear for the same one thing. I feel so nice to know that am not alone out there and that my best buddy is right there to share yet another emotion with me…thanks Subhs!
Oh yes and even today I stay 'bad' with Math, but today I did not feel miserable about this, instead I had a good laugh at how impossible I am when it comes to Mathematics. I choose to believe that its not really all that bad to be bad at Math, its not an interesting equation for me to solve, rather bland and drab. For the fear of sounding defensive, I would rather conclude- Anu thanks for the hearty laugh at ourselves over our trademark TOI tea/coffee session.
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