Happy birthday, Piyush!

The first time I met Piyush, I’d hated him. He was too loud, too boisterous and swore outrageously, like a regular teenager. But, somehow, he was also quite popular with everyone. I wonder if I was put off by those traits or felt resentful about his envious social quotient. It was my first day at the new school and I’d made a mental note to keep away from this guy. He had fueled my resolve further by making the obnoxious claim that I, too, would start swearing like everybody else in the class within a matter of weeks. A month later, I approached him to declare that his prediction had fallen apart and he’d acknowledged it with a frivolous nod. Years later, I swore at someone for the first time in my life. I rang Piyush up the same evening, excited to tell him about it. It didn’t thrill him one bit though. “There’s nothing great about it, Prashant. You shouldn’t have. I’m not happy to hear it,” he’d said wistfully. That’s the unlikely course our friendship had assumed, meandering through what not, over the years. The Piyush I’d met for the first time was just a façade, beneath which resided the lovely person he actually was.

He wasn’t always like that, he’d told me after we became friends. He was a timid ten year old child when he joined the school. Though he was a local kid, they put him in the hostel for a few months because they felt he was weak in studies and needed extra attention. The hostel followed the law of the jungle – the mighty rules. Being the scrawny little rodent, he was kicked around by one and all. They won’t let him use the loo, take away his underwears and call him names. The ten year old Piyush could only cry, sometimes late into the night. And the more he cried the worse he was treated. At some point, he started hitting back with abuses – filthy, nasty ones – that he had picked from others in the dormitory. He was getting better at them with every passing day. It could shut up the bullies, and, of course, solicit blows and punches too if not used with discretion. But, somewhere down the line, they stopped bothering him because it wasn’t fun anymore. He didn’t cry, was too eager to fight and was immune to almost everything. He was now one of them.

That was then. He was now a tall and brawny adolescent who led the pack with great gumption! “You remind me of what I used to be once,” he had told me. “Don’t change!” But this was when he was in one of his better moods. Otherwise, he would blow me off for being such a baby. “There’s a ruthless world out there waiting to rag you! I wonder how you are going to survive,” he used to rant. But I know that he secretly hoped I’d pull it all off on my own terms.

Life came full circle when I went to live in the hostel for a month in class tenth, as the school authorities decided to hold extra classes through the summer vacations. He was among the few who commuted from home. He initiated me into the hostel life with great delight. Undergarments were destined to get lost in the dorm, but he showed me the perfect place to dry them – high up on the ledge, beyond everybody’s reach and notice. He bought stuff from the market for me and other hostellers – toiletries, stationery, even casuals – taking his cut from the cost. “Do you think it’s worth doing anything for these monkeys otherwise?” he’d say with nonchalance.

We were both good at singing and would always participate in the school functions. It was during the many rehearsals that our friendship bloomed. When our school hosted the inter-DAV sports meet, he shone through the Volleyball and Kabaddi matches. Our school earned the gold medal in the latter. His team had a guy who was an extra and never had to play in any of the matches but got a medal alright. Somebody jeered about his easy luck, but Piyush defended him, revealing how he himself was in a similar situation a couple of years back and knows how much such remarks hurt.

I urged him to leave MP and explore the world beyond it and he never took me seriously. “I’m happy where I am,” he maintained. But, as luck would have it, we both left the school and the district after tenth. I moved to NOIDA, while he went to Kota to prepare for engineering. He returned home after a year due to falling health. After twelfth, he joined an engineering college in Gondia run by Praful Patel, the Civil Aviation Minister. It was a five-star college, frequented by celebrities of all shapes and sizes.  He loved all the high profile fun and made great friends too.

I received an SMS from him one Valentine’s day: “Prash! I’ve finally found someone! Her name is Aradhana! Please draft a love letter for me!!” I did, with great passion, and was proud of the result. “What happened? Wht dis she say??” I asked later in the day. “Everything went haywire! She proposed me before I could open my mouth! I’m putting on airs now but will say yes,” said the crook! That Diwali, I went to see him. We were meeting after months, but I had a strange feeling that I’ve spent a lot of time with him recently. I was stumped to realize that it was because I had watched Jaane tu… ya jaane na that afternoon. Piyush shared a remarkable resemblance with Imran Khan!

His birthday falls on third of October. “You lag behind Gandhiji by just a day,” I’d observed way back in school. “Yeah! I’m a true ‘follower’,” he had replied with glee. Last year was just as special as always. I was one of the first to wish him and we chatted for over an hour. We were both going through messy academic crises and made the most of this rare flash of joy. We shared about the latest scandals, called our respective nemeses names, cracked jokes and laughed a lot. A couple of weeks later, a common friend from school called up to confirm if the news was really true. Had Piyush actually died in a road accident the night before?…

There were many versions, the most accurate among which I heard from his uncle when I went to his house last Diwali. He was driving down on his bike from Nagpur to Gondia, which was a couple of hours away. His friend was riding pillion. A vehicle hit the bike close to a small bridge that ran over a water body. They fell in the water with the bike and remained undetected for a couple of days. Piyush got hit on the head and died on the spot. They recovered the badly swollen bodies after much trouble. By the time they brought him home, he was nothing but a black lump. They committed him to fire and he was gone, forever…

We’ll never know what he could’ve done with his life. All the promises, aspirations and hopes have blurred into the realms of conjecturing. A few things sustain, though: the memories of his bright, handsome face, his smile, his jokes, his retorts, and the sound of laughter that still rings in my ears.  Happy birthday, Piyush! You’ve gifted me with so much! Thanking you feels so pointless. Wherever you are, and in whatever form, may peace find its way to you…

Much love!

Gwalior: Peeping in through the chink

This is another old write-up and dates back to my student days in Gwalior. It was originally supposed to get published in the local TOI supplement, but that never really came through. Nevertheless, it is very close to my heart. My take on life in Gwalior...

Gwalior: Peeping in through the chink

A chink - that is what best describes my perspective of Gwalior, because it hints at the inevitably constrained and constricted glimpse of life in the city that my residence here allows me. I’m a student living alone, with my limited set of concerns and requirements, and, therefore, can never understand the life, euphoric and angst-ridden in turns, that a regular Gwalior-wallah has to pull through, in its entirety. But, even through my relatively short dalliance with Gwalior, I’ve got enough chances to be in a position where I can put forth my unassuming opinion about it.

Gwalior will always come back to me as a city that could tell its cheese apart..! It knows what’s special about it, what makes it count. It has its role in the evolution of India’s collective heritage eloquently documented in the pages of history, its beautiful monuments presenting elegant testimonies to it. But, it also resembles a portrait painted in forlorn hues, showing that it once used to be big, in every sense of the word. The story of Gwalior is in perfect sync with those of many other small towns strewn across the length and breadth of the country. It, like most of them, has seen the time when everything about it was “big deal!”, an era of political, commercial and educational prominence… And it, like most of them, hasn’t been able to catch up, post liberalization, with the glitzy metros, to the point that the mainstream doesn’t care about it anymore. But, the loss of gloss hasn’t quite affected its inherent spirit! The old timers are still very much in love with it, actually. The views of its residents, thus swinging between the two extremes, present a very interesting contrast.

I have a daily brush with this contrast through two of my friends who both have their roots in Gwalior. One of them is a connoisseur of the many delights of the city: he knows it inside out and negotiates his way through the utterly confusing lanes of Lashkar with amazing gumption! He knows where the best eateries are, what market can get you the best deal in cell phones and can’t bear to look at Victoria market in its present state, because to him it appears battered and raped! He, sensing my initial disillusionment with the city, went to great lengths to introduce me to the best that exists here, which included a close encounter with the city’s intelligentsia. His sense of belongingness towards this place is almost infectious! He cannot stand a single word against Gwalior and, for each of its flaws, has ten arguments to prove how living here is any day better than “your Dilli-Noida!!”

On the other hand is my second friend, whose attitude towards Gwalior is amusingly cynical. He stops at nothing short of calling it a “Manhoos shaher” and simply despises living here. He can go on and on about the city’s squalor, lack of development and the crudeness of the locals. His outlook represents the many ways in which Gwalior disappoints its young breed, making them feel that they have lagged much behind their counterparts in the other ‘happening cities’, in more ways than one can comprehend. Traversing through these vastly different views, I’ve, over the years, managed to find my middle ground. I believe that though the city’s infrastructure leaves much to be desired, there’s no dearth of reasons to like it either.

What I remember the best from my first ever visit to Gwalior is ogling at the magnificent ramparts of the Fort – strong and formidable, set against the skyline of the city. My terrace, too, provides me a generous view of it, the temples and palace complexes looking like trinkets strung into a gigantic bracelet. Though countless metaphors have been assigned to it, over the many centuries of its existence, to me it appears like a falcon sitting on guard in its nest, keenly watching its young ones chuckle about, perpetually prepared to defend them against any possible danger. This is one image that’ll always stay with me.

Gwalior is trying to gear up. Every now and then you stumble across something that speaks of the city’s urban aspirations- be it a Crisp Corner Outlet, the arterial road of City Center with all its glass-fronted buildings or that ultimate epitome of upwardly mobile consumerism: the City Mall. Money is flowing into Gwalior- a fact that can be inferred from the high-end retail outlets that just don’t stop springing up and the many luxury cars that one so frequently sees plying on its roads these days. The city’s population is a medley of people who claim that ‘it’s arrived’ and those who just can’t wait to run away! The city will definitely arrive and certain people will always run away, but what’s important is to realize that Gwalior will thrive only when its people accept it the way it is, committing themselves towards its betterment. The key is to develop a penchant for its resplendent past, with our eyes set on a radiant future!.. That’s all the chink allows me to see…