a new day

today is the first day of the rest of my life. sounds good.

i just deleted my orkut account. it was something i decided yesterday. less time in front of the computer and more in the big bright world out there. blogging is different. it means i write more — songs, poetry and that novel which has been in the works for so long — and i may even start sketching, guitar classes, salsa, the list is endless.

not that i spent too much time orkutting anyway and deleting the account was more symbolic, if anything at all. but i consider it the first step towards being a more social being. i intend to start the transformation from the shy introvert to the life-of-the-party dude as soon as i have arranged my thoughts.

what happened today?

warden came back from bangalore where he was doing some research work at the IIM. And was he pissed at seeing the number of ciggy butts on the ground in front of the hostel! it led to his taking a quick tour of the hostel. he never came to our wing though. looks like he has forgotten that the guest rooms on the second floor, where we stay, is also a part of the men’s hostel. good for us; though we were careful enough to hide the bottles under the clothes in the almirah.

Talked to Kurt Bengali today. he is off ot goa, finally, with Koshy mon and some other MBA friends of his. we had planned many a trip to goa which never quite materialised since all three of us had different schedules, vacation timings and monetary considerations then. i was working, Bengali was doing his MBA while Koshy mon was in JNU doing his MA in IR. Now, the scene is just the opposite. i am studying while the two of them are working, Koshymon in bombay and Bengali in Delhi. I did look for tickets of the railway kind but there is a big waiting list for that weekend. and flying is no more an option. i am not an earning man, as Bengali would put it.

Bengali, Koshy mon and Pillai were among my batchmates who landed in Delhi along with me after graduation. though the initial camraderie was quite robust, it didn’t last as we found new friends where we worked and studied. but we did manage to meet up almost every month — usually at my place since i was the only one who had my own place — for some booze and nostalgia. pillai turned up once in two months and there were others too, but the scening — a term koshy mon cined – was usually enancted by the three of us.

pillai was on a trip of his own the whole while. he was in north campus while most of us used to stay in south delhi. so getting to nostalgia avenue meant a lot of travel for him. he even complained to me about no one ever going to north campus to visit him. which easily spurred me to make a trip there the very next week. it may have been because i was easily the most jobless of the lot. no one else turned up, but that kept pillai in good humour for a few days, i suppose. 

Pillai is still there in delhi, working his ass off for the civils. it would be nice to have an IAS in our batch, someone we can call to cut the ribbon when the college has a function. i would be proud to say that the ribbon-cutter was from my batch. Anyway, pillai still complains that no one ever comes to see him, though he puts it in a much nicer way now. “Everyone is so busy nowadays,” he says and it is actually true too. 

Since i moved back to Chennai, despite all resloutions to put my best foot forward and be more outgoing, i failed to connect to most of the crowd here entirely. Though there are people i hang out with, it is just not the same as college or even Delhi anymore.

Recently, my friend Lal passed away after a battle with blood cancer. everyone knew that he was at an advanced stage — the cancer was diagoned quite late — but I never expected the end to come so soon. Lal was one of the most happy-go-lucky characters i had encountered; his laugh was loud and he was quick to it but it was his accent that left us in splits in many a general body meeting of the hall of residence. His demise set me thinking about a whole lot of things. or maybe it just brought to the fore what was always there at the back of my mind. that death could come knocking any time. if that is the case, shouldn’t i be living every day, every second as if it is my last. my senior died last year, just collapsed while brushing his teeth in the morning, without any warning. why can’t that happen to me?