Triangulation

Recently in SNDU, everyone is triangulating. It’s the new buzz word. If you are not triangulating, you are not doing your job correctly. Last I checked, we used to call it connecting the dots. Anyway, the way work permeates my existence, I suddenly realized another form of triangulation just happened in my life, as if by Magic.

Somewhere in Class 12, I came across this play called Priyo Bondhu (Dear Friend). Heart warming, poignant and beautifully integrated into the heart of the city of my birth, it left a mark behind. In fact, so much so that I insisted all my friends have an audio cassette of it. I think I made it travel to almost all states of India and somewhere in some forgotten corner of teenage rooms there is a Priyo Bondhu left behind.

I read about the play putting the BITS internet and Google to good use and I realized that there were 2 more. The original was Love Story and its Hindi Adaptation was Tumhari Amrita. Being in Pilani and Bangalore did not help much as it would be an anomaly if suddenly out of nowhere Farooq Sheikh and Shabana Azmi appeared in Pilani. Even the Karnataka topper and her SPICMACAY could not have pulled it off.

The basis of the story was friendship in its purest form spread over decades. Two friends, separated by time, space and ego find their solace in each other through their letters.

Anyway, as soon as I came to Mumbai and my theatre bug hit me hard, I was on the lookout. I am one of the biggest fans of Rage Productions and somehow when I watched the real theatre in Bombay, I felt convinced that my selection of the BITS Hindi Drama Club as the more talented over the English Drama Club was correct. Anyway coming back to the second point of the triangle, Love story as the original was fantastic. Set in distant lands, it could have been a story about friends in Mumbai. And Rajit Kapur was out of this world.

But the triangle was not been completed. Tumhari Amrita was a rare screening and my nomadic life seemed to ensure I was never in the city when it played. But then as I was leaving Mumbai; a fact then known to very few people; I got a call to watch Tumhari Amrita from an old friend. It did not disappoint as a truly Indianized adaptation of a relationship that had redefined my idea of friendship way back in college.

The triangle was finally complete and the version from Calcutta stood tall. What made it unique was the fact that the two friends never met again unlike the others and that elevated the story and its beauty to a whole new dimension.

Here’s to the most tumultuous friendship. Here’s to Life.