Born Again

“You can close your eyes to things you don't want to see, but you can't close your heart to the things you don't want to feel.”

I wish I knew who wrote that. I wish I could write like that. But I don’t think I am capable of words that tug at your heartstrings. If I did, I would have used words to heal the scars. But even if words fail me, friends seldom do.

Sometimes you need to remember things that are important to you. And sometimes if you are lucky, then you get reminded about them at times you need them the most. Somewhere at the beginning of the year, I realized that it had been a long time since I had really laughed, really cared for anything outside work and life was seeming like a dreaded weekend to weekend to routine. Just then like a breath of fresh air they descended.

Led by the “Gaurav of The Kachhi Beer Drinkers”, they came one after the other. Sometimes they came with their friends, a few times there were friends of a friend and in their “just out of college” way of looking at things, my last few months in Mumbai took a life of their own. In those last few months, when almost every friend had been moving out of Mumbai, they came in as family.

Often life surprises you in strange ways, you never know how the bonds that you have created can come and lift you up from your self-inflicted misery, the bonds suddenly are no longer shackles but a pathway to a life that once was. It was during one of those times that one is confused that the newly anointed alums of the Department of Photography descended on Mumbai.

The words “DOPY blood” has been misused regularly for a variety of things. It’s sometimes used for people with general enthusiasm which is typically shortened to “Gen Enthu”, further shortened to “Genthu”. It’s sometimes (on those rare occasions when there are more than 3 people coming for the shifting work post a festival), just a sigh of relief from old timers who thank the lucky stars that the department will survive. But to me Dopy Blood means a calling that you can’t resist when you meet someone who once shared a passion that you did.

They made me shake off years of lethargy; sunrises in Mumbai had never been so beautiful and suddenly I was clicking again, with one of that age old cosina, shooting with films like I have always loved to.

Life had changed, the love for “writing with light” had returned and redemption was bestowed on a soul parched for what it loved to do.

Here’s To Dopy Blood. Here’s to a bond beyond words – with ink or with light.

Daya ko Bulao

So one weekend we decided to have a Dopy meet. Given that Dopy Standard Time has been known to linger on for quite some time and has never been a thing to be proud of, I was happily sitting and watching a Woody Allen movie when Crazy Photographer barged in hoping that others had gotten rid of DST.

But that was not to be. We started the meet 2 hours late and in the sweltering heat decided that the best place to go and plonk would be my pad. And there in typical Dopy Style I was introduced to C.I.D. I thought to myself how could I have lived without understanding how awesome this serial was. And I am prone to watching what Echha is doing at her new household.

Anyway, CID was so awesome I completely forgot that we were supposed to engage in Dopy gossip. It was of course sad that CP had no new gossip and all the new gossip was about people who I had never met.

But Daya, he was awesome. If only Hollywood knew what power was there in a strong one handed slap, they would never have hankered over Weapons of Mass Destruction. Who needs a Neo when Daya is there? One slap to the Architect and he would have let all the humans free. But what if Daya was an illusion too? Or worse an agent?

Anyway, the fact is even today if I look back, I can see myself saying to the kids who came down, “In you, Dopyness is strong. In Jaipur, where everyone comes to see forts, want to go to Mcdonadl’s your seniors did.” So we watched CID back to back till the visiting Dopyite called us to Theos. And then there was food and pastries and I don’t remember much…

A Trip Down Memory Lane IV – The BITSians

I am one of the new breeds of Global Indian. Agreed. But after that the second spot is very confused. Am I a Calcuttan having spent my years of growing up? Am I a Bosconian with the strong influence of my basic education? Am I an IIMBian, the identity that’s perhaps my latest and most important as it defines my future steps? Or am I a BITSian having grown from a child to a thinking teen and having the courage to bet all to move to where my heart led? The answer is complicated. Perhaps I am a combination of all of them but this post is for the BITSian, a group of people that shall always be a class apart.

Whenever a person takes a trip back, he knows there will be two sets of people, some of whom he would have met earlier, others whom he would not have. And I think it’s the second class of people who make the trip a memorable one. The new faces of my department, who had no reason to come and meet a heap of old bones, people who had just read my articles and had never seen me, juniors who could as easily ask for a treat as could their seniors after my placements, these were the people who showed me the real meaning of camaraderie of one’s alma mater. After all, where else would you find a junior missing classes in the mornings to accompany you to Profs’ houses, where else will someone sheepishly knock on a psentisemite’s door and ask, “Are you Madhurjyada?”, where else will a guy start laughing in a class seeing my SMS, where else can I sit with a multi-talented guy and discuss his theories at 3 in the night, or sit with another equally talented guy and be offered the best of Anjan Dutta’s music?

But the one thing that’s most amazing is to stand aside and see your juniors perform on stage, alone, without your help, and pull off the show with easy brilliance. This trip showed me this one scene which I always wanted to see. I have seen batches from 1997 to 2004 and I have met some amazing people but the 2003 batch is undoubtedly the one that has produced an amazing set of people across clubs, departments and associations. If I have to choose one single BITSian batch apart from my own, I would any day choose the 2003 batch. Living in a psentisemite’s room has an advantage. He cleans up the room because I’m coming; his sidie puts it up as his status message and life begins afresh for me. And it feels nice that even now they want to create something new and want to give back something to their college before they leave. And last I heard they were immensely successful. The DOPY BOSM coord comes sauntering into sky and arranges for a meet; only yesterday he was ushering in the cell phone revolution at DOPY and BITS arranging batch meets through his cell phone. Two of them stay with me all through till I leave C’not for one last time, my pseudo-ju doesn’t care about her last set of CDCs.

I know it’s not possible to talk about all the amazing moments I had meeting my juniors in Pilani and seeing them as adults and in control. In my last trip back to school, the seniors had said, “It’s your school.” I had said, “No now it’s yours. Take good care of it.” My juniors at Pilani have done the same. They have taken good care of my college. I am an old fashioned guy in many aspects. Though I call people juniors, they have been more than friends to me, yet till they graduate I would continue to introduce them as my juniors. Come on. Give a little leeway to my innocent idiosyncrasies.

There had always been a sense of guilt whenever Instrumentation Forum comes into the picture. Of my innumerable clubs and departments, it has received a little less attention. I have always been there to help out but never submitted an individual project. That’s what always pained me. As a result, even though I almost stopped writing after Pilani, I have never turned down an Instru Mag Editor. So this year too when the Editor, who has never met me, asked for an article, I could not say no. Don’t know whether it will be published, but it does feel nice, more so as the Ed gives the insignificant me a personal audience. J

But this post would not be complete without three people. First, my little sister, just the other day a school going kid, sulking at why I don’t come more often to meet her will be the next Moruchaya President. We had seen a total strength of 50 in Moruchaya. She’ll have 50 coming in every year. Second, the next DOPY OASIS coord, a guy whose love for the department surpasses even mine and if I am asked I would put him on the same pedestal with VJ and Setty. Coming from me that’s something. He has a tough job ahead of him. Maybe he’ll be the one during whose time the future of the Department will be redrawn. I wish him well. But I know he’ll be an amazing co-ord. And yes, he'll definitely mail us all about it.

And finally, his wingmate of my psentisem, the Editor in Chief, Cactus Flower, 2007. Ever since CF 2003 was published, I slowly distanced myself from my most beloved thing in Pilani. The Old School of Life had taught me not to interfere in other Ed’s matters. (I never refused to help with technicalities though.) I could feel the winds of change that swept through. People told me about it, but I never judged. Let the future decide which path was right. Maybe both were. Anyway, the point is as I spoke to the CF Ed I could feel the same sense of pride that had differentiated the Eds of yesteryear. We took pride in our task, in our responsibility. And my resolve to never look at a blueprint again fell down like a sand wall. In front of me was a guy who could very well have been from an era a decade back. In front of me was a draft that looked fresh, yet traditional. Whether he was a good Ed only his team can tell, whether it is a good CF, BITSians and Time will judge, but time spent with him during my last few hours at Pilani was worth the self imposed exile.

An excerpt from Cf 2003,

After all “in this mortal world everything perished and will perish, but ideas ideals and dreams do not.”
That is all and all that I ever needed to know.