Readjusted estimates

Until as recently as 5 years ago, I was blessed with the gift of a no-trace-of-fat-or-muscle-retained stick thin figure despite an insatiable appetite especially at job treats, electric heater aided room cooking sessions and farewells that lay thick and fast across the duration of the third and final year calendars at engineering college. The most common question put to me tinged with a trace of shock then as the pile of chicken bones grew thick and fast around me (sometimes even the bones were not to be wasted) was "How can you eat so much? Where does it all go?"

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Then came the 4-5 years of lounging around in front of a computer screen at office and it was only on this Thursday that I understood the full social impact of my inactivity based physical transformation. A colleague was in his last week of work before his transfer to another location and he had taken us, his soon-to-be-ex team members out to lunch. I wasn't quite hungry and post college, my appetite had really gone down from an equivalent of 100 to 5 but as the future event will suggest, my appearance may be reflecting an opposite trend. Though it was a buffet, I opted for just a single helping of all the items on the tables. As I was winding up the meal with two scoopfuls of icecream and gulabjamuns, three different people at my table had exactly the same question for me. This question maintained the element of shock in it. Except for the fact that now the question was "Aapkaa ho gayaa?!! [Are you done?!!]". Darn it!

Foggy parathas

[Tonight is a cold night in Calcutta, cold by Calcutta standards that is, but just the right kind of cold if you ask me. The motorcycle ride back home through deserted late night roads is faster by 20 kmph as your shoulders stiffen up to brave the chill in the air. Your twitchy on-the-verge-of-sneezing nose & numb fingertips feel like they belong to somebody else. Your eyelids are cold, like they have just been dug out of snow. Just the right kind of cold that a man can take... and robustly enjoy! Makes me think back to the four winters spent in the heart of Haryana, last experienced only 4 years ago but already seems like 4 decades ago.]

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07:30 AM

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I have always been a creature of the light, never a creature of the night even through the routine murdering lifestyle of an engineering college hostel. When the sun is up, I have to be up too no matter how late I sleep or no matter how much of a biology v/s fermented liquids challenge last night's party was. So all too frequently on a winter's morning on a weekend, I would find myself blinking like a deer caught in the headlights and grumbling my way out of the sensational comforts of a thick blanket. It didn't matter that I would be taken down by another wave of extreme sleepiness at around 11:00 AM, but for the moment, I was hopelessly awake.

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A hostel bears an uncanny resemblance to a graveyard in those hours of the morning, so deathly quiet is the surroundings. Every party worth its salt has already ended in tearful emotional moments of the "You are a real friend!" nature and the chorus of puking heads out of the verandahs of decadence has long gone silent. It's a surreal world, especially in contrast to the mayhem and the noise and the loud music that inhabited the same space just a few hours ago. Then there's the all pervading morning fog rolling in from the sunflower fields in front of Hostel Number 5, almost looking responsible for putting all the party revellers to a much needed but vehemently-fought-against slumber.

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I lumber down the stairs after pulling on my worn-down-to-the-last thread blue jacket as the cold stings my ears. The few odd inmates (Yes, we have had some notices which referred to us as "Inmates of Hostel No. 5"!) who were also in wait for breakfast to begin also come shuffling down, a mini army of zombies staggering through the fog in search of the one thing they craved, the only thing that could justify being awake at that  - hot paranthas! Methi, aloo, gobi whatever may be the stuffing - all welcomed onto the cold steel of the railway catering style steel plates, topped off with a cube of butter and then another cube of butter to serve as the 'subzi' component of the meal. 

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The warmth of the first morsels of food awaken the other senses and I can hear the sound of the carrom board striker whacking into the sides. Somebody has already got down to business in the common room neighbouring the hostel mess and I am sure by the time I leave the table, none of the newspapers pinned to the boards would be free for a read. Nonetheless, I wander into the common room out of sheer habit and check out what's on TV. Wonders of wonders, it's not ETC with its endless stream of Bollywood movie trailers but a West Indies v/s Australia Test match live. Lara is hitting the hide off the Aussies and it seems that the word has got around already. A few familiar faces, cricket-fans as they are, rush in and take up the first row. I too find my nook, in the second row with an empty chair in front to prop my legs up on to half doze, half dream my way through the wizardry on display on TV. Another blissful day of anarchy thus progresses in REC Kurukshetra, in the land of foggy parathas.

1.1.11

Image by randihausken via Flickr

It's very strange how the number 1 is indicative of a beginning and also of closure. '1' is the all important first step in a journey to success and '1' is the place where the ladder of success ends. So on a day when the calendar is bursting over with '1's, I find myself horribly confused. Is this post my first step towards achieving perfection in writing increasingly meaningless pseudo-philosophical babble or my crowning achievement in my attempts to waste the time of people who bother to read me. Happy New Year 2011 anyway. And sorry... insufficient sleep trying to catch up and an extreme will to post on the first day of a new year often combine to achieve randomly inexplicable results like the content of the post above.