Being 31 / That incident with the elephant in the night time

Monday, 08-Jun-2015

-

So this is how it ends. A dark ghat road on the Kerala-Karnataka border. A speeding car. A huge elephant looms up right in front of my car's windshield. Death by a magnificent lone tusker is a spectacular way to go. 

-

31. The age by which one would have everything figured out. Career. Ambition. Direction. Or so I thought when I was 21. Today at the doorstep of that number, I am not so sure and quite happy for the fact. Knowing everything would be a little bit scary. No such problems here.

-

31 undeniably feels 'old'. But then 41 will feel even older. Much to my surprise, 'old' is not a bad feeling at all. It's rather fun to look at the young 'uns and all their plans with a "Tumhein kyaa pataa" smugness. This, however, does not extend into forgiveness to Yo Yo Honey Singh for what he did to "Dheere Dheere Se". On a side note - Hrithik, seriously dude, what is your problem - do you really have to d-a-n-c-e t-o e-v-e-r-y s-o-n-g?

-

31 has been quite the journey, especially post the 18 years of incubation in a little town by the banks of the Narmada. A different life I do not wish for. Getting here via Bharuch, Kurukshetra, Kolkata and Taunton has given so much food for thought and so much variety of company that any more would just go unutilized.

-

Books. Maps. Motorcycles. Family. Friends. Freedom. Pets. NGC/Discovery/Animal Planet/BBC/History. A generic Ph.D in Geekery. Space and time have intersected in the most fortuitous manner to make the preceding the dominant themes of my life. A lot of lives, due to various circumstances, have been driven by other people's "You should"s. I can't complain about any such compulsions.

-

As it happened, the driver of my car that night in Kerala swerved, like Alladin on his magic carpet.... swerved just enough to avoid the charging elephant, half dangling the car out onto a chasm hundreds of feet deep. As surprised as us when we turned around the hairpin bend at speed, it had decided to do something about the puny little Tata Indigo that dared challenge him. We of course had no such intentions and made our escape. 

-

One of the reasons that I am agnostic and not yet a committed atheist is in memory of incidents like that night's. I don't know how I am still here but I am here. Maybe, just maybe, someone is watching [in a non-creepy way].

-

That thing about your life flashing before your eyes... it's for real. In the couple of seconds that it took for me to see the elephant towering over the windscreen of my rushing car (it will redefine your definition of big), realize that it was all over and then realize that it was not all over, I saw a teaser. 

-

A teaser which ended with ... "You lucky bas***d"

-

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2015/09/being-31-that-incident-with-elephant-in.html]

Kirmich Road

NIT-Kurukshetra Main Building (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bangor. Maine. USA. A radio ad. A surprising radio ad. I let my attention drift from the speeding traffic coursing down I-95 S towards Boston. Dangerous. I grip the steering wheel tighter and look to the road again. Memories.

-
"Mahindra Tractors... now in New England!" the ad said. I grew up in an industrialized small town in south Gujarat. I have no childhood memories of farms and farm machinery. That name though... has special resonance.
-
Kurukshetra. Haryana. India. Land of the Mahabharata and not much else after. Scratch that. Everything. It was everything and a little bit more. For 4 years. Tucked away in a corner of a sprawling university campus, bordered by wheat fields is an engineering college. Or as it seemed to us then, a universe... our universe.
-
A narrow road. Used only occasionally by tempos and Mahindra tractors. The borderline between our world and theirs. Offering easy access to two critical facilities - khokhas for rescue from the tyranny of hostel mess food and thekas for the times when the food wasn't enough of an escape.
-
Kirmich Road. Home to khokhaas Akloo, Harish, Meghnath and the only so called 'restaurant', the James Bond inspired Golden Eye. Not for the culinary aesthete, it must be said, given the buffaloes tied alongside their shed like structures and the buzzing flies around them but for a certain group of young adults, the best in the world. Host also to the entrepreneur from Kerala who set up his roadside idli-dosa stall, here in rural Haryana, as far away from home as he could possibly be, brave and undeterred in his mission of serving quality South Indian fare. 
-
The road of terror and darkness in the first year. Beyond which lay the naked yellow bulbs under which seniors were free to do, in their own ominous words, 'whatever they want' after they had spirited away the freshers from the stifling confines of their hostel/jail in the middle of the night. The jokes and the humour were crude but the anda chow-mein on some nights was compensation enough.
-
 The road of freedom thereafter. Birthday and job treats, recuperating cultural/technical fest committees, farewells, reunion parties - all had a way spilling onto Kirmich Road, a bone chilling walk on a winter night and respite from baking hostel rooms in the summer. Akloo's half-fry Maggi and a steaming glass of patti at midnight was a treat hunter's 'mission complete'. Meghnath's parathas too with their mysterious green chutney, which gave salvation to some and jaundice to others, warmed many a soul in a Haryana winter. 
-
Unlikely friendships - making a mockery of the conventional ideas of common ground and background - were formed here, unrequited love - the most common ailment of any young boy's life - was analyzed and criticized here i.e. until it struck the criticizers themselves and understanding silences - over shared cigarettes - covered those golden periods when words seemed superfluous, here in this nondescript road by the wheat fields. 
-
A cancelled lecture's magnificent happy hour saw the tides of students wash over Kirmich Road's shores. Late night debates, whose origins could never be traced beyond the vast lands of a country called Boredom fed by the river called Alcohol, reached their garbled crescendo here. This narrow rectangular strip of pitch and tar was a stage... a canvas for all those emotions inseparable from the adventure called student life.
-
No wonder then, that half a world away, 8 years since I had even thought about it, Kirmich Road sprung back to life in an instant. Nostalgia tends to smoothen the edges of reality and even to periods of darkness provides a noir like cool. 
-
In an idealized tableau, I can always see it, my feet propped up on an empty chair and a glass of patti in my hand, accompanied by a changeable cast of friends - a noisy tractor bouncing past leaving behind a trail of the faint but unmistakable tinny notes of a Punjabi song's ektara. 
-
Just another ordinary... but never quite ordinary day on Kirmich Road.
-
[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2015/09/kirmich-road.html]