Gray I Am

How hard it could be… In my view, everyone come to realize this, sometime or the other. I too had a share of this feeling. It is as tough as it would be for a poor to survive the chilly winters.

This is why I love rains.

This is why I love strong winds.

This is why I love to go to a discotheque and sit away from the music.

This is why I love masks.

When I watch out of the biggest window in the world, I feel like I am falling apart, I feel like it is tearing me apart. I feel faded. My face lost color. It is getting worse with each tick of the hand of the clock which runs faster than the others without realizing that it will have to go again on the path it covered and didn’t care about the lagging of others.

A great blow of wind and there goes away my head, falling down, smile on the face and eyes so well gelled. I see my face now. So many days went without me catching my glance.

This is why I love strong winds. It makes me feel incomplete.

I threw it out far far away from the grand window. I turned around. The next moment, the piece I threw out of my life came like the strong wind and found its place onto my body. And there I stand, shoulders down, tired, full of anger.

This is why I hate strong winds. It tries making me complete.

I sit in the rain. So strong that wherever it struck my body, left visible scars. I found it lovely. Days passed on, my eyes fully opened, rain must have stopped a day or two back. Jelly eyes. Nobody heard me. Nobody. Nobody heard me crying aloud.

This is why I love rains.

I can go on and do whatever my heart says, without worrying for me to get infamous. Sometimes I become michael jackson and the very next time father of that old church which still struggles in its churning situations through the winds and rains which gives me a strange mixed feelings. The church can fall down and the priest which fled from the temple to the church becoming father and keeping the absent idol stand there still hearing to all the deities.

This is why I love masks. I can be a father, a teacher, a preacher, a learner, a sinner, a lover. I can fool around. I can cry loud, louder like a baby.

I tried sweeping the gel out of my eyes. But in vain. It remained there to be with me. To remind me every day, every night, every moment, blurring every vision.

This is why I hate rains. I sit to cry, to wash away my soul, my body in that acid. But it comes back and that too with the dark, viscous gel.

I went to the house of sins and still could not prey. I went to the temple and still could not pray. I hit my head with the walls in the sin house but they turned out to be cushions. I hit my head with the walls in the temple and there went away the water I was filled with.

This is why I hate masks. It never changes your soul. I continue to remain in gray shade. A bit of white and a bit of black. A bit of love and a bit of hatred.

I know I am dark. Accepting this introduces some white, bright spots. I revolve around me. I am sun for the earth I am. I am universe for the galaxy I am. I am nothing of the everything I am.

A day at hostel

His hands are strong. If not 2.5 kgs, no less than 1.75 kgs. You wake up due to the deep sound produced by the thumps he makes on that door of your room. No 33. “abe kamine, poha khatm ho jayega”, these are the words you never want to listen from Kathu because he is way too possessive and crazy for the poha in the mess, and thus rush through the morning process. A breakfast abusing the mess secretary. Sometimes you imagine the great secretary made up completely of Rs 1000 notes, the money he saves for himself and his leisure from the contribution of tens of your sort.

The only person quiet on the table is Mahendra. A soul at rest. There were two sharmas in the lot. If you get to see the Rahul version of the Sharmas entering the mess, you notice his lips. Cursing the great secretary, he ensures to enter, make faces, leave with lips in motion of those chants you hear from every other living near you. Not to forget you, of course.

If you see Ranjeet(commonly, profoundly, cheerfully, forcefully  known as Rana) and Khatri(most of the people still don’t remember his first name, I do although) having their sunlight breakfast, you tend to skip yours. The voice and the content of the discussion can lead to a technical complex.

You come back, not to your room. Gather around and talk all about the social, political, sexual issues the country and you are facing together. After all this ‘gyan’ you may think of taking a bath.

They come chatting about the Prakash version of Jyoti, all the time. Ashish, Bikash, Santosh, Rishi. Their arrival marks that the lunch is ready, and if not, they are more than happy to talk more about their common love. Kadi in lunch and everyone of them is out of the mess.

Its not a necessary and sufficient condition that Meena would be coming if you hear abuses in length and ample quantity, the ones commonly unknown to people on earth. But not vice-versa. It’s a necessary and sufficient condition that you hear these chants if Menna is coming. Meena, the heart of gold and the body of John Abraham. To confirm the ‘body’ part, plenty of his semi-naked videos can be found on Youtube. Generally the videos are directed by the second version of Sharma, the Sachin one and produced by the Rahul version of Sharma. The person you see cheerfully waving and sometimes in action too, is Sanjay.

The ‘leave it’ became famous not after some great volleyball player, but Azim. His way of marking presence in the class is totally different than the peculiar style of Meena, which resembles very closely to the way Prerna marks her presence. When Azim is finished playing with his Linux machine, he would call his mate Punni(rarely known as puneet) an proceed to have his lunch.

Many people commented that they are gay. Usually, to disprove such allegations, people start maintaining holy distance, but they came even closer. Pankaj, the head of HR community of Kanpur and Banarasi(not paan, but sanjeev) are like two bodies and one soul. Talking about pankaj. He shared beautiful relations with Sachin version of Sharma and Kathu whom he teased with the one-liner “saala, kutta aadmi”.

Siddharth is the neighbor of Ravi, who once developed a great Time Table Mangement System along with Suprakash(uncommonly known as Joota-Light by Chamma who in turn is not known commonly, huh, chamma and his never ending fanatasies). The only person who could dare to take siddharth’s bucket is chamma, not pathak(I don’t remember his first name, may be Abhishek or so). I remember pathak had ‘Solutions to Let Us C’ which he was never able to take out from beneath his bedding because of us.

Sumit, Manish(my ATM partners) are very studious with respect to time and are on the lunch table, unlike Madhusudan who must be sleeping by now. He found his glory only after he reached the exam late and still was able to score decent marks, unlike chamma’s glory in Automata.

Evening snacks are at Uptron Chowk. The chaat at Uptron is the cheapest in the world which doesn’t mean it’s not tasty. Come Tuesday and there is a sure fight between the two great pundits. One at the Hanuman Mandir and other, the Rahul version of Sharma. The fight is over the content of what Hanuman should eat, shall it be boondi or ladoo. Please ask Hanuman also.

The day ends with an Ass-Kicking(literally) birthday bash. A team usually led by Sanjay beats the hell out of your cranking door and enters like you owe them those 20 bucks you pay not for the pastries and kurkure but for kicking the ass of every other you can find. Ass-kicking of birthday boy followed by Ratan’s cool dance followed by Ass-kicking of everyone except siddharth, ashish, Rahul. Everyone goes to sleep except the birthday boy who still have pain in the ass.

Days will pass, but the story will be the same. Characters will change, but the story will be the same. We find our characters not in what we are now, but what we miss we had been. Let’s be the same and keep that nonsense attitude we all have.