Cricket at 112

"Running in from Garage End at full speed and bowling with an Akram-copy action, left arm over-the-wicket to the batsman standing with his trademark, easy, elegant stance, is the opening bowler. The batsman is yet to get off the mark in nine balls.

"Ooh! That was a jaffa. That ball just took off from a good length and crashed into the garage. A demon in the pitch. The batsman walks down to examine, and with a little benign smile and a casual comment walks back to his crease. Bowler running in again for the fourth ball of this over. Bowling wide of the crease, angling it across the right-hander hoping to induce an edge. Oh, bowled him! How did that happen? It was almost the exact same spot where the last one bounced, and this time, it just died down on the batsman. This has to be the toughest pitch to bat on in the world!"

It sure was the toughest pitch to bat on. Any ball on a good length would climb up to your shoulder, irrespective of what pace the ball was bowled at. If it was a little shorter, it either sat up to be hit, or just flew miles above your head. The bounce sometimes was so much that yorkers bounced over the stumps! When I was younger, I thought it was the sloping nature of the pitch that gave it this bounce. I even bowled a few down the slope to see if it skidded off the pitch then. A little later, I wondered if it was the fact that there it was, in fact, an unevenly laid road. Maybe, it was just my high-arm action, and Sharan's ability to extract 'jump' from any track with his legspinners. Whatever it was, it made batting really tough. When I heard Sunny Gavaskar and the likes talk of 'chin music' and the 'perfume ball', I thought, "The team should practice here, in front of our house for a while!"

Strangely, neither of us became very good players square of the wicket. The explanation is simple - there were houses on either side, and you could only score runs straight. So, when the ball bounced to around chest height, if you attempted a shot, it was never the pull or the hook. It was a tennis forehand. And just like the tennis forehand, you watch which way the bowler is likely to go on his follow through and hit it on the other side.

It wasn't this simple though. The pitch had its hot spots - these strange patches from which the ball would refuse to bounce. For years we practiced the art of hitting those patches, and failed miserably. And then there was the magic wicketkeeper. Any ball that touched the bat and hit the back garage on the full was out. And because we batted right in front of this garage, there was no respite when you edged the ball. Caught behind became the most common dismissal - usually it was the forehand that wasn't properly controlled, because the bounce was too much to handle. Oh, this keeper could never effect any stumpings. So, when I decided I'd had enough of Sharan's loopy legspinners that turned violently, and bounced over my head, I'd try walking down and taking them on the full.

Batting there required extraordinary concentration. One mistake, and the pitch wouldn't forgive you. One Sachin-like drive-on-the-up and you were out. Consequently, we never played limited overs matches. It was always two innings. An average match still lasted only about an hour, with the two innings' scores totalling to an average of around 20. I remember a day when I batted 40-odd balls without scoring! I was still highly impressed by my skill - I had lasted 40 balls on that pitch!

The rules were even stranger. There was a boundary that wasn't very long. A four was a four. But if you hit a six, it counted for one run. So, if there was a non-striker, then you change ends. There were four house roofs also to deal with. We could easily scale three of them, but the rule was still that if the ball ends up on the roof, then you're out. And, your score is reduced to 0. Not the team score, but your personal score. But on most occasions, it was just two of the three regulars - Sharan, Adhi and I - and personal score and team score was the same.

Then there are the more eccentric rules. The ball has to cross a water pipe about seven feet in front of the batsman for the batsman to run. This was the most irrelevant rule because nobody ever bothered running. We scored in fours and ones (the sixes that counted as ones!). Now, there was this huge mango tree that formed a canopy for about half the pitch. If the ball hit the tree, as it often did, and the fielder caught it, the batsman could still be out. Many times, the ball took ages to escape from the various branches of the tree and finally fall down, and fielders would place themselves in strategic positions to try and catch the ball when it actually fell down. On the other hand, if the ball hit an electric wire and fielder caught it, it wasn't out! The evolution of these rules was simple - Sharan made them up as we played along - and it was usually to his advantage, because he was the youngest, and allowed to cry himself to victory.

And then there were the variant we played - eleven players - a concept we borrowed from the hallowed verandas of the first floor at 80, West Marredpally. We'd have a notebook where we wrote down two teams, and take batsman and bat for them. The rule was, however, that if the batsman in real life was a left-hander, then you batted left-handed and vice versa. Sometimes, Sharan would get out one too many times and would be forced to bat left-handed, and other times, I'd end up batting right-handed. If you were bowling for a paceman, you had to bowl quick, and even copy his action if you could. Same for spinners.

Despite the complicated rules, the game had a simplistic feel to it when we played it there. No elaborate field settings, no strategising, no pacing your innings, and no getting settled (you were as likely to get out on 100 as you were on 0, because the pitch was too unsettling to allow and settling down). The game went on at a lazy pace - sometimes through the day with breaks for lunch and tea. Nobody dived around while fielding, no batsman ever bothered pinching a quick single and no bowler ever exerted himself. And yet there was a passion attached to the game. We hated losing. We fought over every caught behind, every boundary and every ball loss. We cherished big wins, and recalled them for years. I still remember scoring a hundred on the morning of my seventh standard Kannada public exam against Adhi, and the match getting abandoned because Amma came home to check if I was studying.

Cricket died a natural death in our street when I moved to Bangalore, and Sharan started playing basketball in the evenings. Last year, when I heard that we were moving out of 112, and I came back to Manipal to help with shifting, I hoped that Adhi and I would play one last Test Match. Unfortunately, we were all too busy packing and moving to our new house.

While it seems highly unlikely that we'll ever play there again, with each of us in a different city, I still carry a little hope in my heart - to run in left-arm over-the-wicket, wide of the crease, angle it across the right hander and get him caught behind forehanding!

Love Brinjal - Part I

This is one of many parts of a story that will, hopefully, appear on this blog at regular intervals. 'Love Brinjal' is a direct translation of one of my favourite Tamil expressions - 'Kaadal Kathhirikka'. All characters in this story are fictional and creations of my imagination. If they bear any resemblance to any characters real, I tender apologies to such characters!
***

"Chill, da. There are other fish in the ocean. You might never find them, but they are there," she said, smiling.

At once, this became the prophecy and curse of my life. Every now and then, I'd get an inkling that the fish I was looking for existed, but I never found it. On many occasions, I'd believe that I had found this fabled fish, sitting next to me in a bus, or at a concert, or at a friend's birthday party. And then she would open her mouth, and very quickly, become another one of those squids that inhabit the ocean. One of the more infamous cases of this was at a bookstore in Delhi. Now this could have happened only in Delhi.

While I was looking through the Indian authors section in a little bookstore on a wintry January evening in Delhi, this girl walks into the shop. Without doubt, she is the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She could have been Miss Universe! (Now, there's another girl I saw much earlier who could have also been Miss Universe, but I'll get to her later.). Women in Delhi, I believed, were too stupid for my psuedo-intellectual, Herman Hesse-reading, discoursing, anti-globalisation self. It was a sweeping generalisation, (All generalisations are usually sweeping!) but I believed it strongly. Until this girl walked into that bookstore. She was a beautiful woman in a bookstore - like Tendulkar playing a cover drive in the Sydney Test - a sight you never thought you'd see. She walked straight towards the Indian authors shelf - towards me! I looked away. I didn't want her to catch me staring. First impressions last long. She looked through the books, occasionally taking one out of the shelf and reading the back page. She was judging the book by its cover - just like me. I had found the fish. After what seemed like seven years to me, and one minute to the rest of the world, it became clear to everyone that she was looking for something in particular. For some reason, she asked me.

"Hey, have you seen that Abhijit Sawant book around?"

I thought of the day when the prophecy was made - the day I was branded an unlucky fisherman. They say knowledge is power. Balls. Knowledge is pain. Now I knew there were other fish in the ocean. Before the day of enlightenment, I would have presumed that there was no fish left, and stopped fishing. But now I knew.

The scene was as filmy as they came. We were at this quiet corner of Cubbon Park, having this intense conversation on the question that would be answered with the Adamsian "42". But then, it probably was not as filmy. Nobody in the movies ended a relationship thinking of fish and oceans. Nobody in movies ended their relationship with the guy saying, "Don't stop me now," referring to the smoking of a cigarette, and both parties smiling. Nobody ended their relationship at Cubbon Park, they sang songs there! Finally, I did something really filmy. When she held out her hand and said, "Let's go," I said, "You go. I'll leave in a while." And when she left me sitting there alone, smoking my first Milds in two months, looking depressed as hell, I was in a movie, every action rehearsed to coincide with the music that slowly drowned out the sounds of Cubbon Park, the camera zooming out, and a sad song taking over.

In a Hindi movie, this would be followed by this sequence where I gatecrash at her wedding and win her back. A French movie might have ended with a scene where she cheats on her husband and I emerge winner. But this one was Woody Allen style, where linearity of time is never really the concern. This one started there. As she walked away, it started drizzling. The drizzle never really went beyond a bracing moisture in the air, although it got more bracing all the time.

**

When I rushed into her house, she was in the kitchen. Making rasam. In an interview, Vishwanathan Anand said that no two women can make the same rasam. They might have learnt from the same person and follow the same recipe, but the rasam is never the same. I haven't heard a truer statement about South Indian women.

"Quick. Get your sruti box out."

"Why?"

"This is the opportune moment to feel good about our music."

She didn't understand what I meant, but got the sruti box and turned it on. I sat on the dining table, and sang five notes. She looked at the sky and replied, "You bastard!"

I continued singing. She kept looking out of the window, and then looking at me and saying, "Not working."

But it was bound to work. It was overcast, and rain was imminent. She joined in, and almost immediately, it started pouring. I don't know if it was my imagination or the truth, but the rain seemed to follow our singing, as if it were dancing to our music. She ran out to the balcony, and in a very movie-like manner, stood in the rain with her arms wide open. I followed suit, and we stood there, on the sixth floor balcony, in heavy rain, with Amritavarshini still playing in our ears, the sruti box droning on in the background, and we kissed.

"Wait... This can't happen" she said, breaking away
"Why?"
"You're too young."
"Five years isn't all that young!"
"You smoke too much," she said.
"That's hardly a reason."
"Have you ever kissed someone who smokes?"
In fact, I had.

***

This was one of those days, three hours after India had thrashed Bangladesh in another inconsequential, insipid one-day. I realised that I felt more and more like the Bangladesh cricket side. Especially when it came to women. From being a geeky, inexperienced bumpkin, I was suddenly thrown amongst a battery of the fairer amongst the fairer sex who seemed to find my lack of charm cute. On this day, I was bowled over by yet another girl, much like the Bangladesh side by Zaheer Khan. I decided at 8 pm that a Milds would brighten my evening, and took my Scooty to the Little Cigarette Shop. On my way back, I got stuck at The Signal as usual - a place where much of my life's exciting events took place. This incident rates amongst the most exciting.

While I puffed on my Milds at The Signal counting backwards from 180 along with the clock, a Thunderbird pulled up next to me. On the Thunderbird was the other woman who looked like she could have been Miss Universe. She asked, "Do you have a light?"

And then there was light, I thought. I was never very eloquent when it came to describing love, or even conceptualising love, and the sad thought was a manifestation of this limitation. 148 seconds remaining. I rummaged my bag for a matchbox. Where the bloody hell had it disappeared? 112 seconds now. She was asking another guy for it. I saw him shake his head. Relief. 99 seconds. It had to be in my bag. But then it wasn't. 80 seconds. Oh, wait. It was in my pocket. Rummage, rummage. 68 seconds. There. I handed it to her. In one smooth movement, she lit the cigarette, and handed me the matchbox. 44 seconds. I was now totally in love.

For some reason, she liked me too. Things progressed and pretty quickly, we were an item - she on her Thunderbird, and me on my Scooty (or sitting behind her) - setting the town on fire. Bangalore was suddenly on top of my favourite cities list, because I discovered the joys of claustrophobia at Pecos, free beer with each food item at Windsor Pub, the cheapness of getting drunk at Ganesh Bar.

One thing irked me, though - the Metal I was forced to listen to. Innumerable concerts spent standing cluelessly in the front row, headbanging to mindless growling, and even more number of nights spent in her room listening to the latest that the Brotherhood of Growlers had to offer. Countless days spent discussing lyrics of the Grand Panjandrums of the Brotherhood, and copious amounts of illicit substances actively or passively consumed.

One day she said, "These lines are so deep - 'reverberations of drowning death, meticulations of reptilian breath.'"

I had had enough of pontification about death! I felt like Bangladesh team again, analysing the end each evening. I quit, and hoped that Bangladesh would too, before all Test Match records became irrelevant.

**

Life in a... Metro

One morning, Anurag Basu got up and decided to make another remake. This time, with a twist. Remake two Hollywood classics into one. And so, while husband cheats on wife like Fred McMurray (Mr. Sheldrake) in The Apartment, wife cheats on husband Brief Encounter style. Now, he realised that he doesn't have the class to pull off these remakes, and he needs more material that will help him to bring in other actors. In comes, Konkona Sen - the wife's sister, Nafisa Ali - the wife's dance teacher, and Irrfan Khan and Dharmendra - the respective loved ones. Oh, I forgot the band that pops its head everytime a song comes along. First time, I thought it was innovative. But five times, playing similar-sounding songs got on my nerves. I agree each band has its own sound, and in most cases, this is desirable, but that shouldn't stop them from making five distinct songs!

The reason this movie really got on my nerves was because The Apartment was so badly remade even without being acknowledged ever. The Apartment is one of my favourite films of all time, and Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine's play the most lovable characters on screen. Replace them with Sharman Joshi and Kangna Ranaut. Neither is lovable in the least. Sharman's character, with his dream of finishing his father's hotel (the usual Hindi-movie sentimentality. Incidentally, his father was a musician. I have heard of cricketers opening restaurants. This is new.) takes away from the essence of The Apartment.

The Apartment is a comment on the corporate world, made in the 1960s. Jack Lemmon doesn't want to build any hotel. He wants to make money. He wants to get to the twenty-sixth floor. He wants a panelled office. If he had a plot like that in Bombay, he would have gladly sold it and lived comfortably. Ok. The character has changed in the remake, what is wrong with that, you may ask? The essence of the plot has changed with this fundamental change in what the character is. Sharman Joshi suddenly decides, for no reason, to abandon his hotel-building plans. He doesn't even look for another job! While it makes logical sense for Jack Lemmon to quit his job when he realises that he has to 'become a mensch', it makes no sense for Sharman to not fulfil his father's dream - an aim he has been pursuing for years. On pure acting terms, whereas Jack Lemmon could be compared to Brian Lara with the bat, Sharman is Brian Lara with the ball.

Kangna Ranaut is the low point in a bad movie. She cried well in Gangster. She won a couple of awards for her crying also. But here, she's none of that breath of fresh air that MacLaine is in The Apartment. Nobody knows when and why she falls for Sharman. We all thought he justified his single-minded, money-making obsession by referring to the hotel. Why does he have to quit his job then for her to make the decision to leave Kay Kay?

Kay Kay's character brings out more flaws in the characters in the desi Apartment. The relationship between him and Kangna was apparently founded on the cornerstone of 'no emotional attachment'. Kangna's English in real life isn't very good, and it clearly affects the characters she plays, because she is still 'emotionally attached' to Kay Kay, and demands the same from him. Why she doesn't get out of the relationship that she knows is 'emotionless' is unfathomable! The fact that she attempts suicide instead is even more ridiculous.

More than all of this, the smaller scenes, like Sheldrake taking the key from Buddy for the first time, Buddy looking at the broken mirror, the exchanges between Buddy and Fran in the lift , the relationship between Buddy and the doctor, have all been either executed badly, omitted or dumbed down. In the end analysis, Anurag Basu underestimated the depth of the characters in The Apartment and tried to cram a two-hour long movie into one fifth of another two-hour long movie. The result was that nobody's intentions were clear, and nobody's actions made any sense.
Above all, when you're making a movie about characters, the audience has to feel for at least one character. In this rip-off of The Apartment, the characters are so one-dimensional and shallow that it is impossible to empathise with any of them. Sharman doesn't feel bad when he has to spend nights away from his apartment, Kangna commits suicide for no reason, and Kay Kay is the 'villain' anyway.

When you're making a movie that has many stories, the trick is to pick your stories well. Love Actually, Amores Perros and even Crash to an extent, manage to do that. Metro goofs up all the stories. A certain teacher, taught us a course titled "Universal Protection of Human Rights". We wondered, "Isn't he taking upon himself too large a burden?" When you've taken a burden upon yourself of potraying Life in a... Metro, the biggest mistake you could make is to render the Metro itself irrelevant. Not for a second in the movie does Anurag Basu manage to create a Bombay that is unmistakeably Bombay. Watch Taxi Driver, and in five minutes, you know it's New York, without a single shot of the Manhattan skyline or the Statue of Liberty. Watch even Khosla ka Ghosla, and in minutes, you know it's Delhi. Sharan and I thought Metro was set in Calcutta till we saw the scenes on a local train!

I spent the whole night sitting by the door, staring outside at the darkness punctuated by the occasional light from a passing town, or little, insignificant railway stations. I could almost hear thatha's voice saying, "ACku danda selavu..." When the train chugged past one of these stations, I put my head out and waved at the diminutive station master standing with his green light. He waved back. I wished I had a camera.

The experience of having the chill wind of the receding monsoon bite your face while you contemplate the vagaries of life, romantic as it sounds, is painful, and comparable to spending an evening with an insurance salesman. It reminds you of everything that could go wrong with your life. In all seriousness, there was little wrong with my life at that moment. But, I remembered small things that would sting later on - like the fact that I had left my geyser on and come away to Madras for a week. And then, there were the more serious things to worry about - like the fact that thatha might not actually be in a state to make his usual comments on the political economy of Madras, on how the British were benevolent and the best thing that could have ever happened to our nation, on how no two South Indian women can make the same rasam even if they follow the same recipe, on how all politicians are crooks (In Woody Allen's words, "Do you even know the kind of morals those people have? It's a notch above child molesters...") and on how society is today turning amoral.

I couldn't imagine him sick and confined to a bed. He was never the physically fit sort, but was never unfit. Every morning, he walked from his bedroom to his easy chair, the full extent of his movement on an average day, from where he sermonised, theorised, meditated and meted out justice to his subjects – the other inhabitants of his house. When he once refused to move to Bombay to stay with my parents, my father threatened to lift him with the easy chair and take him away. He was the sort who had grown used to retirement. He had his routine - his trips to the bank, his sporadic attending of concerts, his fortnightly visit of his siblings in Nanganallur. I knew that even he would be terribly disheartened if he couldn’t do all of this.

As dawn dawned, I braced myself for the bleak thatha. Not the thatha who told me every morning I spent at his house, with a little twinle in his eye, that Brahmins must get up before sunrise; but the thatha who would lie on his bed and stare blankly around at the scores of people helping him go through his mundane day.

***

A few minutes before sunrise, as usual, Paati woke up, brushed and went to the door to pick up milk and the newspaper. She cursorily glanced at the headline about women becoming the head of state, and started boiling milk for morning coffee. She checked if there was enough decoction (pronounced di.gaa.shun). He woke up, just afterwards, when he smelt the coffee, and saw the first rays of sunlight peeking through his windows.

“Oy, turn on the radio!” he hollered from his room. Sure enough, an unrecognisable voice was heard throughout the house singing Raga Ataana. Hardly anyone sings Ataana these days, he thought to himself. The voice wasn’t doing a bad job at all.

“Oy, I have to brush,” he hollered again. Paati came to the bed with his brush, and a bowl and a glass of water. When he was done, she said, “I’ll get you the coffee.” And the coffee came, along with the newspaper. And he sat up, with coffee in one hand, and the Hindu newspaper in the other, excitedly checking if his letter to the editor had been published. Once when someone told him that it was pointless to send letters to the editor because only retired Tamilians from Mylapore wrote to the editor, and only other retired Tamilians from Mylapore read these comments, he was outraged and never spoke to that person again.

“Oy, my letter about the bad road in front of our house has come in the Hindu!”

“I don’t know why you bother. You haven’t used that road in three months!”

Reading the Hindu every morning, sipping coffee and in an old veshti and torn banian was a way of life in Madras, and thatha was one of it’s firmest endorsers. Apparently, when he was in Canada for a few months on some work, and it was one of Canada’s coldest winters, he insisted on freezing in a veshti when at home. Later, he discovered that wearing tights underneath the veshti made the extreme weather slightly more bearable.

The radio in the background was now executing a complex Pallavi in Ataana. Thatha put the Hindu down, and hollered yet again, “Turn up the volume.” The music now filled the house, and Paati began to hum along. Thatha was keeping talam and nodding in appreciation every now and then.

“A-one,” he declared when it ended, using one of those typically Madras expressions. Paati made some sound signifying her approval.

***

When I haggled down the fare to thirty-five, I paid the auto driver and climbed the flight of stairs to the house. I was ready to face a forlorn thatha. The door was open, as always. When I entered the drawing room, I heard from the bedroom a voice saying, “…the gall to come to Madras and complain that nobody speaks Hindi. You come to a different state, you learn that language. We lived in Delhi for six years. Didn’t we speak Hindi? These North Indians…”

There he was on his bed, with a frown on his face showing his utter contempt for North Indians. It turned into the brightest of smiles when he saw me. Surrounded by the newspaper and a glass of coffee.

“Thatha!” I exclaimed in relief, “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Just immobile, that’s all. Frankly, I’m enjoying it. People do everything for you. You just sit around like a king and enjoy”

He wasn’t forlorn or sick. In his own words, he was just immobile. Who said nothing is constant but change?

Long Hair and Other Dirty Habits

In my nostalgia driven weeks after Law School, I suddenly remembered my unforgettable Labour Law viva. After ten trimesters of giving vivas, I was quite confident that I could defend anything that I had written successfully. But there was the catch - I hadn't written that project, Raguvaran had. On my instructions. But, he had written it. Half of it, at least.

Morning of my viva, I read 'my' paper and on the fifteenth page, I see footnote number 23 - "That book you gave me". Footnote number 24 - "Id." Footnote 29 - "Whatever Act they are talking about." Page 5, line 9 - "Industrial britney Disputes Act". Someone was playing my own joke on me. There was no way I could have ever hoped to have defended this. But I was cocky. Three years and a bit in Law School had taught me to defend anything. I once even had an explanation for why there was a footnote in my Contracts paper that said, "Cite random economics book here".

Prof. Nagaraj never read projects. I had nothing to worry about. I just had to know something about the topic, and bombard him with fundae. So, I read class notes on the topic, and confidently walked in.

Prof. Nagaraj: What is your topic?
Me: Judicial mechanisms under the ID Act.
N: What have you covered?
M: Sir, if you look at the Table of Contents... (first mistake)
N: Only the first chapter is relevant. After that you have just added whatever you want to fill the pages.
M: Sir, no. I have analysed Section 10 in the second chapter.
N: That is irrelevant.
M: Sir, um, I think it is relevant if you consider it from the perspective (now there was no way I could intelligently complete that sentence, and then it struck me) of comparing it with Alternate Dispute Resolution mechanisms. (There. He loves Alternate Dispute Resolutions.)
N: All of you are talking about Alternate Dispute Resolution even when it is irrelevant just because I taught you that course last year. And Section 10 has NOTHING to do with ADR.
(Head hung down in shame) What is the paper? If you had just taken one standard textbook and paraphrased it, you could have done a better job.
M: Sir, that's what I did! (Second mistake.)
N: Doing a bad project is wrong. Accepting that your project is bad is worse!
M: Sir, sorry. (Third mistake.)
N: What sorry? This word 'sorry' for everything everyone will going to use. No meaning it has anymore.
M: Sir, sorry... (Four)
N: I don't know what has happened to you. In third year, when I taught ADR, you were very active in class. You took part in all class discussion. Even simulation exercise you did. Now, you will going to come to class and will going to sleep. You have gotten into long hair and other dirty habits.
M: (I have this habit of laughing uncontrollably at all the wrong times, and when he said 'long hair and other dirty habits', I began my continuous giggle) No, sir.
N: What 'No, sir'? I know everything about everybody.
M: Sir, sorr... um, sir...

Then, he took my project and started writing something on the cover. My curious self had to find out what was written, and I leaned over the table. He then said, "You want to see? YOU WANT TO SEE?" And he showed me. In big, bold letters, with a red pen, across the cover of my paper, "BELOW AVERAGE". He said, "So that I don't forget."

And I was worried about Raguvaran's footnotes!

Tryst with Destiny

"...At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity."

We took it a little too seriously, didn't we?

He's Leaving Home

"Dude, lets go to Pakistan."
"Now? It's a little too late."
"Everybody's there. Last night at Pak."
"Sarkar's cutting tomorrow?"
Silence.
"Fuck. Yes. Sarkar's cutting tomorrow... Vipul also!"
"They're there right now. Let's go."

And so, Surd and I, on my bike rushed to Pak - to consume, one last time, the tea that kept me sane for three years. As I drove, helmetless, past policemen, I remembered the first time I went there, with Bailey, on the day before the CPC one mid-term (a night that would culminate in four of us standing in the middle of the Cauvery hostel quad screaming, "Takwani!!") and being fascinated by how a place this extraordinary in atmosphere could be tucked away in a quiet corner of Bangalore for this long.

For three years, four days a week on an average, Sarkar, Vipul, Spandan and myself with Singla, Senti, Amit, VP and other junior and senior visitors discussed life there over countless cups of chai and Classic Milds. And on that last night, when I reached Pak, I was overwhelmed by nostalgia. I somehow never thought that my non-smoking, vegetarian self could ever be so attached to a place that mainly serves young, dead animals and cigarettes to go with the chai! The days I didn't go there felt strangely empty. The days Sarkar and I didn't come back at 12.45 and sign in the gate three register as The Pope, or Simi Rose, or James Bond (with roll no 007), I usually sulked around the hostel like a little kid who had just lost a game of hide and seek.

Finally, the moment arrived. I had to leave Pak (officially called Gangondanahalli) for the last time in my life. I walked up to Ayub - the guy who makes the chai - and thanked him for the best chai in the world. Without warning, he hugged me and said, "Jab Bangalore aaoge, idhar zaroor aana!" That's the first time I realised that I was not only finishing law school, but also leaving Bangalore for some time at least.
***

"Ok. I have to cut now. If I stand here longer, I'm going to cry."
"Don't cut now."
"You don't understand. I can't stand here."
"Go."
"No. I'll stay."
"Just five minutes."
Then it happened. I had to cry once, and I did.
"Made me stay here for five minutes just so that you see me cry, didn't you?"
***

Bong and I sat on one of the metal cots in the hostel on the second floor. Tuts was blasting "New York Nagaram" from his room. Senti slept through it like a child. Jags and Surd nailed gin and Sprite. Mishra and Arun - each more drunk than the other - played a pointless game of badminton in the quad.

My last moments in the hostel were spent like this - on a cot on the second floor, high on gin, with various kinds of smoke whirling around me giving me the feeling that I had spent most of my time at a whiskey bar.
***

The room was almost spotlessly clean. The table had some assorted items left for whoever moved into the room next year (That would be Cheena). There was a pillow lying around, which was to be donated to CCL for the kids. After five hours of intense packing, I looked back at the empty room. Just last evening, it was home - everything from toothpaste to hair conditioner, cane chair, desktop, music system, book rack, survival fluids, bread and cheese, deodorant, Arun, Geek. When I left, it was empty. The new guy had to come in and start from scratch. Actually not. I left him my posters, shaving foam, and an extension cord - a good start.
***

Just before I left, we engaged in our only act of vandalism - behind the door, we wrote the last line of the judgment that law school passed on us - "There will be no orders as to costs."
***