Thursday, January 11, 2007

“Mission Friendship”

Last semester of MBA program; last few months left with friends; tension of getting placed in a good company with a princely package and loads of perks and perquisites; excitement of entering the corporate world in a matter of few months; all this excitement in the air and here I am standing at the tapir outside our college campus, hanging out with my friends, when it all starts suddenly …
As usual a caravan of cars are passing by with such speed that it reminds me a few lines of an old poem which I had read during my school days:
“One second it’s here
In a wink of an eye it’s gone”
On the other side of the jungle of these machines, I see something, which attracts my eyes, the instant I see it. Oh! It’s as if a beautiful girl has materialized from nowhere, reminding me of the Greek goddesses. Wow! I can’t believe my eyes, seems to be too good to be true, a lovely innocent face, wrapped around with a pink dupatta, trying in vain to keep the dirt being blown around by those mechanical beasts, away from that sweet face of hers. She’s trying to cross the road and come to our side, but her attempts are to no avail. Suddenly she finds a gap amidst the continuous trail and uses it to come to my side of the road. My feet are glued to the ground at the sight of such a striking beauty; I couldn’t have imagined even in my wildest of dreams, such a beauty could exist, who was so sweet and gentle. Her subtle beauty made an instant impression on my mind and I was surprised to find that she was a part of my own batch. I couldn’t imagine how could I have missed her since the past three semesters, but then again, couldn’t blame myself considering the colossal batch strength.
But now that I had laid my eyes on her, I was determined to make friends with her and kept this task at the top of the “Things to do” list for this last semester. I had just over three months time to accomplish this Herculean task. But, as they say, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve that.” So, to my utter joy, I found out that we had two subjects in common. I took it as an omen and started working towards my goal. My first dialog with her was during one of those classes, when due to some reason the class had been cancelled. We exchanged our names and soon I added her on my Orkut friends’ list (long live google!). Now I started communicating with her via Orkut. But, the real world seemed to be pretty tough in comparison. Being in the same lecture wasn’t of much help, and my being a backbencher and her being the sincere type didn’t help either. To let you in with the irony of it all, let me share the day of her birthday; thanks to Orkut once again, I was able to know her birthday and, decided to wish her today, and to make this day a success. But then again, it’s easier said than done, I scrapped her the birthday wish and as my luck would have it, she was sitting right behind me, Orkutting. Soon got a reply from her side. Just try to imagine this situation, two people sitting back to back and still communicating via the net. This really shows the edge the virtual world has over reality. I felt so awkward and when I turned after finally deciding to wish her in person, to my utter dismay, I found her surrounded by her friends. Whenever I see her, I find myself completely speechless. Until now I used to think of myself as a very open person, who could easily make friends, but I am unable to understand what’s so different in this case. The way I feel when I see her can be understood to be very similar to what has been described in this beautiful gazal of my favorite singer, Jagjit singh:
“Jab saamne tum aa jaate ho,
kya jaaniye kya ho jaata hai,
chaaha tha yeh kahenge,
socha tha woh kahenge,
aaye jo saamne to kuch bhi na keh sake,
bas dekha kiye unhein hum”
So, this day also went through the drain without any progress. After a few weeks again, I got a chance to make contact. We had a test in one of he common subjects. I, along with my roommate and one of my friends went and sat behind her, with me sitting just behind her and both my friends on my either side. But, as luck would have it, there were two sets of questions, with her and both my friends getting the same set and only me being the odd one out. So, here I was sitting with my head in my hands and both of my friends discussing the questions happily with her. I wouldn’t like to dwell on the mocking that I had to face from them after the class was over.
So, here was another opportunity squandered by. I could go on narrating many more similar incidents, but with the same result, for ex. Just a few days back, this friend of mine told me that she was there with him in one subject, which I had not taken. I was determined to make the most use of this information. I agreed to attend this class with him, as the professor of that subject is a very lenient person. I was too happy to go along with my friend to his class. But then again, after reaching the class, I thought it very unlikely of him to be helping me instead of making it harder for me to succeed. I decided to check the validity of this info. And checked out the attendance register, which confirmed my suspicion. She was not a part of that class, cursing him under my breath; I stormed out of the class without giving any reaction time to the professor.
Now, let’s review the current status; tension of placement is over; all my friends are well placed; she is also placed in a leading company; less than a month left before this final semester comes to an end. I am determined to succeed and thus plan to make optimum use of these few precious days left with me. We have an “Ethnic Day” celebration on the 13th of this month, and I plan to use it to my utmost advantage. But then, no one knows what future has in store, also looking at the past results of my efforts, I m not very optimistic. Still, I am determined to give it a try, so that later I don’t have any regrets on my part. I hope you will pray for my success. Keep watching this space for my further progress. Especially, you sure would like to know what happened on the 13th, won’t you?
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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey anish i can anyime guess taht name satrts witan aaarrrrrrrrrr right.................................................

Anonymous said...

this is so touching..........
actually u always realise the worth of your friends when u r about to b parted...........

The tragedy of life is somewhat like this :-"just when we manage to get all the answers of life......Life changes the question."

regards
Prerna

Anonymous said...

wow!!! what a great blog dear.. what a great experience... but i am sure you will do something on ethinic day... nahi toh ek baar kahiye hum hi kar dete hain kuch..lol joeks apart.. i ma impressed bro.. while reading i was thinking about my life experiences...which are exactely of this tyep..hahaha...

god bless u dear!
keep writing!!!

Laghu Sikarwar said...

Anish, to be very frank, this was a wonderfully worded narration of the events from the recent past. But, what really surprised me were the comments that i happened to hear from a friend of mine from kolkata!!!


btw i was wondering if the 'lucky' girl is aware of this blog!!! I'd really want to share the address of your blog with her!!! Her comment (if any) would certainly add credibility to your 'memoirs'

Newaz i'd say that it could not have been expressed in a better way!! On a serious note!! this is a compulsive read!!! n dude you sure have taken a leaf or two out of the numerous novels that we read!!!


keep the good work flowing.

PS:Please increase your frequency of writing, as I'm sure everyone would be eager to read your next post after this one!!!

Shweta said...

Great job, dude! You are turning into a very prolific writer. Must say, i admire your knack of narration, could actually visualise whatever you have written.I was waiting for your next post but 13th has come & gone...................

Priungkush Chatterjee said...

brother... well well.. what do iahve to say... just a big smile or a grin on my face... jus having a good erad.. connecting to the author as well as the subject of the blog and the irony.... welli must say laghu hit the spot on his comment.... neways... keep it up... i would perhaps suggest you to increase the frequencyof your writing to improve the overall quality to a higher level... wonedrful is the word that i might use to summarise... well do i know the lady...? perhpas that is not the question to be asked at the moment... . ibeleive the question is whether iw oulddisclose the name as an annonymous blogger... lolzzzz.... keep thinking...

Unknown said...

anish ji,
aap to kisi MB author se kam nahi lag rahe hain mujhe.
How could u not end the story n leave it to us to imagine what happened on the ethnic day.
u kno how tech friendly I am. By the time I read the continuing story, you would be long gone out of ur MBA. isliye whenever you write the rest of the story, just give me a buzz sweetheart.
luv,
Swati

Anonymous said...

Very Well written, waiting for your next Blog.I hope u get success. I appreciate ur intrest in writting and narration it.

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