“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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An Angel Who Changed My Life…

“She came…She smiled…She conquered…”

In our lives, we come across many people of many types. Some who stay in contact with you for a long time but still fail to make an impact, some who are there for a small period, but still are able to leave an everlasting impression…
Well, she was one of those latter kinds of people I talked about.
I had joined this college late and was new, so was she (she joined even later than I). When I saw her, the first thing I noticed about her was her radiant smile. She always seemed to be so full of enthusiasm and zeal that you couldn’t help noticing. Soon, she became the flavor of the class, with loads of friends around her. But, I and another friend of ours shared a special relationship with her. We three were an inseparable group. We used to spend our evenings sitting in the CCD near our college, talking about anything and everything…. oh! How we savored those moments of togetherness. Sometimes we even used to sit in the library (when she used to drag the two of us there for the assignments and studies). We used to have long discussions over many cups of coffees, making the tagline of CCD a reality – “A lot can happen over a cup of coffee”.
It was she who brought us into the in-circle of the class. Still, we preferred her company to anyone else. We three used to hang out for hours together. I had the privilege of spending more time with her, as she was in my group of one of the subjects; in fact the group consisted of the two of us only (how this happened is another story which I will tell you all sometime later).
The two of us used to be at my place for hours together, doing the assignments over numerous cups of coffee, which she used to make. I learnt the art of making amazing coffee from her. There are numerous events that are coming to my mind right now that I want to write about, each having it’s own place in my treasure of memories of the time spent with her, be it the fights we used to have over the answers and interpretations of the assignments, be it the presentation we gave together, or be it the discussions we had over coffee. Well, she and our other friend had a common interest in the Ayn Rand philosophy, most of the time discussing about it, while I was the lone fighter of the Alchemist philosophy. These discussions used to be the major part of our CCD visits.
She taught me many a things, showed me a new way to look at things. It seems now as if she was sent into my life to bring me out of my shell and look at the beauty of the world around me.
One thing she was crazy about was, “chicken”. She just couldn’t resist the temptation. She used to take us to various restaurants for it, it was another thing that she never used to have more than a piece or two, for which we used to tease her also.
She used to find happiness in the smallest of things. You could make her happy by just offering her a bar of chocolate or a cup of coffee (yeah! She was crazy about coffee).
She used to be there whenever I needed her. Many a times, she would be consoling us on our poor internal marks, (yeah, at CCD and over few more cups of coffee).
Everything was going fine, when suddenly I felt alone. She was not there! She was gone! For none so ever a reason, she had left. She was gone from my life. After teaching my how to live, I think her job was done here and she left for another one in need like me.
I still can’t forget the day when I got a phone call from one of my friends, informing me about her sudden bereavement. I was really taken aback! She left a vacant space in my life, which can never be filled by anyone.
Finally, I would like to end with a few lines from one of her favorite songs…

“She can kill with a smile

She can wound with her eyes

And she can ruin your faith

with her casual lies

And she only reveals

what she wants you to see

She hides like a child

But she's always a woman to me”

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