Short Story: Down the memory lane

The e-vite stirred up a mixture of emotions, mostly nostalgia and excitement, with somewhat surprise and relief. He read it again "You are cordially invited for a reunion of the Class of 1998 of  Institute of Technology, Varanasi. Venue: Holiday Inn, Randolph, MA Time: 6:30 PM EDT". It was for today. He felt relieved on having checked the email address which he otherwise rarely checked, as all it ever received were spam mails. A bit of nostalgia hit him when he recalled how he and most of his friends were in regular contact for first few years after their college but then as time passed  and as for everyone life, situations, cities and countries changed, they all lost touch. The invite was like a blast from the past bringing back all those memories of college life and he was excited at the idea of the reunion.

He graduated from one of the finest institutions from the country getting admission into which was extremely hard and competitive. One would expect that all the students who came in there were  extremely focussed on their academics but recalling back his college days Vivek thought "Academics was one thing that evaded us in our college life". He got reminded of everything except studies  including all the ragging, bunking classes, endless hours of playing cards, smoking pot, spending nights at the river front to catch a glimpse of the sunrise, the local tea shop, cheap booze, the   sadistic professors, cramming through the exams and finally, her. The last thought made a blissful smile cross his lips.

"Those were the days", he thought. 

Vivek called up home to tell his wife about the invite and that how excited he was about the idea of meeting his batch mates, most of whom he had never even seen after the graduation. She, too,  sounded excited at idea. There house was in Dedham and his office was in Cambridge. Randolph was almost in the middle of Cambridge and Dedham, just south of Boston.

"I will take a cab and come directly from office. You can bring the car and then we can drive back together", he told her.

The excitement of getting together with old time buddies was increasing with every passing moment. He recalled the first night in the hostel and the petrifying moments of ragging, when all the  first year students were stripped to their underpants and made to stand in a line. A senior, pacing up and down the line was shouting, "There are only 2 rules of ragging. Rule 1 - The senior is  always right. Rule 2 -  In case of doubt, follow the first rule".  Another senior was explaining the 'family' structure of the hostel, "The second year student having the same roll number as yours  is your technical father, the third year student is your grand father and the fourth year one is your great grand father and you will respect them accordingly". 

Although, for most part, the word 'ragging' was treated with a lot of apprehension and fear by the first year students, it had its amusing moments too. Moments, that later on everybody who went  through them would laugh upon. For example, when some senior would ask a first year student in a scornful tone, "So how many fathers do you have?" The timid and terrified first year student would  say "Only one sir". A few of them might even take an offense to a question like that but then you couldn't back-mouth with the seniors (the rules of ragging gave the seniors a carte blanche) and  had to just gulp down the humiliation. Some of the smart ones might say "Two sir. One biological father and the other technical father". But no one was able to get the right answer which was four.  Later on the senior would explain the count of four as first being the biological father, the second being the technical father, third being Mahatma Gandhi, who by virtue of being the father of the nation was also the father of every student in the college and the fourth was the bull. Why the bull? Well, cow has the status of the mother in most Indian cultures and that promoted the bull to  the status of father. At the end of this description the freshers (even the ones who felt offended earlier) would find it hard to suppress their laughter. But ofcourse, freshers were not allowed to laugh while being ragged or they would have to go through a rather embarrassing exercise of wiping the grin off their face that involved singing a song while dancing with it and then wiping the  smile off the face, shoving it in through a certain body orifice, taking it out through a certain another and then burying it under ground ordering it not to come back.

Vivek was so engrossed in his thoughts that he did not realize the growing smirk on his face. Completely oblivious to the fact that he was in his office surrounded by people he continued to have  blissful, and often funny, expressions on his face. He did not pay attention even to the meeting reminder that popped up on his desktop. The chain of thoughts was broken when the phone rang. It was his boss, Jim.

"Vy-vek,  we are all here in the conference room CX-AB3. Are you joining us?", Jim said from the other end of the phone. 

"As if I don't have to if I don't want", Vivek said to himself. "Corporate cultures have this cunning way of making you do what they want yet making it sound like you chose it", he thought as he  got up from his seat and started walking towards the conference room. The lights in the room were off and around the table were Jim, Ken, Jack (who was also often referred to as John) and Helen. He was the only Indian in the group. Ken was projecting some spreadsheet from his laptop. Vivek slumped in his seat feigning to look on the projected spreadsheet though his mind was time-travelling in the past.

The ragging period ended with the formation of new relations. Life in a hostel was a whole new experience. New found friends and newly found freedom helped let go of the moorings that connected  Vivek and many like him with their parents all this while.

During the rest of the first year, as they say, birds of same feathers had flocked together. The studious serious front benchers were often seen together as were the ones (of which Vivek was a part of) that always missed the morning class and were always found in the last row of benches in the classroom. Besides the differences of academic interests in the two kinds of birds, they had more  visible differences too. For example, the former woke up early in the day, bathed and shaved everyday and wore clean pair of socks. The latter did not have any pattern of bathing (but it  did happen on some days) and often relied mostly on one pair of slippers all the way from bathroom to the classroom (making socks absolutely unnecessary). The former lived in clean rooms, had books  neatly stacked and carried the titles like 'Thermal Engineering', 'Machine Design' or 'Applied Physics'. The latter had rooms full of cigarette buds on the floor and cobwebs on the ceiling. They  too had many pieces (literally 'pieces') of literature in their room that once belonged to magazines titled 'Penthouse' or 'Playboy'. The former worked very hard for their grades and the later  dreamt a lot, gloated in their disgusting and smelly lifestyles and blamed the bad grades on system. Adding to it were their over confident and misleading seniors who said 'Grades are useless and  do not play any part in your employability. You should have an all round personality' , which for the sake of convenience was construed as involving yourself into everything but the studies. The  former were often seen during engineering or technical day-time festivals like 'TechNex' or 'Modex'. The latter were frequent visitors on all night festivals like 'Ganga Mahotsava' or 'Dhrupad  Festival' ('Our local Woodstocks', they would call it). A year later, it was at one of those festival that Vivek saw her for the first time and..

"So these are our deliverables by the end of phase 1", Ken was wrapping up the final spread sheet. "Vy-vek, you think you would be able to deliver that DLL library by then? Thats perhaps the most  critical piece". Kenny's statement was followed by a silence.

"Vy-vek??", he asked again.

"Huh? What? Oh ya. Whatever. Sure", Vivek said in a flustered tone, certainly not sure of what he just agreed for.

"Ok then, seems like we have a plan", Jim, the boss, stepped in. Just like almost every other corporate 'boss' Jim only made the opening and closing statements in a meeting and was sure that the  'guys' will figure out the rest. He called it leadership by means of 'delegation' and 'empowerment'. Others compared him to the pointy haired boss from a certain cartoon strip on the world of  management.

Vivek checked up his watch. It showed 5:30 PM as the time. Vivek decided to wind up for the day to leave for the reunion party. He boarded the Metro Boston subway train (red line) from Central  Square station in Cambridge to Quincy Adams in Quincy, just outside Boston, and from there he decided to take a taxi from to Randolph. Lost deep in his thoughts, Vivek hardly noticed the elongated  time period for which the red line was stationed on the tracks of the Longfellow bridge, right outside Charles MGH station. The announcement of 'traffic' ahead brought him to the present.

"The Boston 'T', espeically the red line, needs significant upgrade", he thought to himself as he took out his i-pod to listen to some music while on the train. He started with his favorite  playlist of Hindustani classical. The joyous jugalbandi (duet) between Pt Hari Prasad Chaurasia on flute and Ustaad Zakir Hussain on Tabla (percussion) and the view of the Charles River alongside  was extremely soothing. It was like a deja vu of the time when he had heard the two legendary maestros in a live concert along the banks of a different river in a different city. 

Pandit ji was performing the rag 'Ahir Bhairav' in a musical concert at 'Ganga Mahotsava' along the banks of Ganges. As the night progressed, the music crescendo changed with Pandit ji and Ustaad  Zakir Hussain taking the audience to a roller coaster ride through their musical enthrallment in the form of a jugalbandi. Somewhere along the jugalbandi did Amit, a close friend of Vivek, spotted  a familiar looking face in the crowd and asked a question in general to rest of the gang.

"Hey, isn't that girl from our college?"

"Yeah", replied Vasu. Girls, in their college, were typically associated with sincerity towards studies and staying indoors as much as possible. Almost every head turned to see the 'girl' from  their college who had such eclectic tastes and adventurous spirit to sit on the ghats all night for a music concert.

"She is Neha, a fachchi", Vasu contiued, "from Ist-Tronics (he meant first year, electronics engineering). She is from Lucknow". Vasu, even though he had never spoken to a single girl in the  college (like most people of this gang), had a complete database on the who's who of girl's hostel.

Vivek, too, looked in the direction of the girl. Normally the girls who came to an engineering college that had a tough entrance exam were the types who took statements like "beauty is skin deep"  rather seriously. But this one was different. The musical notes along with the visual impact of looking at this simplistic beauty created reverberations in Vivek's mind, something that would give  him sleepless nights in the days to come.

"What's her name again, Neha?", he enquired again with a strange inquisitiveness in his voice and continued looking at her for the rest of the concert. Not that Vivek had not seen a pretty face  before but there was something about Neha that was different. Something that kept her alive in his head and dreams. A strange connection that he had never felt before. "Was it that cute smile?, or those free flowing hair? or that sweet voice or those big eyes", he tried his best to figure it out but could not. For the next many days he tried very hard not to think of her but the harder he  tried, the more difficult it became. Soon he found himself longing just to get a glimpse of her. It did not take long for rest of his friends to know about what he felt for her and well, boys,  while they make excellent dependable friends, they can really mess with someone's mind, especially in the matters of heart and feelings. They can be really insensitive with their crude humor and  yet extremely encouraging (sometimes overly so) and co-operative at the same time. Throw in some alcohol and the intensity of these emotions peak to new heights.

"Come, let's go to the girl's hostel and you tell her right now what you feel. Don't worry, I am with you", someone might say after a few drinks not realizing the he himself would be the biggest  worry. Despite all its whims, this male bonding formed a strong network between all the friends where they could share their joys and sorrows with each other.

"Cisco Systems - The human network" said a big bright billboard along the highway I-93, parallel to which were the train tracks on which the redline was waiting for the signal ahead between the  stations of JFK/U-Mass and North Quincy. The stretch between JFK and North Quincy was the longest stretch between any two stations on the red line and most of it was over the creek of Boston  harbor. Vivek started wondering how people from the cities south of Boston commuted to the city center when there were no trains.

"Trains form an important part in connecting cities", he thought, "and well, often they connect more than just cities".

As the years progressed, Vivek had acquired reasonable fame due to his regular appearances in the college's cultural and extra curricular activities. Every now and then when he would cross paths  with Neha on the campus or any of those cultural festivals, he had a momentary eye-to-eye connection, but it would just make Vivek's heart skip a beat and his walk a lot faster to get out of her  sight. And then he kept on wondering if she noticed him or not. Was her smile for him or was it his imagination? Of course friends around him were not of much help as they had contradictory views.  Some made fun of him for what a wuss he was whereas others tried to bloat him with confidence. There were times when he crossed paths with her many times a day at various spots and he wondered if  she was also following him like he was following her but then he dismissed it as a thought of an over-imaginary mind. Despite all his efforts, he could not muster up enough courage to approach her  and at one point, he gave up all hopes of ever having a chance to talk to her, till came that lucky break.

It was the end of winter breaks in his fourth year and the last semester in the college was about to begin. Owing to some confusion, Amit, his friend from the same town, had booked them in the  train to Varanasi a day in advance and as a result it was just the two of them from their college on the train, that was otherwise filled with their college students every time a vacation got over.   As a result, the journey was pretty boring. Somewhere near the midnight, the train reached the Lucknow station and over the years it had become a ritual to eat "Bun-Makhan (Butter with bread  buns)" there. For some reason, Bun-makkhan and hot tea at Lucknow station tasted something out of the world. Maybe it was because they were generous with their butter or maybe because everyone was  absolutely hungry by the time Lucknow station arrived. Amit and Vivek got down and had their dinner of "Bun-Makhan". They were barely halfway through and the train started moving. They rushed back  and boarded the moving train but the coach they boarded was not the one they had their seats in. Assuming that all the coaches are connected from inside, they started walking towards their  compartment but to their disappointment their current compartment was the one next to the 'general bogie' which meant its exit was blocked from inside. They would have to get out of the train to  reach their seats but that could now only happen at Sultanpur which was a good 4 hours away, which meant no sleep tonight. Cursing their luck and the 'bun-makkhan' they started to look around for  some empty seats. Just as they turned around Vivek found himself face to face with Neha. Both of them froze at the moment or maybe the moment froze itself. Vivek was trying to make an effort to  say something but words wouldn't come out. He cleared his throat to make sure the vocal chords still worked and was about to make another attempt when  Amit, standing behind him, said 'Er, Hi'.

'Hi', she replied back and then as the moment was melting itself, the three of them got talking. They told her the story of being booked in the train a day in advance and then the goof up at  Lucknow station due to the 'bun-makkhan'. Awkward and stupid as it sounded, she found it amusing. She told them that she was heading a day earlier for some family engagements and was accompanied  with her brother. She invited both of them to share the seat with her and her brother. Naturally Amit rose to the occasion and sat with the brother keeping him engaged in conversations so that  Vivek could get some lone time with Neha. While most of the talk was on generic topics of college activities with a conscious effort to avoid the eye contact but still every now and then their  glances met giving a faint awkward expression on Vivek's face that he tried to defuse with a grin. Barely realizing when the four hours passed, the train pulled into Sultanpur station and it was  time for Vivek and Amit to get back to their seats. Ofcourse, neither of them slept for the rest of the night as Vivek had to tell Amit all the details of his conversation with Neha.

Back at the Institute, things improved as Vivek and Neha would now nod a 'hi' to each other every time there paths crossed. Pretty soon their relationship graduated from a simple greeting of  'hello' and they would spend some time talking to each other. Vivek's sense of humor ensured Neha always had a pleasant time chatting up with him but he was never sure of what to read of her  smiles and could never bring up himself to tell her how he felt about her. At one time he bought some chocolates for her but couldn't say so when he met her. The whole situation became rather  embarrassing when he feigned that he just 'happened' to carry some chocolates, if she liked any, and felt like a fool later on. 

The last semester for Vivek somehow seemed to have ran faster than any of the previous semesters and sooner did he realize it was the last night of the college when he and his friends had gathered  on the top of the water tank getting drunk and nostalgic about the last four years. Booze, weed, a 'two-in-one' playing old nostalgic hindi songs and a clear sky with plenty of stars to gaze on had created the perfect atmosphere. Everything from ragging to exams to their jobs was getting discussed till they broke into dawn by which time everybody was totally drunk and exhausted. Finally, like always, the topic shifted to 'girls' and not a lot of boys had much to add to the ultimate topic of any male bonding session.

"Well, atleast one of us had a colorful college life', Vasu said looking at Vivek.

"What colorful?" scoffed Amit, "Had he been a man enough, he would be spending this night with her, not with us". More laughter followed. After about half an hour more of leg pulling and gulping down his last drink, Vivek suddenly got up as if his body found a dose of energy cached somewhere.

"Come", he said to Amit in a strangely confident voice, "Lets go".

"Go where?", Amit asked as Vivek was dragging him. 

"Girl's hostel". A silence followed these words as the rest of the guys saw Vivek and Amit climbing down the water tank and getting on the Amit's bike. The morning breeze and the loud noise of Amit's motor-bike piercing the morning tranquility had some sobering effect, and at least they could stand properly outside the girl's hostel as Vivek  ordered the watchman to call Neha. It was almost 6:30 AM. Neha was still half asleep and in her night dress when she walked out bare feet. Despite the sleepy eyes, there was a charming freshness  and glow on her face. Her hair were disheveled with the locks flowing over her fore head and on occasionally on the face but she had never looked more pretty to Vivek.She wasn't exactly sure how to react as she saw Vivek and Amit waiting for her outside. Amit gave a gentle squeeze on Vivek's shoulder and a courtsey nod to Neha and walked away. 

"Hi", Vivek said as she walked near to him. Ignoring the slight expression of disgust on her face, perhaps due to all the alcohol smell, he continued "Listen Neha, I am really sorry to have you  woken up like this but these are my final hours in the college and I will be on the train to Delhi in a few hours from now. I just wanted you to know that you would be my best memory of the  college."

"Vivek..er..what?", Neha tried to speak without really knowing what to say.

"Neha", Vivek continued ignoring her attempts as if he was in a rush to finish what he had to say, "ever since that night on Ganga Mahotsava, never has a day gone when I have not thought about  you. Those 4 hours between Lucknow and Sutanpur were the best 4 hours of my life. Every day when our paths cross and I see your smiling face, my day gets made. Every day I don't see you I feel  incomplete. I don't know when I will see you next but before leaving I wanted to let you know how I felt. *hic*"

Vivek's hic-cup led to a brief moment of silence, a pin drop silence.

"Vivek", Neha said with the tone and expression of someone struggling in a maze, "I really don't know what to say. I mean, I thought we were just friends but now.. "

Girls probably don't realize that when they say "I thought we were just friends" to a man who just expressed his feelings after gathering courage for years, how humiliating and crushing it makes  the man feel.

"That's alrite", Vivek cut her in between and raised his arm to stop Neha from speaking further. 

"Vivek, no, let me finish.", she tried to say in a desperate voice but Vivek cut her again.

"Its really alrite", he said as he started to walk towards Amit who kick-started his bike. Vivek got on  the pillion seat and even before she could realize what next to do, they left.Next few hours were spent in sobering up, packing, little rest and then finally they were on the railway platform where Vivek hugged all his friends before boarding the train. No one had discussed  'Neha' through out. As he boarded the train and bade that last good bye a tear rolled down his cheek.

Simultaneously somewhere outside in the streets of the city, an auto-rickshaw was stuck in a traffic jam and a couple of girls sitting in it were urging the driver to move fast. One of them was  really getting extremely fidgety.

"I don't know what to tell you", Neha was telling her friend Meera. "I mean, it was early morning, I was barely awake and out of my senses and he was so wasted and then he wouldn't let me talk  and", she was talking so fast eating half of the words, "I never got to tell him I feel the same way about him". She then requested again to the auto driver, "Bhaiya, please, can you hurry up".As soon as they reached the station, she jumped out of it and threw a hundred rupee note to the auto driver and ran into the station without bothering to take the change back. The train to Delhi was on platform 3 and was about to leave. She ran towards the platform but all she could see was the train from behind as it departed from the platform. Tired, exhausted and exasperated she slumped  herself on a bench and let the tears roll down in a free fall as she mourned her love story that got over even before it could start.

Getting out of the red line train at Quincy Adams, Vivek took a taxi to Holiday Inn, Randolph, about 4 miles from the station. Another 10 mins and he was in the drive way of the hotel. He found his wife in the main lobby waiting for him and they started walking towards the party hall. She asked him to move ahead as she wanted to stop over at the ladies room. Entering the room,  Vivek was  welcomed from a lots of faces of his past that have changed over years due to receding hair lines and bulging waist lines. Their was Vasu and Pankaj and KK and a whole bunch of other guys. As they  all hugged each other, one of them asked "So where is you better half?".

"She should be here", he said looking towards the entrance.

"Ah there she is", as he spotted his wife in the incoming crowd of people and waved at her "Over here, Neha..".