SOME DREAMS!!!....OR ARE THEY??!

The sticky note on my desktop tells me it's five days to go for my exams to end!That was two days ago,a measure to help me keep going and keep me studying for trust me, I have lost all motivation and inspiration to really study like I did in my graduation years and score the sky.Not that I ever have but I have to say my graduation years comprised of purposeful studying, something that went a bit ahead of the mere classroom teaching. Healthy debates with the teacher, information of the world, how a Chinese and simultaneously an American boy my age must be living in their country with a completely different administrative system shaping them, understanding Shakespeare(though that seemed,sorry,seemeth a task at times!)and reading and understanding wonderful elegies and poems by Shelley,Keats and Milton. Working for the college magazine under a wonderful team, writing articles and selecting them for the magazine along with ma'am and my best friend who also happened to be a part of my team, hanging out in the cool cafe opposite college, parties, exams. Damn, those were the years that shaped me! I have learnt so much from those days. 

But we have had some really good times here too, haven't we? Just the other day, I was flipping through all the photos and videos of me and my friends on Facebook and man, it was such a trip down memory lane!! Everyone looks different though we have seen each other everyday for almost 12 of the 24 hours each day for the past one and a half years and more, we have danced like drunkards in the classroom, we have sat on the front bench and had register chats while pretending to be scholars with invisible broad rimmed spectacles on our eyes, we have exchanged glances everytime a particular song has played and smiled or laughed on the lyrics, tune and sound of the singer, we have had completely useless idiotic philosophical talks over matters ranging from religion to sex(both the kinds),we have randomly allotted female roommates to their male counterparts making hilarious combinations of people who haven't even properly spoken to each other, we have gone bonkers when a camera is rolling, talking nonsense into it and interfering each other(fly on the wall style!)every other place in the campus or city has some memory attached with it and everytime we pass by it,we remind ourselves of what happened there. We abuse each other with the choicest of expletives, we have signature lines and mannerisms, we imitate each other in the sorriest way possible and crack up. We suddenly remind ourselves that very soon we won't be hanging out like this and become all silent and cranky. And then we also study and manage to pass every semester, expressing shock while holding the mark sheet telling each other how we never thought we would score as much. Wow, never thought much about these moments! They strike particularly hard now that I reach the end of a journey I started with a completely blank slate. There were so many phases, so many events, people who influenced, people who mattered. I have always found this thought of this college amazing, a country full of people, some from the same city, who otherwise would never have met or thought of each other will depart knowing and befriending and loving such a variety of people!

There are these different images imprinted in my mind of how I would bump into these people at some point in my life later and how we would be successful professionals, we would make up plans to catch up at a cafe over coffee or how I would treat a friend over dinner at this expensive hotel where she and I can only imagine to be eating,and then with another friend how we would have a race on the streets of Mumbai late at night, where she would be driving her BMW 530i and I would be in my Mercedes SLK Roadster and then when it comes to directing my first film, how I would call up my friend and ask her/him to be the cinematographer or editor or scriptwriter for it and then when the film is successful, we would give interviews together to a journalist from a prominent newspaper or channel who would also happen to be one of my friend from the Journalsim batch and I would boast of how we started out in college, making crappy short films, making plans to collaborate on projects in the future and then how we made such a masterpiece together and then my Journalst friend would be interviewing us!If not for anything else,just for the sake of these amazing images, I will work as hard as possible to make them come true! Guys, let's make it happen!!      

THE BOY AND THE GIRL

A heavy traffic, busy roads, people hardly bothered about people's presence and a lot of noise and activity. He stood right in the middle of the street, in front of a statue in bronze color with some pavement around it. If you captured it from a camera, it would separate him from the crowd. His eyes searched for something, someone. He was visibly anxious as his eyes moved to and fro faster than the fluctuating directions of the traffic and maybe his heart too was beating a bit faster than usual. As he turned to look towards the Bank Of Maharashtra branch towards his right, amidst the fleeting crowd he saw one person on whom his eyes stopped and then there was a silent happiness in his heart. There, at a distance of a two roads she stood she in black and blue. A black T-shirt and blue three fourths with the hair tied neatly in one pony behind and a cell phone in her hand. She waved lightly to indicate her presence and to get his attention and she succeeded marvelously at the latter. She went one better in fact, she captured it!

They were meeting! They were finally meeting! It had been around four years now, since they had last seen each other. There had been chance encounters and small silent, unmentionable meetings in between but this was the first meeting, in the true sense of the word where two people face each other and talk, that they were having. She came closer as she crossed the road and his anxiety rose to new heights. 'She is still so beautiful' was the first thing he could think of, saying it was a different ballgame! They shook hands, smiled and wished each other a Happy New Year. His mind was full of questions to ask and answers to hear but somehow he was finding it slightly difficult to clearly open up  and speak. She was being diplomatic, polite in fact as she conducted herself with him and asked if they could sit somewhere and talk. He consented and they walked into a neat and clean restaurant on the roadside. As he ordered for two cups of coffee, he was about to begin. They talked, for an hour and then some more, the past came to life, the present was its result and the future seemed completely hollow and blank. He was trying to get to something, just a friendship was more than enough, she was adamant, understandably so but he could hardly see it. He was not able to frame it right, she was not able to get it right. It all ended in a sheer mess! As they headed out of the coffee shop, he was full of disappointment, she probably was a bit sad too at the way things had gone, they both had wished there would be a different outcome this time but some miscommunication meant that was not meant to happen. A friendship would have been a bonus of sorts for him. As they bid goodbye to each other and walked the opposite sides of the road, he, cliched as it may sound but nonetheless emotionally looked back to her, she walked on. He knew probably this was the last time their paths had crossed, he wished they would cross once again some other day.

It has been three years but that day hasn't yet dawned. Even a coincidence was not meant. But after those three years, when the boy through destiny or whatever you may call it was brought back to that very place again and he could literally see those three or four hours that impacted him so much, play out in front of him he could only smile, smile at his naiveness then, at her situation, at the sheer nostalgia it evoked, at how far he had come from that day and also how far must she have gone. Everything there was just like it was then yet everything had moved on. Yes, I could have handled things better then and maybe things could have been a lot different today but the way it stands, I accept it wholeheartedly. I caused my own situation. She was not wrong. She just couldn't get it. For whatever its worth, I am sorry the way things went that day. And I still wish our paths cross someday just so I could say this to you. You were not wrong.