An Introduction.

Its 11:09 AM, and about 33 degrees outside. The AC is not central, and I’m feeling the humidity weighing on me. Then there’s work too.

As I trudge along the day, my mind goes back to Shillong, and the idyllic examples of my existence back there.

The smell of pine hurts your chest in a sweet way, something that is unique with the mountain air of my “Queen of the Hill Stations”. I remember sitting on those giant steps in front of my school’s main field, and even then I used to sit with nostalgia heaving within thinking about my school days, and those optimistic nineties. Little changed about those steps, except that instead of having lunch there, we had grown into obnoxious teenagers trying to sneak a beer in and searching for a quiet place.

We were not trouble-makers at all. We just wanted to be left alone. A motley crue of characters, our group was. Be it the insanity of Debu’s humor or Tarkari’s brooding paranoia. Bahduh was “brotherly” in outlook at times while J was armed with a cattle prod at all times, making sure we were not wasting our precious “youth” by doing “nothing”. Vicky was another one armed with a sense of humor that could be lethal, but it always involved context, so you can’t really say he was Stand-Up material.

We never knew how we ended up spending so much time in Down-Shop, and during those drunken expeditions into the Risa Colony forest. With the self-confessed jungle expert Steven with us, exploring the forest took National Geographic proportions. Each creaky wood that made up the “first bridge” had adventure etched on it and the story of how I saved Steven’s bones near that stream by pulling him up after he almost went crashing down will never stop being a topic. Yes folks, we’re talking about 80 kg Steven and indeed the alcohol blurred the gravity of the situation. The alcohol and the fact that ICSE was over.

It was easily a 15 feet drop.

Well let’s get back to describing my Shillong. The winter afternoons were heavenly indeed, especially if there were oranges involved. It was on one of these winter afternoons that I skate-boarded my neighbour’s blue home-made board into the wall of the rubbish dump near Speedway Motors. In the process, I went crashing too, but I still felt cool. I felt like I was in an Offspring video.

Debu’s house was another place that offered us solace during those bitter cold days. An ashtray which could have just had P Shome's name [The only “confirmed” smoker in our group back then] labeled on it was where we stubbed our troubles of life. And of course a host whose hatred of clothes is well-known, forever trying to learn GnR lyrics and maintaining his look of a SOAD discard, his snarling vocals forever being the background music as Tarkari held a stuffed gorilla in a deadly headlock. [Sorry for the very contextual description of things but on the good side it’ll be like a brain exercise for all you strangers out there]

Then there was UFO, the place between the 2 logs, christened by yours truly. They still call it UFO now, 8 years later. This place is located in the entrance to the “Dark Woods” of Risa, near the dwellings of some Nepalese who Steven claimed to be after his life. [The ever dramatic soft-spoken fat-ass he is]

It’s basically 2 fallen logs and some space in between, on a gentle slope. Gentle enough for Bodo to go crashing down as he went chasing “ghosts”. The surrounding pines were so tall, and their charred trunks made interesting photos. It was there when we laid on the dry leaves and stared at the sprinkled blue beyond the pines. That scene stills stays with me as I type this journal in an office a couple of hundred meters off Bangalore’s M.G. Road.

I can never let it go. Those memories are long gone but it’s something which I will not forfeit forever. Maybe I’m older now, and I don’t know if UFO will still cater to my expectations now, but I wish I can go back and sit down, rest my head on the light brown grass and let the sweet smell of pine soak up this cynicism that the city has bestowed upon me. Maybe then I’ll see the difference in the life that I want and the life I am living. Maybe I’ll realize whether the past really exists or is it just a sugared-up representation of our lives like everybody says.