Drenched

A rainy day in Shillong is not just about the downpour. It creates stories and anecdotes that wouldn’t happen if it was not for the rain.

In school, the rain would slam onto the courtyard and the corridors would be splashed in no time. With my kind of luck, it rained especially when I was in my track-suit [on the days we had aerobics], and much to my mom’s horror I’ll go back home literally brown with mud and water.

The rain brought about interesting games, like the one where we pull each other along the corridors like a sledge. The gymnasium used to be open at times and it was a hall of noise literally. There were these stacks of desks at the end where kids used to literally climb up and down and everyone is having his lunch everywhere.

Rain meant the building was cramped for space and with students running around and emerging from every nook and cranny, there was bound to be the usual bumping, which would evolve into a full-fledged fight. I was one of those guys who saw a lot of fights but was never involved in most. These fights would more or less happen when it rained, and a lot of times, the proposal of postponing them till 3 O’clock was usually made.

As I got older, a rainy day usually meant comics, movies, hot alu-chops and endless waiting for the showers to thin out a little so I can venture out. There were the times when we’d get caught in the rain and get totally drenched.

I remember it was in my tenth grade that the guys got invited for this party by some PM girls. It was a Saturday and we were all decked up and met up in Down-Shop. As we started off to our destination, which was a rented hall in a pretty posh hotel in Police Bazaar, the rain suddenly came down on us and we literally dissolved in it. There we were, almost the whole of 10B, in the middle of Ward’s Lake [short-cut], in our best clothes and gelled hairstyles, drenched and caught unaware like sitting ducks.

By the time we’d reached the place, we were ushered in by our lovely hostesses, and shown the bathrooms straightaway where we all ended up trying to wring our T Shirts dry. That Figueroa [forgive me if I spelt it wrong] wine didn’t last more than a few minutes as everyone warmed himself up and I’ll tell you, the dim setting and the expanding dimensions of that hall, the preceding downpour and the general excitement and nervousness in the air still remains fresh in my memory.

I met a lot of new people that day, and over the years some of them have become my very good friends and part of that wonderful Shillong gang that constitutes my world back home.

So now as I type this while listening to a melancholic Korean song by some anonymous singer,window shades pulled behind me and the sun shining brightly outside, you can only guess what the weather is in my thoughts.

The Cast of Characters

I never felt the heat till I came to Bangalore.

This past Saturday, a small period of time I spent out in the sun caused me a head-ache that lasted till the evening. Whether it was the brightness outside or the heat or a combination of the two that caused me discomfort, I’m not really sure, but it certainly disrupted my weekend to such an extent that I was not even in a mood for my Saturday beer.

Much to D’s glee, this is the second weekend that I ve not consumed my usual copious amount of liquor. A seminar this coming Sunday means that the dry stretch would continue for a third week most probably.

My mind now runs back to 2001-2003, when I used to skip those torture sessions with PCM and instead opted for a sitting session in Down Shop. We never really hated the sunny days back then, cos they weren’t that sunny. I’m speaking of-course of the days in April which can actually be called the end of spring and the beginning of summer in Shillong.

My mind then wanders to those discussions we had in Down Shop whilst our attendance continuously dipped a few meters away up the hill. There was Malik, there were a couple actually and whoever sat behind the counter assumed the title. The Bandus were always changing, although there were a few regulars, including a Sly! Thanks Ksuid, for introducing me to my namesake.

Then there was “blue jacket dude”, who was really annoying. No one ever knew where he came from but he certainly did hang around, even played a cricket match with us once. Malcolm, the drunken mascot from Steven’s locality [Every locality had one.] was another one who hung around, frequently assuming the role of a Native-American warrior who just fought his last battle. Somehow these characters became a part of these unknown yet recognizable faces that made Down Shop really a nice place to let out those heavy sighs and relax those muscles. A nice session would evolve once the place filled up a little, and there was even space at the back for a few of us loyals.

The “Debu” would walk in and hunch under the doorway while he let out a trademark wail. Love sucks, it stinks and it goes down with a couple of drinks; that was his mantra for a while. Also add to that the uncertainty of PCB and here was a guy who was being driven “over the edge”. Slow walks in too, polite and yet as cynical as one can get sometimes. The Gold-Flake passes around, and the bitching starts. Tarkari plots yet another scheme to put the Math teacher out of his/her misery. P Shome walks in announcing himself loudly. He then brags about how dirty his jeans are (we even had a competition much to everyone’s disgust) while fishing out a cigarette from underneath that bed sheet he wears with the boats on it. Amidst the yells of FIRST BOOK! The Debu triumphantly gloats over the fact that he s mastered the art of acquiring the cigarette (or anything that looks like one and is about to get burnt).

J walks in and walks out. He has an agenda on his mind and always “looked” the least idle from our lot. Vicky marshals himself from across the road with a cigarette in his mouth and his faithful companion of a bag slinging by his side. The talk shifts to the previous weekend’s “get together” and the sins and acts of debauchery that were committed. The ones who were “rocking on” too much were picked upon as well as an inconsolable Debu who realizes that push-ups are not acceptable in most social gatherings, especially if there is a lack of dancing space. Add to that unattended (un)zippers and we actually had a case of public obscenity.

Sometimes the conversations would take “shady” connotations when a member of the group narrated his adventures/misdemeanors of the weekend, and how a mixture of alcohol and dance (?) led to an unexpected encounter.

Ksuid would appear to retrieve his bag from the counter, sometimes it was one of the guys from the other classes. There was a running joke that stated the efficiency of the Down Shop counter; that Malik would even harbour a dead body for you out there for a few days provided there was space. Thanks to this service provided, we never really needed lockers in college.

That was then. Along came sweeping changes in our lives, and even the shop wasn’t spared. The security of Down-Shop has now been replaced by the swankier Palomino, and while I must admit that I’m a fan of the cutlet (which goes really well with the “grease”), the spirit of Down-Shop still lingers around somewhere, misplaced tangibly speaking but sort of left over amidst the new structures. All you Edmundians who read this and were a part of the age where Down-Shop existed will know how central it was to the manner in which we socialized back then. There’re quite a few of them who would still have accounts in Malik’s notebook and there are those who have never tasted such sublime “longs” anywhere else; you all know what this humble eating joint meant to us.

But gone are the days when Bodo would be searching for “buckets” and Slow for cigarettes, in the confines of the shop; The loud conversations, that plank of wood across the ceiling where every one has banged his head at least once (some everyday) and that fire at the end of the room, are now just figments of the past, in a place that we can’t visit anymore.

Decisions

8
10
18
17

My math scores between 2001 and 2003 do not look very encouraging. SSG didn’t help with her tireless crusade against me and my helpless friends, and this hapless group included Tarkari, O-Sam-a and P Shome. Another thing that went against me was that Calculus involved no numbers, a fact I was not aware of when I filled my forms.

Until then, Calculus was this cute professor in Tin Tin comics.

In the end there I was, burdened by PCM, the most “challenging” of the courses. Cruel indeed, was Mathematics, but it earned me a few gold medals.

The credit goes to Patrick for coming up with this ingenious analysis of examination-leaving skills. Now those who thought they spent the least time in the examination hall would have an imaginary medal to prove it. So in the end, those of us who weren’t cut out for the Math Olympiad did get the consolation a medal to reward our resistance to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s evil spawn.

Physics was another chamber of tortures and in the end it took good old-fashioned mugging up to scrape through those initial exams. Tarkari and P Shome though were in a league of their own. While O-Sam-A and I disintegrated under the formulas, our two commendable Bong Brothers sailed through their integration sums.

Well, those medals were kept aside for a while, when the twelfth finals loomed. Considering that my total over my last 4 exams was 53 to be precise, I needed to double my previous best (18) to pass. Well you can guess the results from this hint; the exam was Istanbul, and I was Liverpool.

35

I look back now and I see an incredible slide in my academic records. But somehow I have no regrets, and while that curve was downward, there was another that went up. My ability to make decisions for myself grew when I started realizing that I was failing miserably when I tried to stick to the safety of norms. I was never cut out for a Science course, and deep inside I knew it. It took two years and a lot of cussing, failed subjects and below par attendance, to make me realize that I hated what I was supposed to be doing.

Maybe that’s why the adventure of a trip to Bangalore looked so promising. That was the beginning of independent Sly.

Sunnier Days

A broken heart signals the end of immaturity, that’s what I’d like to believe. No one comes out of it the same and when we pass the “blame-game” stage we realize that in the end it just prepared us for bigger shit that’s going to happen.

You might call me pessimistic but in reality this is an optimistic approach to a struggle of a life.

The weather eased out a little this morning. Finally, some reprieve from the weather gods, but now it looks like it is getting back to normal. At least I’m indoors penning (?) this journal and not outside in the sun.

How I used to love the sun when I was a kid, and the sunniest day of all, Annual Sports Day. Even if it rained the whole week, it never rained on Sports Day until the final March-past was completed. A couple of weeks, even more, of practicing our class drills, and the ensuing after-school sports practice all culminated in this great “social” event. For me I don’t have too many memories of the latter, sports practice. I was involved in it 3 times and the last was in class 10, after a gap of 5 years. I can’t fight it anymore now; I just never was that good in sports. Add to that a family concerned more about grades than how I felt about other things, then I guess you can call it fucked-up to an extent.

Yeah, bring it on guys, I accept it. (Although I had a few memorable cricket moments)

Back to sunnier topics, how I would never mind the sun back then. No one did, as we all frolicked to our tents in our drill costumes, looking forward to the goodies offered in the stalls around the quadrangle by our very own wonderful teachers. It was a small world for me back then, spread over 24 acres and a bit of Canada.

Then after the brief sun came the rainy season, a real dampener on those cricketing aspirants, while for the footballers it only meant a slushier football [Pit]ch. Back then there wasn’t much any of us saw in the rain.

Now I’m looking forward to it.

UFO, the Space between the Two Logs.

The space between the logs, UFO owes its name to a certain issue of Fantastic Four [April 1998] which featured those incredible Moloids.

The Moloids now live below the earth on the slopes towards the “Dark Woods” of Risa, their underground civilization marked on the surface by 2 mundane logs. If it wasn’t for the man himself, Slyman, Overlord of the Seekers, this would have been a secret that could have lasted ….. well….. forever.

But that fateful night when I deduced the secret behind [below?] my favorite drinking hang-out, they came to me and made me promise that it is all the information that I can divulge.

The Moloids are the soul behind the drinking experience in UFO. They make you look beyond what you see; find hats where skulls are supposed to be, and make trucks braking on the highway sound like other-worldly banshees screaming for your skin. Never doubt the Moloids for then you are toying with eternity.

Dhruba is one of the many examples of the people who were touched by the UFO experience. That fateful afternoon, when the demon called ISCE had “passed” us, was when D learned that there was nothing that bettered nature itself. A few minutes later, Steven was being pulled up from a certain fall, [As mentioned earlier, this is an event that will never stop being talked about]. Saved, was Steven by the grace of UFO, and straight shots of McDowell’s Rum [Something Irish yet again, if only just the name]

Christmas 2002, when the Muffler was almost lost. I shudder to think so, but gladly I am able to tell you that it was retrieved. UFO never loses your things; you only have to go back before it rains.

UFO, “the space between the two logs”, where we all liked to go and chase our demons and angels. I wonder if it were signs of things to come.

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.