The other day I was having lunch in college mess, a bunch of friends accompanying me. All the 16 chairs on the table were occupied. I am used to eat in quiet, I do not speak much while eating. In the course of having lunch I witnessed a fierce argument between guys sitting to my right. Though they were not in my class, I still paid attention to them(well its always entertaining, you know :P).

The conversation:

Guy 1: How can you claim that those people do not work in the group, that too so vocally?
Guy 2: See, I have worked with them in the last term a couple of time and I have found almost all of them as social loafers. Ask anybody sitting here about them and you will get to know.
Guy 1: But the point is that you went to the faculty and demeaned them in front of other few who were there. If you had to change the group you could have gone straight to the faculty’s chamber and discuss the matter in private.
Guy 2: Everyone knows about them, how does it matter? if I said it in front of others. (his face redden with anger )
Guy 1: I think that you do not have the right to speak ill of anybody like that. They do not work much in the group but you cannot say it’s going to be the case every time and again.
Guy 2: I will have to do there spade work, I am the one who is suffering. It is easy for you to say and please do not pretend to be saint. Everyone here is for himself. I did what I felt was right, that’s all I have to say.
Guy 1: Good for you then. Giving a justification is easy but judging the rightness of the same is difficult.

Guy 2 now left the table in unrest. We watched as we chewed food, digesting arguments from both lads, burping our ways to a full stomach we were almost done. Guy 2 (sitting next to me) now was waiting for others to finish. Our eyes met and I took the opportunity to tell him in one single line that "it is our experience which shapes our belief". He looked at me in disgust but I continued -"The other chap had some experience with those social loafers, so he complained, quite openly though, let it go now".  He shook his head in disagreement then made same statements as he had made before. I said I will explain it later, for now cool down.

To illustrate, Akshay kumar, in one of his interviews narrated the story of how he changed his name from Rajiv Hari Om Bhatia to Akshay Kumar. Within a short span of the name change he got a break in a movie and witnessed a turnaround in his fortune. This experience made him superstitious, he admits. 
True it is that experience molds beliefs in ways sometimes inexplicable. 

The Hefty Affair


This one is the latest experience I had with my friend Adil. It is Friday today and we have to go to mosque for prayer. I called him a few times to ask him to rush through lunch and come as soon as possible. He assured me multiple times of not messing up this time unlike last week, I waited outside the hostel for him to come. He called me from a few meters distance, to ask me to arrange helmet as the guy whose bike he had borrowed did not have one and it is compulsory for us to wear one to go out of the college gate. I hurried my way up to the third floor to borrow helmet from a friend. In all the haste I managed to come back to the parking space. To my surprise, Adil was unable to locate the bike there. He called the owner only to know that it is near the main gate. Now we ran desperately, we knew we were already late and this delay will result in us missing the congregation prayer. As soon as we left college Adil drove the bike fast to cover the time. The speed was in three figures in a few seconds; suddenly the surge in the torque of bike reduced, before I could sense Adil turned and said it is short of fuel damn it. We stopped and checked for sound of the fuel in tank it ascertained that it had fuel, the bike is Pulsar 200 without kick start. After a few futile self-starts Adil pushed the bike and tried starting it, luckily after a couple of attempts it started. Now we reached almost 2 kilometers from college and we took left to enter into the village 'Kohli'. The bike was off again but this time we checked for it to be in reserve or not. But we were not able to make out which side to turn the knob to keep it on reserve. Arbitrarily we kept it on one side. Finally the bike started, it was me riding it now, the village road is full of pot holes and is narrow. Overtaking a four wheeler there is a challenge. The condition of bike was trustworthy so I pumped it up. Now crisscrossing the potholes and other vehicles on the road we reached the destination just in time. The speed with which we covered our distance was enough to drive anybody’s adrenaline up. It was a mind boggling experience leaving me astonished.  When we returned I drove in 40’s, I could sense the difference at that time.    

Our Last Supper Together

This was probably the last time I was seeing them, after there is a far chance that I see these French guys. They had come to my college(IMT, Nagpur) under foreign exchange program, for about 100 days. They were to attend classes with second year; I am a first year grad still we got to know each other well. They were 3 guys Gwen, Geof and Josh.

Gwen was  romantic, committed, decent and civil; moves head while talking in a natural and consistent manner, smiles with wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. Out of them he was the closest to me. Geof had a peculiar way of conversing, partially bald with the foliage loss from front, he mostly wore dark goggles, didn't like Indian food much and used to carry soft drink all the time. He was good in sharing and comparing cultural differences. The third guy Josh was the tallest amongst them, he was funny, spontaneously witty, extrovert, happy go lucky kind of person. He was incredibly open in his conversations.

At lunch a day before our last supper I accompanied Gwen. Its Christmas eve today. We sat across each other, I asked him about his new year plans, his experience in the country of Gods and colors etc. After the general chit chat I inquired if he will remember any of us after going back to his country. He straightforwardly declined it, said after some time he will forget. Well that is how things go, we meet people in our journey through time in life and after loosing touch eventually we tend to forget them. Of course now we have social media, which does gives connectivity but it solely depends on the persons intention to be in touch. People also remain in friend lists just for the sake of it.

On their last night at campus we had dinner together. "So this is the last time then", "all the best for your future endeavors", "enjoy new year(in your country)" etc followed with the supper. One of them spoke few words in Hindi followed those were all cuss words they had learnt. We laughed on the manner he cussed it sounded polite. We bid adieu as our paths diverged.

What does a human being gives and takes from others? Is it only monetary or something which is intangible? The way we perceive it defines our exchange. We come across many people in our life, some people become important, some do not register in our memory. No matter we forget them or not what we shall aspire to do is make the most of the time we spend together. The time spent should be worthy to remember. After all what we can best share are joy, smile and happiness.  

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