Going For

A lot of time has elapsed since ‘Going Out’ came out, a time marked with significant changes in my social circles. This makes me want to revisit and update the other three articles before plunging into this one. As for my companions in the residential colony, the hangout has boiled down to just Pillar and Winnie and also to the singular activity of walking. The differences of age which we all pretended not to notice have now started cropping up like those thorny shrubs which are always catching you unawares in the rear. We don’t even give each other high fives when we pass on the way, let alone actually meeting for cards and stuff. It’s like the law of entropy where everything ultimately falls apart, though I am never going to let that happen to my friendship with Pillar. Now when I read all those things I said about always finding a way to get together, I laugh at the illusion I was under, or was convincing myself to be under. Nothing strange about that. What is more curious is that this does not bother me at all.

On the other front, my school friends are still where I last saw them, and I am also seeing them more often than before. Those bridges were seriously strong to start with, and so I’m not worried about any of them. Lastly, about the college group. Moving into senior college has changed that, too, the saddest part of which is that Annie and Slicker are no longer with us. Though, determined as she is, Annie keeps trying to make special appearances and Slicker has to be dragged in. Teensie, on the other hand, though still in our college, has moved apart from us and is now a part of a different group. That is something I can’t honestly blame on entropy, though.

Now to the happier matter. The new group has nine members, myself included. The rest are all girls. You’re way off if you think I might be complaining. In fact, the only reason some people seem to think we cannot get along is that there’s this misconception that common points of interest seldom match. Nothing could be farther than the truth. Of course, it may have some role to play when you’re in school, but not now after you’re mature (in the eyes of the world at least). I found to my delight that these friends of mine share most of my likings in great proportions, and so I feel perfectly at home with these guys. The fact that Elix, Bonbon and Azura are also a part of this group, and that old Link keeps making special appearances, has done no less to make me comfortable here. So I am ready to assign some more code names.

I think I should start with Jigsaw. She has been around since junior college, actually, and we became friends mainly in Logic and Philosophy classes. (Come to think of it, all my best friends ever have something to do with either of these subjects. What does that suggest, I wonder?) In those days she used to sit just one bench behind us, if you get my drift. We also spent time together in the German non-beginners’ class, where she was one of the best non-beginners and where I was because of a mere technicality. She’s helped me a lot with that too. I remember she telling me that I stood second in class XI beforehand, and also that she herself stood fourth. That has got to be the longest handshake I’ve ever been a part of. She shares my love for all the ridiculously complicated stuff in life, and with her I can have endless discussions on that. What usually happens is that one of us mentions a thing, and the other just closes their eyes and sighs. Unimaginable quantities of information are actually exchanged in that simple exercise which most might misconstrue as alternative Yoga. The one time this happened most intensively was when a few of us were watching Now You See Me at her place late at night. We exchanged glances everytime something awesome happened in the movie, and I daresay we ‘saw’ each other too; it was almost like we had some magic of our own. They say how close you are with someone depends not on how long you talk, but on how less you have to actually say. I know that if I told her this, she’ll close her eyes and sigh.

And then there’s this one whom the others tell me I should call Phoebe, because she’s totally in love with that name. So am I, to be honest, but I warm more to that moon of Saturn than the Friends character. We had talked before like classmates do, but something made me truly appreciate having her around in this odd way. She told me my haircut looked good. It didn’t. It never had, and whenever I used to get one Elix, Bonbon and Azura would rush to compliment me with singular epithets like ‘stupid’, ‘gruesome’ and ‘hideous’. I used to take that as a cue to grow it back like a forest gone wild. This system was shaken to the core with Phoebe’s compliment. I remember asking her if she was saying that just to be nice, but she insisted she meant it. I wondered because she has that kind of motherly attitude where she’s unwilling to make anyone feel bad after the thing’s already done. Looking back, this made me feel really good and I hope I conveyed that. I responded in turn by complimenting her doodle arts, which unlike my haircut were really amazing, in deliberately flowery language (some habits don’t even fall sick hard, let alone dying). She loved that so much she kept sending me these visual treats and made me fish through my vocabulary. Kindness would have been her signature virtue had it not been for her endless innocence. That is a virtue if maintained in the right proportions; otherwise it’s an itch. She balances it wonderfully. Phoebe is the only one in which I’ve found the most commendable lack of pretence. I know that upon reading this, she’d make a fuss about a bridge like this needing no words like that, and promptly look away.

When you feel close enough to someone to enjoy their fondly calling you a horse, it’s always a bit weird when you dwell on how you met them first. I recall this day when I entered the German class and found only a couple of other early arrivals there. Shrewsbury was one of them. We got to talking, and she asked to see my German assignment, and we exchanged them to compare. There could really have been no comparison between her awesome doodles portraying the soul of Pune and my colour print-out of a photo featuring Singapore’s skyscrapers. Consequently, she was done reading my work long before I took my eyes off these doodles only to gape at the level of German they were described in. I’ve often felt this after coming to college; some people’s talent is just scary. Afterwards I discovered that she liked everything I did (except skyscrapers, but frankly that’s just me) and so we stocked our conversation inventory for ages to come. Like that icebreaker moment for Phoebe was that haircut thing, the one with Shrewsbury came when I commented on an amazing landscape she’d drawn. The way she always reacts to any pithy comment I make about her artwork reaffirms my faith that appreciation of art is itself an art, and nothing boosts my self-confidence better. What I love about her most is her active joyful energy; I’ve never seen her shrink from any group ‘do’ just because there was some work involved. She looks as if her soul lives in a dandelion field always blowing them the hell off. The best part is that you can’t just watch someone like this without being there yourself, and that’s bliss.

There are people with whom you continue to talk in English even though you know full well that they curse in your mother tongue. It somehow just feels right. On one hand you have Bonbon and Elix who are at their wittiest when in classic Marathi, and on the other you have Wanda. This, plus the fact that she’s a hard-core Marvel fan (as is more than half this group) made me import this name for her. Wanda shares my love for video games, and though the idea that girls don’t like games like CounterStrike and Vice City is again disturbingly inaccurate, she’s the only one I’ve actually seen playing them. I spent my childhood days being the strategic advisor for Pillar when he played these on his computer, and so watching Wanda with all guns blazing gave me a very pleasant shot of nostalgia. I already foresee a future where endless discussions on emulators, graphic cards, level cheats, walkthroughs and Take-An-SMG-Only-If-You-Can-Handle-It are going to bore the earrings off the others. Our icebreaker moment came when we were, after an exam, looking through the catalogue of a racing game with awesome graphics to see which cars they had to offer. Both of us pointedly sighed at the same cars and reflected the bright gleam in each other’s eyes for a full two minutes when we found that Lykan Hypersport. Living an adventure - albeit virtual - with a friend really makes that bridge something of a spectacle, as I saw clearly in the eyes of everybody who passed us when she was buried in PUBG and I was steering her around the campus. She also shares my dream of having a shack in dear old London, and that has formulated a new fantasy in my mind where we’ll meet in those cute little cafes to discuss the latest virtual thriller, and exchange air-hugs over unfinished coffee as we both hastily depart for our classes.

Finally I come to Tintin, another junior college stalwart. Walking with her is not very unlike walking with an enormous bottle of champagne having a wide mouth which is constantly on. Her excitement bubbles over the most routine of things and makes the rest of us wonder sometimes if we take a rather grim look at life. We’d spoken to each other like classmates do for a long time before this particular thing happened in which I found myself ordering her to go on an errand for me. In those days I used to be obsessed with rescheduling lectures so that we could all go home early, and this monumental feat required talking to all concerned teachers and making sure the news reached everyone in time. Needless to say I used to ask a lot of help from the Going Out people. Then this one day, somehow none of them were around when Tintin had told me of this golden opportunity which was going to save us all an hour and a half. I immediately told her to pursue that teacher, which she readily did and we could have the desired change made. I remember laughing about it with her on the walk to the bus-stop. Many times since, I’ve watched her stand where most college students would break down and run home, and this is extremely helpful to the rest of us who often have misgivings about staying on. If anyone is willing to stay, she’ll happily accompany that person until then end. And in the end, being there for you when you need company is a fundamental block upon which all college friendships are based.

Moving into the second year has resulted in us having other good friends from our own respective departments, for there have now emerged certain likings which only those with whom you share that special subject can understand. I have made a couple of such great friends in my economics class, for whom I might be assigning codes someday too. The time I spend with them is often marked by periods of intense discussions on economic theory and becoming effervescent when discussing economic bubbles which intrigue the three of us in equal amounts. Thus sometimes I don’t always spend every minute with this group, but that can never do anything to the way I feel about all of them. My economics class friends are more like work buddies, and you enjoy work precisely because at the end of it you have someplace to go. That place for me is here, with this new family that has chosen me.

Friendship really is a tricky thing, isn’t it? You walk up to someone and talk about something, and suddenly somewhere in the back of your mind you hear ‘Hey, I like this creature. I’m going to do stuff with them.’ And then it just grows and keeps on growing. Soon the emphasis on ‘stuff’ moves subtly to the ‘with them’ part, and that is one of the most wonderful transitions occurring in this incredible relation.

We become, and then we do. We spend, and we cherish. We part, but we remember, and so we remain. And then it doesn’t matter whether we do or we don’t; what matters is that we are.