Any dream will do

N was one of them - my college crush. I had a boyfriend, but that's another day, another story. (He never did become my Valentine.) Cut to the chase - I remember college board elections in my final year was when I developed this huge crush on N. N was a junior, N had a gorgeous gaunt face with pronounced cheekbones and oceanic eyes. I say oceanic because I don’t remember if his eyes were blue or green or grey or brown – just that they were limpid. Yes, because I don’t often get those kind of compliments about my own eyes, I use the adjective to describe a boy’s :P.

Note to self:

Usage of word ‘limpid’ in connection with me in this lifetime – check.

Valentine's Day, 1997

Anyway, coming back to N, he was running for college president. He happened to be in my secondary group of friends at college – the music and fine arts group. There were a couple of friends from my primary gang mentioned in my previous post, but it was an eclectic mix of people from various classes and departments. Back then, I was riding on an Atlas Shrugged high, and was looking for a Galtesque face to colour my dreams – the face that knew no pain, fear or guilt. N fit the bill to a T. And I harboured a crush on him from June through next Feb, which is when I decided to do something about it.

I even remember the day – I had my Chemistry practical exams in the morning (freedom in a couple of months!) and the afternoon was dedicated to time with the lovebirds in Group B. Everyone was busy thinking of what to get their Valentines and what they could expect in return from them. I was busy preparing for the proposal of my life. Back then, pocket money did not exceed 50 rupees a week (and I had to earn it by washing Dad’s clothes and ironing them) and even then, it was a lot. (How times change. 50 rupees isn't even tuppence today.) I hadn’t allowed myself any masala dosa sessions in the college canteen all week because I needed to buy a gift for him. What did I buy? A long stemmed red rose, a super mushy Valentine’s card and a couple of BIG chocolate bars. N is one of the very few men in my life who've got chocolates from me. I walked up to him just as he came out of the canteen eating something and went down on my knees with the rose clenched between my teeth and the card and chocolates in my hand and asked him if he would be my Valentine. (An act such as this would be considered butch nowadays - chalk one more up for my generation!) He stopped mid-bite and stared at me for a full minute before he accepted my gifts of love. Which is when I told him that it was merely a confession and not a proposal :-). He and I would have never worked and we both knew it. But that is one of the best memories of my college days.

Ten years ago, on my birthday, N made a pendant of a gaunt face with pronounced cheekbones and deep-set eyes from clay and M-seal for me. I still wear it sometimes.

Valentine's Day, 2007

My Valentine for the last three years has been my one true love. He never ceases to make me feel like I’m the most beautiful woman in the world. All because I gave him a bar of Diary Milk the first time we met. And as with every Valentine’s Day since then, there was something waiting for me this year, too.  Among the many tokens of love that he sent my way was this little white teddy bear that holds a red heart in its hands with “I love you” inscribed on it in gold and silver :P.

It has its pride of place on my desk at work :-). 

Morals of the story:

Only men who deserve it get chocolates from me.

Those who get chocolates leave lasting impressions.

Funny Valentines make the best Valentines.

Because they're funny Valentines, I will love them all my life. 

xoxox

Minu and Koopi are sisters. Minu is the older one, by two years. Minu is the saanvli saloni, while Koopi is the gaaon ki gori innocent bacchi. Minu, by virtue of her being the oldest of the two, likes calling the shots. Koopi is one pretty thing, with this really sweet smile. Koopi is the younger one, by two years, in case anyone out there is really, really bad at math. Minu and Koopi were losers at college romances. So was I. How do I know them? We were thick as thieves during college. We are thick even now, of a different kind. Minu and Koopi are Punjabis, and God help me if they’re not. That’s what I remember them to be, anyway. Their dad is an army man and their mom is a homemaker who makes awesome nariyal ki barfi and poori chhole and their bhaiyya is the oldest one of the children, who is, in plain language, bhaiyya to them – a quiet authority, who by virtue of being the oldest amongst all of them, commanded respect and demanded affection and got both in equal measure. That’s how I remember him. He was bhaiyya to me, too. Minu and Koopi have an older sister, I don’t remember what she looks like. Minu and Koopi have a younger sister, too – Pinky if I remember correctly. They were my favourite family amongst all my friends’ families in college.

Minu taught me a lot of things. Because she is older than me too, she would tell me aise karna chahiye aur vaise nahin karna chahiye and I would listen. Minu also taught me that draping one’s head with a dupatta while frying poories would make the poories absorb less oil and hence, there would be that much less fat that settled around one’s posterior. Apart from almost singeing my scalp and burning the skin off my ass, I have nothing to show for it, or should I say, too much to show for it, so there goes that theory out of the window. Minu would make tea for 16-17 people and after adding the teapowder to the boiling water, would come and enquire if anyone wanted strong tea. If anyone said yes, she would add ¼ spoon more. Minu also made awesome, awesome gobhi ke pakode. Minu in the final year lost her heart to someone much shorter than her (and took it back too). This was during that phase of our lives when we thought that if we did not snag someone in our group before we parted to become independent adults, we would probably never get any action. This was because our dear genetics professor, bless his heart, had told us all, and I mean all, in class, that we should get married as early as possible and not wait until we were 25, because sex was more fun when we were younger. Remind me to sue him if I ever meet him again, for misleading information and hence emotional distress, but like I was saying, most guys in our group of 16-17 people were taken, mostly by the girls in the group. I was the quintessential bridge between every possible permutation and combination of two in our group of 16-17. So anyway, coming back to Minu, I remember that she came to college once in her younger sister’s knee-length frock and she hadn’t waxed her legs, dumbass. Yes, back then, it was the age of the naïves and the don’t-cares who co-existed peacefully with one another.

Koopi is this fragile, tender-hearted thing. I remember being instrumental in her first hook-up, or so she says. He was D-bhai, my rakhi brother in college. I was mighty, mighty, mighty fond of him because during our zoology trip, he told me I looked gorgeous as I came out of my room with a towel draped around my head (I had long hair then). Something now tells me he told me that because he wanted to get closer to Koopi, because I was close to her, but anyway. Their romance was the stuff you get to read in books and watch in movies and always wish for and never have in your real life. DDLJ time it was, I remember. It went on for a year or so and gradually fizzled out because he had tremendous pressure at home to end it, and frankly, what do twenty-year-olds know about life, anyway? He broke her heart, that bastard, and I’m still fond of him. Because the romance ended on a sour note, he stopped being friends with me, too and the world has the nerve to label women drama queens. Really. Koopi's favourite song of all time is Ravindra Jain's 'Ankhiyon ke jharonkon se' sung by Hemalata. Koopi darling would belt it out like crazy after breaking up with D at every opportunity she got. She also wrote down the lyrics of the song for me and I swear I still have it somewhere. According to Koopi, if you wanted attention from a man who wasn't giving it to you, you had to sing mediocre songs such as this and nonsense rhymes of dil, mohabbat and pyar written by Sameer, composed by Nadeem Shravan and sung by Alka Yagnik loud enough for them to hear and voila! They would be at your beck and call. Unfortunately, this was another theory that flew out of the window. And I'm telling you from experience.

Yesterday, I met Minu after five years. Yesterday, I talked to Minu, really talked to her, after ten years. Minu has married a guy much younger than her, which gives me endless hope regarding my own chances of snagging someone before I hit menopause. Really, what is with her and shorter/younger men? Minu hasn’t changed one single bit, and I choose to ignore her burgeoning waist. Minu hasn’t changed one single bit. She stays twenty minutes away from where I stay and I came to know this three years later than I should have. She has an adorable three-year-old bundle of joy who demanded that I come for her birthday party next week. Koopi also is in Bangalore and is married and though she was reed-thin during college, has apparently ballooned now. Hahahaha, divine justice! I spoke to Koopi on the phone and after the standard saali kutti kameeni gaalies that I gave her, to which she replied ‘Tu kabhi sudhregi nahin’, we’ve decided that we’re doing a gupshup cum adrak waali chai cum gobhi ke pakode session soon. Thick and thick as thieves time.

Last year was a year of reunions. It looks like the trend’s spilled over to this year as well. I ask you all, who loves me, baby?

I think it was the 8th of August, 1994 that it all started. It could have been the 4th for all you know. I'd lost Ma a couple of months before and was still trying to cope with the newly bestowed Lady-of-the-manor title her absence brought with it. I remember it was in early August. How my memory falters! Old age, you see. It is just not what it used to be. I may not remember the date, but I do remember the day. It's crystal clear, forever etched in my memory. (Cheesy lines galore!) 

The auditions had begun a couple of weeks before. It was the first year of college. Post college student union elections, this was what we had all been looking forward to. College auditions for various extra curricular and cultural teams to represent the college at  intercollegiate competitions were in full swing. Of course, nepotism and favouritism were rampant even then, I'm sure, but I wasn't this jaded then, so cynicism crept by me.  I was this starry eyed 18-year-old and some of the senior guys were heartthrob material, I'll give you that. Out of hundreds of tryouts, I was in the final 20 and the day dawned bright and clear. We were to sing on stage in front of the whole college and it was my first time. I'm sure all of you know the jitters of first time experiences :o). 

The previous day's final selections had given me some sort of courage. There was this girl who was auditioning. I distinctly remember her face.  A round, Bengali girl who sang Kabhi Door Jab Din Dhal Jaaye pronouncing the "a" syllable only as a Bengali can. She sang:

Kobhi door job din dhol joye...

She didn't make the cut, but the last girl to audition was this very pretty girl with long hair, in an orange and yellow dress, fair, but with braces. When she announced she would be singing the same song, chaos ensued. The boys had had enough and wanted to leave. But the girl would have none of it. She dashed to the door and bolted it. Leaning against it, she said and I quote: "No one leaves till I finish." That kind of bravado was what I lacked. I still do. But that had given me that little push to at least go and give it a try before I chickened out.

Not only did I feel I could do it, I had also made a new friend. V, who sang Jhuki Jhuki Si Nazar so beautifully, that I think it's second only to the original. It became our song. He introduced me to Jagjit Singh, by the way. He of course made it to the finals and as luck would have it, he was sitting right behind me, he was in my English class and when he came back, I introduced myself and we proceeded to the college canteen for coffee post tryouts.

So as I was saying, the day dawned, (I think it was a Saturday) and the judges were lining up. There were six of them, I think. One of them was a family friend, S, my sister's Veena master's son, so I felt I stood a fair chance. So, one by one, the twenty sacrificial goats made their way to centre stage and gave it their all. Yes, I was the last to sing. The song that I'd chosen? Tere Mere Milan Ki Yeh Raina from Abhimaan. My family and I were Hrishida's loyalists even then. (I'd sung Teri Bindiya Re for the tryouts. Guess I forgot to mention that.) So long, Hrishida. You've given us much to remember you by.

I remember what I was wearing. It was a white salwar with pink and green dots and a pink dupatta. I closed my eyes, mustered up whatever courage I could find and sang with the slightest of tremors in my voice. Inside, I was shaking like a leaf, but outside, I wanted to make it so bad, that I left most of my stage fear backstage. V was silently encouraging me from the sidelines, God bless him.

I finished with: "Thanks for listening. And not booing."

A minute of the most deafening silence and then applause. I don't think it was thunderous, but I could see V clapping real hard with a big smile on his face. And S gave me a thumbs up sign. I walked off the stage in a daze and bumped into S who said the booing comment was not at all necessary, for I'd sung really well. He said if it were up to only him, I would make it to the college team, but he felt that I did stand a good chance of making it anyway.

And make it I did. I was now in the college music team. We represented our college at many cultural festivals and won many prizes, but my favourite reward was V. He and I remained steadfast friends for 10 years, even though I lost touch with almost every other college friend of mine. The next two years, we were the judges for all college music team auditions. He balded, I ballooned, but we remained close. Two years ago, I lost him to life. He's somewhere out there now, I don't know where, but he remains one of the nicest people I've ever known.

Miss you, V. I was listening to our song today. Thank you for the music.

Tujhe bhi apne pe yeh aitbaar hain ke nahin... 

End note: Next up on College Chronicles, My First Proposal...