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Remember, Remember...



Remember the walks from College to your home, remember making you wait outside AMRI, while I headed towards Panchantala, remember 5 years of sharing lectures, notes and conversations, remember blocking your phone on your birthday from 12-6, and dropping by for lunch the next day, remember, you, Aadil and me in your room, remember wading through water to drop you home, remember the play rehearsals and your exasperation's, remember days at Tarnaka, and at Arunlekha's house.
Remember the snaps I took at your wedding, remember the Sin City's and V for Vendetta's we watched together. Remember Chandnidi's house at Nacharam... Remember picking on Partho Mukherjee and gaping at Bertie, remember giggling the class off, while AP and Christina were lecturing, Remember spending more time photocopying your notes than actually reading them... 
Remember every damn thing, you chastising me when I would go off the boil, laughing at me imitating Belafonte singing Scarborough Fair/Canticle, Remember that crazy night with Elakshi, Namrata, Arunlekha, Runa & Vineet, Remember the fact that you always took my calls irrespective of the time, 
Remember the Christmas at Chris' home with Suman, Tri, Jishnu, 'Banjo' amongst others; Remember you down with cramps and getting the proxyvons, Remember you introducing me to Hari, remember sitting in the staircase near the library, and the road along the ground with Vidisha, Tri, Sagnik, Simon, Krittika, Jishnu, Banjo...
Remember you punching my solar plexus for 8 years...
Miss them for 2 & half years now.
Like everything else...
Miss you and Love you girl, for you truly will be Forever Young...

Picture Perfect

The Final Paper
The Final frontier,
The last hurdle
Minutes before a famous victory
I'll recollect the exultation many a time, I think
and remember the expression on everybody's visage

The final bow
The one for keeps...
as papers go flying in the air.

Excitement gives way to euphoria
As bodies break into cold sweat;
and the voices go shrill

Faces turn blurry now
Yet the voices remain fresh...
Shrilly and piercing, a cry of joy celebrates the end
Of another step in life.

A hurdle bound to pale out to insignificance
in times to come

But the sketches are etched forever,
The faces may meet two scores later
with shades of joy and recognition of another kind.

Bodies may decay, faces spread out
The memory that comes back though
is the lasting image,
of goodbyes, adieu's and au revoir's.

Remarkable they seem later, theatrical, Beckketisque,
Pinter-like even, joyful nonetheless!
A momentary glimpse of 'all of us' together,
The moment that stuck, almost as if frozen in a time warp
or even a photograph!

Yet that's the moment which keeps coming back,
When days gone by are recalled.

We didn't have mobile phones with cameras
to remind us of those moments,
yet every megapixel remains
in some deep corner of the mind.

Wishing we'd got the Point and Shoot 35 mm's
the KB 10's, the Vivitars and the Minoltas
a Cannon or a Yashica if you were privileged
with film rolls that needed studios to get prints of,
negatives that were preserved, all 27 or 36 of them if you were lucky!
Just in case a friend asked for a copy...
None of us owned Polaroids then
They were too fancy for us!

I found a few strips today in an old shoe box, the negatives looking eerily familiar
And as i think of today's myriad photographers, toting a Digital SLR
and framing a perfect composition.

I wonder if they evoke the nostalgia of the perfect frame that wasn't captured?


Shine on you crazy diamond!

 Dedicated to you Bondhu!
May you be forever young...