I was looking at some old pics today....Pics i had clicked in a galaxy far far away a long long time ago...or so it felt(Who am i kidding !!)....I was looking at pics of my stay in kota...Actually ..i had taken my camera there only in the last 2 months ...but the pics took me back...like some old greying 'Nam veteran...I leant back... staring at a point in the distance, transported back...Arriving in kota for the first time...watching my parents' train leave...Scrinching up my face and sniffing loudly...crying myself to sleep, thanking god(and my parents !) that i had a single room....
Tosh....Actually...I spent that first night playing cards...sleeping at 3 if i remember correctly...I remember the first words i said after my parents left...I called up a friend and said " Oye mere dad mom gaye..chal gaandmasti karte hain...!!"
Not to put up some false show of 'big boy' bravado...but i don't think i ever felt alone in my whole stay in kota....I remember many anxious juniors and even more anxious parents coming to me for kota-wisdom later and asking me " What problems did you face?" and me replying ...frowning in concentration.."Uhh...Problems..Nope..can't think of any!!" And y'know..it was true..I took to kota like a fish to water...Oh..the crazy things we did there....I remember this one time..i had gone to the mess wearing this, Quoting my mom.., 'disgusting' sleeveless 'shirt' and a revolting pair of 'shorts'..when one of the mess workers droppped a whole big serving bowl of daal on me..It was thick dal..OH..thick and heavily spiced...And wet....had the texture of vomit....I remember soaking it in a tub and nearly barfing every time i saw that stuff floating around...Needless to say..my mother was over the moon...On her next visit i got an i-pod....
Another barfable incident was my house mate Anup scraping out utensils which had contained chicken (had....) about a month ago...from a foot away...Oh...yeah those were the days yaar..Like the time after marathon watching movies ( 4 i think) all night..me and my house mate Abhisek returned..He was taking a leak while holding our house keys in his mouth ...when...yeah...he yawned....Neither of us remembered the last time we had used the toilet.....for..ahem... the big job ( i found this site with a delightful list of euphemisms..http://www.thechurning.com/2005/10/19/final-round-of-shit-euphemisms/) But we held our noses and fished the keys out with our kitchen tongs...(Needless to say ..we stopped making toast and maggi became a staple..!!)and washed them thoroughly with a hosepipe and the tongs with a soaped up rag.....The keychain ..which was the letter 'S' had to go...It was leather you see....
We had a lot of crazy philosophical talks up there on the terrace...ranging from...Why are we here ? ... somewhere, two hot, smart and funny girls are discussing that 2 guys (like us...!) are discussing that two boys( funny how picky we were... even in our daydreams) are... ad infinitum...
There was this one time that we had this crazy idea...we decided that we would let our freezer get clogged up with ice and not thaw it and then rip out slabs of ice and smash them on the floor..Abhisek's mother had come to visit but I was like a man with a mission...i had to do it..SO i called abhisek innocently as if to ask him about some question i was solving but pointing to the fridge...We pulled out a huge..and i mean big ..gigantic... e-normous slab of ice....grinning devilishly at each other ...we hefted it once...twice and smashed it to the ground...It broke into many small pieces (and some big ones...YAAY !!) with a sound like a pistol shot...Man..that was fun..i mean..i know i'm getting cliched here... but..yeah...it WAS fun...and you won't know what i'm talking about till you've smashed some ice yourselves...
I could go on and on..but..i have to sleep....forget it yaar..I can't help it..i'd probably chuckle to myself for an hour before i fell asleep..I'll go on a teeny weeny bit longer..Like the time The lights went off in the middle of the Loo( yesss..I'm talking bout the dusty winds that we learnt about in tenth standard geography...) and all of us rushed out onto the street..One friend of mine..Who had this habit of roaming about in his room bare chested ran out without putting anything on.. and walked for nearly a mile without realising this ...(it was pitch black) Then ..to make matters worse...a fat friend gave him his shirt as he himself was wearing a vest underneath..which let me tell you was not a pretty sight when the lights cam on.... Or that time when..we all gathered in my room to play cards with my small stereo blaring greenday till it was hoarse..My landlord heard the 'noise' and decided to check on me....He knocked on the door upon which we rushed hither thither...with one of us hitting the lights and another the stereo(Dumb Dumb Dumb...)...some lying down on the bed and the last one: Avi...crouching behind my bed....I opened the door..bleary eyed and said..kya hua uncle..He incredulously asked me..(Duh..the lights and music and sounds of merrymaking were LOUD a second ago) "Kya chal raha hai bete ?"All my 'sleeping' friends 'got up' and started looking at my landlord as if surprised..I said.."Uncle ..ye yahaan padhne aaye hain.."....Up popped avi still holding his cards..fanned out and arranged for easy accessiblity saying.." Haan uncle..Schrodinger's equation bahut tough hai.." That stiffled laughter must have reduced my lifespan by an hour atleast but i would trade a year just to see everyone looking at Avi with ..a look on their faces that i can't describe without grinning widely even now....
A lot of good friends,304( a card game..that i swear...can be played for days on end),cyber cafe nightouts,movies, kilos (seriously) of Ratlami sev bought at the wholesale rate and ch***iyaaps : only 99 photographs...Seems unfair na...
PS:Oh..The joy....
PPS:Abhisek Amit Anup Ardhendu Avi Ayush Rajat Manav Mukul Nikhil Prateek Rohan Siddharth Tapan Tarun Tejas ...THANK YOU !!
PPPS:If i have missed anyone out...SORRY and THANK YOU !!!
PPPPS:I must have an eye infection...Better go wash them...
PPPPPS: OOH and Pyaaj ki kachaudi..
PPPPPPS: Junta please add items....
oye... tht was crazy shit yaar, kota rocks (like anything!) and boy oh boy, i can add truckloads of these shitty getaways...
ReplyDeletelike for example i racing(!) with you infront of IL hospital, your (ahem) successful attempts at breaking in your own landlord's house with .. err.. the landlord watching, your (ahem ahem!!!) birthday present (i guess we got a video clip of it, dont we prateek?:P ) , pyaz ki kachauri (how could you forget tht!) , i .. err.. escorting tarun to his place keeping him safe from the hungry dogs prowling kota's streets at midnight (and then running back to save my own ass!) , the flyer-strewn streets in front of Gaurav tower at the end of a test, the community maxims (err.. necessary "evil" for school-passed boys, eh?), the community footballs and the galli-mohalle ke matches, and yeah , i attending nks's class in d1 and he smiling thru out the class... lol.. man, i'll just go on and on and on...those were the days, man i shud write a post on it myself!
:)
nostalgic.
Wow! This really made for a fun read, even though I wasn't a part of your Kota experience. Could actually feel the thrill and excitment of all the things you guys did, simply by reading your post. Found myself laughing at some of the stuff you've written about as well.
ReplyDeleteMemories of times like these will last a lifetime and make you glad you had experiences like those, every time you think of them..........And 'friends', we make so many of them as we go through life, and with each one, we share memories of so many different moments, some more special than others; but each one, stays on with us, no matter how far we may go from one another.
That's what makes life worthwhile I guess - moments like these, which get imprinted in our memory forever........Lovely post Sumedh!!!
nyc 1 yaaar........and trust me yaar schrodinger isn't dat tough..........there are lots more stuff to add here .....for eg....teachers ki mimicry....meri ag sir se fyt.....teachers ki lena.....teena tea stall ki chai..mess ,mein baith ke gappe maarna.......and mess se bahar aake bhi gappe maarna.....haalanki maine tere sath zyada time spend nhi kiya par jitna bhi kiya mast tha...really njyd a lot with u....nd thanks for the nights too.....
ReplyDeleteDUDE!!! kota was funnnnn mannn!!! if u wanna have the best memories of life and find the best of friends... KOTA is THE place to be!!! and i don't know if that 'siddharth' refers to me or some other siddharth, felt nice:-)
ReplyDeleteawesome memories i have of kota!
i agree kota was a hell of a place !!
ReplyDeletei mean i still remember all the 'gand masti we did'the many ways of entering our rooms as the gates were locked , the endless flow of ratlami sev,the chocolates dat ur parents bought(whose debt i can never clear coz i had eaten much of it) and the 'up yours' plan than never could materialise.. tapans saying "goti", u dancing like stifler wen overjoyed,avi and amits innovative ways of adding to the hindi literature(read 'chomma','poppa'),nikhil's room partners gaiety,(he still owes u a sangam lunch if u remember)ardhendu's constant worrying "abe mera rank gir jaayega be p2 lag jaayega"are things i shall cherish for life...
thank you everyone for making kota special and my sincere apology if i've missed neone
awesomely said !!!
ReplyDelete