A meeting - November 2019

Yesterday, I met an old friend from school who is settled in London now. Such are the perks of living in Delhi. There is a pattern to our interactions which goes in a way that after 2004, our interactions have been mostly once in two years. The last time we met in our hometown according to him was to bring me ‘ivory sheets’ in 2004; I studied advertising at graduation.

Well, when I was in the process of choosing, qualifying and taking admission in this course from apparently the best college in the capital of the state of Bihar, I had to batten down the hatches. Obviously no? Which parent of the 2000s would have understood and approved of Advertising as a subject to study? It was a long battle which I eventually won with the only consolation for my father that ‘She is studying in the best college of the city’ and never wanting to spell any further details.

Yesterday was almost like rediscovering a ‘me’ that I had buried in oblivion. The juvenile days of class 8-10 were recalled. There were so many things that I had forgotten, which I realised as he was mentioning them. The land line phones, my fascination for writing letters, my pimples, the determination to lose the last ounce of flesh on cheeks, the craving to go out of city only with friends and to break-free.

It was interesting to hear him talk about the hardships of staying in European countries. To meet a general physician, there is a waiting of 7 days, proving an ailment as emergency is tougher than cracking SSB exam and there is constant stress of missing the relevant metro without having a choice of another public transport. No wonder, for an excruciating eye problem which the NHP doctors failed to identify as an emergency, he was asked to wait for 4 days with the confirmation that it will heal on its own. As it was a reoccurring problem, he knew the medicine that worked but couldnt buy it without prescription in London and ofcourse no doctor agreed to write it. He had no choice but to fly to India, buy the medicine from a random pharmacy, apply and get fine in half an hour. Nonetheless, he went back to London and visited the NHP hoping for a long-term solution. Lo and behold, the doctor says ‘ Did not I tell you that it will heal on its on within 4 days’? With a poker, he said to himself, “I am happy the whole episode was still cheaper than consulting a private practitioner in London”. My take on this is that I have enough of my own logic defying anxieties to deal with, who is going to add to it the woe of worrying about missing the metro. Hearing his rant, I was sad and happy both. Sad because like half of the educated population of India, the idea of the utopia outside India was shattered. I would miss the little solace, I would find in imagining myself living in foreign country. Happy because-I thanked God and counted the conveniences and flexibility of our country- so what, if we are overcrowded and using carbon-filter masks to breath.

I have mentioned the pattern of our interactions, so this was after 2008 when we had met face to face in Pune last and had talked in detail on any medium after 2013. It necessitated that I share with him all the attention I got from guys in post-graduation college while he wasn’t any behind throwing names of girls who used to die for him. It was probably our way of self-ego massage, now that we are around 10 years ahead of college li

fe. Of all the things what is most important is that both of us shared the feeling of having worked enough in life(at the age of 34), earned as much to lead a decent life where we swear by going minimalistic, dying gracefully, not succumbing to the rut of office life and to do only what one feels like doing. We also discussed the phenomenon of bad gene pool originating from medically assisted good health and I mentioned my outlook supporting no progeny. It was getting too obvious to conclude that so many of us are cosmically connected as a tribe from
childhood days with almost the same perspectives in life. Well, we did discuss that we might have treaded beyond ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy’ to transcend to the zone of having ‘Luxury Beliefs’.

While for quite some time I thought that we spoke like monks but then something slapped me and a bubble appeared over the head saying “which monk survives on Luxury Beliefs, you morons are only creating Oxymorons”.