Made with My Cool Signs.Net
In the past six months I have lived in
(Long Post)
Dearest A,
Despite my inherent quality of rambling ceaselessly, I have promised to limit myself to chronological sequences of events for this letter. I shall begin from the beginning and continue till I reach the end. However, if I do trespass the boundaries of sequential arrangements, do realize that my mind is still in a jumble of opinions and memories and I would like to jot them down before I lose them forever in the giant sink of my mind.
We did not start well. Though Shada and I had planned and planned till we had actually planned throughout all our examinations, we still could not manage tickets for an air conditioned compartment and ended up in sleepers. There were five of us- Deep, who would accompany us only till Chennai, Ari, whom I had never spoken to directly, Stinky, who did not even bother to get an excuse of giving an examination to go on this trip, Shada, my co-planner and I, still numb to the actual fact that I was going to Chennai.
You have known, more than anyone else, how much I have obsessed about Chennai, its people, its music, in short, anything which breathed Tamil was adopted as mine to love and cherish and adore. Yet, here was I, on my way to Chennai, worrying about accounts, people not reaching on time, the fact that I was not wearing my Presidency T-shirt, and that there was a young woman with a child on our seat who refused to speak or move. Chennai was yet to enter my conscious.
Travelling second class was a revelation, A. The compartment carried around twenty more people who travelled on the strength of the fact that they were numbered 348 on the waiting list. With the heat, the crowd and absence of my beloved laptop, I was predictably violently sick throughout the journey and lived on glucon-d for most of the second day.
However, it seems making friends with people is easier on trains than when you have been classmates for three years. Ari and I discovered a passion for musicals and spent most of the night entertaining Stinky with our rendition of 'I could have danced all night'.
(n.b. I know you think my taste in music is suspect, but I will have you know that Deep also has the song 'mera laung gawacha' on his ipod. Of course, I keep mine disguised under the name 'Deep, dark wailings of the soul'. Also, he is a boy. So, bleh. I shall revel in the song and if you complain about it once more, you are not invited to my Gothic themed wedding.)
Chennai is beautiful, A. I will admit now, I was afraid. I had been afraid all the while that everyone else would be right. The people would be hostile, the city would be ugly and it would not be the paradise I had always imagined it to be. But it was. It was. Every tiny bit of it. The buildings are beautiful, the roads are clean and wide, the names so fascinating.
But Chennai to me has always been Chennai of the people, Chennai of the music. I found it. It was there, waiting for me, exactly as I had wanted it to be. The warm, friendly, amused people, all around, smiling wryly at our antics, at our hopeless attempts to get a grasp on their language, despite the fact that absolutely no one spoke in Tamil to us. The only Tamil we took back from the city was the one we came with- 'illai' and 'kodumai kodumaiyo'.
You know, A, if you have a Chettinad meal at a restaurant, they give you complimentary bananas. It is a good thing. Chettinad meals turned out to be too spicy for even those of us who had been reared on Bangal food. (No, I am not one of them. I have been reared on paratha achar and I am proud of it). But the utthapams, oh, the utthapams, light and perforated and so pretty, it felt sinful to even touch them.
Presidency College is in ruins. The one in Chennai, I meant. Ours, apparently, is going to be painted a light purple. After I leave. Why do things turn purple after I leave, I will never understand. The sea, also, is very uninteresting. Then again, I am a creature of the mountains, and thus, perhaps, a little biased. They do not sell coconut water over there either, at least, not on the beach we visited. Beaches without coconut water is sinful, ruins the idea of a beach.
Anna University is very beautiful. Deep red brick complemented by marble floors, it is difficult to believe that is a university, at par with Calcutta University, a land where time stops and communism begins. The canteen sells "pockets of water" for a rupee and we are branded as aliens. By the end of Chennai, all of us had got used to the fact that people would stop, stare at us, and then move on. Yet, someone just writes on a gtalk window that "we have no time to stand and stare". I just saw an entire city do exactly that.
I remember, while buying Tamil DVDs at a mall, wondering if this is what the sole purpose of coming to Chennai had been, buying Kannathil Muthamittal with English subtitles. But I had Chennai for one whole day. I gave an exam in it, went to the sea, bought DVDs, had South Indian meals, went to a children's park at midnight and left footprints on the sand. Which is all Chennai will ever be to me. A delightful city of delightful people where I had a delightful time. I did not get to do anything I had planned (including stalking A.R. Rahman and asking a Tamilite to marry me). I will possibly never cherish a moment there either. But a chapter is at an end now. A story has been laid to rest and I can begin afresh now. There is a whole new world awaiting for me of new obsessions, interesting fascinations.
You see, A, I have been to Chennai and I have come back. This is the trip, this is the tale, this is all it will ever be. Yet, it was so much more. More than even I realize now.
I still have two more tales to tell you. Do not expect them any time soon. The vacation has turned me lazy.
S.W.
There has been a shower of bombs (again). People have died (again). A news channel makes a couple of gaffes and announces names everyone else is trying to keep under covers. Political parties make statements, everyone eyes the upcoming elections, including Mamata Banerjee (whoops, wrong post) and the hangover is exactly what it always is like after a big bomb party.
Last month, after a reunion with old friends, enemies and embarrassing memories, eight o' clock in the evening found me far away from home, with messages flooding in with the very cheery note that a bomb blast would occur at City Centre exactly at 9. Intrepid as ever, I made up my mind to be near City Centre at zero hour, and, mind reader as ever, Goopy announced she would personally see to my safety. And thus, at ten to nine, I found myself on a rickshaw, being bundled home.
Rickshawwallahs, unlike autowallahs, refuse to be friendly to me, possibly sensing the lack of philosophical depth. However, after recently being part of conversations where people proudly mention their philosophical tete-a-tete with the tribe, I made up my mind to have a conversation worthy of blogging about later on. Hence, with an iron resolve and a cheery disposition, I remarked airily, " Say, know anything about the bomb?"
The calm of the night air accentuated the silence. By now, blushing profusely, yet undeterred, I persisted, " The bomb, you know, which is supposed to go off any minute now."
Success finally found me, and an old, garrulous voice, cold and disinterested, not unlike my class ten Physics teacher's while I tried to explain to her why I thought my bathroom mirror was an example of refraction since I appeared fatter in it, queried back, " Where?"
Delighted by the breaking of the ice, I exclaimed excitedly, "Oh, City centre. Amazing, no?"
The man mused on this for a while longer, and then replied again, this time showing more than a little curiosity, "Oh, you mean here?"
Looking at my right, I realized we were going past City Centre.
"Yes," my voice trailing off, in a mixture of fear and curiosity, "right here."
He stopped pedaling for a moment and we just looked at it. All I managed to see was a few policemen thronging the place. The place had been emptied apparently, and possibly, even then, someone had come to know the warning email had been a hoax.
As he took his money, he remarked, I will always maintain, rather wistfully, "We did not die."
I looked at his face. Lack of adventures had made gawkers of both of us. "Kindred spirit," I whispered rather foolishly and came back home to announce to surprised parents how close a brush their daughter had had with death. Unsurprisingly, the replies were,
"Gimme the remote. Oooh, animals eating other animals."
"Go, wash."
I look at the news reports this morning and remember Karol Bagh. I remember convincing auto drivers to take us to Miranda College, remember the feel of homecoming the street had given me after a long, hard day. If I close my eyes, I think I can recall a green sign, brandishing the name of the hotel where Stinky, Berry and I claim to have been the happiest in our stuffy, claustrophobic lives.
A news report says people have taken the recent bombings very philosophically. No fear, no retributions. Bombs happen, people die, someone mentions the undying spirit of the city. The numbness with which people greet the news is, in a way, pitiful. And scary. Then again, I am not the one who girds the loins of mind to write something deep and meaningful.
(For people who do not know, City Centre is a mall)
Apparently, dinner parties are not hosted to give one a chance to practice their incinerating skills. Hosts tend to look askance at guests who forage toothpicks from the appetizers and burn them on floating candles. Yelling "Burn, you heathen, burn" and jumping up and down excitedly is also not advised. It is little things like these which make parents dub you as an anti social and talk about psychiatrists in hushed tones.
Being a final year student abruptly changes your life. The subject stops seeming like something you decided to take a vacation with before finding your niche in the world. Companies actually attempt to provide us with jobs without blanching inwardly. Everyone around you looks younger, and teachers and students fall back comfortably into a back-slapping relationship. This is the right time to call yourself an adult. Unless you are doodling tornadoes in your notebook while your professor gives you a lecture mostly wandering around the topic "You are the future."
Hence, having kept aside everything I love the most, days and night are spent mostly on oil, oil prices, inflation, more oil, cartels, complaining incessantly about why hair styling prices rise with rise in price of oil, interviewing rich, snooty people, even more oil, and discussing with bus conductors what they think the political impact of oil price rise is. As fascinating as the exercise is, all it seems to lead to is frayed nerves, an impatient attitude towards oil in general, and a hatred towards buses in particular.
So, on days not spent wondering about oil, we take photographs. Which I will now proceed to unveil to the discriminating public, for one of them (the pictures, not the discriminating public) is very dear to my heart, namely,
which is the dearest view on earth. You are viewing Presidency, from my secret spot.
The world viewed from under an umbrella is a very beautiful place. Specially when its three people under a very purple umbrella and you are walking on a very unknown road to a very known destination.
The known destination. Accompanied by very buttery pao bhaji and what seems like people shooting a Bhojpuri movie.
And how such trips are destined to end.
Being a senior is turning out to be a most interesting experience. Though random thoughts about burning toothpicks in Indian Economy classes require to be quelled. Specially since they do not provide us with floating candles.
I do, I do! :D
I have, as is obvious, decided to collect tags the way people collect stamps, coins, butterflies, weight and notches on the bedpost. This is Doubletake's contribution to the Tiggery Pokery (which is what I have decided to name my collection) and she is duly thanked and wept on.
4 Jobs I’ve had (in chronological order):
As 2 year old, was responsible for getting my dad the paper. Yes, I was the family puppy. Overcome by the fact that I was actually given a responsibility, I crawled all the way into the chair and still have the scar to show for my efforts.
As a 3 year old, my mum made me watch over my sister. I watched her fall right off the bed. People keep on alluding to that incident.
As a 20 year old, my friends send me to get photocopies done. I am also responsible for dividing the food bill so that I am the only one who does not have to pay the VAT.
4 Movies I Could Watch Over and Over:
My Fair Lady
Pulp Fiction
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Dr. Strangelove
4 Places I have lived in (in order) :
I distinctly remember answering this in some other tag.
4 TV shows I like
Scrubs
Friends
Hope and Faith
That's So Raven (Does Disney count?)
4 favourite foods:
Vada Pao
Aam ka achaar
Fried chicken
Chocolate Cake
4 Places I would rather be:
Right now?
At Pingu's place, with friends, food and lots of tears and laughters and playing with barbie dolls.
With my mentor, being comforted and told that life sucks and I should get married. Thats his solution to everything. Even when I tell him that I burnt Maggi.
My library. I realize I have seven books due. For more than 15 days. And I keep on forgetting to call them up to reissue.
At Ladakh. Away. Happy.
4 People I am tagging:
Hate doing this. Everyone is tagged.
After having harried me since time immemorial to stop making her feel as if she gave birth to a blob, my mother has finally succeeded in making me agree to early morning walks. This fact should do no credit to her, since the only reason I do go for walks is that I do not feel like Mathematics after 5 a.m. in the morning and I never can go to sleep until the rest of the world sharing my timezone has awoken and arisen.
Morning walks, though a rage among most health advisers, is an extremely lonely undertaking. A person resorts to it only after he is past his first, second and sometimes third youth. And they all seem to severely disapprove if a person boasting of less mature years, wisdom and looks invades their territory. An ensemble of eyebrows raise themselves to frown upon walking attire, headbanging ( Any sort of rock is a thing of awful beauty during early hours, specially when accompanied by chirping birds, against whom I have a special dislike) and random trippings along any sort of uneven roads, stones, rocks and invisible barriers. Icy looks are all a part of the thinning process in this part of the world.
Morning walks are also devoid of any sort of guys. I do not even ask for cute. But anyone who is remotely dateable seem to while away their entire mornings sleeping, unmindful of the fact that their probable soulmate is taking headbanging morning walks along one of the most beautiful and romantic settings possible, happily wondering what is for breakfast.
The best thing about early mornings are yellow flowers. They are present everywhere. They dot most trees, they lay strewn about on every path and you often end up sweeping them away from the bathroom floor after the mandatory shower. They freshen up the warmest of mornings and brighten the dreariest of streets. Not that streets look dreary. An young sun, dew bathed roads, a dimmed moon somewhere out there in the skies, and sometimes, while changing music in the player, the drunken calm of day create a vivid, joyous, exhilarating world, challenged, perhaps, only by the magic of midnights.
There is also the joys of the inebriate's walk, as I have named it. All it involves is finding the oddest and the narrowest of by lanes, and taking random turns whenever possible, making the way home more circuitous, more adventurous and more beautiful. The prettiest of homes, the oddest of colours, the brightest of gardens, all seem to be tucked away in hidden corners, unseen by people who come looking for them, awaiting to surprise walkers in search of a reason to keep on walking, and desired by the very people who plan to move to Antartica given a chance (Onnesha, take a bow).
The bare truth is, I have fallen in love with these walks of mine. They do not harrow my soul any more. They do not seem to do my blobness any good, but they soothe the frayed nerves of mine after an intense mathematical session. My soul is a walker's soul now, and I will never be able to find delight in the joys of driving. Then again, a walker never killed a stag. Walkers just remain walkers at bay.
Once upon a time, I used to dabble with the idea of taking to crime. It was the same age during when any man over 21 was supposed be called an uncle (At 20, everyone under 30 is hot). The idea did not really last. Possibly it had to do something with my abject inability to shoot balloons. As a four year old, I would get agitated at my inevitable failure to pop even one of them and would have to be forcibly restrained from beating up all those balloons with the same rifle I was holding. 16 years later, I wish my father would be around to restrain me again.
I have never really known why my father would take me to shoot balloons at an young, impressionable age. It has been proven in time that he never harboured dreams of raising a sharpshooter as a daughter. Common sense tells me it was probably because he had no idea what to do with me when babysitting. Paranoia tells me it was the best way to quell any homicidal tendencies I might otherwise visit on delicate furniture. He is a smart man, my father.
The above paragraphs has nothing to do with the theme of this post. In fact, this post does not have a theme. I have absolutely no idea what I am even typing right now. Its early morning, the birds are chirping away, welcoming the world in a trilling, mad, joyful, soulful song and giving me a headache, and I have to leave for my morning walk in half an hour. It will probably be another furiously hot day and I will melt away, sweat droplet by sweat droplet. In fact, if you have not guessed it yet, right now, I am not a very happy blogger.
I spent all my money in buying the Gameworld trilogy and finished them in under a week. This has had very strange developments. Like a spate of re-attendance to college, where I spend hours gazing happily at the seats and wondering if Samit Basu's posterior ever adorned them. (He is an alumni from the same department as me. If you think that motivates me in any manner, think again). There has also been cases of tattooing the name Kirin on my arms during Maths classes and later explaining to questioning parental figures that its just a misspelling of an old Enid Blytonian term.Parents, but obviously, refuse to believe such tripe. But are reassured by the fact that the elder daughter is not the closet lesbian they were fearing her to be. Today, a fictional hero, tomorrow, a living breathing man is the motto they are trying to live by. I am still wording the speech which should be informing them about the celibacy vow.
There was a week spent in un-idleness in Delhi. College packed three of us pseudo-economists off under the hope of keeping the beacon of Presidency Economics high. Siblings sent us off with joyful good byes in the hope of the splendour of gifts brought back. We went there in the hope of meeting some proper guys for a change (Dear Kolkata guys, please do not get offended, we love you all. You are intelligent, stalwart men who will always remain the people our parents hope we will end up getting married to. This is just the rebellious phase every just-left-teenage girl goes through. But we always come back to you. Maybe we leave you again later. But we will discuss that in some other post).
We did meet them. It was a wonderful eight days which we spent falling in love over and over again with every man in sight, not even excluding wonderful looking professors from Pakistan (Pakistan has everything, good looking professors, good looking men, even, for crying out aloud, good looking women, and an actual interest in Economics. Wish to reword those Partition clauses again). We also realized Kolkata is not an undisputed World number one in aantlamo. Very, very curiously, Delhi comes close. Frighteningly close.
However, the trip's main impact laid elsewhere. Not being one to keep people with their breaths held in taut suspense, I will be quick to come to the point. It was the washing of clothes (Cue, quick drawing of breath). It was while we washed clothes, past midnight, with the aid of shampoos the hotel beatifically provided, we realized that we had actually transcended to adulthood. That we were women in the real sense of the word. Also that we would make terrible washerwomen and that washing clothes would also have to be struck off from the list of alternate careers. There were also instances of impromptu dances which involved jumping on a rather bouncy bed and which ended with loadshedding and meeting cute looking guys in the lobby to discuss the electricity problems in Delhi and why that meant the Stock exchange was about to crash(The mating calls of economists are not very attractive. We are reduced to either discussing the Stock Exchange or questions on how to become millionaires while trying to get Ph.D. degrees. The first ends in fistfights, the second in MBAs).
I realize I must have mystified my readers (Gasp, I have readers, it feels good to say that while planning crazy attack on chirping birds). The college sent us off to Delhi to attend a seminar on (held breaths again) Economics (gasps) with a few other South Asian countries. Scores of undergraduate economics students were bunched of in a scenario reminiscent of Goopy Bagha Phire Elo where Bikrams are caught and imprisoned (this is for my non Bengali readers. Bengali readers, skip this section before getting an aneurysm or something by the mind boggling description) by a mad yogi of a sort, whose death had been predicted by a boy named Bikram. The imprisoned Bikrams in the story become his housemaids and washerwomen. We, instead, presented papers and listened to endless babbling by famous people on how to achieve the Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani/Nepali/Sri Lankan Dream. Since none of us were even particularly clear about which dreams they were focusing on, we would utilize the time to run away to Connaught Place and visit Nirula's. Or some other equally wonderful, ambrosial joint (Cue: Wipe away nostalgic tears).
Delhi stories might keep on appearing by bits and spurts. So might murderous attempts on birds. The balloon story, however, appears only here. I have no idea how to conclude this piece. So I will inform everyone that I am going to have chocolates for breakfast. Also that I have begun to resemble a blob. A nice, shapeless, green and brown blob. Which still does not sound like a conclusion. So I will try again.
This is the conclusion.
Which was mostly what the weekend has been about. Dead turtles lined up in a broken line, buried ostrich-like in an otherwise pristine beach. At twilight hour, a lone turtle being washed up on the shore, a lone moon directly above me with a lone star underneath and I, plopped down on the golden, silky sand, the sound of the sea enveloping all other sounds and the wind in my hair, the best caress one could ever receive. A seemingly endless beach with two occupants, one of them, sadly, dead and the other, feeling the waves lap at her feet.
And highlights from the world of Television :
This post is about nothing. It has no literary value whatsoever. No opinion will ever be dictated here. I probably should be sleeping while I type this, but I do not care. Let dark circles remain a permanent feature of my physical attributes. I will show them they are not everything.
Love is a weird thing. Here you are, thinking there is no man on earth who could be everything you wish him to be (which includes having the guts to dance on the roof of a train and be a criminal mastermind) and then suddenly you see him serenading Audrey Hepburn. Life suddenly becomes topsy-turvy. And anyone who suggests this is a school girl crush, may you get the Wagga Wagga disease.
Kolkata buses have many faults. But no one could label them dull. From banters between a fisherwoman and the conductor to free-for-alls, they never lack the human element of comedy. However, the government thinks otherwise. What with too many passengers being dragged to depots because they fall asleep on long bus rides and snore past their stops, they decided not to risk the unpredictable presence of over sensitive passengers and went and added radios. They possibly voted for television firstly, but what with the universal demand for soaps clashing with the fact that they are mostly R-rated, they decided on the radio, where the most harmful thing for children's ears would be the Bula-di advertisements. But since everyone knows them and can recite them backwards, word- perfect, that was not much of a scare.
(BTW, what is it with minibuses and Big FM? Has Mukesh Ambani taken over RT-72 bus? Is a chain of buses the next big thing he wishes to gift his wife after that joke of a jet plane?)
So here was I, one sad Friday afternoon, dragging my sorry self to a Statistics class, pondering on the meaning of life when the friendly, neighborhood radio decided to play the title track of Bhul Bhulaiya again, for what I could make out, the fifth time in the hour. That was when I realized how desperately I was in love. For Gregory Peck materialized in front of me singing that very song, for ME!!! For the next five minutes, i gazed openmouthed at the conductor, for Peck always seemed to hang around him, resurrected from death, lip syncing a pseudo-rap song from a Hindi movie, all because I have a wild imagination and have watched DDLJ absolutely too many times.
I could not concentrate much on my tuition either. Peck seemed to hang around a lot near my teacher's left ear, just looking in that heart warming manner of his.
As if I do not already have enough reasons to quit bothering to educate myself further.
I still do not feel sleepy. I might prolong this post a bit more. I wonder how many of my blogrollers are busy deleting my link.
People who have ever loved Mathematics might appreciate this. What with too many late nights trying to deduce why a particular question was taking you three months to solve and was a possible contender in next year's examination, the subject tends to overcome your senses. You live, breath and feel Maths. I went a step ahead, I started walking Maths.
The area I live in has islands. They are the names for circular edifices at every crossroad, with shrubberies in them. If the following picture belonged to wikimapia (it does not, its a Palit original), it would show islands like this.
Yes, slightly messy. So was Picasso.
Anyway, here is a crossroad, many cars, its late in the evening, Spiderman here is a figment of my imagination and there I am, in the right hand corner lower footpath, waiting there for fifteen minutes. All because I wanted to reach my destination by taking a path which was tangent to the island.
Given,
OP is the radius, not that it matters.
The red star shows my desired destination.
Drivers do not like me. I am a bad pedestrian.
Required to find:
A tangent which does not kill me.
I actually went to and fro the footpaths, around eleven times, till I found the right tangent, starting somewhere two meters away from my starting position.
Also, the angle alpha signifies nothing. I have forgotten what two tangents do when they intersect. Probably start a family of baby tangents and eventually end up getting divorced, but by then, I was home.
Ah, the first glimmers of sleepiness. Let the end be now.
The all-pervading aroma from the door on the right proved to be a unisexual bathroom while the door on the left was stoutly locked, which led to an inevitable choice of the center door. The first room turned out to be a hall which had been converted into a sales counter. The compulsive shopper in me called out to look at the delights at display, books mostly, with cheerful titles like "Governor Generals of India during the British Raj" and "British Trade Policies (1870-1930)" . It was again the more practical Bonky who came to my rescue by reminding me that if we pooled our funds, we would only be able to scrape a few hundred bucks for a book we would end up gifting to our grandparents. Better sense prevailed and we moved onwards.
Actually we did not. The sales counter man doubling up as a security guard asked us to halt and said visitors were supposed to go the rooms to their left, the rest being private quarters. Our conspiratorial minds immediately went haywire, forming theories of a room where skeletons were kept, hung from the overhead chandeliers which where the last governor's wives' corpses after he had consumed them (cannibalism happens to be one of our many interests). However, remembering the fact that even Scary Movie 3 scared me out of my wits, we dutifully went leftwards where the treasures of Metcalfe Hall were laid in front of us in all its splendour and glory.
"Bricks?"
The query resonated throughout the room. All the room contained was glass cases with bricks laid lovingly and protectively in them. Wondering slightly at the hobby of the last resident of the Hall, we roamed around, trying to fake an interest in stones, if only to please the septuagenarian
looking wonderingly at us from his post at the sales counter. It was then that we discovered a brick derived from the foundation of Bethune College. (A query here. How do people acquire foundation stones? Do they dig the place up? Or do they take it out before the rest of the building is made. If so, then can it be technically called a foundation stone since it never was allowed to remain a part of the foundation?) College loyalists that we are, we made it the mission of the next fifteen minutes to hunt up the foundation stone from our college among the fusillade of bricks collected in the room. Sadly, the stock of the foundation stone of our college had apparently been low and the room lacked severely in any bricks ear marked thus. On a happier note, none other bricks were found from any other college and we left the place, disappointed yet pleased.
Bonky suggests an inventory to be made of the bricks we met there so here it goes:
(This post is dedicated to Bonky, the person who has always inspired me to never follow my own decisions about dieting, but to go and stuff my face if I have the money, and, if possible, lend her some too.Hence, I openly proclaim that I will name my first child after you, regardless of its sex, if your husband murders you before it is born.)
It all started with the usual level of frustration with life for Bonky and me. Looking comprehensively at the fact that we were turning into amoebas, hated our graduating subject and had mistakenly arrived an hour early for our morning class on a warm, gentle Saturday morning, the next obvious step was walking dejectedly towards the college gates, wondering which stagnant waters would we end up being mosquitoes in. One of us opined (at this precise moment, I forget who, but it doesn't matter, both of us still think that) that we were total losers to be hanging around in the college for classes on a Saturday, when other people our age would be
a) sleeping
b) preparing for some date hours later
c) sleeping
d) getting rid of a hangover
e) sleeping
f) staring at the ceiling, blowing air bubbles and wondering what would be there for breakfast.
At this psychological hour, a tram crossed our path. We, pseudo economists and self proclaimed unicellular organisms when it comes to survival, think alike and think different. A tram with an unknown destination was accepted as our calling and we got up on the next one (we had missed our first inspiration while we were busy reading each other's minds).
This wasn't our first ride. We have had many such impromptu escapades from the humdrum menace of classes. Yet, the first foolish questions in a series of foolish questions happened to be, "where does this tram go" to a bemused conductor, possibly unused to absent minded, bespectacled, foolishly blinking young girls with as little clue of their destination as he himself. We got two tickets to the last stop, hoping against hope it would not be beyond traversed paths or recognizable tracts of civilizations. It was while we giggling away to glory at our daring, adventurous spirit (we are young girls who haven't been left alone beyond a fixed diameter around tuitions) that we suddenly found ourselves amidst a glory of British architecture and a bevy of business people amazed at the spectacle of two tripping teenagers staring goggle eyed at everything. The more erudite Bonky recognized the place as Dalhousie, the place which houses banks and churches with equal élan.
Traipsing around like little girls, an eye opened for food shops, it was not long before we saw a supposed minaret at a distance. Close inspection proved it to be the General Post Office. Following Rikki Tikki Tavi's motto, we went and found out all we could about it, which was not much. Though we did find a couple of cute guys we could stare happily at, our lack of post office etiquette rose a few eyebrows. Our girlish exuberance at the sight of the stamp corner and a computerized section was not well received and it was not long before we were looking somewhere else for luck and interest.
More aimless wanderings and a roving eye brought us to a building covered with beggars which proclaimed itself to be Metcalfe Hall on a disused pillar. Having heard the name in one of my rarer non-orkutting browsing of the internet, I dragged a bewildered Bonky to the bird defiled exterior, with its impressive rows of columns and wide staircases one could play hopscotch on (we did try to, as a matter of fact).
The interior was not very impressive at the beginning. A huge notice loomed proclaiming the legend that we needed to get permission of the security guards to look around, not that we saw any scope of doing anything illegal there, except, maybe, practice our cheerleading skills. Perceiving our hesitance, a man, posing as a security guard (oh, come on, why would Metcalfe Hall need security guards?), rushed us off upstairs, the ground floor being cordoned off for the birds, we presumed.
However, things started looking up with our ascent. Our journey was assisted by sweeping, wooden, carpeted stairs while the walls were adorned with pictures of Victoria Memorial in all its splendor (we suspect those pictures had been photo edited a bit, Victoria Memorial never looked like that ever since coloured photo films had been invented). Muffled footsteps accompanied us to a landing with three, yellow, paint-chipped doors.
Which door did we choose? Did the day bring forth further minor adventures? Were there any more philosophical musings? Did we discover a dead body sprawled across the middle of the Metcalfe Hall with an oriental knife sticking through its heart? Find out later in the sequel to Bonky and Pongo's Day Out.
(OK, fine, I am too lazy to complete this.)
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