Roses are red. Yellow and white, too.

Most days in college are pretty rosy. In the mould of rosy days… with bright sunshine, brighter moods and all things black and gloomy locked up inside the skeleton closet. These are the days which make you want to take out that flamboyant, fluorescent yellow shirt and pair it with those red leather pants you picked up under the influence of someone under the influence. Those are the rosy days. And then there are the rosier days, like Rose Day.

So t’was, with the smell of fresh roses and the wailing of a distraught wingmate, that consciousness called on my person that day. I stirred, but was not yet shaken by the events that had unfolded in the ungodly hours of dawn. Unlike most other such events, I actually remembered the significance of the day. It wasn’t that tough really, considering the conversation that two visibly excited friends had inflicted on me the previous night.

“Tomorrows Rose Day da!”

“Ya I know… who’re we sending cards to?”

“Not decided… but we’re allowed proxy cards too…”

“Hmmm…”

“…”

Now, I’m not one of those early birds. I mean that figuratively, not like one of these crazy gits who maintain they’re mammals, not birds. I have my share of late night fun, the music, chatter and uncontrolled emotion. There’s something about the dark blue sky that’s so conducive to conversations. But I have my limits… and though generally of extremely tolerant temperament, I somehow took offence to hushed, conspirational tones floating over my half-asleep self. A couple of broken chairs and one broken conversation later, I had finally retired in peace.

Rose Day is a pretty neat idea. If ever an economy could run on overworked hormones and underworked brains, it would derive more than a little inspiration form this set-up. Simply put, you could, for a very nominal price, send a card and a coloured rose to anyone in college. Every colour indicated some emotion, like friendship-yellow, enemity-thorns, peace-white and the oh so wonderful, love-red. The catch was, however, that you could send it AS anyone. The importance of that is lost on any person who has not spent days and days thinking of ways to utterly humiliate the guy next to him. That, in any case, was not the kind of person you would find in Agate Hostel. The wails that had greeted me in the morning were from a poor soul who in turn had woken to a call from a very disturbed girl, demanding the meaning of the poem he had sent her. Ah, realization dawns.

The aforementioned poem was very peppy… written by a friend of mine, who went by the mysterious acronym PKG. There was this particularly nasty line, which went,

“Her beauty next to yours, is like a molecule besides an atom,

Why one would ever love you, is something I cannot fathom”

There was another, interesting card that Bolo received. It was generous in its praise, and signed off by “Rachael” and “Phoebe”. A more mature attempt at humour than most, I felt, though Bolo disagreed.

Around this time, I came up with an interesting plan to send a girl both a red rose and a yellow one, asking her to keep one and send the other back. The idea was foolproof, I thought, and went as far as to draw up a list, titled “The Lucky Ones”. I had originally written "The Hitlist" but then, you have to feed your ego every once in a while. However, my wallet seemed to lack enthusiasm, and quite surprisingly, its ‘empty’ threats carried some weight. Thus it is, that though anticlimactic, I did not receive a single card that day. But something of note did happen, amidst all the self-proxies, thinly veiled flirting and miffed friends. A couple of guys, NSK and Venky, got really beautiful cards from the girls in their class. It was very touching, and if not for my arrogance and opportunism, I would have admitted the same. As it were, the yellow roses that arrived had soon been dyed red, and by nightfall the gang had all but rechristened the duo as heartless flirts.

Bluff, and other Stuff

Have you ever had one of those moments, when the Absolute Truth floats down with a double somersault, a couple of cartwheels and a full split, landing right on your nose, while the heavens open and glorious hymns reverberate, a moment that will define the rest of your life, and that of countless others?

Neither have I, actually. But I came close. As close as you can 17 km away from civilisation, anyway. We were playing Bluff, a small group of say 16 people. The weather had decided to play spoilsport, at around 5 in the evening, so you had a bunch of very pissed off young dudes, with energy to burn and way below ignition temperature, so to speak. The rain brought with it some very unwelcome little visitors, buzzing around the place and in general having a right ball. The music was blaring pretty loud… a stranger would even have thought the room was shivering given the weather. But then it would have to be a pretty strange stranger.

Bluff is a pretty simple game, really. It involves a great deal of nerve, risk management techniques and the coveted ability to lie through your teeth. In all, it is like the card game version of ‘Life’. Except that you didn’t have to decide if to send kids to the private school or buy a new car. And you didn’t have little, colourful plastic families (and their cars) around the place.

The game was going pretty much like most others. Genie and Deeps played a quiet, high risk game and got out quick, probably to scourge the room for snacks. Siva invariably got stuck with one card, almost everyone in the wing including the bathroom cleaners knowing which one. CV, of course, was making it a point to prove he could bluff. The rest were making it a point to prove he couldn’t. No prizes for guessing which side was winning. CV has the kind of poker face you see in one guy a generation. Eyes wide, eyebrows raised, a couple of gulps… and the absolute banishing of all eye contact. Some of us would swear that we saw his face arrange itself in the pattern of the card in his hand.

It was in such a condition that news found the entire gang, courtesy me.

“Guys!”

“…”

“We’re holding a cricket tournament da… my club”

“…”

“So form yourselves a team and get registered quickly…”

I should mention here that most of the guys are cricket crazy. In the fashion of most Indians. They loved playing, watching and talking about the game, with a passion most reserve for barroom brawls. The room would testify to this… Hanging Light – Sachin vs. Lara. Dent in Bed – Is Dhoni a phoney? Broken Mirror – Did Sourav score 183 or 183 not out. You get the picture. And me, being of saner disposition, would just sit there watching the ruckus unfold, playing peacekeeper.

Anyways, with a slight grunt, someone (must’ve been Siva, for some odd reason he didn’t like being picked on by twenty guys) put their cards down, the others quickly followed suit. Amazing though the game might be, we were all quickly boring of the sheer length of it sometimes. Besides, putting so much pressure on Siva n CV for entertainment pricked our conscience a bit. And so the team huddled, deciding the squad of fifteen. By my count, around eighteen were interested to play, which meant that some hard decisions had to be made, and the people concerned placated with some extra attention and numerous nods of the head. In around quarter of an hour, the squad was decided, and the team name was to be decided.

Since we were the first team to register, we stressed upon ourselves the importance of naming the team. The old school ‘PS XI’ was instantly dismissed, as It would spawn a ‘Northie XI’, ‘DAV XI’ and other similarly depressing names. Someone suggested ‘St. Mary’s Devils’, after the name of the ground the guys played in Chennai. The more conservative of the lot rejected it. The next was ‘Sarakku Irukku’, in honour of our very own ‘Sarukku’, NSK… he makes it a point to push any mattress he sleeps on to the ground, and then justifies it saying that all s fair in love, war and sleepiness.

Finally, we decided upon the highly innovative, “18 Till We Die”. The name struck a chord with most, seeing as we did make Room. 18 our joint… I did raise the slight problem of if we would be called the ’18 Till We Die’-ians or ’18 Till We Die’-ites or ’18 Till We Die’-anis. However, logic is misplaced in times of rapture, and as such, my words were drowned in the wave of emotion that was sweeping across the room.

Where the party was that night, Part 2

...

The day drew to a close, and a very happy Rahul congratulated me on making it through the prelims. The finals were a day later, and I couldn’t not win, he said. I smiled and nodded, as the butterflies in my stomach seemed to enjoy mating season. The new day dawned, and even the skies seemed arranged in some sort of devilish grin. I ignored my overactive imagination and went about my work. A small grin here, a smile there, I was even starting to become less nauseous… I could actually look at food by the time evening came round.

All participants were required to assemble in the barn half an hour earlier, so that the organisers could spit out all sorts of conditions while we still contemplated how stupid we were. I vaguely heard a disclaimer to the effect that they would not be liable to the mental or physical torture we may undergo after the event, but dismissed it as a bad joke. Turns out the joke was on me…

The interaction parties were pretty standard. I’d been involved in organising one, in fact, and there cant be two ways it plays out… People come in, music plays, a random event takes place, and people wait for the breaks between events, when the music plays and they have an excuse to jump around like idiots and bang into other idiots, and depending on the genders involved, giggle or grunt. The simplicity of the entire thing was pure genius.

I managed two rounds without getting too bashed up. In fact, I actually had some self respect left going into the final round, a surprise, we were told. I actually like surprises… they remind me of birthdays, and birthday cakes, and chocolates… the whole deal. I was pretty much spaced out, on a time trip back to my 8^th birthday with a huge bugs bunny cake, when the crowd went deathly still. Then there was chaos. I started, as a visibly shaken competitor informed me that we were required to dance.

I should have expected it, what with the numerous prophetical signs… but of all things Dance?!?! I can dance well enough to pass time in the room… deft foot here and another jump there has even got me a few murmured compliments. But all that does nothing to the fact that God, no doubt chuckling to himself way up, decided to give me two left feet. Or two right feet, doesn’t really make a difference… the fact was that I couldn’t dance to save my life. If ever I’m given a choice between dancing in front of my entire batch, and skinny-dipping into boiling oil, I’d go for the latter. It s only humane… the first option would kill a lot more people.

The next day dawned, cheery as ever. The whole world seemed happy. Videos of me onstage were already doing the rounds, and many were roaring for an encore. It was widely believed that I would be approached by the Press to clear the air on if what I did was a solo version of the tango or the salsa, but some popular actress had sneezed up a controversy and saved me the blushes, Bless her…

Where the party was that night, Part 1

I was just sitting there, minding my business. That means I was raking my way through some dude’s SMS inbox, or trying a ‘new’ hairstyle, or something similarly uninteresting, when Rahul walks in.

Now, Rahul’s this tall guy… and I mean that in the context of tall guys. He puts the others to shame, I tell you… apart from creating nightmares for the Civil Engineers in the group, and quite a business for these bruise ointments when he walks into a room… Once I counted him banging his head against the ceiling/stairway/fan 6 times en route to the mess. Which is no small feat, even in a place like Agate, where most wall fittings seem to suffer from acute vertigo.

Anyway, the point being, Rahul’s usually sober… not like the rest of us who go jumping around, getting high on sugar, SMS-es or CT marks. Or in a particularly drugged-looking friends case, getting high on boredom. This particular gentleman makes it a point to test my nerves in these moods… plays basketball with the
light, tag with my room door and ‘dodge-the-water-i-found-next-room’ with unsuspecting souls that walk around the corridors late night. Very becoming on an 18 year old…

But I digress. To recap, I was minding my own business when an unusually chirpy Rahul walks in. Now it is a testament to my powers of concentration that I didn’t notice him just standing there doing nothing but make small chirping noises. Finally satisfied with a thorough bulldozing of a friends credibility and leaving him to clean up, I turned…

“Hey da!”
“ehhh… Hi…”
“Listen… we have this thing coming up… called Mr. Freshie”
“…”
“So I was thinking… you know… you could participate!”
“…”
“So watchoo say?”
“…”
“Enna daaa?”
“I’m waiting for the punchline da… all good jokes have one these days”

Come on… you cant blame me! I have an excellent reputation of falling flat on my face in public. There was a time, when innocence and no small measure of enthusiasm accompanied my trysts with the audience. But that was a different time, when the world was one large playground, music was more than remixes, and there were no Bush jokes. After a particularly devastating outing in my twelfth, I decided to bridle my enthusiasm once and for all.

“Hey, I’m serious da… I’m sure you ll do good… in fact the prelims is a written round. Why don’t you attend that? I’ve already put your name in for it…”

By now, my friend had started to sound increasingly like those random advertisements on TV for a lucky charm, fitness belt or an extra brain. But old habits die hard, and alert as my subconscious was to the change in speech patterns, it found itself a silent observer to a question paper so mind-numbing, it would have been criminal to not attempt it. And if you listened hard enough, you could have heard the unmistakable sound of a nail being driven into a coffin...

The 5 o' clock fairytale

The air feels hot. The atmosphere is oppressive, burning. You cannot separate moving from aching, nor can you that fire in your heart from that in your skin. Two entities, so similar, yet so very apart. One will move you, nurture you, and let you rise above yourself, transcend for a second or less the barriers that we humans place upon ourselves. The other will pull you down, make you kneel and cough up spittle, and will burn till it soothes itself in a puddle of your own sweat. Remind us that we are all too human.

I know which one always wins for me… and life, unlike fairytales, is no fairytale...

“I’m out da… change?”

“Enough da… lights bad anyway”

If ever there was something pure and wonderful in the world, those words held it for me. I welcomed them with open arms like they were the eternal truth, in a neatly bound book with gold lettering “Why the sky is blue, and other truths” written gracefully on the front cover. Then I realised that the book had spikes, that embracing it wasn’t a really good idea.

“F***!!!”

You really don’t understand the true meaning of having 200 odd bones and countless muscles in your body until all of them decide to hurt at the same time. It was almost musical in a demented, sadistic way, like some arch rival of mine had voodoo dolled me into a guitar, and was playing Megadeth on it. And I’m pretty sure which muscle he had the bass mapped onto…

“Enna da… shoulder a?”

“Ya da…”

A collective sigh ensued. Normally, this would be treated like a complete lack of feeling. I mean, which sensible friend would sigh without a word of comfort.

Only the ones who’ve seen it happen everyday for a year. My life is so fractured. Or twisted. That depends on if we re talking about the wrist part of my life or the shoulder part. Yep, im injury prone. Each time fate hits me with one injury, I treat it till it hits me with the next. Fate MUST be a sadistic woman. The sort that’s going through middle age, with a drunk husband and a worthless kid, who has to earn and bake the dough, wear an apron over the business suit. That explains the sadistic part. Woman? Because she s so damn obsessed with me…

Going back to that fanciful looks at the two fires burning… Sport is about fire, isn’t it? The passion to win is so very different from the passion to play. The passion to play is so very different from the passion to excel. And the passion to excel is so very different from the passion to win. The passion of the Christ is so different from a passion fruit drink.

I just had to throw that in. I can’t stand seriousness in text. It reminds me of third grade, where we had to write between the line in the ruled notebook, and there was only one way to write a B or S, and there were just too many ways of writing BS.

Anyway, You go out there, everyday, maybe even twice a day if you re really bonkers… you sweat it out, do something so immaterial in life. Who give s a damn if that ball goes into the hoop or not, or if you did a hundred cool tricks before it? I mean, apart from the people who preach the butterfly effect, that is. Believe me when I say it, that s a theory for the zoologists.

Ah yes… passion. The passion drives us all, competing against fatigue, lack of sleep, cycle tests and the Gobi Masala you had for lunch. You can do wonderful things with passion, and by association with sport. I always believed, in other words, I just realised, that a game truly becomes a sport, when its players won’t have it called any other way. Which might be a stupid definition, really, but who cares for pessimists?

Isn’t it weird, or downright mental, that when you’re so tired, so physically rundown and phasing in and out of consciousness every second, is also when you feel so good, so active, so content with life? And isn’t it equally crazy that you have this big wide grin on your face, and later, even as your muscles ache in protest and make you limp to your bed, that you lie down with a groan and a smile, murmur something about the lights and find yourself overcome by a sleep so pure and undisturbed, it was worth every second of the pain?