Where the party was that night, Part 2

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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?