It was March 4th 1998. Me and my father had reached Kasturba hospital, Manipal, surgical OPD. I remember it was a wednesday. I will digress a little here. Every wednesday was exciting for me, as X-Files, which was my favorite would be aired on that night. I would sit glued to the TV throughout trying to decipher the dialogues with the limited knowledge of English I had. We were waiting in the hall, whole afternoon and then my father asked a nurse there, if they would let us know if Dr. Ramchandra had come. But they would put off. We would eagerly keep looking at every other doctor who passed by , trying to imagine if he was the doc we were waiting for. After a couple of hours,sister told that doc wouldn't come to OPD since his child was sick. We had come all the way from Karwar to hear this. I was in my 10th standard and board exams were less than a month away. This sudden lump like growth under my right ear had caused anxiety and the doctors in Karwar had suggested to see someone in Manipal or Hubli. March 4th was a special day. It was the annual prize distribution ceremony and I was notified that I had won first prize in Sanskrit like the year before. This year I had also won best all rounder of the year along with some other prizes. I had missed that event because we had to come to see the doctor in Manipal, and I think that was the last felicitation I would have ever attended for my lifetime. I really miss it to date. I used to buy books from the prize money I had won. The previous year I had bought books on Thomas alva edison, Stephen hawking and books related to machines ,magnetism. Those days my dream was to build a flying object which would have its own magnetic field around it and since similar poles repel , this thing would have a field against earth's and glide easily without any resistance. This basically is flawed, but as a high schooler, this was my fantasy which was obviously influenced by X-Files. Back to March 4th Manipal. I asked my father to leave as soon as possible, so that we can reach home before 9 and I would catch X-Files. So desperate ! hehe!. But we could only start from Udupi( Town near Manipal) at 10 in the night. After this day I do not remember what went on till my board exams were over. I had studied hard and in those days there was no issue of lack of concentration. I would just sit on a bed and start studying and get lost with it. I was pretty nervous during the exams not because of the usual exam fear. Infact I used to love exams, may be because of the holidays that lay on the other side of it :). The reason for fear was beacuse I had heard these stories of people using unfair means to copy in the exams and to escape from it they would pass it onto someone sitting nearby. Like they would throw the chits under someone else's bench. This had caused a lot of worry for me. What if I was made the scape goat for some one else's sin? The anti copying squad would simply whisk me away. But nothing of that sort happened and I finished my exams, and if I remember correctly I did not regret for having done any one exam bad. Like I said, the holidays were important to me :D.
That very same day one of my friends Vivek was leaving Karwar and he had asked all friends for a photo session. We were probably 5-6 of us. I had to finish this quickly since me and father had planned to see a doctor in Kaiga. Hence I rushed to the studio. I remember it was cloudy and humid on an early April afternoon. We the teenagers had nothing else than to discuss except movies atleast on the day exams had ended, and we were discussing every other movie that released; Jeans to Ishq. After the photo session we departed, and it was the last time I have seen of Vivek. Few weeks back I heard his voice on phone after 8 years, it was totally different. It's strange you bump into people after a long time and things have changed so much about that person that you wish it were the same person once again. Same evening we went to Kaiga to see that homeopathy doctor and came back at night. There is only one good hangout place in Karwar which is the beach. Except rainy season it is the best place you can on a sombre evening gazing at the sunset. You, the horizon and that huge red ball sinking into the water, and nothing else in between. I used to meet my langotiya yaar( close friend) and classmate Nagraj, everyday on the beach, during holidays. We had never a dearth of topic to talk about. Obviously girls and crushes were a major hot topic in our talks. This was all that I was, a very common small town guy dreaming about stars , space and Indian institute of Astronomy. I can sense that frustration building inside you if you are reading this expecting some twist in the story..I want to apologise for this. I am telling this story only to give you a small picture of my life before the summer of '98. Keep reading..
No comments:
Post a Comment