Some Scattered Thoughts, Now Collected

Basically, I just couldn't let go of some of my stray thoughts so thought why not spread them out on my blog, just for keepsakes.

• The musical soirees that changed my life are the memories of the days gone by…flood my mind. "Gazab Ka Hai Din Socho Zara... E Diwanapan Dekho Zara..." Truly unforgettable!!

• "Sawan Barse Tarse Dil.....". Can't forget this song.... all throughout the late 1990s I have been listening to it on MTV. Beautiful ghazal-like rendition by Hariharan and Sadhna Sargam. "Sawan Barse Tarse Dil, Kyun Na Nikale Gharse Dil....." In a way, life becomes really tough if you have so many unforgettable memories to keep you awake and away from the realities of life.

• Listening to “Right Here Waiting for You”: This is one of the songs that have seen me through some of the toughest days of my life. A very special song that is high up on my list, along with Elton John's 'Sacrifice' and 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight', and of course Bryan Adams.

• Perhaps sipping tea at the office cafeteria is the best way to slink away from your boss' doubtful gaze!!! Today I escaped.

• Getting late for the office but I have to listen to these peaceful and timeless ghazals first. Enjoying the beautiful weather and munching on a bhutta.... by the lake!

• Eisssh Monday der na kheye deye kono kaaj neyi... shudu shudu Sunday er pore thik hazir hobe...!!! Bokar moton. Ufff... Hotobombo kotakaar!!! Abar shei offich jawa.... jhuddo kora!

• Listening to “Tum Mujhe Yun Bhula Na Payoge...”: I have always loved cared and nurtured old Hindi songs and Robindra Sangeet like invaluable gems. They never fall out of one's deep affection for them. A song like this one is for essential listening. Listen to this song and take the reins of your life back into your hands.

• Back home after an evening out with a friend. Had some of Hyderabad's famed biryani... again! Methinks, it's better to taste/eat some known Indian grub at a little-known yet fine restaurant than dig into some anti-septic food at some foolish Dettol-scrubbed western kitchen-/lounge-type garage!! “Chham Chham Barse Ghata, Ghunghroo Bajati Hai Hawa...". Anyway, I just put this song on the CD player. If you do get a chance to listen to this song, please don't shy away from it. The song is a wonder, sung by Asha Bhonsle. Listen to it sometime and you will get to breathe a minty fresh air of its uber musical quality that you won't get anywhere these days.

• Listening to the song "Apni Toh Pathshala, Masti Ki Pathshala". I love this song. Exactly 10 years ago, I was working at Kolkata's Salt Lake City and falling in love with every moment of my life. I still remember those days. How can I forget? And this song was on my lips every day when I was being driven to the office and dropped off at home.

By Arindam Moulick

- This article under the same title has been published on EzineArticles.com. Click here to read the article: https://ezinearticles.com/?Some-Scattered-Thoughts,-Now-Collected&id=9542089

Books Are All I Have

Following is my personal take (not reviews) on the books I have read recently:

The Lives of Others:

Just finished reading "The Lives of Others" by Neel Mukherjee. The book is a work of a genius. The Lives of Others is beautifully composed and I can’t help but say that it reads like a great Bengali novel. 

With so many unforgettable characters the book had to be complex in its storyline, and, especially, the characters Supratik and Som of this endearingly grossing family saga have moved me to the core. Strongly recommend it. Sadly, it missed out on the Bookers. What a novel! I would very much like a sequel to this book, please.

Ghost Stories of Shimla Hills:

Books based on ghost stories fascinate me a lot. Even crime/horror fiction. I don’t know why every time I think about reading a book I find myself levitating towards picking up a horror book or a crime thriller. 

“Ghost Stories of Shimla Hills” by Minakshi Chaudhry is a good read. The book is a collection of real ghost stories of Shimla hills; about bhoots (ghosts) and churails (witches) and so on. Don’t expect spine-chilling stories here, but you’ll be treated to some nice real stories about ghosts who wander in the Shimla hills on dark moonless nights and lonely stretches of one of the most visited hill towns of India, Shimla or Simla. 

Some stories are scary and some are really fun to read about the living and the dead.

More Ghost Stories of Shimla Hills:

Well, ghosts exist everywhere, but I never knew Shimla, the famous hill station of our country, has so many ghosts. It was really exciting to know that it does have its share of ghosts and churails! 

"Spine-chilling" is not the word I’d use to describe these stories however, they are nice to read, and know many things about the cool Shimla hills. 

Maybe one or two stories did spook me up a bit, the rest seemed good and readable, not very spooky. I loved reading "More Ghost Stories of Shimla Hills", which is a sequel to the previous one I read: "Ghost Stories of Shimla Hills".

Cell:

The book “Cell” by Stephen King is not bad at all, but certainly not one of his better works… but it is worth digging in though. His mastery of overwriting, and creating believable plots really wonder me and the King of Horror is a little backslid here. 

But make no mistake he is at his best writing about the apocalyptic world that has gone totally crazy! 

Although there are some of his trademark horror elements infused into it, it is not entirely about horror for the sake of it; it is entirely about some very lucky people surviving a world we once knew: the world that has changed dramatically after the "pulse". It’s a zombie novel for sure. I am not shameless to ask - Mr. King, will there be a sequel to this one anytime soon? Please? Please?

Chowringhee:

I have just finished reading “Chowringhee” by Mani Shankar Mukherjee or Sankar as he is known as. 

The book (originally written in 1962 in Bengali) is an incredible read. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading it and wanted it not to end. But of course, good things do come to an end!

The story is about a young out-of-work protagonist finding a good job at Calcutta's greatest hotel, the Shahjahan. The story is about life in the hotel. 

I can’t forget the delightful characters like the central character of Shankar (the main narrator or the principal storyteller), Sata Bose (the chief receptionist), Marco Polo (the Manager), and of course Byron, the mysterious Karabi Guha, inebriated and flashy Phokla Chatterjee, and others. Chowringhee is a tribute to the City of Joy. If you want to know about the charming forgotten tales about the 1950s and 1960s Calcutta, you have to read this book. I adored this book.

The Ritual:

My Horror Book of the Year 2016:

I’d just finished reading the book “The Ritual” by Adam Nevill. I am still shuddering all through with mortal fear and I think I’ve gone crazy! Trust me when I say that I had my worst nightmare coming true leaping out of the pages of this book to devour me whole in one BIG GULP!!! I somehow survived, I don’t know how! 

If my mortal existence was not entirely dependent upon the love and belonging of the members of my family I would have gone, quite literally gone! Thanks to them I had been spared from a certain extinction that I knew was well near! It was THAT BAD for me. Oh, Dude! I know…Ha ha ha ha! If this is not HORROR, then what is? I mean, you have read your horror king Stephen King books, but BEWARE of this book by Adam Nevill: it may spell doom on your happy-go-lucky human existence! HORROR PURE HORROR! That’s what it is. 

It’s about four old friends going for a “hiking trip in the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle”. Right from the first line, you’ll be hooked to the story and you can’t put it down until you’ve finished reading the last page. That is the power of this book.

I challenge you can’t read this book at night, which I did and survived. Now you’ll have no chance to say that I didn’t warn you enough beforehand. Read this damn exciting book, if you haven’t read it, and live to tell the tale. I guarantee that it will scare the living daylights out of you! This is my Horror Book of the Year 2016.

Scion of Ikshvaku:

“Scion of Ikshvaku” by Amish is a great read – fast-paced and excellent writing. One of the best books to have come out this year from the pen of one of India's most popular writers writing popular fiction - particularly on the complex subject of Indian mythology.

To be sure, till the late last decade, Indian mythology involving holy books such as Ramayana and Mahabharata (and the Gita included) has only been restricted to Indian television screens. We never read about them except maybe in some comic book format, (or if anyone reading these books in the original) but never in a full-length mythological fiction format.

Although, we loved watching the serials (of the great mythological stories) in every detail on TV, reading about them now has been a kind of a dream come true for passionate readers like us. To be fair, Amish can really tell a story in a way that is at once appealing and endearing. That's why perhaps his books have sold millions.

Amish's popular fiction appeals to my kind of reading experience. One of the other things I like about writers like him is that he is committed, accessible, and even charming to all his fans. To me, these are the intrinsic qualities readers look out for in writers like Amish Tripathi besides buying his books and reading them like crazy! I had already bought the book and was halfway through reading it before attending his book launch at a city bookstore recently. I really recommend the book for great reading.

By Arindam Moulick

Image source: Internet, except the images of 'Chowringhee' and 'The Ritual'.

Of Books and Reading

A little bit of reading...

1. If you want to read pure English literature, then this is the book you should be reading. It will leave you pining for more. I have read many books by Amitav Ghosh, especially the Ibis trilogy comprising Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and now "Flood of Fire"; all of them are brilliant pieces steeped in the Indian way of storytelling and history.

You don't know what you are missing until you have read these books. Excellent story and great writing that sings! Reading the Ibis trilogy made me feel honored and privileged. 

The best book I have read this year is Flood of Fire and will be on the top of my bookshelf. 

I am ultra-fond of reading books by Amitav Ghosh.

- December '15

2. Second message: I have just finished reading Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh. I was reading Jibananda Das’ poems and abandoned them halfway in my excitement to finish the last book in the Ibis trilogy. It took me more than 3 weeks to finish reading!

I loved reading all three books in the Ibis Trilogy. Reading Flood of Fire has been a true revelation in the sense there is much to admire in this one that I feel honored and privileged to have read all these books. In the background of Opium Wars, the characters such as Zachary Reid, Neel, Kesri, Shireen, and never forget Mrs. Burnham, have made thrilling stories of their lives tied together by the Ibis ship. Altogether, Flood of Fire is a fitting finale to a glorious expedition of the author Amitav Ghosh’s writing about the Opium Wars. I strongly recommend this book.

- January '16

3. I have just finished reading “The Compassionate Mother” by Brahmachari Akshayachaitanya, the first biographer of Sri Sarada Devi. 

It is a very special book on the life and times of the Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi. 

Swami Vivekananda knew her Divinity and he called her “The Living Goddess Durga.”

The Holy Mother was an unusual awakener of souls. Read this book and enrich your life.

- February '16

4. Just finished reading the book “Make Me” by Lee Child.

The book is about a town called Mother’s Rest, a tiny place hidden in a thousand square miles of wheat fields with a railroad crossing. And the worst nightmare is about to begin… 

This is a new masterly thriller from the best-selling author Lee Child. 

I absolutely loved the suspense. Excellent pacing. While you read the book, have some hot coffee like Jack Reacher does, always and many times over.

- February '16

5. This past Sunday I’ve been busy reading the book “Aarushi” by Avirook Sen. One read this book back to back, as one always does no matter how hard-pressed one is for time. “Aarushi” is a gripping read with all the judicial tangles, court cases, and all kinds of outlandish trolls thrown by the people who simply want to spread salacious rumours about the dead teenager's parents. 

The murder case is one of the most botched-up judicial operations we have ever known! God save this country! Save our so-called “judicial system” from these useless punks who keep their offices and call themselves able bodies of the judiciary. 

Avirook Sen's book Aarushi is filled with facts, and hard facts, and also gives a very good analysis of the entire story. The author has done a great job. We’ll possibly never know who murdered poor little Aarushi Talwar, but I am sure one can have one’s conclusions fairly deduced from reading this good book.

- February '16

6. Patrick French's book "India: A Portrait" gave me a wonderful time reading, and have I been finishing up reading a few books in quick succession recently? Yes, indeed!

This book is a great refresher on politics, multiculturalism, and great heaps of modern India's history from its independence up till now.

There are plenty of anecdotal essays on India's staggering political and economic perspectives. 

I particularly liked reading about Srinivasa Ramanujan, the mathematical genius who died young. Nice portrait. Good book.
- March '16

7. "Daniel Deronda" is George Eliot's final novel. Written in 1876, the story is set at the heart of the cosmopolitan aristocracy of contemporary London and is her most ambitious work. Daniel Deronda was her last work before her death four years later in 1880. Personally speaking, it was an extremely hard task reading the heavy tome.

The idyllic villages of England she portrayed in her novels such as "Adam Bede" and "Middlemarch" were not the usual elements she dealt with in this seminal work. What struck me as particularly astounding is the fact that the kind of psychological insight the author has into the characters of Daniel Deronda, of Jewish origin, and Gwendolen Harleth, a nervous English lady of contemporary London is so profoundly sketched. 

Somehow I get a feeling that the title of this beautiful work could have been Gwendolen Harleth instead of Daniel Deronda since a whole chunk of the novel is about her. Reading Daniel Deronda has been an exhilarating and delicious experience. I am very glad I did.
- March 2016

By Arindam Moulick

1997, An Era Has Passed, Part 2

Karthik’s Story... An Unfinished Life

Losing a friend like Karthik was a personal setback for both Sitaram and me.

Karthik had been nurturing for long an ambitious soul within his being, like a limited-edition diamond ring he wanted to protect at all costs, no matter whatever it takes to carry out tasks necessary for him to pull it off; to make it up for his beloved father he missed so much.

Losing his father much earlier in life in Chennai was undoubtedly extremely hard for young Karthik to deal with in the first place, not to speak of his entire family who upon losing their only breadwinner/guardian could see no reason to continue to live in the city. Too many memories for them to tackle.

Survival was not a problem but unforgettable memories were, and they were too many to break their hearts and shatter their lives into never-ending misery. His father was, I suppose, a minor-league film producer of Tamil and Telugu films back in his heydays. He produced enough films to make enough money that went a long way to send his eldest son to the US for studies, not to mention the upbringing of his two daughters and another son. Karthik had once told me that I should not think that his father’s demise had anything to do with any film production losses or was in any way debt-ridden for his family to pay back to the debtors.

The fact was that his father had a congenital heart disease that dangerously aggravated his condition even after a prolonged diagnosis and had died following a cardiac arrest. Karthik’s father was no more living in this world, but his father’s death had broken young Karthik’s heart. He had told me that if it were not for his mother, he would have taken his life that very day when his father left for his heavenly abode. Tears and abject helplessness in his mother’s eyes gave young Karthik his will to live long enough to serve his lone parent.

I remember what Sitaram and I had told him earnestly once when we sat on the terrace of our office building eating from our open lunch boxes:

“It’s not important, Karthik, the circumstances in which your father had died. What is perhaps more important is to live a life of purpose and dedicate it to your mother and your siblings. You have to live your life in the loving memory of your father. What’s undeniable is that you are suffering from the loss of your own dear father, but you have to live and be your father's beloved son.” We know that Life is sometimes unfair, but this time it was totally unfair to Karthik.

His family thought it prudent enough to leave the city they were hitherto so happy living in. Even so, leaving his previous life in Chennai and not before completing his formal education, he had preferred to come away along with his surviving mother, two sisters, and an elder brother to start a new life here in the city of Hyderabad. Chennai memories were always there in the family’s heart; they could never forget them and how could they.

Coming away to Hyderabad did bring a semblance of balance to Karthik’s personal life, not to mention his grave emotional situation which I am sure was at one time very overwhelming for him to tackle or come to terms with. He had appeared far better off than what he was dealing with in Chennai with all his unforgettable childhood memories and carefree college years and his father’s bread-winning and successful film production business which ultimately had ceased to exist. There could be a variety of reasons given for that, but I never felt right to press Karthik to come forth with anything he preferred not revealing or talking about it. It was beyond me to get nosey in that way. On the contrary, he shared a lot of stories with us about his idyllic, happy-go-lucky life in Chennai, for instance: he shook hands with many popular film stars, took their candid pictures and autographs, and even shared a few laughs with them. For Karthik and his happy family, life was exactly what it was supposed to be. Idyllic.

I still remember so distinctly when Karthik’s elder brother, a US resident himself got married to a demure little girl of their mother’s choice at the new swanky Greek Park Hotel. I and Sitaram, resplendent in our best attires, had attended the reception. We simply loved the food, the ambiance, the grassy lawn where we had had a fine dinner, and of course the company of his entire family of distant relatives and cousins who came from different places to mark the occasion with gaiety and pride. The general bonhomie that ensued was a thing to behold. A sparkling night well spent in the company of Karthik’s well-turned-out kith and kin.

We Still Miss Our Friend

Fate had dealt another cruel blow to the already much-bereaved family; our dear buddy Karthik Krishna who had the entire world at his feet breathed his last in a US hospital.

Karthik was driving his brother’s car alone on an interstate freeway when a white punk slammed into his car from behind with such brutal force that Karthik lost control of his car and plunged headlong into a wayside ditch. He instantly passed out in his car which was twisted and crumpled beyond belief. Precious time elapsed before he was taken to a nearby hospital and put under emergency medication. He was almost lifeless; he never got out of the coma. After a long wait of two agonizing days and nights, our dear friend Karthik was declared deceased. In fact, as Sitaram recounted to me, after the accident he never regained consciousness, not even for a moment or two to see his mother, brother (whose car he was driving), and sisters who were waiting for him to come back. Karthik never woke up from his deep coma.

The dream of making up to his father’s wishes could not be turned into reality. Just when the things in his immediate family were slowly coming back to normal, God had to take Karthik away!

Sitaram and I had been missing him very much and the memories of our daily little post-lunch ‘Thums-up party’ at a Kirana-cum-Bakery store tucked away in the bylane just behind our office building. Following the year 1997, my life changed dramatically, and drastically; it never remained the same again, as though my very existence, my mind, and spirit, and even my professional life took a heavy blow. I lost the necessary zeal to achieve in life.

Although Karthik's passing away affected me (and Sitaram) a lot, I cannot for sure say if I had really gotten over Karthik's death two years later in 1999. With Karthik’s passing away, our era of threesome friendship had also passed away.

After Sitaram went back to the US, we hardly ever exchanged emails. Time and Distance took their toll on whatever traces of our friendship remained between Sitaram and me; our friendship had been completely eclipsed. It's been 18 long years and I've never heard from Sitaram again.

Rest in peace, O dear Karthik, Rest in peace. Sitaram and I still miss you deeply. I dedicate a song for you, dear:

*“O yaara… tu pyaro se hai pyara,
      O yaara… tu pyaro se hai pyara,
    Mera hai, mera hi rahega,
     Dil dara main toh yeh kahoonga
    Paya jug sara… …”

Among his many favourite English albums: one was undoubtedly AQUA. Songs like “I am a Barbie girl, in my Barbie world…Life in plastic; it’s fantastic…” and “Doctor Jones”. He used to keep playing the chartbuster songs on his CD-walkman that he often carried to the office.

The other rock group he liked was MICHEAL LEARNS TO ROCK. MLTR’s “That’s why you go away”, “Sleeping Child”, “Someday”, and songs so wonderful such as “Paint My Love” and “Breaking My Heart” were his perpetual favourites back in the year 1997, and mine too. There were others too that blared on our music systems all day and night: BRYAN ADAMS’ “I’ll always be right there”, “Straight from the heart”, “Heaven”, PHIL COLLINS, ROXETTE, BON JOVI, BEE GEES, ABBA, STING, with a lot of KENNY G’S “Songbird” and YANNI’S “Tribute” (one of our favourites!) thrown in.

(The fact is that the Barbie song – girly as it sounds – had caught our fancy so much that we made it a point to switch on MTV or Channel V as soon as we got back our homes from the office and wait for the song to come up on the countdown, just for the heck of it. Such craze it was!)

Truly, an era has passed.

With beloved Karthik gone forever, Sitaram too is no longer within my reach and is not even on the near periphery of my life that would give me hope, never mind howsoever small and reclusive, to catch up with him one day, or he with me. There is not even a small possibility of it left now. Unfortunately, he too is lost, perhaps forever, in the wilderness of Time and Distance existing between us friends living apart in separate worlds and not being able to come together to meet and greet; so much for the presence of social media these days.

And I still remember their sweet voices…they still echo in my ears. I’ll never forget them: long-lost friends of mine. The year 1997 of our friendship can never be forgotten and it is one of the greatest years I have ever lived and had a chance to enrich my life.

I am growing old but I still dream about those younger wonderful days I had spent in the company of my friends Karthik and Sitaram and the amazing days of our friendship, and I know I can never get those days of the year 1997 back. Perhaps not in this lifetime will we meet again. With Karthik gone from our lives forever, whatever little was left is now a part of ancient history.

END OF PART 2 of '1997, AN ERA HAS PASSED.'

(To be concluded)

By Arindam Moulick

- Written between Sept. 2013 - Apr. 2014.

- This essay is warmly dedicated to my long-lost friends Sitaram and Late Karthik.

* Song Credits and Courtesies:
“O yaara… tu pyaro se hai pyara…” is a Kishore Kumar song from the Hindi film Kaash.

- A slightly different version of this article under the same title has been published on EzineArticles.com. Click here to read the article: http://ezinearticles.com/?1997,-An-Era-Has-Passed,-Part-2&id=8964365

1997, An Era Has Passed, Part 1

In times like these who do you turn to but friends who’d understand and empathize with you.

Sitaram and Karthik

Sitaram and Karthik were right there for me, and I for them. Regrettably, I was the first to make an exit out of Segorsoft (name changed, not the real name) after having just put in a year of service there.

Unfortunately, I had no other option, I had to move on. Perhaps, I could’ve stayed back and clocked a couple more years, at least for the sake of my beloved colleagues-turned-friends Sitaram and Karthik, and yet they, I knew, would never have approved of such a thing. Maybe, one must do what one thinks is best, but it was damn hard to arrive at a decision of sorts that will take me away from my well-beloved friends.

On the contrary, they’d entreat me to move on if there’s a better opportunity available for me elsewhere. Decisions taken based on emotional attachment(s) could go wrong; they’d simply say that to put some energized confidence in me. Besides, just another look at that good-for-nothing scumbag of a project leader called TP Cheddi would have anybody scampering off the job place for good!

The day when I resigned Sitaram was visibly hurt and upset even. Surely we would miss writing software codes day in and day out on the same computer we worked on huddled together. Now those days are all going to be over.

Delphi and Visual Basic software tools became a part of our daily staple on which we lived and persevered throughout our tenure at Segorsoft. What's more, it was actually Delphi that we enjoyed using more than VB and was more compatible with InterBase – a back-end database handler. VB was good enough, but Delphi took our breath away. There was something special about it that we never could do away with entirely. Both Sitaram and I eventually had to learn Visual Basic on the job and the fact that it was most similar to our favourite tool Delphi in its usage we automatically became experts in just over a month. Therefore in that sense, it was hardly a big deal.

Our Mutual Friends

Sitaram looked as if he was deeply wounded and displeased at the same time when I first told him about the new job prospect that was coming up and that I was seriously thinking about it.

I knew he and Karthik would vehemently disapprove of my looking out for a new job. Because it was tantamount to no less than a ‘betrayal’ when someone from your friends' group is actually trying to get out for some good job offers, I did not have the useless courage to get cheesy and tell the very people who mattered to me the most during my one year spell at the company upfront of the new job prospect that I was considering.

The point of the matter is that a year at Segorsoft had been enough, especially for three of us guys to make pledges of friendship to last a lifetime, and beyond so to speak. So why should there be at all any question of breaking away from the deep bond we shared at the workplace? Bonding with them was the most profound part of my life at Segorsoft (other than that it was work though, for obvious reasons). Work anyway had to be done but at Segarsoft its share of space and time always had to come first before our precious friendship could matter a bit more at the workplace. Work was in a way worship for us threesome friends. Having said that, it really doesn’t mean that work had to go through some kind of delay or it suffered due to the profound solidarity of our friendship that almost always had us in a great spell of camaraderie.

After I came away and joined the now-defunct Satyam Computers and completed about a year there, I got a phone call from the charming Sitaram saying that Karthik too gave up his job at Segarsoft to join a software company dealing in online learning and software development concerning e-commerce and stuff. Just then I knew that in all probability he too was harbouring dreams of his own to make it to the US. I was mighty pleased for Karthik knowing that he had finally left Segorsoft for good even as a couple of other colleagues of his too had begun giving prior notices one after the other. This is not to undermine Segorsoft as a software development company, what with all its extant learning opportunities and project work it could provide us, but let the truth be told: what it did not, however, offer us young guns was a learning ambiance and cheerful project leaders who had a great sense of humour and would readily pilot the team without being bossy and channelize the team's latent energies into becoming competent professionals. The one project leader we knew at Segorsoft was the project leader we despised.

It was not at all hard to expect good companionship from individuals (such as the one described above) in charge there. True professionalism was something unheard of. Apart from that fact all else was going well for this upstart software development company.

Yet, my heart ached for Sitaram: one of the rising stars on the IT firmament, who, once upon a time, had decidedly taken his own sweet time before he thought it fit to call it quits from Segorsoft.

Sitaram, a Kumar Sanu look-alike, was ostensibly looking for the bigger picture! He wanted out surely, but the US of A was also his ‘ultimate ransom’ he had an eagle eye out for to be able to seize his chance. Good for him. In the late 1990s, that was every budding software engineer’s dream destination. I too had dreamed of going to the US and so did the adorable Karthik, an Adrian Brody look-alike. It was a big-time necessity for us, young software engineers, to be able to fetch the ‘hindering’ H1-B visa stamped on our passports and then, as they used to say, “Push off to the US” for good.

Some youngsters went to the US on account of parental pressure or some kind of societal show-off exercise, or even the kind you get to see most often – making hay while the sun shines! Of course, like always, there were exceptions; at least Sitaram and Karthik come from the group of associates who think of ‘professional sustenance’ rather than bide time to push off to the US while it still is possible for them to do so. I can vouch for the fact they were not the types who would bask in the reflected glory of others or believe in easy pickings. Like the people who believed in themselves, they too worked hard just like a conscientious person who prefers taking no ‘shortcuts’ but learns it the hard way to attain his goals.

Such “Pushing off to the US” kind of people who wrote software codes is no surprise really if you ask me because in those days it was perfectly normal to dream to go there, it is okay even now. But it came so out of the blue from Sitaram B. that I and Karthik Krishna had to take a bow and gladly give an echoing round of applause for him. Sitaram was not known for harbouring such what he called ‘colourful ambitions’ but he did after all and we realized that, eventually, to our much relief. At the end of the day, he did exactly what he thought was capable of. He had earned his jackpot after he got married and left for the US and never returned. And that’s another story for another day.

Thankfully all those years of life’s centrifugal forces and the push and pull of one’s own personal ambition towards achieving career fulfillment – as today Arindam is enabling himself to see, loud and clear – have been summarized into one big synopsis, unedited yet manageable for posterity’s sake. A gravitational pull so hard and binding to the land of his origin that flying off to the US for work like his friends Sitaram and Karthik had done never came to him as an opportunity. This statement probably sounds self-importantly sky-scraping in its feel, if you’d know what I mean, but still, what Arindam got in the milieu of his own life’s bargain is not what he always sought to have even as he had later found out to his utter amazement the reason for his not making it to where every software engineer worth his salt went.

The ‘software engineer’ tag that had fastened a proverbial noose around his neck during his heydays and that which, as a matter of fact, was supposed to be a big ticket to IT glory, was never easy for him to have plucked out or gotten rid of just like that. Never mind the sticker of ‘consolation prize’ he thought he would never really come to such a pass to deserve, and the prize stuck, overpoweringly or naturally, to his long professional work history like a parasitical leech that never let go.

At least Sitaram is doing fine and constantly winning his life’s battles in the US of A, but alas! Karthik, our sweet little adorable Karthik is no more. Karthik departed this life; he came back to India not like someone so full of life and verve but as someone who spoke not a word or two… He said he would come back and then we all would celebrate his coming. A good year and a half passed by and there was no sign of him, even an occasional email or two from him had stopped completely, and it kept me wondering why the emails I sent out were never replied to. What’s taking Karthik so long to reply?

Just like last time when he made news by quitting Segorsoft, it was Sitaram who happen to visit my Satyam office to share news about his ‘American’ whereabouts. He was an ever-alert buddy. This time too it was Sitaram again who broke news about Karthik’s sudden death in a car crash in the US in the year 1999/2000.

END OF PART 1 of '1997, AN ERA HAS PASSED.'

By Arindam Moulick

- Written between Sept. 2013 - Apr. 2014.

- This essay is warmly dedicated to my long-lost friends Sitaram and Late Karthik.

- A slightly different version of this article under the same title has been published on EzineArticles.com. Click here to read the article: http://ezinearticles.com/?1997,-An-Era-Has-Passed,-Part-1&id=8964347

Confessions of a Young Software Engineer, Part 2

Since Segorsoft (name changed) was an upstart IT company, there was an inarguable necessity for us to have at the helm of project affairs someone with fine leadership and great interpersonal skills - the one that showed general proficiency in the pursuit of developing great software while also leading a team of young software programmers. But that was not to be and a timid-looking scamp like TP Cheddi was most certainly not up to such a challenge.

Let me explain further and please I don't expect myself to be cute with this story...

TP Cheddi in his ‘leadership role’ as a so-called project manager at Segorsoft came as a cropper right from the start! He was an unmitigated disaster, to say the very least of the abject situation we found ourselves in. Cheddi was a typical case of one bad apple spoiling the whole bunch (from the heap of rarely good ones though at Segarsoft). He was unfit to be anything of the sort that he was made out to be at the workplace. He was an accomplished failure and his level of skills was a damp squib. But it seems that nobody realized that for a reason except us.

We folks at Segorsoft liked to believe that we were not just another software firm as most firms would naturally do; in fact, in many ways than one, and apart from the fact that we were harnessing talent on a scale that was on par with other reputably known firms in the city, we were expanding our horizons and carried out projects for both private and government companies and brought them to successful fruition.

As an upstart IT organization, our skilled workforce had just the right perspective to achieve what we wanted to achieve, and we were one of the early torch-bearers of raw software talent in the promising new field of the Indian IT Industry in the South. That was a great advantage for Segarsoft as an IT company and luckily they did not squander the opportunity away. The "gentlemanly flamboyant" MD of the company saw to it that we were always on the right track and things were happening fast and bright.

But what he didn't even know was that we had someone like TP Cheddi at the hustings to make matters worse. He was a portable disaster on the verge of turning into something of a terrible doppelganger on the various projects we were working on. Even as an individual, he failed miserably in our young and observant eyes; he could never live up to our raw expectations and knowledge-seeking power we had. TP Cheddi just couldn’t handle it. He continued to remain wet behind the ears, never looking to improve his condescending mindset which - in spite of him being highly unworthy to be a leader - smacked an unmistakable holier-than-thou attitude. He looked like an inexperienced hoodwink, grim-faced and tired from waging his own nuisance battles against software engineers who abhorred him on his face. Still, a dog’s tail remains twisted no matter how many times you try it’s never going to be straight! One wonders how such a 'project manager' ultimately survives in an organization that believes in extracting positive work from its employees. It was really a mystery.

Our numerous ‘inquiries,’ ‘errors,’ ‘doubts,’ and 'code corrections’ were never answered to our satisfaction. Quite frustratingly, we either had to look through big fat reference books or perform the ‘trial and error’ or ‘R&D method’ that even some project managers with some real-time experience worth their salt had openly espoused.

A project manager is supposed to help you when you get stuck with something or not being able to work out the problem; that it’s almost a given considering young people do end up asking a lot of questions, after all, don’t they? But to this dick-head scalawag, it never occurred to him to think it properly through and come up trumps to succeed in the tasks at hand. Apparently, that was not his problem!

Throughout our tenure at Segorsoft, TP Cheddi came across as an abnormal and frustrating chap that knew no social skills even, let alone talk about his software skills. After a point, we couldn't bother ourselves communicating with this stinking toilette Goo because it was simply such a waste of time in the fetid commode of his association! So we opted out.

Getting our goose cooked!

That day just within a few hours on the first day of the new project, this writer Yours Truly, and his partners/friends Sitaram and Karthik had become enormously disappointed when it was announced that the hell-hole TP Cheddi was going to be, like it or not, our project manager! Of all people!

Sitaram held his head in the palm of his hands, found a chair, and bent over. He became totally distressed while Yours Truly frowned to the point of banging his head on the nearest wall or whatever was available to bang his head on. Karthik appeared to be positively stoned as he couldn’t believe what his ears have just heard!

We were fairly motivated young professionals no doubt and had plenty of dreams to fulfill, but frankly speaking, having a project manager whose I.Q. can only be equivalent to a bus conductor or a Kirana-shop bandicoot, a humungous drag passing for a project manager came as a real shock! TP Cheddi as our team’s project manager was a big let-down; certainly a stumbling block for our aspirations to take flight.

We worked on a hospital management project for a super-specialty hospital client, which took over 6 months of hard slog to complete the entire project successfully. After we finished, the bus conductor… err…project manager sensed that Yours Truly could be ‘pushed’ to do the job of “deployment” on the client’s computer system. Yours Truly was up and ready to perform the task in spite of the bad feeling that was left in his mouth about being ‘pushed’ and all. Software engineers like us whenever required are supposed to consign ourselves to such menial tasks as well; many a time without prior intimation to the concerned engineer which ultimately makes it uselessly demanding for him to agree and execute the assignment on hand.

Uploading the finished software product into the client’s computer system was no problem at all, but the task itself sounds menial and unimportant when there’s no definitive timetable or precise planning as to when and where it should get done and how to go about it. Simply demanding to “do it today” was downright insulting and disrespectful to the employee concerned. And when a mentally-inept project manager is at the helm of affairs, the task of software deployment howsoever good it may sound to you, offered nothing of inspiration or interest when that person was around to wipe out the enthusiasm.

Software professionals would like all technical tasks to be taken into account and potentially linked to their annual performance index. That never happened. Nobody seemed to have got the idea that all tasks, whether small or menial, can and should be taken into proper account and serially documented. But they only cared about major job responsibilities and nothing else mattered to them (even if the task was supposedly menial as working on developing the functionality for just 30 mins only), at least to TP Cheddi that is. We believed that in an IT organization, especially an upstart like ours, every piece of work should get accounted for and your reporting manager should know first-hand about it all.

Bakhras for slaughtering!

How does it sound to you if you are asked to pillion ride on your project manager’s bike and travel all the way to the client’s place to upload the software application and while coming on the way back to the office entering into a cloth showroom and buying cloth material and cut-pieces for his new shirts and pants?! All this occurs as per your project manager’s express wish – without even a single word of appreciation or prep talk coming in your favour when the job was done. Who bothers! Did he ever bother him? Never did.

Some of the other Bakhras like us were always available for such slaughtering business! Catching one was never a problem! Put their jobs on the line and you have them tamed and their goose cooked!

I confess: customized software applications development got my goose thoroughly cooked! In the months after they promoted me for what I accomplished for them and before I finally made my mind up to get out of my somewhat brooding mode and TP Cheddi’s crooked, disgraceful attitude, I took charge of supervising software applications myself. I took over handling client sessions, business analysis, overall project management & intelligence solutions, and other consulting tasks. Otherwise, you see, I was certainly destined to suffer from an adrenal burn-out.

Afterward, Cheddi was blotted out of my mind and was ancient history - a history that won't appear in any archaeological surveys conducted by man or Superman.

Bamboozling IT Market!

Life was seemingly good until I decided to get into the raw deal of software engineering. Little did I know that coding is the most intrinsic part of being a software professional, not to forget the unceasing hubbub of new updates and in-vogue technological tools that a software guy is expected to bearably keep up with, in the race to seek out the ‘latest software’ editions in the already bamboozling IT market. Screams, howls, and shrieks as in “Oh!-My-God!” or “I-won’t-be-able-to-do-that” or “This completely sucks!” don’t figure in a software engineer’s dictionary. It’s totally blasphemous or suggestive of being a kaam-chor (escapist) if they do!

Learning new tools and experimenting with new usages was a nuisance for lesser mortals like us to scrape around and make a respectful living. I wanted out from what seemed like a defiant invasion of my privacy and lifestyle breakdown concerns. Needless to say, within a short period of time of my foray into so-called software development, several things at once began to cripple me, asphyxiate me and I wanted out at all cost. Personally speaking, it didn’t matter anymore for Cheddi if I paused and thought it all through one last time before I made a permanent exit from the not-so-hunky-dory world of IT at Segorsoft. To be frank, I wouldn’t even bother to think of him as some like-minded concerned type. He clearly wasn’t that kind of an individual. Caring or advising was not one of his strengths, not even by mistake could he bring himself to care. Never was he known to be a proper IT professional. A pathetic rat-assed mongrel he was; always have been distrustful, sarcastic, cheap, and uselessly tacky!

Thinking that software programming is for so-called ‘nerds’ and not the 'territory' for alternative career-seekers like me, Yours Truly could not ever give up on his hard-earned laurels. It was damn hard not to get attracted to the glamorous world of software engineering or look the other way when you know that people around you are getting better and better at it. Therefore, would it be sacrilegious of Yours Truly to contemplate such an impractical idea of his that only means to desert everything related to IT and walk away? Possibly. Possibly not. Who knows? Do you know?

Being a software programmer means – Yours Truly had gradually realized to his great heart throbbing misery (yeah, nothing less than that) – having to consciously have a crack at learning new software technological gobbledygook year after year. Or otherwise, if learning new technologies isn't your cup of noodles (not Tea) then soon it will be tantamount to professional stagnation - and not to speak of personal mortification that comes off you like old cracked chips as an itinerant side effect! You are caught between a rock and a hard place! Neither here nor there! Dangling in the balance sheet of life! Dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghaat ka! And so on and so forth.

Giving up the ghost of learning new software programming tools sure comes as a big relief to some but for some others, it becomes a necessary evil thing to keep one's job in the IT sector intact. But folks, let that exclusive story spool out later when the time's right and the lucky stars in their heavenly stardom above are set in their rightful astrological positions (excuse my little predilections here please!); only then will I be able to tell you, my dear friend, what it takes to be a young much-harangued software engineer in a world that is increasingly becoming weird and funny at the same time. A world that bamboozles you to no end.

That story, as I said, will come up for consideration not now but later. As of now though, I say chaps, one is not in the mood to hang up one's boots!

End of part 2 of ‘Confessions of a Young Software Engineer.’

(To be concluded)

By Arindam Moulick

- Written September 2013

- Click here to go to part 1 of ‘Confessions of a Young Software Engineer’.

- This article is warmly dedicated to my long-lost friends Sitaram and Late Karthik.

My Case for Quitting Facebook

I wonder if it’s time to quit Facebook for good.

Navigating through all the trolls, the self-aggrandizing comments, filmy-looking photos of individuals (with their eyes, nose, ears, and hairstyles or other parts of bodies in self-flattering poses, self-complimenting postures and projections, Oh!), the incessant self-promoting (GUILTY ME!) in the open-for-all, bare-all, dare–all society of “Likes” and “Dislikes” and of preferences and aversions of social media is taking a heavy toll on me! (The tell-tale signs of which are this message itself, I confess).

Although I haven’t stopped being completely “social” on Facebook or otherwise, either personally or professionally, counteracting all the ‘out there’ stuff speaks volumes about how thick-skinned I must have become of late persevering all the hunky-dory tosh I see being bandied about every day on Facebook.

Be that as it may, I can’t expect myself to say “Take me outta here, I am a celebrity!” since I am not yet known to be one. (I know I am sounding a little modest here!). Precisely, for that reason alone, I think I ought to throw in the towel in the light of the fact that Facebook has begun to feel like a killjoy of sorts, a daily harangue no doubt!

(Presently, I might offer to quit Facebook and I know hardly will anyone notice this. But I might return tomorrow or just a while later… who knows, to hoist up my pix and hold out all that jazz to the world out there. ;-))

By Arindam Moulick

Confessions of a Young Software Engineer, Part 1

Even to this day I, Yours Truly, cannot for sure say if I, much like an itinerant happy-go-lucky software engineer, was good at software coding or programming. Indeed, I was content with the outcome of my software engineering efforts, but could I consider myself fortunate to be a happy-go-lucky software engineer in the first place? I guess I just couldn’t say for sure. Do let me offer an explanation…

I was not good at anything that even remotely suggested coding software or building programs that had changed the way we deal with the world today if you know what I mean. However, the desire to “work and earn a living” seemed hard-pressed against my soul’s inner longing for 'spacious distance' and 'peace' even as I seesawed between regular whimpering thuds on the firm ground and software engineering balderdash sending conflicting fireworks to my brain and crashing out loud. 

Okay okay now, I concur that balderdash is probably not the word I should be using because once upon a time it was this software engineering thing that had given me my bread, butter, and brown toast on my supper table, and my fledgling career its much-needed foundation, so, therefore, I rollback that word in right earnest.

Designing software applications weren’t really my kind of stuff. But requirements gathering for the proposed business solution offerings, including devising customized plans and strategies; (maybe even) corporate sales; or application deployment, were slightly more interesting and far more intriguing to work on than the mundane stand-alone coding part of the job. Conversely, I was even prepared to take up the whole business of software programming job on a war footing. Uh Uh! Now that’s really something I have just said, a contrarian viewpoint. If you are thinking that I have gone nuts, well, I, beyond any doubt, have gone even past that! I mean, what else could I do as a confused young software programmer? 

Whether I like it or not, I needed to pull myself together and become, as they say, a man of honour and do what I am supposed to do: program or write bug-free codes that work out the functionality. So, as a mark of deep respect to the comrades I hung out with, I acquiesced.

As part of my ‘professional practice’ - a brainchild of my alma mater, I’d had a brief stint as a software engineer at an upstart IT organization by the name of Segorsoft. Back in the year 1997, every firm worth its salt (of TATA or anything, preferably iodized) was an upstart firm and so this company too was one such upstart thing. Writing truckloads of software codes using an archaic Delphi and a hot-and-happening Visual Basic (VB) as a haranguing set of front-end programming tools for you to live your life on, and never mind an old-fashioned Interbase edition for a back-end database support thrown-in that I was entrusted with became a regular fixture on my office itinerary.

To some extent I enjoyed doing what I did and I rather wouldn’t categorize myself as revolutionary software kiddo, never have been one, never liked to be one, I wanted to drop everything and just disappear from the software coding scene. But things weren't so natural then as it is now. The fact that I had already smelt a rat in my dire-straits type of situation couldn’t speak up for itself and I kind of imploded within. There were other people who felt the same yet preferred staying confused and lost like me; probably sticking around to catch something good in the future. We hoped the ‘future’ that we talked about will come by and throw a glance at us and take us along to wherever it wanted us to be. 

The fact is: it was not about the company I worked with per se, it was about my inner calling. It was also about the brainless chap, of the rank of a project manager no less; the one who held the reins of the ambitious Hospital Management project. All this had eventually become a big drawback, a ghastly let-down of a situation for my young self to go with the flow (of things) at the workplace. Obviously, we bitterly despised this rabid individual for his crotchety ways and it was him alone that was part of the reason we wanted to opt out of the project and quit the darn job too. Problem solved! But no, we didn't do that.

The Fad of Being a Software Engineer

Stuff like Stored Procedures, Database Calling, and Bug Fixing became the order of the day. On most days I survived on creating complex Stored Procedures – not without sweating like a pig. My palms getting reddish, my face flushed and my head feverish; my fingertips ached like a million needles pricking them; my back ached like an abundantly overused Pony; my head grumbled even as I felt like a burnt Sienna! Simply put, software engineering seemed to be my cup of woes, but not Tea!

The software codes I produced sometimes remained in “cold storage” – an "icy stockpiling" my partner at work had reiterated that so nicely once – until called upon to get them a proper usage somewhere within the lines of codes, again without much horse sense if you ask me, and oftentimes they were belligerently appended like quick-fix appendages to other software codes languishing elsewhere within the recesses of my computer or on our escapist dullard project manager's system. I don’t know how many zillion times have I hit the poor ‘Backspace’ key on the keyboard of my life to erase or eradicate my own source codes and make amends to come up with better codes, which almost always used to give up on me like a Gone Case! Yet I lumbered along solely to be able to learn something good out of these professional exertions and as fast as I could muster.

Afterward, call it God’s effortless grace or call it plain dumb luck, I took to using Delphi most of the time at the company as a proverbial duck takes to the pond. VB came later. And as anyone might expect, I liked Delphi better than VB. Not surprisingly, Delphi had caught my fancy big time!

Thus, I managed to code a lifetime's worth of software codes, using them the way it was required to be used. Always at the behest of our so-called project manager. I slowly began to chuck out irrelevant codes that were plain unworthy to be used and started using those ones which significantly made a difference. How could all these come about? Well, when you’ve great co-partners like Sitaram B. and Karthik Krishna to help you restore confidence in yourself, you never will slouch or take it easy from having to keep writing loads of software codes; besides not to mention the mortal fear of Kick-Ass HR Policy that hustles you no end also helps keep you from floundering without a fight.

Unfortunately, as if the gods were in a comical mood when it genuinely mattered to have a qualified mentor well-conversant in software technicalities and the works, our manager turned out to be a worthless and incompetent fellow that we had had to put up with on a daily basis. An escaped convict…that’s what he ever managed to look to me and my precocious partner Sitaram. One is not really sorry to say that upfront. 

Our expectations from a manager, who at best could become not only an able mentor but also a capable guide, were nipped in the bud as he was the person unfit to be a manager. We were bedraggled with vicious thoughts taking great leap-frogs in our young minds to have some great black hairy bull gore him to long-lasting debarment or incapacitation!

Sitaram and I hardly ever bothered to “interface” with TP Cheddi unless it became really necessary for us to do so during office hours. It was of absolutely no use to work with this ‘TP’ of a person. If truth be told, Sitaram would go ahead with his steely resolve and perform all the tasks himself without much botheration as to whether or not his work needs to be done at all or done differently to appease TP’s cunning ego; he bashed on, regardless. Since he was good at programming he almost always got everything correct; there was no room for misinterpretations or errors anywhere, rarely ever, for our project manager to pick. Such was Sitaram’s positive nature at work and he excelled at it.

As for this hack who called himself ‘project manager’ (read Task Supervisor!), Sitaram had one perfect retort: Go Take a Dump, You Filthy Animal! We never said that on his face, for that would be tantamount to unprofessional conduct. We said it from a safe distance away. But we knew our project manager’s unnecessary ways: He was a professional debunker of responsibilities, an escapist dud to know real programming standards. We didn’t know how or who at Segorsoft had appointed an irritating hack like TP Cheddi, a useless douchebag, as a project manager in the first place. Sitaram used to say that TP Cheddi was merely a “Show put-up” for the company’s lack of good HR skills. Sitaram was right about that.

We found ourselves constantly flummoxed by his uselessness in everything he attempted to do! His coding or programming skills were bogus and equaled a big ZERO. 

Ask him anything and he’d squeak: “Why? You don’t know?” One felt like slapping him across his pot-holed, pock-marked face and making him see the reason "why" and why we "don’t know"! None of us slapped him though, because our sense of professionalism was paramount to us and it was best to avoid such ugly primitive people of no use and get on with their work or whatever they did to survive in their profession.

TP Cheddi’s daily job was to simply sit with an equally dumb girl on his left side and keep a gaping eye on the computer screen without anything going into their desolated unconcerned pair of heads! There were jingoistic nonsense pals of his who believed only in trial-and-error methods (they call it ‘R&D strategy’) - real stuff of programming was sluggish turtles at best - that used to leave them completely high-and-dry, with nothing substantial (not even half an inch of code) coming out of their useless exertions all throughout the day. They were an intolerably slow, futile, and uncreative pack of damp squibs eking out a living from a fledgling IT company.

Good communication skills were not their cup of tea either; they believed in excommunicating you out of the whole software programming business the company was striving to undertake. They were really jealous scoffers, mocking, biased, and a sneering bunch of muggers. Out of this entire misogynist lot, TP Cheddi was the prima donna of a fornicating hack resembling a wolfish ant-eating Badger, and this guy was known to be forever irritated with himself and the other individuals that were plain unlucky to be interacting with him. That is to say, how idiotic, how third-rate, or how lowly an individual can be. If there was one, then TP Cheddi was the ultimate one!

As a fledgling software firm, Segorsoft was no doubt in good stead with added contributions coming from its handful of good IT professionals. However, the company was not a performing asset yet; maybe that wasn’t a matter of immediate concern for the gentlemanly flamboyant MD of the company, but the man had invested well in some people like us to contribute their software skills and hopefully earn profits from that will also catapult his company in good stead.

But really, what was eating it from inside like insect-eating larvae were the company’s own buffoonish IT recruits who used to get a kick out of the chance to call themselves software programmers. TP Cheddi, in spite of being the top-rung counterfeit, had managed to survive for a long time in the company, stage-managing his ways by God only knows how. Fortunately for Segorsoft, some of the folks were somehow good at the job of coding or programming. But others – a good many of them – were a bunch of time-passing good-for-nothing slacks with no proper IT or communication skills!

If there were a Backspace or a Del key to delete our worthless sorry-ass Project Manager TP Cheddi, we’d have had absolutely no qualms hitting it and hitting it hard enough to pop all the keys out of his goddamn keyboard and stuffing them into his mouth! But alas! Tsk-Tsk! There isn’t any such key to delete freaking idiots like TP Cheddi.

End of part 1 of ‘Confessions of a Young Software Engineer.’

By Arindam Moulick

- Written September 2013

- This article is warmly dedicated to my long-lost friends Sitaram and Late Karthik.

Dear Diary: Oh! Those Wonderful Days in College!

Dear Diary: 

You know everything! I miss my college days so much, dear.

The 17th day of April '14 was not like any other day; it was a very special day for me. I had been thinking enough times to go visit my college but was unable to until recently. 

At long last, I had made that one important journey to the university/college campus located just off Kandaswamy Lane, where I had once been a student of Masters for two eventful, yet peaceful years. I don't know why I became so impatient of late to see it just once again after my graduating from there nearly 20 years ago. 

I walked along the old route I used to take every day via the now-defunct Hotel Sabharwal on the right and the Hyderabad Theosophical Society (a crumbling edifice belonging to a bygone era) on the left, to reach my college. Today, as I stood in a trance at one corner on the specious open ground near the tree-lined administrative offices of the college campus I gazed at the perfumed classrooms on the 2nd floor where I had once read Contemporary English, American and Commonwealth Literature and felt able to reciprocate a pretty girl's personal feelings for me. Those days were really the best days of my life. 

The remembered memories of Madam Professor's lively lectures on John Milton's Paradise Lost and of other eminent professors' masterful interpretations on the great Victorian, Elizabethan and Romantic Ages came rushing forth in the garb of unbridled tears barely held in my eyes. Feeling the swell of the nostalgic emotions in my heart, I broke down. 

Though the summer sun was beating down its typically hot sun rays on me even as I stood there day-dreaming about my earlier life gone a long time ago, I persevered because I knew this day like today will probably never see a reason to come back into my life again. Therefore, God, I entreat you thus: Let me just stay here a little while longer and muse over the time and tide of those romantic days that have all disappeared and gone. Twenty years is a long long time. 

Saying a quiet 'thank you' to the much-loved college of my young romantic days, where I've spent some of my best days in the alpine company of fellow learners exploring great works of Shakespeare, Milton, Austen and Pope; and where it all started out: my first cautious footsteps into adulthood, I came away rubbing my eyes and feeling perchance a little lighter in my heart. 

Like we say often times: Those were the best days of my life. They really were. And they will be missed eternally.

Sincerely,

Arindam Moulick

- Originally written in April 2014, published today on my blog.

- This article was originally published last year on March 11, 2015, under the title "Oh! Those Wonderful Days in College!" on the EzineArticles.com website. Click here to read the article on EzineArticles.com: http://ezinearticles.com/?Oh!-Those-Wonderful-Days-in-College!&id=8954888