I last saw Sunil on a hospital bed, lying in pain, eyes closed, and curled up, at one of the city’s well-known cardiac care facilities.
Satish had earlier called to say that Sunil might not be able to make it this time and that we should go to see him in the hospital. We went to see him immediately. Doctors were back worrying about him because, despite a slight improvement in his heart condition that allowed him to be discharged and go home, the disease he had been battling for three and half years was still plaguing him. As with most heart ailments, there was no permanent cure.
Sunil, however, did make it, and when following a 15-day stay in the ICU, he appeared to be in somewhat acceptable shape within his home without much difficulty. Satish and I were relieved to know he'd returned home to recover from his cardiac condition that, as far as we knew, no one in his family had suffered before. (His disease had no hereditary component for him to get afflicted with.) However, such optimism was short-lived, and he was admitted back to the same hospital a few months later, his condition worsening by the hour. This time our dear friend, our college classmate from the flirty, halcyon days of our youth, tragically passed away... leaving a legacy of dazzling friendship that we'll fondly treasure, alongside memories of our somewhat truculent kinship of the later years.
All those days of walking the Trishul Park heathlands, our beloved Eden of camaraderie and friendship, our centre of the universe, working on our notes, playing cricket, watching films at Armstrong's residence, waiting for the bus, Diwali time, seeing movies at Sangeet, Anand or Skyline, Exhibition, dreaming, 'starting problem,' dhabas, nothing will ever come back. The grief of losing a friend from the college era stays with you. Nothing is ever forgotten.
The Lecturer and His Barley Water
I still remember the first time I met Sunil at the college. We happened to be sitting next to each other on a long wooden duel desk bench, common in classrooms in academic institutions. He was short in height, while I was a little taller. On the first day of the academic year at college, we concentrated on note-taking as instructed by the science lecturer, who sat at the desk on a low-rise concrete platform, legs comfortably stretched outward. He, to our horror, regularly took heavy swigs straight from a label-free, potable transparent glass liquor bottle he kept near at hand!
Nonetheless, we took notes somewhat inattentively while he lectured on the lessons he'll be teaching in the coming days. We sighed silently. Nobody in the class thought to ask, nor did he come clean on what the hell he drank (chugged rather) every so often from the bottle loaded with what gave off an impression of being a white-coloured libation - is it desi tharra, palm toddy, or something; we wondered. However, thank heavens! The middle-aged professor, dressed in a deep-coloured safari suit and looking courteous and dapper, promptly put us all at ease, informing us that his two gastro physicians had instructed him to drink as much Barley water as possible. And live to lecture. So he decided to bring a bottle of it to college and drink from it whenever he wanted. So that was "Barley water" he drank? Well, it was, we thought, fair enough then! It had to be what the professor was saying because he didn't appear to be 'going bonkers' while lecturing, nor did his eyes appear to be 'becoming reddish' as a consequence of substance abuse. He also didn't sound inebriated. Neither did his speech become muddled, considering a professor/lecturer consuming an alcoholic beverage in the classroom or on college premises is an ethical violation. After our classes ended, Sunil and I took a bus home, leaving The Lecturer and His Barley Water behind.
****
Once upon a long time ago
College days were headily gorgeous. After attending our respective classes during the day, we hung out together regularly in Trishul Park, where Armstrong and I resided, in the moonlit evenings. Satish and Sunil came hither on most evenings so that the place evolved into our precious 'Eden,' where we gathered together day after day for deep-dive self-reflection, crack jokes, celebrate our social hour, having the time of our lives.
My beloved Trishul Park: it is where the open grounds swarmed with tall grass blowing in the wind; where the sunlight glistened among the swaying blades of grass; where the summer afternoons were full of shushing siestas, particularly after lunch; where the winter seasons were much colder than they are now, so we mostly sat out the evenings confining ourselves to our homes, eagerly watching the wonderful Doordarshan serials and studying in short spurts, going out only when friends came to look in on you at the window; and where the serenely beautiful vicinity of the woodland areas filled with eucalyptus, ashoka, banyan, peepul, imli, and flowering jungle jalebi trees of many ages that lined the thousand country roads of the desolate Sub Area just out yonder: sprawling a little furlong east of our parkland.
In the Sub Area, which extended from the eastern edge of our lovely residential campus to the opulent Golf Course around the Lake Lines where Armstrong once resided back in the early ‘80s, wildflowers enticed the worker bees searching for nectar in the surrounding verdant greenery beneath the blue heaven of the skies. In the old pastures upland where birds fed and nested on old peepul trees lining the inner avenues, ripe tamarind pods still sour to taste hung on tree branches at a good height from the ground up. Amidst all this fragrant beauty, our occasional stroll around the neighbourhood of Trishul Park in the twilight afternoons or on chilly winter evenings to celebrate our essential and profound connectedness - our friendship - was a wonderfully rewarding experience: an era that never came again. Forever etched in our memory.
Sunil's family had a history of untimely deaths. Death was a constant fact of the Bhale household. Every few years, a family member died, either from old age or a terrible ailment; there was no way of knowing what awaited him down the road of his life.
Sunil's geologist father died a few years before Sunil left this world. A few years before his demise, Sunil's paternal grandmother, who was particularly strong-willed and sarcastically witty, had left for the heavenly abode. And a few years before her death, on the day when Sunil was to sit for his first exam paper in 1991, his aged grandfather fell into a deep well within the compound of their rented house and died by drowning.
After Sunil's death, just three years later, his mother also passed away. In the early '90s, the death of his elderly grandpa was the first blow to his family. It happened on the day when Sunil was about to step out of his house to come to the bus stop where I waited so that we could catch the bus we planned on together to get to the exam centre and write our first-year exams. He never came. Death in the family, it seemed, was always a constant occurrence.
During the days he suffered from ill health and was in and out of the hospital, I couldn't help but reflect on our days in the early 1990s when we became friends and met every two or three days. Back then, Sunil and I liked to converse in English rather than Hindi, much to the chagrin of our friend Armstrong, who spoke impeccable Hindi. Armstrong, bless him, spoke Hindi beautifully, and he enjoyed doing it. None of us could qualify (or compare) as good as he was proficient in the language; he was a pro's pro: wonderfully trendsetting communication amongst friends. Every time he spoke, he drew silent applause from an adulating audience like us. No one had ever guessed that a south Indian man could speak Hindi so well, with flawless pronunciation, intonation, and accent - much like a north Indian Hindi speaker. (Note: If you are a Hindi-learning aspirant, get in touch with my dear friend Armstrong! Your second language preference for Hindi will become your first language within days.) Satish preferred interacting in local dakhni Hindi than English, not because of shyness to speak in English but because Hindi is simpler and easier to relate to when conversing with friends. Armstrong had taken commerce at the same college as I studied science. Satish, like him, had taken a commerce degree but at a different college. All four of us had graduated the same year.
Armstrong was such a joy to be with, and Sunil and Satish meant much the same way he did to all of us.College days were headily gorgeous. After attending our respective classes during the day, we hung out together regularly in Trishul Park, where Armstrong and I resided, in the moonlit evenings. Satish and Sunil came hither on most evenings so that the place evolved into our precious 'Eden,' where we gathered together day after day for deep-dive self-reflection, crack jokes, celebrate our social hour, having the time of our lives.
My beloved Trishul Park: it is where the open grounds swarmed with tall grass blowing in the wind; where the sunlight glistened among the swaying blades of grass; where the summer afternoons were full of shushing siestas, particularly after lunch; where the winter seasons were much colder than they are now, so we mostly sat out the evenings confining ourselves to our homes, eagerly watching the wonderful Doordarshan serials and studying in short spurts, going out only when friends came to look in on you at the window; and where the serenely beautiful vicinity of the woodland areas filled with eucalyptus, ashoka, banyan, peepul, imli, and flowering jungle jalebi trees of many ages that lined the thousand country roads of the desolate Sub Area just out yonder: sprawling a little furlong east of our parkland.
In the Sub Area, which extended from the eastern edge of our lovely residential campus to the opulent Golf Course around the Lake Lines where Armstrong once resided back in the early ‘80s, wildflowers enticed the worker bees searching for nectar in the surrounding verdant greenery beneath the blue heaven of the skies. In the old pastures upland where birds fed and nested on old peepul trees lining the inner avenues, ripe tamarind pods still sour to taste hung on tree branches at a good height from the ground up. Amidst all this fragrant beauty, our occasional stroll around the neighbourhood of Trishul Park in the twilight afternoons or on chilly winter evenings to celebrate our essential and profound connectedness - our friendship - was a wonderfully rewarding experience: an era that never came again. Forever etched in our memory.
****
Poor Sunil, a nostalgic Goan who had studied science in the same class as me at the same college, passed away too soon, dying young, leaving behind great memories that will live on as a memorable legacy of our friendship we started way back in the year 1990. Sunil's family had a history of untimely deaths. Death was a constant fact of the Bhale household. Every few years, a family member died, either from old age or a terrible ailment; there was no way of knowing what awaited him down the road of his life.
Sunil's geologist father died a few years before Sunil left this world. A few years before his demise, Sunil's paternal grandmother, who was particularly strong-willed and sarcastically witty, had left for the heavenly abode. And a few years before her death, on the day when Sunil was to sit for his first exam paper in 1991, his aged grandfather fell into a deep well within the compound of their rented house and died by drowning.
After Sunil's death, just three years later, his mother also passed away. In the early '90s, the death of his elderly grandpa was the first blow to his family. It happened on the day when Sunil was about to step out of his house to come to the bus stop where I waited so that we could catch the bus we planned on together to get to the exam centre and write our first-year exams. He never came. Death in the family, it seemed, was always a constant occurrence.
During the days he suffered from ill health and was in and out of the hospital, I couldn't help but reflect on our days in the early 1990s when we became friends and met every two or three days. Back then, Sunil and I liked to converse in English rather than Hindi, much to the chagrin of our friend Armstrong, who spoke impeccable Hindi. Armstrong, bless him, spoke Hindi beautifully, and he enjoyed doing it. None of us could qualify (or compare) as good as he was proficient in the language; he was a pro's pro: wonderfully trendsetting communication amongst friends. Every time he spoke, he drew silent applause from an adulating audience like us. No one had ever guessed that a south Indian man could speak Hindi so well, with flawless pronunciation, intonation, and accent - much like a north Indian Hindi speaker. (Note: If you are a Hindi-learning aspirant, get in touch with my dear friend Armstrong! Your second language preference for Hindi will become your first language within days.) Satish preferred interacting in local dakhni Hindi than English, not because of shyness to speak in English but because Hindi is simpler and easier to relate to when conversing with friends. Armstrong had taken commerce at the same college as I studied science. Satish, like him, had taken a commerce degree but at a different college. All four of us had graduated the same year.
‘zindagi ke safar mein guzar jaate hain jo makaam
woh phir nahi aate, woh phir nahi aate’
- a song by Anand Bakshi
(To be continued…)
By Arindam Moulick
Dedication:
To Armstrong, Satish, and Sunil, my friends from our Trishul Park days. Miss those days…
‘Remembering: Going to The Dhabas with Friends - part 1’
‘An Abundance of Tasty Memories - part 2’
‘Memories of the Distant Past - part 3’
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please make your comments here:......