Satish, a worldly-wise, practical young man, had, like Armstrong, also moved on and constructed a house before obtaining a wife and settling into marital bliss and fatherhood.
Practical-wise, Sunil was comfortably the most practical of the four of us. A straight-talking provocateur, he was more grounded in the practical realities of the social situation he typically faced: not because of his Goan upbringing but rather because of, well, thanks to the inherited blueprints of his genes, while admirably adapting to the changing circumstances and getting on with the job at hand.
Armstrong and Satish were the least realistic individuals you would meet compared to Sunil's typically famous foxy cleverness, probably born out of inherited DNA you wouldn't expect yourself to outfox easily—not the DNA but outfoxing his cleverness. Both were a notch or two below Sunil's definite mannerisms and decisive nature, which verify his cognitive capacity to process his own gritty thoughts in a way that means business and his temperament for facing life's numerous eventualities on the chin and moving on. Satish, like Armstrong, gets perturbed. None of us achieved the kind of tact he was capable of showing. That is why Sunil was higher up the proverbial ladder of modern realists universally known to the unsuspecting men and women of the society on the other side of the Alwal main road opposite Trishul Park.
Putting it another way, metaphorically: Sunil was at the top of the human race's figurative realist food chain; he was a numero uno in that regard, full of zest but also full of sarcasm tempered by irony, satire, and humour intermingling at the same time to produce a condescending, a sarcastic whack in his speech when he opened his voluble mouth to evict words dripping with sarcastic acerbity corresponding to a degree of semantic abstraction that goes straight for the jugular, stinging, whipping and burning all the way to thy kingdom come! None of us could have been as hands-on and practical as Sunil was; he was up there to the standard of well-read men. His caustic use of 'dialogue delivery' may imply mock contempt but tempered with good humour, it'll make you hoot with a laugh. He was a little man with a Napoleonic demeanour who meant business.
Because I was (and still am) more of a philosopher of nostalgia, whatever that means, and believe there is a deeper groove of memories to explore in my mind, it has never been easy for me to move on. Sunil's cleverness trait was not something I could relate to because, back in the early 1990s, I was an emotionally self-perceptive guy who valued creativity and the emotional talents I encountered in others. Therefore, being practical occasionally causes me to experience a bittersweet conflict of emotions that cloud my motivation to seek my way through the gauzy nettle of paradoxical complexities life puts up for you to engage in, as it were. Hence, I listen to a lot of music and often find myself seeing the faces of my friends and loved ones as I play it, rekindling the nostalgic memories I associate with the familiar songs I've come to relate. Because this balmy context accentuates all my days, I'm constantly reflecting, not living in it, on the unforgettable past. While the foreseeable future seems bleak, scarred, dark, and vehemently unchangeable, making it unsafe for us to live without constantly checking our surroundings or looking over our shoulders, taking nostalgic breathers down memory lane asserts its importance even more. Whatever you may love about AI, automation, or robotics—which disregards all human intervention—all of the above is verifiably confirmed to follow. Sigh!
His natural cooking abilities were certainly honed from a young age by his doting mother and extended family members, who were undoubtedly excellent household culinarians who, I'm sure, would compete with the cuisine chefs of many of the city's restaurants today. (Conversely, in today's world, the so-called cafeterias, coffee shops, eateries, hotels, diners, shopping malls, banquet halls, spas and resorts, barbecues, and the ubiquitous dhabas dot every available commercial location where excessive consumption or hyper-consumerism has become a widespread spectacle. With 7 billion people on the planet, we are gobbling up the Earth's scarce resources at a rate faster than it is sustainable.)
Little wonder why everyone from his humble family boasted a bulging waistline—several 'DeMellos' put together! His well-informed speculations on topical subjects of the day seldom come untrue. In a different sense, Armstrong loved to resolutely set specific goals and doggedly pursue them while regularly holding an objective mirror up to present times, or contemporary culture, if you will. Both are progressively savvier and logically sensible in other vital areas that demand a constant gaze of awareness in addition to having the knowledge and experience to battle with, compete with, and cope with concerns and problems that are now part of contemporary life.
Last but not least, there's me. I've jokingly alluded to myself as a pessimistic optimist (not optimistic pessimist; there's a perceptible difference) who covets the lifelong love of reading dozens of notable books each year and strives to be intellectually creative but doesn't quite manage! (Take that with a generous pinch of salt, especially the preceding sentence, because I tend to exaggerate and write implausible hyperbole, as anyone can see in this write-up!) This have-a-go depiction is unlikely to amount to anything in terms of overstating facts here, so I must speed along …
You could say that, except for Satish, I was the last one standing. I tried to manage my life as best I could, even though I knew it would be more difficult than I imagined before even setting foot in the ever-changing outside world beyond my sheltered, happy, trusting, immersive life at Trishul Park. Looking back on how ably I coped with the general loneliness following Armstrong's departure and Sunil's parting, I earnestly believe I adapted pretty well, given the sense of profound loss and unutterable longing that permeated most of our days after 2005, one had to adjust. Without your usual associates or trusted friends, you cannot navigate a life that almost always descends into a mess so bleak you never thought it could affect you so profoundly when you start missing your familiar friends. The thing that slowly starves to death is the will to carry on and behave as if nothing had happened. It's tough to deal with that actuality if you ask me because if you are supposed to move ahead in your life, it's hard to conform when advised that "you should". Marriage and a kid came a few years later, and so did the one-sided sense of emotional estrangement, frustration from anxieties and insecurities, concerns and doubts, and a general lack of time.
After that strangely unusual period resulting in our estrangement from our buddy Sunil, the fact that life did not treat us harshly as well as unfavourably was indeed a lucky blessing, as life is often wont to do.
“Always Alwal”: A Small Circle of Friends
Being homesick all year round, I try to unwind and unclutter my mind while practising mindfulness in an exploratory endeavour that deserves success at a period in my rather contemplative or living-in-the-past life, seeking a perfect relationship with myself and searching into my soul. I knew deep down that I couldn't 'settle' anywhere but within the 'andar mahal' of my humble abode, my sweet home in a part of town where I have all my childhood memories. After all, home is where the loving heart is: That was where I belonged, I reasoned, without resorting to being much regretful about anything or feeling guilty conscious about nothing in a culture readily designed to frown upon radical determinations you brook and so one's attention drifts to a stream of nostalgic consciousness that's yours and yours alone to rejoice in your 'soul provider': immersive daydreaming if you like, as the days and nights get by the changing of seasons year after year after year, and you remain where you always belonged. Homesickness ailed me; it was that bad!
We often found ourselves reminiscing fondly about our favourite moments of the pre-Web era of the 1980s and 1990s. Longing for the simpler times when everything was leisurely, humble, and modest rather than brash: to the point of arrogance, aggressive, and in-your-face rudeness of today's cyberpunk times we suffer. The nostalgic comforts of playing amateur cricket or talking gaily and laughing merrily with long-time friends while sitting contentedly on the puliyas near our homes were the best times of our lives. The 1990s were uniquely a time of relative prosperity, peace, and happiness that the current generation will never experience. Alas, those precious times will never come again. That old chapter of our friendship was long over: the one in which Armstrong made a special place in our hearts before heading north. Sunil left for the heavenly abode, departing his beloved “ALWAYS ALWAL”. Satish and I continue to be nostalgic about the familiar charm of the good ol’ days of the 1990s, the happiest years of our lives. We still miss those years very much.
****
Satish kept up his sobriety intact and is still very insightful into human nature relatively few individuals have, particularly what rouses or persuades some individuals to think sincerely and act morally, as they ought to naturally but fail to do. That is his interesting specialty, and I'm glad it still survives today. Some personality traits don't have to go away. His natural cooking abilities were certainly honed from a young age by his doting mother and extended family members, who were undoubtedly excellent household culinarians who, I'm sure, would compete with the cuisine chefs of many of the city's restaurants today. (Conversely, in today's world, the so-called cafeterias, coffee shops, eateries, hotels, diners, shopping malls, banquet halls, spas and resorts, barbecues, and the ubiquitous dhabas dot every available commercial location where excessive consumption or hyper-consumerism has become a widespread spectacle. With 7 billion people on the planet, we are gobbling up the Earth's scarce resources at a rate faster than it is sustainable.)
Little wonder why everyone from his humble family boasted a bulging waistline—several 'DeMellos' put together! His well-informed speculations on topical subjects of the day seldom come untrue. In a different sense, Armstrong loved to resolutely set specific goals and doggedly pursue them while regularly holding an objective mirror up to present times, or contemporary culture, if you will. Both are progressively savvier and logically sensible in other vital areas that demand a constant gaze of awareness in addition to having the knowledge and experience to battle with, compete with, and cope with concerns and problems that are now part of contemporary life.
Last but not least, there's me. I've jokingly alluded to myself as a pessimistic optimist (not optimistic pessimist; there's a perceptible difference) who covets the lifelong love of reading dozens of notable books each year and strives to be intellectually creative but doesn't quite manage! (Take that with a generous pinch of salt, especially the preceding sentence, because I tend to exaggerate and write implausible hyperbole, as anyone can see in this write-up!) This have-a-go depiction is unlikely to amount to anything in terms of overstating facts here, so I must speed along …
You could say that, except for Satish, I was the last one standing. I tried to manage my life as best I could, even though I knew it would be more difficult than I imagined before even setting foot in the ever-changing outside world beyond my sheltered, happy, trusting, immersive life at Trishul Park. Looking back on how ably I coped with the general loneliness following Armstrong's departure and Sunil's parting, I earnestly believe I adapted pretty well, given the sense of profound loss and unutterable longing that permeated most of our days after 2005, one had to adjust. Without your usual associates or trusted friends, you cannot navigate a life that almost always descends into a mess so bleak you never thought it could affect you so profoundly when you start missing your familiar friends. The thing that slowly starves to death is the will to carry on and behave as if nothing had happened. It's tough to deal with that actuality if you ask me because if you are supposed to move ahead in your life, it's hard to conform when advised that "you should". Marriage and a kid came a few years later, and so did the one-sided sense of emotional estrangement, frustration from anxieties and insecurities, concerns and doubts, and a general lack of time.
'pyar mein hota hai kya jadooWith friends pushed off the to-do list of the social fiesta that we traditionally enjoyed to the hilt, as well as our hurts and possibly even the remnants of preconceptions, including the biasing effects of typical stereotyping bottled up, our once-significant part of our youth days began to dwindle.
tu janay ya main jaano'
- a song from the film Papa Kehte Hai
After that strangely unusual period resulting in our estrangement from our buddy Sunil, the fact that life did not treat us harshly as well as unfavourably was indeed a lucky blessing, as life is often wont to do.
“Always Alwal”: A Small Circle of Friends
Being homesick all year round, I try to unwind and unclutter my mind while practising mindfulness in an exploratory endeavour that deserves success at a period in my rather contemplative or living-in-the-past life, seeking a perfect relationship with myself and searching into my soul. I knew deep down that I couldn't 'settle' anywhere but within the 'andar mahal' of my humble abode, my sweet home in a part of town where I have all my childhood memories. After all, home is where the loving heart is: That was where I belonged, I reasoned, without resorting to being much regretful about anything or feeling guilty conscious about nothing in a culture readily designed to frown upon radical determinations you brook and so one's attention drifts to a stream of nostalgic consciousness that's yours and yours alone to rejoice in your 'soul provider': immersive daydreaming if you like, as the days and nights get by the changing of seasons year after year after year, and you remain where you always belonged. Homesickness ailed me; it was that bad!
‘dukki pe dukki ho, ya satte pe sattaBefore quitting his employment at a Hyderabad-based company that manufactured and exported cotton yarn because he told me it no longer aided his professional advancement, Armstrong swiftly found his secure footing in Delhi. Thanks to his kind Air Force officer brother posted there, Armstrong could make a move and settle down without the possible disruptions that an unfamiliar place often brings. On chilly winter evenings, when Satish, Sunil, Armstrong, and I lounged on the terrace of his flat in Alwal, eating hot pakoras and drinking chai, Delhi would frequently creep into our conversations; it was there Armstrong would begin anew. Simultaneously, Satish and I ventured into what seemed to be the next phase of our lives: he did so by entering the chosen profession of number-crunching financial accounting, and I did so by entering the always-down-turning, life-sucking field of IT (information technology), which I should never have done, but that's a different story for another time to tell, and I've plenty. And none of our lives were ever the same again. We longed to return to those former times, but they never came. Life changed forever.
gaur se dekha jaaye, toh bas hai patte pe patta
koyi farak nahi albatta, koyi farak nahi albatta’
- a song from the movie Satte Pe Satta
We often found ourselves reminiscing fondly about our favourite moments of the pre-Web era of the 1980s and 1990s. Longing for the simpler times when everything was leisurely, humble, and modest rather than brash: to the point of arrogance, aggressive, and in-your-face rudeness of today's cyberpunk times we suffer. The nostalgic comforts of playing amateur cricket or talking gaily and laughing merrily with long-time friends while sitting contentedly on the puliyas near our homes were the best times of our lives. The 1990s were uniquely a time of relative prosperity, peace, and happiness that the current generation will never experience. Alas, those precious times will never come again. That old chapter of our friendship was long over: the one in which Armstrong made a special place in our hearts before heading north. Sunil left for the heavenly abode, departing his beloved “ALWAYS ALWAL”. Satish and I continue to be nostalgic about the familiar charm of the good ol’ days of the 1990s, the happiest years of our lives. We still miss those years very much.
(Sunil used to say: Always Alwal especially, when we used to ride home on our bikes after an evening out shopping for shirts, greeting cards from those cosy little Hallmark or Archies shops of the 1990s, or simply just checking out the new range of 'blasting' home audio stereo systems from Aiwa, Sony, Sharp, or Philips at newly-opened electronics showrooms either at Park Lane, MG Road, or at Abids, not very far from our friend Satish's most favourite fabric material store, Silk Centre. Sunil ultimately bought a 100 watts Aiwa compact music system, and I got to have possession of a Sony soon after. He would listen to Bryan Adams, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Guns N' Roses, and occasionally Metallica nonstop, often reading a John Grisham novel or a Micheal Crichton techno-thriller. Sunil liked listening to the new CD of the Hindi romance film 'Yes Boss.' For some reason, the songs he was so loyal listening to were by the rock band Air Supply, probably because he had an old cassette brought back from his younger years in Goa, a sentimental value. He would let me borrow it from him a few times.)
I wish I could turn back the clock to the early 1990s or 1980s before the new millennium created an even more dreadful split between the haves and the have-nots, the wealthy and the poor, on this planet. In a society that is fast depleting all of its resources, our doom is well neigh. Where the traditional way of life has been permanently supplanted by the so-called disruptive technology in all of its digital and analogue avatars, the consumerist affluent (haves) are getting richer while the impoverished poor (have-nots) are getting poorer.
This is the kind of world we have created: Surveillance cameras - small, large, panoramic, micro, wormhole - watching everything you do, whenever you do it, wherever you do it, and whatever you do without missing a beat, every movement scrutinised, even in darkness. No matter what you're doing: whether you're standing, sleeping, sitting, or pooping, the cameras will roll and rove in an increasingly inter-connected, cloud-connected, data-recording paranoid world of the Internet of Things where intelligence is ‘artificial' and machines 'learn' by themselves, you don't dare need to do anything. Frankly, where are we headed as a selfish, technology-led human society?
****
Sincerity smilingly apprizes that striving to live up to everyone else's legitimate expectations of me while being rootless is not in my DNA. (Fond dreams are no longer possible since the current reality affects me so much that I become weighed down in the arena of my contemplative life, cowed down (or bogged down and all that) by its constant arm-twisting.) It's not like I'm complaining. I'm not a home-bound rhetorician staking paltry claims for others to chew on and steer them into sympathizing with me while coercing them to agree to my way or the elevated highway! Otherwise, it is not within my moral power to assert that, but even if I'd "miles to go before I sleep," I know my yearning heart would break if I suggested that dreams and social reality could be comparable. Perhaps I don't desire them to come face to face. Perhaps you do. Conceivably my standard response would have been marginally contradictory if you had asked me a fundamental question on that matter twenty-five prolific years before; I willingly concede that it won't be all that different even today. Dreams and reality are not good bedfellows; life's better if they don't mix. Even though I'm a senior consultant with two post-graduate degrees (in software technology and automated information systems: trust me, it's not as hunky dory as it sounds!), donkey-working my way up the cliff face of a 'global-shlobal' IT organization's hoi-polloi, I, advisably, keep my head down and code, with no luxury to die, let alone mourn, or vice versa. (Yet, life is much more than that hard fact of slogging, whining, and sacrificing. Escape the long list of miseries of being treated like willing slaves, speaking like parrots, and working like controlled robots. Despite the pitiful compensation of peanuts thrown into your savings account as a princely sum, while you are fashionably working from home, consider living your life and making memories as a more divine agency to heed. Oh, somebody kill me!)
Reflecting on and understanding how both usual and unusual, common and uncommon events or circumstances have worked out for me, even as my dear friends have gone on to set their practical world aflame with passion and purpose, is my life's sweetest pleasure. In the days that have passed, I was content to dwell on the glorious past of the 1980s and 1990s. Those are unforgettable years. I can't keep my mind off anything else as I am, emotionally and spiritually, attached to them. Those were the best stories of living and longing. Call me a dunce or call me by any other name: I miss that era so much that I'd trade the world or spend the last dime to be there. I can still hear the voices singing, children laughing, and friends calling, oh sweet god in heaven, take me back in time.
How do you reminisce about the good old times while ensuring the well-being of your family? Ask. (I believe this is precisely how our lives should function, with our friends and family participating in a healthy social biome.) It's because the past enchants me more than the unpredictable future, yet it doesn't interfere with my current happy reality. "Nothing exists except an endless present ...," said George Orwell in his novel 1984, that today's 'endless present' remains an intentional miasmic distortion of truth, just as twisted as it sounds. This world, such as it is, no longer suits the old-timers. For those of us, salt-and-pepper bearded grownups like us, who grew up in the '80s and '90s, the here and now, the 'endless present' is fraught with something happening, always happening for the worse, so the idealized past is more charming and fair: it's where we are and always will be. (I wonder what Armstrong and Satish would have thought about this.) Our golden years ended a long time ago. Indeed, they have come to an end. But not though in our hearts or thoughts.
‘dil dhoondta hai, fir wahi fursat ke raat dinAfter obtaining his master's degree in commerce and working for a spell, Armstrong hardly looked back in nostalgia as intensely as was expected of him. (So I know what he thought of nostalgia as a way of life.) Hence, he moved on to far-flung destinations from which he could never return to where we all graduated the same year, the same place of our golden years at Trishul Park. His realistic outlook on life—being rootless and mobile, complicit in the reality of the new millennium, which can be slightly inelegant to misty-eyed nostalgist like me but not to anyone who doesn’t figure out the foreseeable future without the AI or Machine Learning tropes that define our lives—is to accept how things are in the continuation of the spirit of living. Or cannot regularly perform at work or home without a wisecracking, keys punching computer wonk coming to rescue your 'backdatedness'. Or don’t get to perform routinely at the workplace, complex issues that, by and large, decay the human conscience and go on degenerating it. (We're all more or less in the same boat: a relatively comparable situation—all of us out of poetic touch with our old roots when we have career-related important commitments to fulfil, jobs to keep, sustain a family construct, and so on.) That a senior executive working in the Finance and Accounts Department of a private company with multinational operations is hard-pressed for time must be understood in this traditional context. And so we do. For him, our friend "Tirunelveli Halwai," the boyhood friends from the olden days, have been just faint echoes of the past, gradually growing dimmer; perhaps, it may be a while before they circle back and signify something to him. Perhaps, he'll return to the old nostalgic memories when he gets around to it. Nostalgia does catch up with you, and when it does, don't let go; it's precious.
baithe rahe tasawwoor-ye-jaana kiye huye’
- a heart-breaking song by Gulzar
Satish has drastically changed as a person, but not his calm demeanour, which hasn't. It got better over time, becoming much more mellow. Content and happier with himself, he still models his private persona after his favourite god: a gentle, pot-bellied Ganesh Maharaj ki jai gorging on delicious, big-sized, exclusively made larder of puja Laddoos, year after festive year after year. Albeit, he's a lot more unavailable and busier than he wishes to be, which sounds good. That's not reprobate if you ask me, especially when you have great Laddoos to devour and generously share with other free-loading droolers like ourselves. Understandably, his cooking skills had taken a back seat before he wed his wife, who, of course, cooks much better than he does presently! Despite that, I dearly miss his passionate renditions of Pulihora, Ugadi pachidi, and distinctive Veg Biryani dishes cooked in pure desi-ghee, as he'd proudly proclaim every time we dined sumptuously at his humble residence, often uninvited.
While I puzzled out a double major in business administration before chasing a possible career in IT (information technology), change — and radical change at that — came around the millennium bend and made its repulsive association with obliteration presence felt. As far as our friendship was concerned, 2000–2001 marked a transition phase, and it was, for the most part, good enough to go into the annals of our decades-long friendship narrative that we hold dear. However, from the second half of the 2000s onwards, it did not, God forbid, diminish per se, but I sensed that its incredible intensity did slacken a bit.
Our friendship may have been sorrowed with Armstrong's departure to Delhi and losing Sunil to death a few years ago. But he, Satish, and I have remained in touch, and that's perfect, profoundly significant as it has always been a treasure. The four of us (now just three of us) have the strongest bond, which will help us endure the tremendous, drastic societal changes sweeping the country today.
And it all started in 1990, one of the most extraordinary years of our lives.
(To be continued…)
By Arindam Moulick
Dedication:
For three of my closest pals from the 1990s, when we were all in college: Armstrong, Satish, and Sunil (who walked off into the sunset). If wishes had wings, I'd have travelled back in time. Where are those days gone?
Click ‘Remembering: Going to The Dhabas with Friends - part 1’ to read the first part of the essay.
Also, read ‘An Abundance of Tasty Memories - part 2’ and ‘Memories of the Distant Past - part 3’, the second and third parts, respectively.
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