IIHM-A - An Abridged Version

We all have an inbuilt mechanism to make judgements, put people into categories. We like certain people and then there are some that we don't. Sometimes we struggle to find the category that they'll best fit in, only to find that they're in a class of their own. There are some that we're indifferent to(I'm indifferent to people who don't have an opinion, as is amply evident in my previous post). And there are some that you just can't keep out of your face.
I walked in to the college hostel to see people as different as Gems in a packet. There were people with different last names, accents, hairstyles, fashion sense and attitude. My Person-Category filing cabinet was a mess. I've always maintained that I'm a horrible judge of character and the first few weeks of college was the first time that I got wise to my own character flaw.
I became part of this bunch that was fun, diverse and typical. We'd hang out together, go for dinners and poke fun at people with funny accents and bad English. Most of us liked similar music, which was one of the primary reasons for us getting along and watched similar movies and shows.
On the other hand, there was a bunch of guys who seemed like 'bad boys'. Now, remember these were days that I was fresh outta the comfort of having grown up at home under the care and more importantly, the supervision, of mom and dad. The 'bad boys'in question were definitely smokers and drinkers and wore kurtas with 'Om' and 'Shiva'and other such pseudo-religious symbols and signs. We had a few run-ins sheerly because of the force of our personalities, but that was that. Nothing major.
Meanwhile, I was having a blast with my new-found friends and developing an active interest in one or two of the girls. My buddy, who is your corresponding roll number in the senior years, was a hottie, I'd earned some brownie points from the seniors cos I'd taken their ragging quite well and I was somehow voted Mr. Fresher and I was over the moon. Couldn't've asked for a better beginning to my life in college.
I also met this senior who was quite an amazing musician- he had a raspy, bluesy voice and fingers that'd wrap around the neck of the guitar and make it look like an extension of his hand. He took an active interest in teaching me the basics of guitar and always chastised me if I didn't show up for our appointments. The funny thing is these 'bad boys'were found hanging around him, every evening, just before I was to meet him for guitar class. I couldn't figure it out and we just ignored each others'presence.
A month or so down the line, I don't remember how, but things began to fall apart with my 'friends'and I pretty much couldn't get anywhere with the girls that I'd gotten interested in. To fill the void, I tried getting along with my two roomies and looking for others whose company I thought I'd enjoy. That kept me going for a bit, though I wasn't very happy, till I started spending time with this cute girl from the culinary course- a sweet, pretty, fresh smelling, curly haired Maharahstrian girl from Pune. We started spending pretty much all our time together after and before classes and were soon quite inseparable.
Meanwhile, back in the boys'hostel I'd begun to hear lots of stories of fights and plots and drugs and alcohol and I was pretty sure I wanted to stay away from it all. But, like most plans in my life, this one too, didn't quite stay the course.
There I was sitting in my room, minding my own business, when I was startled to hear a loud thumping on my door. I got off my bed, to open the door and as soon as I'd unlatched it, it burst open and in came 4-5 guys. These were from the bad boy category- smoking, drinking every day and listening to monotonous bass and treble music and indulging in all sorts of clandestine activities behind closed hostel doors. There was Gobnoxious- a loud, Delhi boy with a filthy mouth and an air of arrogance that reminded you of Reggie van Dough, Richie Rich's not so rich cousin; followed by Doofus, a short fat boy with hair like Salman's (from Tere Naam. To his credit, it hadn't released at the time)from Mumbai with origins in Mangalore; a tall lean brace-wearing Sardar called Smurfy and the last guy to enter the room suprised me. It was my guitar tutor. So Gobnoxious swaggers into the room, all red-eyed and with an aura of alcohol around him and asks me," Who put oeuf mayonnaise on Smurfy's bed?". I had no idea what he was talkin about and before I could deny any involvement, felt a sharp, blinding sting on my left cheek. I reflexively clenched my fist and let rip, connecting lightly with his jaw as he stumbled, and fell flat on his ass, disoriented. Before I could gain the upper hand, 4 strong hands gripped my shoulders and two more pushed me back on the bed. I was now cornered in my own room.
They kept asking me why I'd put oeuf mayonnaise on Smurfy's bed, I continued to deny it and after about 10 to 15 minutes, asked them to leave. But they were in no mood to listen. I began to understand that the oeufs were just an alibi for Gobnoxious to provoke me into fighting and to give me, what he hoped, a sound thrashing and a lesson in who NOT to mess with...EVER!
As Gobnoxious was readying himself for another attack, there was a knock on the door - a couple of do-gooders wanted to find out what was going on and to see if they could help me. I, in an act of bravado, refused their help and said I'd sort it out by myself. I don't know if this changed their opinion of me or scared them into thinking that someone else might walk-in or complaint to the hostel guards that there was trouble in room no. 5, but they gave me stern warnings and dirty looks and left.
A couple of days after this, Crickey, the quintessential boarder - he always wore track pants, polo shirts, a cap and sports shoes , walked up to me and said, " Bro, why don't you hang out with us? We'll be your friends." Coming from one of the best boarding schools in India, I'm sure he'd seen many people in my situation and had possibly been part of many groups of friends who'd helped those people.
I got introduced to the rest of the gang - NoFuneesh and Small, were his room-mates. NoFuneesh was a , smart, devout muslim boy from Pune and Small, an overly effeminate export from the Steel City.
Curly, who I'd met during the entrance exams for college, LongNose, a calcutta boy who fancied himself as one of the best looking and the most talented cricketers around; Jerky, a South Indian boy with a Mumbai upbringing who dropped out of engineering college in search of a less punishing course and lastly, Sumo, the big Parsi from the Steel City.
We bonded over music, cricket, girls, funny accents and mischief. I was taken in by the guys and we had a blast over the next few months.
I first got drunk after I downed a quarter of White Mischief, to prove a point. Soon, as the buzz was settling, we sat around a rickety steel table, with slippery and dirty, white plastic chairs placed on gravel with blades of wild grass peeking out from between the stones. The conversation moved to confessions and the boys began to fess up - about girls they'd been with, ones they'd like to be with, about lies they'd told each other and the negative thoughts they'd had about the other. When my turn came, I took a dramatic pause and said, " OK guys. I wanted to thank you guys for taking me in and helping me out, but I feel that you guys ignore me sometimes and I don't feel like I'm part of the bunch, yet." No one said anything about it, they just moved on to the next confession.
When it came to Crickey, he said, " Bro, you know why you feel ignored and not like you're part of the bunch? That's cos we try to lose you when we go smoke grass!"
I was stunned! "You guys smoke grass?!!"
"Yeah. What do you think we're doing at Playa's place when you're hanging around trying to learn guitar?"
I had no idea.
So that evening, after we went back to the hostel, I saw them smoke weed and have a great time, laughing their heads off at stuff I didn't find funny at all. It even got to a point when I was nearly in tears, feeling bad for how stupid they were, wasting their lives away smoking weed and enjoying it.
When Jerky began coring an apple, very carefully and everyone else shouting out instructions about how to do it, I got curious. I knew that one apple wouldn't be enough for everyone in the room, so he couldn't be coring it to eat. Before I could ask, Jerky began stuffing the hollowed out apple with a potent wad of weed and then finished it by stuffing the other end with a loosely rolled piece of card board. It was an Apple Chillum. The boys all drew deeply and blew thick, white smoke and raved about the flavour. The apple went around the room and just when it was with the person next to me, he asked, "Try karega?" . I politely refused, but then I really wanted to. Moment of Truth.
I took the Apple Chillum and pulled hard. I passed it on and everyone waited and watched - expecting me to cough my lungs out. I coolly exhaled a cloud of white smoke and made a face as if to say, "That tastes like shit!"
This was the beginning of my education. 1st year of college. I learnt so much in those 3-4 years, I don't think there'll ever be a phase where the learning curve will be so steep.
I began to listen to music by artists I'd only heard of, but never cared to pick up a cassette (CDs were prohibitively expensive then)to listen to, properly. I went from sharing the odd cigarette with one of the boys to making sure I had at least 5 in my pocket when I returned to the hostel and definitely one to smoke on the throne next morning. I had a cute looking girlfriend from Pune. We were crazy about each other. We all hung out with our girls, went drinking, on hikes to hillocks behind the hotel, borrowed bikes and rode with them to a little hill station close by, studied together before exams, discussed F&B and decided what we'd like to do after college and what we definitely wouldn't. We woke early Sunday mornings to play 20 over cricket matches and had the girls over, cheering for us and bringing us bottles of chilled lemonade. Life was good.
Life came full circle when many boys, named here and not, who'd fallen out in Year 1, ended up sitting in one room, sharing a bottle or a J. Gobnoxious was one among them.

....watch this space!

Confessions of the Opinionated

I'm not anything if not opinionated. I think its good to be opinionated. That's what I'm talking about.
I've seen far too many people without opinion than I'd like. Or at least who I presume are opinion-less, for lack of a better word(Maybe sans opinion!). I mean, I'm only half as opinionated as some people I know, but still I end up being the most, in many conversations I've had with most people I've met, of late. And it saddens me. It saddens me that people think knowing a little about the time lines of Indian history, world history, basic GK is stuff that makes you 'too serious'. Its annoying that people think being good at trivia is unnecessary and all you need to do is put a point across. No, you don't, not backed with your baseless opinion. But isn't that relative? Sure it is,but what matters is what you back your opinion up with, and how powerfully, and more importantly, convincingly its done!
There are things that people strive to be, and perfect, is one of them. I'm not one to even try. I know I'm flawed and accepting it is the best thing that I've done, besides marrying the girl I did, that is! More than accepting it, embracing it is what put into perspective, the things that make me flawed..and enjoy the fact that I don't celebrate being perfect or being in the pursuit of it.
One thing I don't like is people making a big deal of money. I don't mean BIG deal of money, I mean big deal of MONEY. People splitting bills down to the paisa, just so its 'fair and balanced'. Balanced? In the emperical sense, maybe, but fair? What's fair? I think its fair to've played an innings to the match's requirements as against playing an innings because you had no other choice. For example, the knock that Atherton played against SA in the '90s that saved the test and won the English the series.
But, I deviate, the point I'm trying to make is that money's something that one can never be sure of and the ritualists of the world try and make money as constant as is possible. Lets not forget how it all started. Besides, there are some things that cannot be counted. Like experience, or intensity.
Going back to opinions. What I've learnt and seen is that the stronger and more passionately you feel about an issue and the more articulate you are, your opinions end up sounding much more convincing than others. So its good to be opinionated, in my humble opinion. I've seen that I'm more receptive to actively resilient, determined and logical points of view than ones backed by newspaper and internet articles(for the 'widely read'), or just popular public opinion. Lets just say I'm not easily influenced.
But I've seen far too many and far too often, people who get inflenced by opinions of powerful personalities or by general consensus. The question is, what do they think about when they're taking a shit? Or when they're on a bus staring at open scenery and listening to random music that's either played on the bus, or ended up playing on their music players-ones that've never come up, cos shuffle has an annoying knack of playing the same songs and omitting the others over n over again.
I've found that learning is more and richer when it comes through a different and forceful,passionate medium. I have to confess that I put my case forward with more confidence than back-up, very often and it encourages really stimulating debate and information exchange.
I spoke to a few of my closest friends and they came to a unanimous conclusion- Opinions are always welcome. Only, there should be passion and information behind them.
Unopinionated people-Let's define them, for starters.
1. Unopinionated people or, for the comfort of the crowd in question, people who 'like to listen and take everything in' generally tend to stay quiet in discussions, often, not contributing to the information exchange.
2. They usually end up agreeing with one party or the other, not necessarily taking sides, but backing one of the many points of view that are in discussion, like that's their point of view as well.

Which it very well might be. All I'm saying is why didn't they think of it first, or if they did, why didn't they bring it to the table?

Being opinionated doesn't mean wanting to be right always, or being stubborn about it. It means that you have an opinion that you have built, using the information available to you and passing it through the circuitry that's made you what you are.

Being the 'taking in the conversations'kind could be because of many reasons within and out of their control. They could be shy, inhibited, intimidated by other personalities, not know how to express exactly what they're feeling, not have the knowledge to contribute or have an opinion or just plain not care about.

If you're the kind that doesn't care,then that is an opinion, too..unless you don't care about anything..

All I want to convey to the readers of this post is to spend a little time thinking about issues that matter to you. Irrespective of how trivial or useless other people might term them, these matters are yours to think about and have an opinion on.

I don't know if I'm coming across the way I want to, but I know people who want to understand, will.

Of course, that's only my opinion.