For BrainStew.

Maybe it's this thing that strikes you only after a month or so but I guess anyone who moves to a different city feels this way.
Or maybe it's just me.
Huh.


Even though I love where I am,right now, if I had a choice,I'd live the past two years again.I know I said the same thing after 10th got over but this time it's different.
The place where I am now,the fun here is so adulterated.
So complex.
Maybe I'll take time to love it but just suddenly I feel like a kid put into college.
I don't want to end up drunk outside a pub every weekend.
That isn't my idea of fun.
Or 'living' life to the maximum.
I think now that I see it,fun lies in the smallest of things.

Like the way Jo and I used to draw caricatures of people sitting on the last bench.
Yawn when the National anthem played early morning.
When we just sat.
Worried about how badly we'd flunk because we had no idea what we were doing in Science.
Worried about how we'd never find love and end up as frat,ugly singles.
I think fun lay in those moments we'd joke about how worried we are.
And Jo would say :"Bloody hell,we're screwed."
And I'd laugh so much even though I knew she meant it.

At that time, in those moments of absolute chaos and stress, we'd pray that these days get over soon.
We'll party after that.
We'll live life on our own terms after that.
But now that it's over,I get it.
Life was then too.
It was when we found a strand of hair in the mayo frankie.
It was when we counted every half mark after the math exam.

I remember when we had to travel all over Bombay skipping from one tuition to another,sitting in the auto, soggy and my hair all drab,thinking about the time this would all be over and I would be happy.
What was I thinking?
I hated the school work.
It killed me.
I understood nothing of what they taught.
I would stare blankly at the old, frail Physics teacher.Curse him.Curse physics.Curse Podar.
But now I understand everything.
That confusion isn't there.
I miss the load.The pathetic work-load.

But somewhere I still want to go back, run to my class in the morning, hug Jo, ask her for her assignment and copy every word blindly.
I love those moments.
When Ness got her contacts and they kept falling from her eye.
All of us on all fours with our heads pressed to the floor searching for her contacts.
The very fact that we looked like retards was funny to us.And we laughed.
The fun in my past two years lay in that moment of time.

Maybe we were losers.
We never got along well with the rich, dopey dudes.
I was never worried about that though.
I knew these people were mine.No matter who dated whom or changed or mutated.
I don't regret not bunking classes.
Call me a dork but guess what,my favourite part of the day was when I was at school.
I don't regret not taking up Arts.
Science has given me so much in two years.
12,376 pages of knowledge to be exact.Most of it,I wouldn't ever use.
But in those books,lay chits, bus tickets, sketches, conversations, formulae, insults.
Even some hints of my emo days.
And I think that's where I miss science.
Those big,fat books that contained all the laws of the world.
And my life in general.

You know when you enter Art School,you always get the feeling that you are different from the rest and yet so similar.
I miss being the weirdest thing in my class.
To think that it sounds lame now but we were the weird ones.
My bag always had the weirdest things inside.
Swimming goggles.
Toothbrush.
Friendship bands that were many many years old.
My lucky walnut.
The one Devansh sat on and it broke.

I would wear the smiley face badge on my glasses.
Ness would wear the toothbrush on her hair.
And Voosh gifted the urine pregnancy test thing to Chatur.
Oh and Chatur.
With the pimple on his lips and his paunch.

I loved being weird.
Here I don't feel like acting crazy because everyone else does the same.
Here craziness seems like conformity.
That's the hard part.

I met Denzel some days back outside McDonald's in Bombay,the weekend that I was there.
"Go study Denzel,you'll fail.Go.Yukti mukti."
After a brief moment of sadistic laughter,I envied him.
He'll probably realize only after a year but he'll remember and he'll cry within himself as well.
I know I have adjusted well here and I have moved on.
I just feel sad about the fact that these people wont remain with me for the rest of my life.I want them.
But they'll change.
I will change.
Things will get awkward.
And life will go on.


In all this overflow of emotion,you know what I want,long for,miss the most?
Jo.
Jo,I don't care if you get into drugs or get pregnant or become a workaholic.
You'll always remain my soul sister,however lame it may sound.
I KNOW and even you do that we have never met anyone who can come close to the fun we have when we are together.
About how amazingly similar and different we are at the same time.
It stings me when people tell me they like my cartoons in Srishti.I tell them to go look at your artwork.
Nothing turned out the way we had planned.
When I look at my college friends,I remember how it could have been had we been together,the way I had dreamt.
The last time we spoke on the phone and you told me you had been acting like a spastic,I wanted to be there.
With a chit in my hand and all my renowned pep-talk skills.
The way you have silently observed my life in these two years.
You have never,ever commented on my blog.
But you read them all.
For having the WEIRDEST name as a follower on the blog.
BrainStew.
Jo,I miss your peircing parrot laughter.
Your grumpy face.
All the times I have had with you.
All the teasing we did.Joan.That short PE teacher.That bai named Jo.Kairavi.Chibby.Z-MAN.

I love this place.
But I wish you were here.
Or maybe I was there.
Or maybe we were both in Podar.
In those last benches,passing chits,laughing,crying,scribbling,solving math,acting cool.
I wish you would fix my tie in the morning again.
And tell me that my bum looks fat.
I wish you would laugh at my misery.

I long for that.And I hope it comes back.
I still remember and miss everything about you.Everything.








If you are currently studying/planning to study in Podar,do this for me.
Go up to the 4th floor.
The last classroom in that corridoor,next to the staff room.
12-B.
Go up to the extreme right hand corner,last bench.
There is a scribbling on the wall that says: I am sexually attracted to a vacuum cleaner.

That's where I was.
Still am.