It has been 21 years ..Just I tried to re-check my poor arithmetics. Not wrong by a large extent… it IS INDEED 21 years. How come I could not meet any of them? Puzzled as I was always , I asked the same boring question back to me. This time, it was a bit stronger and stirred me as well. Not sure what triggered. Not that I care now.
“Retrospection is not regurgiation” reminded someone from some corner of my mind. True. Most of the time, we intent to do an retrospection and we look back with some emotional bias that spoils the scerenity of retrospection. Cautiously, I tried to retrospect this time. No pleasant/unpleasant memories... just a retrospection and a tryst to find them again.
First came Cyriac . Google is something that you can use for almost anything you have lost – including the car keys and the beautiful girl who boarded the non-descript townbus in an equially non descript town. Anyone is traceable at any time.
No one can say that they did not have their 15 seconds of fame in the digitized world. Got the University address first, tracked and got a phone number of Nandakumar, the super senior who surprisingly remembered me even after these many years. He promised to send Cyriac’s cell number by SMS. Was not my belief that I would not be remembered just after these 2 years except for my asthmatic episodes and horrible Malayalam?
I awaited patiently.. not more than 10 minutes I could hold on. Sent him a nice message on his cell and gently reminded him to send the phone number. If I could wait for 24 years , could not I wait for another 24 minutes? No, I chided myself. Sometimes, there are no fairer games – especially when it mattered friends. Came in the sms atlast. I thanked him tersely on a reply message and prepared my self for giving sheer surprise calls to all the long last friends.
With a grin on my face and imagining how the faces would be on the otherside of the phone, first , I plugged in my cell phone in the charger. The old Nokia E 61 is as good as a landline for me with a constant need of charging. Anyway , it served it’s purpose today , when Cyriac ansered on the other side with utter confusion over the name “ Sudhakaran” as the caller. Fyriace, ninde Folid Ftate Fyffif engane undu? , got him to the memory lane. The sheer laugh and total loss for words were all that needed for us to get started .
Sometimes words are impediments in a conversation. To have a true conversation, you need not think coheretnly, put the right words in a logical sequence, conditiion that with your consciousness of the society acceptance on the expressions and words.. All these miliseconds delay in arranging words are too much for minds and hearts struggling to burst out and enjoy the sheer moment of happiness – of getting something long last.
“Talk slowly and in medium pitch” said my boss in a softskill development workshop some time ago in Singapore. He raised this point again and re-instated, “You should not offend the audience with your expressions and body language which is very subliime and potentially lethal than words”. For once, I did not care. I know the audience. It was not Cyriac. It was ME. I enjoyed the conversation and I enjoyed all the stammering and staggering and incoherent utterings of me and that of Cyriac. Who cares what we talked? It was talking that mattered.
After 20 minutes , we became aware of what the hell we were talking. The sheer awareness brought in the consciousness and our talks became more or less “normal”. He volunteered to send the ppt with all the contact information except a few –just pulling my legs again. What he did not know was that I had already fallen!
When I was done with the phone, I realized the unfinished ppt and the demo scripts with workflows in the new Virtual Machine. Damn… deadline is Monday. Got to my feet on work again. Monday would be the D-day.
Atlast got the mail from Cyriac with the ppt around 8 PM Sunday. Will write about each call in coming days.. Just to bore you all and make you configure the Spam mail settings to accommodate my email id in there. Neverthless, the assault would continue.
