This day, that year!

At a friend's wedding last month, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that most of the closest friends of the groom in attendance were actually class/hostel mates of his from senior secondary school. The fact that the school in question was my own school, the famous (notorious?) Delhi Public School, RK Puram, only added to the nostalgia that swept over me with this realization. To imagine other school class/hostel mates being so close to each other after so many years and at the same time, there being so much distance between my own friends from that era and me, it was a saddening thought.

And then I met this hostel mate of mine, who I was reasonably close to, at the airport this weekend. Both of us were coming back from weddings of people both of us knew, just that I went to one and he to the other. Seeing him there brought back so many memories, what with the recent remembrance that other wedding had initiated. I was, however, shocked at myself, especially with the lame enthusiasm that I greeted him with. Instead of meeting like long lost buddies, we met like strangers, some bit of it may be attributable to the insanely early hours of the day at which we met.

I was also chatting on the internet a couple of days before this weekend meeting with another hostel mate of mine and he seemed pretty disillusioned as well. Keeping in touch is so easy yet so difficult. Life moves on and so do circles of friends but both of us agreed that it is up to an individual to pick and choose who or what they want to retain out of the different phases of life. Retention of friends for good is so much a personal trait rather than being explained by any amount of providence or even the age old excuse of lack of time.

Having felt and said all this, I just thought of putting my thoughts together and go back in time some 12-13 years back (how time flies!!!) and write about the people who mattered probably the most in that period and what I have left of those associations now. So here goes, this one dedicated to DPS RKP, my alma mater and all things/people related to it:

Arnav Hazarika Som, extremely popular with girls, the rock-listening, guitar-playing variety...compete antithesis of what I was at that point in time. And yet we became close, close enough to share a bed (two single beds joined together, don't get any ideas!) in a room of nine people (yes, we had nine people in one room!). I learnt a lot from Arnav (or Ronnie as was his nick name) and I looked up to him, wanting to be like him some day. It was only much later when I met him during my MBA summers stint in Kolkata that I could see myself as coming anywhere close to it.

I met him last at the Delhi airport just a few days ago and though I always knew that he was in Mumbai, I could never really initiate any contact. He is now in the private equity arm of a Times Group company and from what I could gather, doing well for himself.

Shivanu Kohli, the quintessential serious and shy guy who would work really hard and not party at all. He was actually a contrasting personality, outwardly silent and yet innately loud and extremely vocal. From a reasonably large town in Haryana, he had the famous Jat temper but displayed it very rarely. Butt of our jokes for the way he looked, he never complained, at least not initially. As we became more comfortable with each other's company, he did use to flare up at times but as I said, it was once in a blue moon. Very serious about IIT entrance preparations, he was the one who gave me the news of my selection and was rather short when I hinted that probably he did not read my rank correctly, especially when he had the misfortune of not being selected at all.

I met him last at the MBA entrance group discussion for SP Jain Institute which was about 5 years back. I later came to know that he had taken up a job at Coke post his MBA from SP Jain but I have no clue where he currently is.

Dipanjan Das, the suave, boarding school old-timer, with lean, chocolate boyish looks, the perfect gentleman that girls would love to take to their parents, someone who could naturally converse in a language and of matters that were still alien to me. Dipanjan was almost always soft spoken and the last of participants in any kind of revelry that we may end up in. He almost seemed to look at us in amusement as we started to rejoice the hostel life and freedom associated with it, having already been there and done that. Teased no end for his alleged flings with the fairer sex, he could be the perfect display of grace and yet the right amount of silent anger that is capable of putting others to shame and silence.

Last I knew (through social networking sites), he had completed his MBA and was with GE. I have not really interacted with him even once after school and I am not sure if I will get to, in the near future.

Snehesh Mitra, the closest of all my friends in school, he was the boisterous Bengali having stayed his life in Bhagalpur in Bihar. Loud and vivacious, handsome and good looking, and yet a little elephant footed when it came to girls, very impulsive and emotional, not too keen on working so hard as to spoil whatever fun there was to be had, Snehesh was very likeable, at least to me. We literally hanged out together, separated only for the classes in the morning (we were in different sections). I could be very comfortable in Snehesh's company and I guess he did not mind mine either.

I would have met him last about a year after school when he was in Delhi preparing for IIT entrance exams and I was there for some administrative work at the CBSE office. I know (again from social networking sites) that he is married and working for a start-up in Bangalore. Even though I have his email id and probably even his contact number, I haven't really been able to re-initiate anything.

Sumit Kumar Jain, another Bhagalpuriah, but as different from Snehesh as chalk is from cheese. Very confident and assertive, except from some sort of complex that he seemed to have on account of his height, Sumit was one smart cookie. The perfect all rounder, he could score in academics, speak and act passionately, look good and charm girls, the works. I did not really kick it off with Sumit but we were still very cordial with each other and when it came to having fun at the expense of others, neither of us were found wanting. Always willing to rock the party, Sumit could be relied upon for the lighter moments but may perhaps not have been as much of a partner when things went wrong for me.

Last I spoke to him was through a social netwroking site when I pinged him out of the blue and got an encouraging reply in return. Nothing happened after that and the last I know, he graduated from IIM Calcutta and was working with HSBC, first in Mumbai, and then somewhere in the Middle East.

Mudit Bhargava, the guy who impressed my uncle the first day he came to drop me off at the hostel, very organized, diligent, and a shining role model for those in our age group...the sort of person who comes across as well read, a thinker who can act without delays, someone who knew how to manage time between whiling it away and utilizing it wisely. Mudit was another person I used to look up to and even be in awe of. Hailing from the snow covered hills of Simla, he fluctuated from being extremely warm to even cold at times. I never really was able to figure him out completely because he seemed to display only as much as he wanted to, as much as he wanted you to see and know.

I chatted with him on the internet a few days back and got to know that he is married now, and after working for about four years in India, is currently completing his PhD from the USA.

Shameek Sharma, the Surd, the epitome that defined the phrase "happy-go-lucky" to me for a long time, he was one of those who probably changed more in the course of those two years at school than anyone else, even me. The day he came in, he was accompanied by parents and a whole lot of books. While the rest of us were just looking at the place and making things sink in, he seemed to have already got a head start that even the seasoned Dipanjan seemed to be surprised at. Dismissed initially as a book worm, Shameek came back strongly to become one of the craziest people I have been around.

I have been witness to his status updates on facebook but am completely clueless about his whereabouts nevertheless. Again someone I haven't met after school, his contact details can be found out without much difficulty but I haven't really done anything about it.

Ajit Bhaiya, closest in terms of background to me, he came from a small town in Bihar, born to middle class parents, soft spoken to a fault and even stammering at times, with a physique that had nothing to write home about...Ajit or Bhaiya, as we used to call him was always playing the downtrodden. Ajit was brilliant, almost a genius when he did come to apply his mind, which unfortunately did not happen too frequently. He was amazing at physics and my savior a number of times when I had frustratingly little clue about what was happening in the middle of all those levers and pulleys. Being close to Snehesh was the common link between us and even though we were never really very close to each other, we did spend a lot of time together at school.

I came to know from Mudit while chatting with him the other day about the tough times he has had ever since he left school and the fact that he is currently back in his home town, doing tuitions in Physics, the subject he liked the most. I had last chatted with him on the internet some 5-6 years back and have had no personal contact with him ever since.

Kaushik Kishore, part of the room 9 and a half (we were the nine 9's, of course) was from Patna and to put it kindly, pretty raw, significantly less raw as compared to me but raw, nevertheless. An ardent procrastinator, Kaushik was one of those who you would like almost instantaneously. Prone to agreeing to whatever someone said, he was hardly the types who would get into an argument. Laid back and relaxed, the only thing that ruffled his feathers was the specter of studies, about which he seemed to be pretty fussed.

I found him on one of the social networking sites a few weeks back and pinged him to get a moderately welcoming mail in reply. I did not really follow up and am still as clueless about his whereabouts as I was before the communication that I started.

Shivam Bansal, another 9 and a half, son of a businessman, used to the luxuries of life but not spoilt at all, not exposed to the tenets of the modern world of rock "and all", Shivam, popularly called Bansi, hailed from the temple town of Varanasi where his father had a going business. I remember Shivam as keeping pretty much to himself but having the most cordial of relations with almost everyone. He was not one to bring the roof down with his own antics but was definitely not a spoil sport when in the middle of things that shook the world.

I have absolutely no clue of where he is after graduating from IIT Delhi. Not to be found on any social networking site either, he has literally vanished from the earth ever since I last met him at school.

There were so may others that keep coming to mind as I write all this and it is so difficult to write about all of them for want of space and time. There were, of course, my room-mates from the second year, the brilliant and accommodating Saurabh Siddharth, and the extremely cheerful and nice guy, Animesh Agwarwal. There were others I used to spend reasonable time with...the mousily-active Shyam Agarwal, the genius, singing-songs-in-the-reverse Keshav Kunal, the soft-spoken giant Ashwani, the brash and super intelligent Abhisheks (mota and patla), the eternal fighter Sandeep Jaiswal, the good looking to-be-doc Ishtiyaque Hussain, the dapper joker Sachin Talwar, the heart-of-gold-image-carrying Nikhil Singla, the crazy genius Manish Jalan, the seniors and the juniors...the list appears to be endless.

And then there were the girls, very few of them I actually came to know first hand...the long haired shy singer Aparna Sharma, the fiery though diminutive Deepanvita Upadhyay, the bold and beautiful Mayuri Khanna, the short and sweet Supriya Goswami, the hot and happening Shruti Nayan (not from our batch but who cared!).

The list and the memories can just go on and on but this will have to do for today's quota of nostalgia. I just hope that despite the changing nature of life, I can get back to those glorious days, if only in my memories of people associated with them. Better still, won't it be great to be sitting together with some of them in some familiar cafe, sipping a cup of coffee and refreshing our collective memories?