Now and Then.....

I start this blog with a very old e-mail by my friend Rhitwick, and which was very recently reincarnated by Diptayan. It was origianlly penned(!) on 27 September 2007 at 09:19. It goes like this. (I had taken the liberty to translate a few phrases here and there, which were origianally in Bengali).

Quote

Priyo bondhgon (Dear Friends),

kono mail nei onek onek din (Long time no mails). lots of things have happened in the mean time .

soumyo’s wife has reached LA so Soumyo can no longer lead the Casanova life tht he was living (he he ) .

debopam’s brother debanik has got married and debopam was also invited in the wedding . I think he took a leave on the day of the wedding

my sis got married and being the responsible bro that I am , I took leave of full 2 weeks and spent the time meaningfully ……….sitting at home and watching all the movies that I had missed over the last few months . I was also invited in the wedding . J

Halu has vanished and I am planning to give a missing person ad in akash bangla (very hot news channel in kolkata )

Diptayan has become the acting CEO of cmc . he now handles the pre sales , marketing , development and post sales support of his project . amrita is cursing him as usual

Nilesh has posted a fabulous profile pic in orkut after visiting a wedding reception in US . I think he has realized tht he also needs to settle down

Sayan …….nah , no news of him atall . maybe in US , maybe in Blore , but definitely not in touch

Indrajit is very sad for Ireland not winning the WC T20

Sourav comes to office , smokes lots of cigerrettes , spends quality time with collegues and goes back home to his family . ….and sometimes we bump into each other in lift .

Pradipta is enjoying his fatherhood ( I guess )

Now the question is how many of you r coming to kolkata during October for puja or other reasons

Keep mailing ,

Rhitwick

Unquote.

Suddenly, I was thrown back a few years and also a few decades simultaneously. Strange, huh? I was simultaneously around the time when the mail was written, and a few months before that as well as a period of around 15 to 25 years back, my schooldays.

Friends? What are they?

Lets start from the older times. My time in Nava Nalanda, the school I had spent 8 years in. I joined there at Class III, at Section A, in the afternoon session. The school as such was nothing out of the world sort, as it was not in one big building with a big playground, rather, it was scattered around the Dhakuria Lake region in various small appartments(!). But it was more what we made out of it than what we had.

The first day at the school was as dramatic as it could have been. The hero was again Rhitwick, who led me smartly to his section, which was Section B. I stayed there till the recess without being noticed by anybody, before I was almost hijacked by the Class teacher of Section A, Anjali Aunty. Yes, we referred to our teachers as Auntys!

As days rolled by, we created groups and friend circles, there were new additions and infrequent deletions in that group as well. But what transcended with the passage of time was a very strong bond among all of us that made it rather a rule for us to attend school, and to reach there quite some time earlier than the school authorities wanted us to, to allow us to chat, play and grow closer to each other. Friends had made the School a place more than just learning from books.

I do not want to go into the details of the day in and day out of each happenings and incidnets. Nor do I want to make this a memoir for my school days. So thats it about the schooldays. Just wanted to get the feel into this writing that, for me, and also my friends, school had been more than just books and exams, and getting good scores in them. We had created relationships, and have grown together. We learnt together, we made mistakes together. We fell down when pushed by someone but found an arm extended towards us while getting back up. So it was all back then!

And back to now, rather a period of around a couple years back! When keeping touch meant a regular stream of mails, or scraps in orkut! Our relationships definitely continued beyond the school days, as we bunked classes together during college-days (different colleges of course, which required a lot of planning and logistics issues, no mobiles back then!!) to watch movies! Or celebrated our first jobs, upto our first kins.

But gradually now and then had somehow transformed into how and when! We started to lose conatct with other, as we got busy with our lives. We got so busy that not only we started to forget each other birthdays, but even started to postpone or even forget to reply to each other's mails.

Strangley, I had started off this confession with a 'We'. Confessions become easier when we have partners in crime! Definitely, each of us had a part to play in this careless non-communication business. Like all the others, I can definitely site some examples where I took some extra pains(?) and time to renew and revive the group. But that is not accepted. Actually, we had taken each other so much for granted, that we really did not care about this, we felt that we are there for each other for ever. But, things like that happen only on fairytales!

So, friends are the ones, who are always taken for granted, yet are always there for you. Life is a fairytale afterall, when you have friends around you. It only needs a small mail to be dropped or a brief 'Hello' over the phone every once in a while to revive, rekindle, sustain and perpetuate the relationship. How and when? Well, its easy, every now and then!