Of Coffee beans, Crystal Balls and Clairvoyance

Enough of flashbacks, rewinds and the sentimental down memory lane stuff.

Time to push the fast forward button >>

December 2008.

The great re-union has finally materialized. Somehow, Alpana, Aashu, Faiyaz, Nargis, Sarita, Stanely, Vimal, Vinita and a host of others have managed the impossible- getting time for themselves and time from the busiest people ever to adore the planet earth.

The sand-dunes partly hide the view of the sea. The full moon is partly visible flirting amidst fleeting clouds. The sea - now angry, now mellow, now noisy and now calm - faithfully keeps unleashing her love and lust for the shores. A bonfire crackles merrily. The flow of thoughts competes with the flow of Wine, Champagne, Nimboo Paani and Kadak Chai. Pizzas and Pakoras, Chilly Chicken and Chenna Podo juxtapose randomly on this Tandoori Night as East meets West in the great SVC melting pot.

Peels of laughter are punctuated with short soul searching silences as SVC'ians pause to retrieve data from memory banks. An incident is recollected, a joke is cracked and it is promptly greeted with contagious laughter. Faiyaz, ever quick on the draw, re-phrases and re-cracks the joke and again there are squeals of joy and laughter. In the distance the sound of the waves, lashing on the shore, evoke long forgotten incidents retrieved from the innermost recesses of the mind. The joy goes deep into the night. Here is how it went:

ACT I: SCENE I

Naresh: Did we bring the ice-box?

Arun: Yes, but I forgot the soda.

Naresh: Do not worry my friend, for the sake of this lusciously lucid bandwagon of burgeoning bloggers who have come out of their clogged and cacophonic metros, I will drive down to Gopalpur and get it in a jiffy.

There is a flash and a click as Vimal shoots from his Nikkon SLR- for posterity to pause and ponder the beauty of the present that is pre-destined to become the past.

Stanely (with a concern in his voice): You will drive now?

Naresh: Worry not my good companion. Smooth shall be the drive as the wheels are made of steel alloyed with aluminum and mixed with nickel, coated with zinc heated to 450 degrees and cooled to minus 25 degrees in a flash, dipped in niobium and passed through 363 stringent quality tests and rolled out from our factory. Then…

Stanely: Ok..Ok make haste.

Naresh departs. While Vimal, enamoured by his silhouette against the full moon, clicks his receding persona for posterity to pause and ponder.

Faiyaz to Stanely (aside): Look what you have done to Arun.

Stanely: Wasssup?

Faiyaz: He has a bag full of gift wrapped pebbles and is busy distributing it to everybody.

Stanely: Yeah, I know. Every time I bump into him he shakes my hand and gives me a pebble. He has already given me three and I don’t know how to dispose them off without hurting him.

Nargis: Stan you should be careful about what you write on the blog. I already have four pebbles and I have also forgotten my purse, dunno where to keep them.

Faiyaz (with a brotherly concern): Bury them in the sand.

Nargis: And what if Stanely blogs about small round malignant tumors buried in the sands of time?

Faiyaz: “Tumor” is fine but “Two-more” of these I will not stand.

Elsewhere, Alpana and Sarita meet and amidst squeals of how are you hug each other. Alpana comments on Sarita’s never-say-fade beauty. Sarita says something equally flattering about Alpana’s slimness. Aashu joins them.

Aashu: Saritaa!!!!!!!!!! You look so pretty in real life,,,,,,,,,,,, What’s your beauty secret ?????????

Alpana: Sarita, you are my best friend.

Vimal appears from no-where and introduces Reena in a flourish to them and there is an awkward silence. While Stanely comes to the rescue, Vimal clicks one for posterity….

Stanely: Reena let me introduce myself. I am the senior most member of this group and I was the first person to pass out of St. Vincents. Tell me about US. Did you support the Democrats or the Republicans?.......

Alpana to Sarita ( aside) : Now Vimal was rude wasn’t he. Can’t I have two best friends?

Sarita: In sooth, I know not what to say.

Naresh: Of course you can. In this chimerical world, where the state of hallucinated lucidity is preferable to mute stupefaction, friendship is the fire that engulfs all. It singes those who come too near but warms those who keep a dynamic distance. Why two? you can have three best friends. Mr. Wren and Martin along with Queen’s English be damned! For thee O gracious lady, grammar can be bent obtusely to permit you for the same and they can be called best, bester and bestest friends all wedded together in the family of the best.

Enter Tasneem. She spreads sweetness with home-made chenna podo pittha.

Louis: Arun, your romance with railways actually should have been titled as Passions of Platform. I mean, come on, there was so little about the romance of the journey. It was all about the station.

Arun agrees and gives him three pebbles.

Shankar meets Arun and after all these years says, “I have a three year old black labrador”

Arun does not know what to say but has the presence of mind of giving him four gift wrapped pebbles.

Vimal clicks for posterity and asks Shankar to find the whereabouts of Afshan and Gita Kar.

Vinita enters in a flourish. Naresh enquires as to why she is late and finds out with glee that the car in which she came did not have his alloy wheels and hence the breakdown en-route.

As Vimal clicks, Vinita goes on to enlighten us about the perils of global warming, de-forestation, displaced farmers, land-grabbing by industries and her RTI petition on the Government’s budget allocation for banning polythene and plastics. Everybody is impressed and for a change even Faiyaz doesn’t know which word to choose for a pun. The atmosphere is very serious. After all, the world would come to an end very soon. SVC’ians even look towards the bonfire with a feeling of guilt for having contributed to Global warming.

Arun takes out six pebbles and solemnly hands it over to Vinita. Tasneem spreads the sweetness with chenna podo pittha. The mood is broken with the entry of Hilu and he explains his late arrival thus:

Hilu: From LA I landed in Delhi but did not want to catch a flight to BBSR. Cuttack and BBSR give me the jitters and depress me. So I flew to Hyderabad, caught a flight to Vizag hopped on to Madras-Howrah Mail which was late by a few hours and phew! I am here finally.

Impressed with his steadfast hatred for Cuttack, Arun gives him five pebbles.

Suddenly, somewhere, something snapped. The burden of carrying the pebbles begins interfering with the convenience of the present. People lose their patience and everyone throws pebbles at the "pebble thrower." Arun flees but encounters boulders rolling towards him. It’s Vimal who is rolling them and shouting, “It’s not pebbles any longer its boulders”.

A boulder crashes into Arun who blacks out. The last thing he remembers is Faiyaz saying something about not to dar when hit by a boulder, Ashu saying what happened ???????????? Vimal clicking, people laughing and Tasneem spreading the sweetness with chenna podo pitha…....

And when he gets up it is 2025 AD

ACT II: SCENE ONE

My frail body aches as I walk towards the lap top. My grandchildren who play ten-ten cricket with gusto are discussing about how the five-five cricket will revolutionize the world. Ignoring them I log on to the blog.

Tasneem has probably sent a pix of an Indian prancing on the moon and everybody has commented on how proud they are. I and Nargis can only presume because on our computers we only see a blank white frame!

Faiyaz has blogged a pix. He is on top of the world’s tallest hotel with a Patiala sign trying to get the moon between his fingers.

Naresh is happy. Hummer Mark VII has been launched and we stand enlightened on the fact as to which Company has bagged the order for the wheels.

Alpana has just come back after a hiatus. She wants everybody to meet.

Aashu immediately says: “Yes,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Let’s meet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sarita dittos.

Vinita by now is the editor of Intelligent Pune with ten editions all over the country. Extremely busy she blogs- let’s meet in Pune.

Vimal is still searching for Javed, Joydeep, Debashis, Henry, Bhabani, Afshan and Gita Kar.

Santa is offering complimentary tickets for the Spice Girls show at Hyderabad. Venu is ready for it.

Kaustubh’s son has blogged the picture of a lifetime. The young man is admiring his grey haired parents sitting on the same bench he had stood 17 years back as a toddler. He further writes, “The handsome young boy in the extreme left is me”. Since he is dotingly looking at his parents and not the camera we are unable to see the reality but in our hearts we believe it is true.

After all the heart sees what eyes can never.

All’s well with the world I think as I walk slowly towards my rocking chair. The sound of a distant train blowing its horn wafts through evoking memories of a bygone era. I keep looking at the distant hills of Mussorie -Waiting….Waiting… Waiting……Waiting for Godot….

Godot will come.
Godot has to come.
Godot never misses his date.

It’s curtains.