My friend Yashu

Few days ago, before going out for dinner or lunch, or buying ticket for a movie I used to dial 8376, 8304, 8281, 8715, 8348, 8226, 8372 almost by reflex action.Before sending my pastime poetry or FWDing some not at all imporatnt stuff I used to type jaina-CTRL-K,huss-CTRL-K,aro-CTRL-K,jit-CTRL-K,dosh-CTRL-K,yash-CTRL-K.
I don't dial 8372 anymore. I don't type yash-CTRL-K anymore. Ya a bit of work reduced, certainly.

Reason: Yashu left the company last week.
Yashu was one of my first friends in Hyderabad. Of course, one of my best friends too.I first met this guy in Escape, the exotic pub of Hotel Green Park, in the welcome dinner hosted by our company for the new joinees, who were to make their debut next morning. I was one of the newbies. We were having who's who kinda stuff when Yashu who was just a nameless fair, middle height,cheeky smiling face then "hi"ed to me and started routine investigation. Now let me tell you this introduction thingy interests me very much. It basically reflects how your identity changes from time to time. I have a very weak memory. So I can't remember how I introduced myself to others or others to me when I first went to school at the age of four. Just using imagination the scene went like this.

One fair, short height, young "Miss" came, gave me a chocolate and asked "WHat's ur name,munna?"

Me:"goobloo." LOL..

Miss:"no no beta, good name??"

I babbled my GOOD name.

Of course she couldn't understand at the first attempt.

She asked me to repeat.. I repeated in the same manner..

She tried even harder to understand.

Probably she understood this time.

More probably she decided to figure it out on next day's roll call.

So without wasting her time she went on to next question ,"Where do you stay?"

Me:"near Milan Beethi Club,Sundarpara."

"You have any brother or sister?""

Ya, I have an elder sister."

"Ok, Good boy, sit down".
(The 'good boy' tag was from that time!Wow!)

When I grew up little more, I was sent to a boarding school. I was nine then. My school used to have (I think it still has) a tradition of welcoming new students by a formal function called "Naveen Varan"(Naveen - young; Varan - Welcome). This was a very interesting program and the auditorium used to be jam packed on the occasion. Every new student clad in dhoti punjabi would have to go to dias. And introduce himself to everybody. As part of introduction one should mention his name ,his native place,what he wants to be, which class he has admitted in and then will have to perform some extra curricular activity. It seems a trivial affair to you or even me now.But let me tell you, at that point of time that was first stage appearance of all of us and everybody was in tension. Not that you would be punished if you did some goof up; instead a lapse (you may not be even fully responsible for that) would only bring a roll of laughter in the audience and you would be famous from the next day!!!! But who wanted to be a laughing stock from the day one!

Anyway, for me everything went well. I didnt introduce me as Goobloo. And my address changed from Milan Beethi club to Santragachi,Howrah and so and so. And I didn't stumble in reciting the first four slokas from Geetha that I managed to memorize quite well..

Time goes on.. So I grew even more. Came to engineering college. And here I came to know that one's introduction consists exhaustively, mutually exclusively and precisely of name, department, place, hobby and something called "hawa". This last something is basically a desi version of AIR(All India Rank in the engineerng entrance exam).And let me tell you the people who take these "intro"s are not as busy as my Nursery School "Miss", so until and unless you
are perfect they wil be patient enough to hear your intro n number of times and will ask you to repeat from the beginning if you make slightest mistake.

Ohh, I am digressing from the topic too much.. Let me return to our welcome party when we were getting familiar to each other.. Here the courtsey question-set was roughly name, college, place, B.tech/M.Tech etc.. Moments after routine interrogation Yahsu, out of nothing asked me,"Do u have a girlfriend?" A pause. Now let me tell you, I have been asked the same question at different moment by different ppl of different category, but as far as my memory goes no one has asked me merely five minutes after knowing me. In fact if you were me, you could have probably thought it was one of those routine Intro questions. Anyway, I confess I was satrtled but at the same tim eno denying the fact that, that is one question that made my intro episode with Yashu memorable and gave me the opprotunity to badger this length...Another memorable thing of that party -- At the end of the party each of us was given a piece of paper and pen and was asked to guess the bill. And Neal, the big boss of our office declared the same amount will be deducted from his/her salary who was worst at guessing. Yashu, smart but at that moment a bit afraid of losing part of first month's salary devised a plan with me."Hey, we both will write the same number . In case we turn out to be the losers our burden would be halved." I was almost certain that Neal was joking, confident about my guessing ability ( I normally outplay my companions when I play guessing game while window shopping ;) ), but still didn't find any reason not to accede to this proposal. As a matter of fact our common guess was quite close to the actual figure.
I identified him as a hungry glutton from the day one itself . His train was a bit late that day . So he reached the hotel the moment we were leaving for dinner. Watching us going for dinner he joined us instantaneously even before shedding his luggage in the room. My reading was not quite wrong. From the next day I used to get antejentacular call from him as soon as the breakfast counter used to open. ;).. In fact one tangible thing that Yashu gained from Hyderabad, other than his nine month labouring experience here, is weight. I still remember quite vividly Yashu,the fatso, with his portruding tummy swimming in the Goa sea.
Not that Yashu wasn't concerned about that. So one fine afternoon he decided to go for jogging at KVR park with his roomie every Saturday afternoon. I am not sure why he abandoned the plan soon. May be KVR park lost its beauty certainly, may be Yashu was willing to have a better jogging partner. Hopefully Yashu will find a better park , and more importantly a better partner in Gurgaon...
There are "n number of" consequential, trivial, important , banal memories that are coming in my mind while I am pulling the string of my memory down the lane, though not in tranquility. But I am partly afraid that I ve already bored you people very much, partly feeling guilty for wasting too much time in Monday peak office hour.. So putting a full stop here for now.
After the break: Yahsu's birthday party, Yashu's prowess in vocals, witty Yashu in Mahabaleswar ......
Stay tuned if you are not too bored...