The first blog

It's been almost three years, when I first tried my hands on blogging during my second term at IIMA. Soon after I left the whole blogging business and got busy again in the whole load of course work.
And yesterday, I found that long lost forgotten blog again. It was a surprise and a good one at that. There were only two posts and both full of nostalgia, even the title of the blog. With years passing by, the intensity of that nostalgia has definitely gone down but all that came rushing to me for once after reading this page.
By the way, that trip to Mumbai never took place and I went back home yet again to recuperate my operated toe.

26 January 2013

This is the date I had decided in 1999 after reading the story 'After Twenty Years' for all the friends to meet up. Yes, it wouldn't be twenty years but long enough to see us all meet our destiny. Somehow, the plan never took off.

This diwali, I tried organizing a get-together sort of reunion of the Lucknow University group - tried including all the friends who were in Lucknow at that time - 5 out of 12, and four of us finally joined. We sat for hours, chatted, discussed, teased, and shared. It was nice and nostalgic but at the same time, I couldn't help missing others too. Out of the missing, there is no news of two of us and two of us chose to connect selectively. Two are out of India and one was out of Lucknow.

Gunjan blew off the idea of 2013 reunion. He said that if he is a friend, he'll remain in touch and if not, he won't come anyways. I think he was right. Sometimes we have to let go and move on. There is hardly any sense in clinging to relations that aren't... and those that matter remain alive despite whatever.

There is this 1968 classic novel by Russell Braddon, titled When the Enemy Is Tired. Based on a prisoner-of-war's survival story, the novel subtly passes on the art of psychological battling. However, I'm recalling this novel today after reading over a year and a half ago because of one thought suddenly erupting inside my head.

In the novel, the protagonist, a military high-ranker, hesitates and fumbles in answering any question to anyone for one reason only - he was punitively taught in his childhood not to answer back any elder.

Somehow, someone somewhere sometime taught me something too - not to ask for anything. And just like the protagonist of that novel, who failed to answer the easiest of the questions due to a simple childhood preaching, I always fail to ask for anything. Now, perhaps, you'd know why I couldn't ask for your love ever.