The Beautiful Strangers

This post is pending for very very very long. I should have not written this post. I should have rather found those beautiful strangers and thanked them in person. But then, they won't remain that much of a stranger. Will they? So here are some stories from my life, when I met them for the first and the last time in life. The time, when those strangers were kind enough to do something that made them so beautiful forever, at least in my memories.

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Those were the beautiful days of teenage. I had just gained permission to watch a movie - ALONE. I ran to the nearest theater and to the earliest show. It was the matinee show of the newly released Kareeb at Sahu cinema. However, the movie and timing and place were all irrelevant. I reached the place some 20 minutes before the showtime. Excitement, you see. So as I sat in my seat somewhere in the middle of the hall, two young guys - 8-10 years older to me - sat next to me. I was looking around and observing people and so were the two guys. They were also in a great mood, looking around and making witty commentary. They caught me smiling at their jokes and we exchanged glances, smiles, and some words of niceties. That was all the introduction we had.

After a while, all the lights lit up and intermission flashed on the screen. The two guys ran out for something. I sat there only and looked around for a patty plus cold-drink guy - the matinee luxuries I had promised myself. However, the vendors were difficult to spot and call from the middle of the rows. The audience was back in the hall by now. The two guys were also back in their seats, with patties and cold-drinks. I sat patiently and promised myself that treat will come at the end of the movie.

Just then, the two guys had some eyes roll between themselves. One of them ran out of the hall again. I couldn't figure out why but well, I was more focused on trailers for now. In few seconds, the running guy was back with additional patty and cold-drink in his hands. For me. He handed it over to me with such brotherly authority that I couldn't refuse. With great hesitation, I tried paying them. And one of them told me, a little angrily - apne bade bhai ko bhi paise doge kya?!! I had a heavy heart and the greatest ever snack of my life. So great that even 25 years later, it is fresh in my heart! 

Perhaps there are more stories. Perhaps there are more beautiful strangers in my life. There are many more beautiful acquaintances. Some day, maybe, you will read their stories too!

Unbeing dead isn't being alive

So, like each year, this year's course of international trade ended in August. And, like each year, students asked if I will be offering more courses. And, like each year, I told them what all I can but I won't offer. But unlike each year, our conversations didn't fizzle out. Some students made a WhatsApp group and we continued our discussions on *life, the universe and everything* - from geopolitics to batch politics, from economic gap to generation gap, and from campus food to *the restaurant at the end of the universe*. 

And we were not limited to WhatsApp only. Like an old man, ^no one should be alone in their old age^, I thought. And hence, we met every once in a while. And as the boys were exhausted after the last CAT, we met on the following Monday. At my home. With Snacks. From Adda. And coffee. Home-made. And we had free-wheeling chat for, maybe, 3 hours. Or may, a decade. I don't know. But we talked a lot. Or rather, I talked a lot and the guys were sweet enough to tolerate me for mere samosas! 

Anyway, our discussions drifted from CAT and career prospects to culture at IIMs to country's culture! And perhaps many other things in between. And in that flow of discussions, someone asked - Why do some people drift away? In that moment, a thousand thoughts and a million memories whirled away through my mind. I answered him something. Perhaps something like - well, people grow apart. Sometimes, their use for each other comes to an end. Sometimes they get too busy in their new life. Sometimes, they want to get rid of their old life. Sometimes people burn the bridges. Sometimes their own "karma" burns those bridges. Sometimes, relationships are killed actively and sometimes it dies of that passive disinterest. 

Maybe I didn't say any of it. But I thought of it all. And then I thought of something even worse. You know, it is good that sometimes, people drift away. You know, it is worse that sometimes, the relationships die and yet, people do not drift away. We just keep walking with a dead relationship on our shoulders and keep dying each day with a dead relationship on our heads. Perhaps it is better to drift away than to die each day. And yet, here I am with so many of them.

P.S. - To make sense of * and ^, you may want to read, respectively,  The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy and The Old Man and The Sea.