“Though we not been in touch for over a decade
We have been together for over four decades.
We are bound together forever,
Your moving on leaves an empty space in me”
Andrew and I met in XI th standard in St. Xavier’s College (SXC), Mumbai in 1977. He and I were in the same class in junior college. He went on to study medicine in CMC Vellore and I stayed back to complete my education at St. Xavier’s College in Math & Stats. We kept in touch till mid 2000s via letters (snail mail). We had a lot of common interests and voracious readers and grew up together to be the adults.
********** Thespians *****************
Andrew and I were thespians in SXC. We both acted together and also worked on stage sets, lighting, and directing in various plays. We had a lot of fun doing all this and hanging out together. We discussed various perspectives until we exhausted ourselves.
We shared the stage and worked with Shiv and Kenny in SXC and also in Mood Indigo. One play specifically where I was in charge of the sets which was a coal mine; Andrew and I spent a lot of time late in the night setting up our stage with Shiv, Kenny and Tarang (another thespian). Shiv (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiv_Kumar_Subramaniam) and Kenny (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1199163/) became professionals in bollwood and Mumbai stage, while Andrew and I continued our passion as we moved out of SXC.
We tried out various readings of plays, poems with various tones and emphasis to understand the writer’s anguish in penning these words.
***** Reading books *************
Andrew and I loved to read all kinds of articles, books, poems, plays etc. He was a Hemingway fan and I was a Maugham fan. We would share our books and discuss each book and story well into late night while hanging out each other’s house or near the sea in Mumbai. We also liked to read pulp fiction and visited the book stalls in Flora Fountain and Churchgate.
He introduced me to SciFi books as I felt they were more fiction rather than scientific. [My father was a physicist and made it clear that most of them are not possible in the realm of physical laws.]. Even today, when I read a sci-fi book or story or watch a movie, I think of Andrew as he introduced me to Asimov, Le Guin, and others. So much so, that while I was in grad school I bought anthology of sci-fi stories by various authors.
Andrew contracted jaundice and was in the hospital. While he read ‘War and Peace’ by Tolstoy; I read ‘Gone with the Wind’ . Both books are tomes and not easy to read or complete in a continuous way. However, we learned we had the patience and later on we read ‘Anna Karenina’ , ‘Crime and Punishment’, Shakespeare, poems by various poets and discussed at length our interpretation of it.
While in college, we were silly enough that we made parody songs and poems of the originals by famed lyricists and poets. It came so much so that we together wrote ‘Alice in Blunderland’ – a take of Alice in Wonderland and nothing to do with it. We mixed characters from ‘Through the looking glass’ into our “book” and wrote mock poems on Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
It was fun writing it over chai in Irani restaurants. We always spent more money than our allowance and had to walk home from SXC.
******** Studying *********
Andrew and I would study anywhere and quiz each other and help each other out in understanding the concepts in physics, chemistry and biology. We would test each other on our knowledge in these subjects and math. We did HW in college together.
We also had a lot of fun and got into trouble with the French teacher as four of us started singing a mock song from a Bollywood hit teasing her when she walked in on us. She suspended us for a 2 days. The song was ‘Hey Joshua, kya hua? Kab hua? Kaise hua ?…. ‘. Joshua was the teacher’s name and she was pregnant and although the class enjoyed the song, she did not.
One time, along with Bomi, we wanted to do a fresh start in getting better grades. So we put all our old assignments and test papers in a dustbin and then lit it with a match in the classroom (after all the classes). Unfortunately, for us the fire could not be contained and the janitor and cleaners walked in and apprehended us and marched us to the Principal Periera’s office. [They put out the fire and then took us to principal]. The principal got the full story from us and told us next time we do such things, he wants us to do it outside and invite him as he will announce it to the college so others could join us to make a fresh start. These childhood antics are what made us adults.
Along with Principal Periera and other staff members; we organized a weekend seminar with Meher – “Bridging the communication gap between students and teachers” in Kandala. It was something that made us grow out of our comfort zone as we had to organize everything from getting the place to stay, to pick out how the topics for the weekend, make a time table for activities etc. We even went in to Khandala before the full team reached to set up stuff in the villa (SXC).
“With you gone, my childhood is fading.
And mortality has come to roost within me. ”
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