Nostalgia: Part 3

The most pristine memory of this guy about which i am goin to write dates back to 2001 ( no need to plunge deeep into the past ..it was just 4 years before ) when I met him for the first time. He was moping around with Guptaji.

He came to me and said ,"Hi, first year ??."

I reciprocated,"yup and you ?."

He shook his head in affirmation as if saying ,"me too."

Then as the process of introduction gathered momentum, I asked his name.

He pronounced,"pankaj." I strut out my heartly smile towards him and told ,"I know my name is pankaj. Tell me your name ."

He iterated ,"ya !! I am telling the same. pankaj is my name too."

" Wow !! what a coincidence !!", i told to myself. "Pankaj is talking to Pankaj" .

But a lot more coincidences were yet to be unveiled like he also belonged to the same place which i belonged. I dont want to go into all these similarities stuff but the sad ( for me ) part of these was I lost the very symbol of my existence..my name. Whenever someone refered to "Pankaj", he meant to refer this guy and not me. He robbed my identification ;( . Well ... I will take revenge. Since i am the writer, i will refer pankaj throughout the blog as "Phani", his pet name.

After that introduction on the first day, I used to spend a lot more time with phani to know him more and more. We used to wake up early in the morning ( early bole to 4:00 am ...wow !! now a days i go to sleep at 4:00 am ;) ) and after being fresh , we used to go to the lab-1 to do programming practice. We used to return to the mess for breakfast at around 8:00 am and then after having breakfast we used to go to the classes. After attending ALL the classes we used to do all sorts of BC with utkarsh, puspendra and parivesh.

Those were the days of HEALTHY INTRODUCTION with our seniors. I remember once when at around 3:00 am in the morning someone knocked on my door. Soporific me, opened the door and i was surprised to find phani on the door. I stretched my eyelids to get his expression clearly and what i saw was a smothered soul whose moist and pallid eyes were saying everything which he underwent entire last night. By now I guessed that he had too much of healthy interactions with our seniors whole night.

I asked him ,"what happend ?"

He replied, "Mat puchho yaar !! main barbaad ho gaya."

"Ahmm..what did u say ? have they harassed u physically ?", I asked with my mouth wide open.

He told,"nahin yaar !! lekin itni gandi gandi baatein bulwaayee hain ki main kahin ka nahin reha."

After listening to his words, I could not stop my cachinnation.I laughed and laughed hard. I thought how antithetical he was from the rest of the world and at that moment ,from the core of my heart i saluted his innocence.

There are lots of memoirs of him in my mind and i m presenting only a glimpse of it in this blog.

Once we ( phani and myself ) went to watch a movie RAAZ. Before watching this movie with him i never knew that phani was afraid of horror movies. Throughout the movie phani had his hands on his eyes and seeing his actions, one gentleman asked him,"kya bhai !! pahli baar movie dekhane aaye ho ?." After his comments, phani gave him a bloody stare as if saying stfu and at that moment , i pledged not to go to any movie with phani alone, in which even a tiger roars.

He was the first among our gang ( as far as i remember among our batch also he was the first ) to buy the PC. Also his PC troubled him a lot as everyday new problems used to evolve out of that idiot-box.I remember, watchin videos on his system was a very good time pass for us. But we pledged not to watch any movie on to his system. And i remember it was almost 3-4 months after he bought, we saw the first movie "COMPANY" on his system.

There was also a time when he was a die hard fan of Anil Kapoor. He couldnot hear anything against him.

Well, with the time everything has changed, phani also changed but the layer of innocence which was there on him four years back is still pristine today. He is a very sensible friend but at the same time he is also capable of hiting you with one of the worst senti possible. The only thing that irritates me about him is his underestimation of his self. I know what he is capable of doing but he himself doesnt know it or doesnot want to know it. Phani if u r reading it , i wanna say that just have faith in urself and you will see that the whole world will be at your feet.