A Bowl of Elusive

Mirza joined college in the summer of '08. As is usual for freshers, he soon found friends, other misfits and rebels like him. Praveer was one of those friends. Tall, lanky and sometimes awkward, Praveer was a talkative and charismatic young man. And he got along well with Mirza. Praveer and Mirza later ended up as roommates at Indira Niwas, but this story was from a time before that. Male bonding can be interesting to encounter, especially because guys are usually so uniquely messed up in the heads and mingle in such funny patterns. The first year of college was all about finding their footing for Praveer & Mirza. It was a time for their individual personalities to clash and gel with those of their classmates and their seniors, who by the way were no less interesting than our protagonists. Meet Himanshu, Vivek Pratap, Arshad & Deepak, the seniors inhabiting 4 adjacent rooms in the boy's hostel. They were sassy and intimidating, and eventually became role mo

In one of my earlier posts, I had revealed that I suffer from a condition called Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It’s a very common mental disorder where the patient experiences severe, ongoing anxiety that interferes with daily activities. Now I have spoken about it to many of my friends and acquaintances and the usual reactions are on the line of “try-to-calm-down” or “relax-its-all-in-your-mind”. What people fail to understand is the extreme nature of stress that I experience. EVERYTHING STRESSES ME OUT. WebMD says “Generalized Anxiety Disorder (or GAD) is characterized by excessive, exaggerated anxiety and worry about everyday life events with no obvious reasons for worry. People with GAD tend to always expect disaster and can’t stop worrying about health, money, family and work. The worry is often unrealistic or out of proportion for the situation. Daily life becomes a constant state of worry, fear and dread. Eventually the anxiety so dominates the person’s thinking that it

Preface: Mirza is a fictionalized and combined version of the several fascinating people I've met in my 28 odd years on this strange planet. I will be recounting various stories like this one, some weirder than others and I'm gonna call it the Mirza chronicles. Mirza was, for the lack of a better expression, “a regular Joe”. The only distinguishing feature about him was his height and build. But he kind of cancelled those features out with his meek demeanor, if you know what I mean. At that time, Mirza was staying with his friends at Indira Niwas, which was at a walking distance from Vista Do Rio, the hotel where he was carrying out his summer internship. Indira Niwas is a legendary house and this is one of the many stories associated with the place. Mirza was a teetotaler, striking a stark contrast to his housemates who were habitual drinkers and dopers. But they got along well and that’s all that mattered. In the winter of ’09, Mirza was working night shift at

Timing always seemed to be a problem for Jay and Sunayana. I left off the last part of this story ( link  here) with Jay having left Sunayana a mail inviting her to have a conversation. As luck would have it, Jay’s mail went straight to her Quarantined folder, as it was her work mail and her company had a rather strong filter for outside emails. Sunayana found the mail when she was reviewing the Quarantine folder a few months later. She didn’t know what to feel about it. Jay seemed to knock on her door at very strategic times. She had just broken up with a guy from work and finding this mail felt like a sign. She decided to call back. Her call couldn’t have come at a worse time. Jay was actually on a date when he got her call. It was an unknown number which he picked up, assuming it might be from a client. His heart stopped beating when he heard her voice, like literally. He gasped for breath and excused himself from his gorgeous Tinder date to go to the men’s room. He had t

It all started for me a few days ago when I added Raw Pressery’s Sugarcane juice to my shopping cart on Big Basket. It was slightly expensive than all the juices out there, but that didn’t matter to me as it was an impulsive buy. I like to sample new products every now and then. Well, the tall bottle of juice was chilled and sweating when it arrived. That’s usually a good thing with juices. You see if a brand it making an effort to transport a juice in a refrigerated environment, it usually means their product does not have preservatives. Well, I tried it and it was really good. It was a flavor of juice which isn’t commonly bottled by companies. And having it at the roadside thelewala , while refreshing can be a health hazard at times. And the bottle was new and well designed. The cylindrical thick ribbed bottle stood out from the rest. All in all, it left a good impression. So the next time I was surfing Big Basket, I searched for Raw Pressery. I found that they were selling a

This is a sequel to my earlier post, "Jay & Sunayana: A Love Story". For all those who haven't read part that, here's the link  for you. It's a small article and won't take up a lot of your time. And it will give you some context here. Many might relate to my protagonist here. So read on, once you're all caught up with the first part. Jay and Sunayana had broken up a year after high school and it wasn't pretty. They had a whole falling out, what with her avoiding him for a while and then confessing to seeing someone else. He wasn't perfect either, he'd charmed a few girls too in the time when Sunayana had been giving him the cold shoulder, nothing serious though. Anyway, so when Sunayana told him they were done, his first reaction was denial and anger. He could totally understand why she had blocked him from all social media sites. Smart move, as anyone who knew Jay would tell you that he could be really unpredictable at times. An

I have always found it difficult to make friends. Normal day to day interactions make me nervous. And yet, I’m often perceived as very confident and outgoing. Welcome to my world where opposites co-exist. I laugh & I smile. And I find it tedious. You see, I grew up in an unconventional setup; no parents; no siblings; raised by grandparents. And at one point of my life, I was an abuse victim. Mix all that up and you have a recipe for either a socially awkward guy or a psychopath. Thank God I am the former. (Still haven’t ruled out the latter.) For a large part of my life, I have been perceived as “weird”. When I was in school, I was widely unpopular for no apparent reason. I was most nice to people but they’d ridicule me or not talk to me at all. I kept trying to get into people’s good books for a while, but when that didn’t work, I gave up. I started getting into little tiffs with people who wouldn’t accept me. But I haven’t been the violent or disruptive type so my tiffs w