by Anil Chawla
Summer holidays were to start immediately after the exam. Sri had taken up a summer project and was to stay back in campus during the break. The other Pandavas, including Kalpu, were to take evening trains back to their respective homes. As they were saying their goodbyes, Kalpu announced that Sri would go to the station to see her off. The other three were surprised because they always made the trip to the station on their own and at separate times. At first, they made fun of Sri, but then they decided that he’d see off all the others as well. Luckily for Sri, all their trains were scheduled to depart within a span of two hours. They all decided to go to the station early.
On the way, Kalpu asked Sri how he would spend his time during the holidays. ‘Focus on the project and revise maths and statistics,’ Sri replied studiously. Kalpu was clearly disappointed; she had hoped for an answer that involved her. When the train started to chug, Kalpu whispered to Sri, ‘You can be sure that there will be a surprise package for you very soon.’ Sri kept asking what she meant, but Kalpu didn’t reveal anything. As the train picked up speed, she kept her eyes on Sri for as long as she could see him. For the first time, going home on a term break didn’t seem exciting.
Everybody at home was waiting for her eagerly. Her mother had kept all her favourite foods ready. Her father welcomed her with a big hug. Her brother told her he’d been taking good care of her Bullet. Kalpu tried to act as normal as possible.
That night, her mother came to her room and began fiddling with things aimlessly. Suddenly, she asked, ‘How are you? Is everything all right?’
Without meeting her mother’s eyes, Kalpu said, ‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think so. You have been so quiet, as if your mind is somewhere else. I’m your mother, I can spot these things in seconds.’
‘Actually, there are a lot of pending assignments and readings to be completed,’ said Kalpu. Her mother assured her that nobody would disturb her and she could study peacefully.
‘I need to refer to books and journals in the library at the institute,’ said Kalpu.
After some thought, Sadhanaben said, ‘Spend two or three days with us. Then go to the institute, finish your pending work, and return at your convenience.’ And she left the room.
Kalpu felt guilty about lying to her mother. She had always had the liberty and the courage to speak the truth—to her parents, friends, relatives, fellow students. Why had she not done so today?
She went to bed with a weight on her conscience and was unable to sleep for hours. Well past midnight, she decided that she would tell her mother the truth in the morning. This brought her some relief and she was able to sleep.
The next morning, she got up late and lazed around for a bit. It was just before lunchtime that she found her mother free and asked to speak to her in private. They went to Kalpu’s room. Kalpu confessed that she had lied and apologized. Then she told her mother why she wanted to go back—for the sole purpose of meeting Sri. Kalpu’s honesty touched her mother who hugged her warmly and asked, ‘Do you love that boy?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a strange feeling I can’t describe.’
There was a long silence in the room. Then Sadhanaben said, ‘Look, Kalpu, I have full confidence in you and your ability to handle situations. I think it’s absolutely fine if you want to return to the institute for a few days. But you should tell your father as well.’ Kalpu agreed. That evening, she confided her situation to him. Vinodbhai echoed his wife’s sentiments.
Kalpu knew her parents trusted her, but she felt a great sense of pride and relief to see how much. She also felt a stronger sense of responsibility. She was much more calm and composed.
She stayed at home for a week and enjoyed every bit of adulation and love from her family. The next Monday, she took an early train from Vadodara to Surat and reached the campus late in the morning. It was deserted. Her room was dusty. After a quick round of cleaning, she freshened up and went to the boys’ dormitory. She did not use perfume, which was unusual for her.
Sri’s room was not locked; he was inside. She lightly pushed the door and found it open. As she stepped in quietly, there was no movement in the room. Sri’s tall frame, sitting on a chair with both elbows on the study table, stayed still—he was so engrossed in reading that he hadn’t heard her come in. Softly, she walked towards his chair and then she was right behind him. Perhaps her shadow had reduced the light on his book; he moved a bit. Quickly, Kalpu covered his eyes with both her hands like a child. Sri was rattled as he had not even imagined the presence of another soul in the room. He gave such a loud yelp that Kalpu had to let go, worried that somebody would hear the shouting, come over and find her there. It was foolish to worry as the hostel was vacant and Sri was the only person staying there. Sri had stood up facing her. His expression was one of utter bewilderment. Kalpu stared at him unblinkingly for half a minute, and then hugged him. As she held him close, she felt the tension of the last few days evaporate. And then, Sri’s fingers were on her back and running through her hair. They stood like that for an endless moment and Kalpu had almost forgotten the world when Sri whispered in her ear, ‘Is this the surprise package you’d promised?’
She answered with a question, ‘How is my surprise package?’
Sri held her face between his hands and asked, ‘What did you tell your parents?’
‘The truth. They know I’ve come here to meet you. Stop questioning me like a policeman.’ She looked at him with a twinkle in her eye. ‘I think I’ll kiss you.’
For Kalpu, passion was running high and she was hoping that would encourage Sri. Instead, he said gravely, ‘This is infatuation. I know you’re a bold girl. But we must understand each other first before we…’
Kalpu interrupted him, saying impetuously, ‘I don’t care. I missed you so much and came back all the way only for you.’ Then she closed her eyes and reached up for a kiss.
She felt his warm breath and then the tender touch of his lips on her forehead. He tightened his hold on her body, and then tapped her back and gently said, ‘Let us stop here.’
There was a sense of assurance, protection and care in his voice.
Kalpu’s grip on Sri loosened a bit but she still held him close, passion transforming into a new feeling which she could not put into words.
After some time, Sri suggested they step out for a cup of tea. As they were walking towards the small tea shop, they realized that there were still a few students in the campus, who were giving them odd looks. One of their juniors came up to ask Kalpu if she hadn’t gone home for the summer. With a straight face, Kalpu replied that she’d been very bored at home, so she’d decided to come back. The moment that junior vanished from their sight and hearing, Kalpu and Sri burst into peals of laughter.
They came back to Sri’s room after tea. Kalpu wanted to cuddle but Sri showed restraint. After some time, Kalpu realized that his restraint showed his maturity rather than his naiveté. She suggested that they go out for lunch and then see a film together. Sri readily agreed. They spent the whole day together. At 10 in the night, Sri convinced Kalpu to return to her room. She agreed reluctantly.
Lying in her bed, she kept thinking about Sri and her crush— or whatever it was she was feeling. A part of her was really enjoying the fascination, and encouraging it, whereas the more rational part of her was inclined to brush it aside. The mystery she was not able to solve was: why now? They had been friends for almost three years.
She remembered she’d promised to call her parents every day. The next morning, she rang her mother from a PCO and told her what had happened the previous day. She felt relieved after that.
Sri and Kalpu spent the next few days wandering together companionably. They drank many cups of tea, both in his room and outside, went for many lunches and dinners and snacks, watched many films, and finally separated at night only to crash into their beds. Gradually, the rational part of Kalpu started to play a bigger role in her relationship with Sri. She became much more in charge of her faculties.
After a few days, she told Sri that she planned to go back to Vadodara the next morning.
‘That will be excellent,’ said Sri. ‘I’m sure your mother and father are worried about you.’
‘And what about you? Will you miss me or not?’ asked Kalpu.
‘Of course, I will. I will seriously miss you,’ said Sri.
Kalpu smiled and put her hand on Sri’s chest. ‘So, is there a heart in there?’
Sri responded with a big nod but cautioned, ‘In matters of the heart, I let my head take the first few calls and only after that do I let the heart take charge. And it’s important for both of us to first focus on our careers. As we make progress in our professions, and as we spend longer times apart, our relationship will be tested for how true and intense it really is.’
Sri’s words were to reverberate in Kalpu’s mind many times in the years to come.
The next morning, Sri came to the station to see her off. At home, Kalpu told her parents how she’d spent her time and how she was much more at peace with herself now. They were relieved. The remaining days of her vacation passed as they always had.
***
It was Kalpu’s day to be lost in memories. Once again, it was Neel who brought her to the present, holding her ringing phone to her ear. By the time she answered, the ringing had stopped. It had been Goky who called, she saw, and called him back.
‘Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you,’ said Goky. He went on, ‘We’ve finally decided where to have the next Rewind_Rendezvous. It’s Trichy. Now I need everyone’s dates to firm up the plan.’ Kalpu was excited to hear about Trichy and the opportunity to go to India. She said yes right away, and promptly suggested a few dates. Goky checked with the others and soon froze one.
Three weeks later, Kalpu and Neel were on a flight to India.
Rewind_Rendezvous@21MakeItSimple
Venue: LEC Trichy
It was after many years that the Pandavas had gathered together and this time, the chief organizer was Sri. There was a sprawling campus guest-house at LEC Trichy, which had been booked for the meet. The guest list was long: Goky, Varsha, Manav, and Manavi; Pantu, Bubbly, Simmi, and Ronit; Sammy, Roma, Koel, and Sameer; Kalpu and Neel.
Sri had arranged for the children be put up close to each other. Very soon, they got busy playing and exploring the campus, not too worried about their parents’ whereabouts.
In the evening, the Pandavas regrouped over cocktails and dinner. While there was still the excitement of meeting, this time after almost twelve years, the environment was quite different from their last meeting in Goa—for many reasons. All except Sri had children who were growing up fast. Life’s experiences had induced some amount of sobriety in all but Pantu. The display of youthful exuberance was muted. Kalpu’s recent divorce was fresh in everyone’s minds.
As they recounted their journey of more than a decade, there was a sense of having reached a plateau in life.
The greatest change was in Sammy. Years of professional stress, long working hours, extensive travelling, inadequate rest, and little time with family and friends had started taking its toll on him. With his thick black hair greying and receding, he looked older than his age. Even here at the reunion, he could not relax. He checked his phone frequently and seemed unable to let calls go unanswered. Tension did not leave his face for even a few minutes at a stretch. His friends’ attempts to draw him out went in vain. A distance seemed to have come up between Sammy and the others. Roma was different too. While Sammy had been busy with his career, she had been taking care of the home almost single-handedly. The two spoke with one another in monosyllables. The always honeymooning couple had become strangers to each other. The common thread was their love for Koel and Sameer, who were growing up as rather quiet children.
On the other hand, Goky and Varsha were their old selves. Goky admitted that he’d allowed his workaholic habits to go too far for a while. Then a cathartic visit to his hometown had made him reflect on life, and he had dialled back. Manav and Manavi were chirpy kids who kept everybody in good humour.
Pantu and Bubbly were gregarious as usual, and both had put on some weight. For Pantu, this was a drop in the ocean. Their liveliness seemed hereditary, and Simmi and Ronit were synonymous with laugh riots.
Life had brought Kalpu face-to-face with some tough realities and she had mellowed down, but only a bit. Neel was getting used to his father’s absence, and was a shy but enthusiastic child.
Sri was as cool, calm, and collected as always.
The general conversation was more on a philosophical plane this time as they’d all gone through many ups and downs in life.
They finished their dinner a bit late but decided to go for a stroll in the grounds. Pantu sought everybody’s attention to declare, ‘I’ve started a new initiative to support five children from the weaker sections of society and those attending government schools. It’s all through an NGO. We cover all expenses for the children’s education and upbringing.’ Goky and Sammy made on-the-spot donations. The others showed interest too.
As they were retiring to their rooms, Sri warned everybody that he was going to wake them up early in the morning for a walk. Only Kalpu actually got up. As Kalpu and Sri were walking in the campus, she noticed a bunch of cycles outside the guest-house. Kalpu impulsively climbed one. ‘This is a green campus. Can you ride a bicycle?’
To her surprise, Sri said he did, having learned how to a couple of years ago.
Kalpu looked disappointed at this response. Sri was confused and looked at her curiously. Kalpu said with a tinge of regret, ‘If you didn’t, I’d have given you a ride.’
Sri replied, ‘This time, I’ll give you one.’
Her eyes searched his face, and there was a long silence which did not seem to end.
It was broken by Sri’s words. ‘I love you.’
Kalpu got off the cycle, came close to him and said softly, ‘And it took you more than twenty years to say three little words?’
The Long Flight Back
The land-line in Goky’s house was ringing non-stop. Goky and Varsha were fast asleep and couldn’t hear it. After it had rung several times, Manavi, who’d been studying in her room, walked into the living room in frustration and picked up the receiver. She was irritated at the lateness of the call, but her demeanour and facial expression changed the moment she answered the phone. She managed to say, ‘Yes, yes, Uncle, I’ll get Papa right now’, before rushing into her parents’ bedroom. She didn’t bother to knock and shook her father vigorously. Goky had gone to bed late, and looked up hazily, but the urgency on his daughter’s face woke him up immediately. She was repeating two words over and over: ‘Sammy Uncle, Sammy Uncle’. Then she pointed to the living room. Goky rushed to it and grabbed the receiver. Sri was on the line. Goky listened attentively, and each moment brought deeper lines of sorrow to his face. When he spoke, he was almost choking. He croaked, ‘I’ll start right away,’ and then hung up.
This commotion had roused Varsha as well. In a daze, she asked Goky what was going on. It took him a few moments to calm himself a little. ‘Sri called,’ he finally managed to say. ‘Sammy—he’s—Sammy’s dead.’ With some effort, Goky stepped out of the room, opened the front door, and went to the porch. He stood silently, looking into the distance, empty-eyed. He felt Varsha’s soft touch on his shoulder. As she stood by his side, she examined Goky’s face. Goky tried to stay calm but they had been married a long time and she could tell he was fighting his emotions. Life’s grind had toughened Goky but he was struggling not to be overwhelmed by the news.
After a few minutes, she said, ‘I’ll get your bag ready,’ squeezed his shoulder and turned to leave when Goky pulled her back, brought her hand close to his face, and started sobbing. In between sobs, he muttered, ‘I knew something wasn’t right. There were signals that STM was under a cloud. And you saw how stressed he looked at the reunion.’
An hour later, Goky was on his way to the airport. The travel desk at hi
s office had been able to book a ticket on the first available flight to Mumbai. Deep in thought, he was recollecting his last one-on-one meeting with Sammy in Mumbai, when STM had received the top award for corporate governance. Goky was staying at the Taj and Sammy came over. They were sitting in Goky’s suite talking about how life was treating them, when Sammy said sombrely, ‘Don’t know how it’ll end.’ When Goky probed further, Sammy was evasive. To lighten the atmosphere, Goky teased Sammy about the award. ‘Is it weighing too heavy?’
Sammy answered in all seriousness, ‘Yes, very heavy.’ And then he muttered that he was sick of it all.
When Goky kept asking questions, Sammy made a vague reference to ‘accounting stuff’ and then went quiet. Goky didn’t pursue the matter further; he didn’t want to pressure Sammy into disclosing anything confidential. They were, after all, from rival companies.
He was jolted when the taxi came to a halt at the departure gate. He paid, took his luggage and walked inside. He looked at his phone and saw more than twenty missed calls—from Sri, Kalpu, Pantu, his brother, and several acquaintances in Mumbai. They’d been trying to contact him, and having failed to get him on his mobile, had dialled the land-line. He saw a few Facebook alerts and clicked without thinking. The first item he saw was a news headline: ‘Paul Samuel, COO of STM, commits suicide’.
Sammy’s ascent to the top had parallels to the emergence of the IT industry itself. Both read more like fables than reality. He was one of the leading flag-bearers of India’s IT industry—an industry that had made the world take notice of India like no other ever had. From almost nothing three or four decades ago, it had metamorphosed to a 120-billiondollar industry. It’d shown a compounded annual growth rate exceeding 25 per cent in the last two decades. Intermittently, there were signs of fatigue, but newer business models and ways of delivering solutions to clients brought in renewed interest, and the IT landscape looked quite exciting. As the industry evolved, and particularly in the late nineties, when Y2K was a burning problem for companies across the globe, it brought unexpected riches to youngsters who had hopped on the IT bandwagon. The telecom revolution happening then was perhaps the most important enabler in making the world smaller, and teams stationed across continents could work together seamlessly. As demand always exceeded supply by a fair margin, the bargaining power lay with employees. Being an export-focused industry, the dollarto-rupee conversion factor was a key attraction for people joining IT. A virgin and almost unexplored market meant that whoever made the first move had an advantage.
