To all the good times...and the rocking times... and the times to come...

At home and comfortable ….a very bad internet connection, an interfering brother constantly monitoring my internet access (now watching Karthikeyan chalking his first points), Bruno asking for constant attention (right now asleep) and I am all set at home….
And to think that it took only two hours for a transition from a hyderabadi life to a kolkata one….
Yesterday I would have sat and typed out some three pages of my last days in hyd… thanks to our great internet connection ….. one click and all of it vanished …spoof !! My genius brother promised me (in return for watching game videos) that he would retrieve it …(here my brother quips in: ….it seems me, the computer engineer had closed the window thus removing all such chances …)
There is something about blogging, knowing no-one will read all your gibberish and something quite different when you know someone will tune in …….:) to spell it out , I am conscious today ….. conscious about use of words and sentences ….like the way you are in front of people….you make a suitable rehearsal of what to say and what not to say and whom to say it to and whom not to say … and quite spoil the genuineness in you that way… well I am going to make a conscious effort not to stay conscious :)..
The first person I noticed on coming down the elevator of netaji subhas airport was Maa, then Baba…and behind them … standing quite a few inches taller than when I had seen him last, with a dark tan and an equally underweight weight and build was Tukan……
After some umpteen (actually three) trips to the luggage conveyor belt, I managed to get all my things in place. We reached our car, only to find the birds had probably found a very good resting place .. (if you get what I mean :) )…..
Three hours before that, I had been at the Begumpet airport, standing outside the gates with a boarding pass, some four hand luggages and with Vishnu, Shobs, Laks, Shalu and Anshuman. Rounds of "all the bests" and "take cares" … and I didn’t want to turn back and go in. But ofcourse there comes a single moment of separation .. the moment when you cross the line to the so called other side …and lives which were so long linked separate to go their own ways.
I can just see Vishnu with an OA page open in front of her, Shobs, Shalu and Laks busy typing away at work…Anshuman would probably not have reached office.. Saurabh would be nearly sleeping before the monitor (if in office) considering that he would have returned from bangalore today, Nanda would have reached office the earliest and must be working or watching the football replay J…. Deepu is supposed to be back today but he might have extended his leave. So see people… I know what all of you are doing J….(J does stand for joke doesn't it....I always meant to ask but forgot) ....and I ofcourse am typing on a Microsoft page (I should learn from my mistakes…) and will Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V a little later……
Nearly twelve to fourteen hours before that, Shalu, Laks, Shobs,Vishnu and me had been nearly rolling with laughter on the floor… it was 3 in the night and shobs had this brilliant idea of recording voices…. All our creative inspirations , from singing to mock ads came tumbling out … we sang “pehla nasha” beautifully synchronized, and “aae kaash ke hum” equally awfully out of tune…. Vishnu solo –“Kaal nahi tha woh kya hai ..” in tamil…. And then there were “Tata Indica ….dishoom dishoom”, and “Green plywood-swaami savitri ” which became “Maruti Indica” and “greenwood”…. All this punctuated by our brilliantly engineered comments which … from literally sleep drunk mouths, sounded quite different from what they were supposed to mean…. J
The previous day, I had had lunch with Shobs, Vishnu and Radha at Indulge. After which, Vishnu coerced me into going back to office. So I landed up on the south wing, fourth floor…waiting for Vishnu to go in and get my slam book. Vishnu came back with reports of Saurabh and Anshuman’s sprained knees …and that I had to come inside...as they could not move from their seats.....
And I landed up signing in the visitor’s book, with a visitor card no. 47…at my ex-cubicle. :) And I am really glad I did….
I ended up getting a welcome with “sahi” …one of my patent hindi adjectives, from nanda, bhargav, anshu and saurabh ….. and we spent quite some time just catching up… I was the one doing the catching up… on the new product that the topcoder team had already come up with … they had a name too… “Saans” (SAurabh + ANShuman)…. I made it clear that I would not join unless it also included a letter from my name (but they might possible consider that more a blessing than threat ;) )…. I suggested one too- “Spans”…Bhargav followed with “Spank”…need I say more! They are on the lookout for dedicated developers by the way.. all the managerial positions having already been taken up by them ….;)
Sitting here.. all that seems pretty far away now……
But then, all this might never have happened…
Vishnu might have got placed in some other company, we all might never have landed up in Hyd together, the top coder team might never have been formed, IMAX might not have become a regular haunt, Sthiti and Sapna may not have been able to frequent us from Bangalore or we from Hyd, phone calls to Pune(Tulika coming over) or Delhi (to Sheeba) may never have happened… we may never have had weekends to spend together …and the world may not have knit us so closely together as it did……
Two years from now, we will probably be scattered all over the globe…..with different priorities…different careers … but yes definitely friends…becoz we have shared a lot together…and bcoz each of our idiosyncrasies are now a part of us and our friendships….. right now, each of us are in the quasi- static state (I like the sound of the word quasi a lot :D ) confused about what to do, about our lives and careers … whether we will be happy doing this or that …what will happen ….and what will not happen …..
But in the end… you are richer by the experience …. and my blog is richer by the chronicle of all these memories :)…..
So wherever we land up, whatever we do..… ….(my brother’s comment : end it with “I will be right here “writing” for you” …) …. And I think I’ll end on just that note :)……

p.s : my last post was titled “To all my friends”… and it began like “There are times when you know you are blessed..and these times are spelt as F.R.I.E.N.D.S…”. yes i know ... senti senti... but i promise this is the last such post ...:) J J J J