Thought Crimes

I've been at C for two months and ten days now. It's been an eventful time- busy for the most part, obviously. It's also been a very quiet time on a personal note. Barring an incident here and there, Lefty has kept his head down and adhered to the general norm. if my presence here has created any sort of flutter, then I must say it has been successful in eluding me. In these two months, I've mainly done what psychologists will tell you most adolescent spend ther entire adolescence doing- fit in. Find my place. And stay there.

This is usually the time when I'm supposed to compare the situation to my first few days at R- and how it was different from here, what I did, what I didn't do etc etc. Relive the good old days. Share a few anecdotes. Look back and smile. However, I won't. Mainly, because I'm not exactly sure of what my initial days there were like. I know Sajal was there with me, and we met Sumedh pretty quickly. After that, whatever I tell you would just be the Rashomon Effect (allow me a pause here while I go enjoy Nihilanth all over again). Some things stick out though, and there are differences between here and there which don't need a genius to figure out. While beginnings anywhere are unfamiliar and any n00b is the newly hatched chicken finding it's way about the strange new world that seems so different from the comforting shell that it had called home for so long, R provided the distinct comfort of knowing that the egg was never too far away. 4-5 rather uncomfortable hours were all it took to traverse 150 km on rickety buses, in precious company, and reach familia. While these visits grew less frequent with time, and home began to have double connotations, one was always practically a phone call away.

How different it all was here. While there was no fear of Ragging, a dreaded word in that era, and prior experience of living in a new place to keep you undaunted by anything, home here was light years away. No more packing your bags whenever any whim possessed you, no more boarding the familiar buses because you needed to get your clothes washed and definitely no more going to Noida to have 4 good meals. I'm never sure what was more unsettling, the physical distance or its cognizance.

You can imagine then, how welcome the decision would have been to say to one and all here that 'I'm leaving on a Jet Plane'. It had been two months after all, punctuated only by the brief yet lasting visit that Mamma had paid to the City of Joy. Plus, it was only a matter of days now before some of the other Lords would head off seek their fortune in foreign lands and any kind of rendezvous would become, if luck permitted, an annual ritual at best. Languid hours of companionship at the Farmhouse were most certainly a thing of the past, there was just this one opportunity for some semblance of one last hurrah.

The precious 45-hour visit could not have begun on a better note. One day prior to the moment of departure, Amul and Ashwini, my former room-mate, landed up at C. Their Visa interview was in Calcutta, and it'd gone off as well as could be. They'd both been cleared to pursue further studies at Ohio State University and a bright future beckoned. We spent a happy evening talking of this and that, recalling some madcap memories and getting gyaan from my current room-mate on the Dos and Don'ts of US. The next day, I inaugurated those 45-hours with a visit to Park Street to meet the two once again, before we finally parted. From there, to the airport. To another more awesome airport. To home.

I spent most of the weekend, relaxing with the folks at home. Fooling around, talking and more talking, exchanging some news that had not been exchanged over the phone, looking at the newest set of photos that had been developed and the customary look around the house to try and spot the changes that had taken place. There were lots of laughs, plans were made for a holiday that is very looked forward to, I even managed to squeeze in the first weekend of EPL matches between the conversations. It was home all over again- great food, the familiar comfort, the loving folks- my family, my home.

There were a lot of au revoirs lined up, and I fulfilled each of them. I met Rakshit and Sagar, spent an evening with Sajji and Chirag and was even generously treated by the now 'Bald and Dutiful' PTV. There was lunch at Mausi's where I caught up with my cousins. The only commonality to everything was that time seemed to fly. And fly very fast. In no time at all, I was back at the awesome airport, alighting the flight that would take me back, the short 120 minute haul that would end this shorter 45-hour journey.

Through most of the trip, one thought had been going around my mind in various forms. I'm far away from home now. This was the first time I wasn't there for my birthday. Srishti's card caught the joy of my turning 22 and the pain of doing so alone, in the unique yet delightfully apt way that she has come to master. This was also the first year I wasn't home for Rakhi. I doubt I'll be there for Diwali, I'll almost certainly miss Mamma's birthday and I'll probably greet 2010 with a very different set of people than the ones I'm used to while ushering in the new year.

Back in the Farmhouse one day, I was engrossed in a (somewhat) deep discussion about how I'd changed in the four years in college. What I'd started liking/disliking, what I'd discovered about myself and the et cetras. I think the discussion lasted about 10 minutes before we decided to move on to more important things, namely AoE. Incidentally, that was one of the things on the aforementioned list. Blogging or writing, to be more general, was another. Yet another was a love for SitComs, which I considered so significant that it even found a way on my B-school application forms a couple of months later.

Musing on the point in consideration some time later, I realized that I'd always had a fondness for sitcoms. It was just never that pronounced or never brought into the fore in as explicit a way as it was in college- 5 epistles in 8 sems, need I say anymore? TV at home had mainly meant sports and cartoons, but as I thought back, it occurred to me that there had been sitcoms slipped in here and there. The first sitcom I recall following avidly was Mind Your Language. It used to air on some channel (probably BBC) at 2130 hours Tuesday night. Mamma, Srishti and I used to enthusiastically look forward to it, codenaming it, and not very cryptically, MYL. It was followed by Murder She Wrote at 10, and we were not allowed to watch it. Packed off to bed we were, trying to make something out of what was happening in the episode from the distorted sounds we got to hear through the door in the next room. Small Wonder was the next sitcom that caught my fancy. I managed to watch the entire series in English, in Hindi and then again in Hindi before I ultimately moved on to bigger and greater things.

I'm not sure if this was before MYL or after, but I remember avidly watching Dennis the Menace- not animated, black and white, and probably aired on Sony. It was dubbed like most other 'imported' shows of the 90s. They used to show I Dream of Jeanie on the same channel sometime later. Another brilliant show. I think it was black and white to begin with too, and later became coloured. Some of my cousins used to watch Bewitched, but I never liked it too much. And then of course, there was Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad. Not a sitcom, but I just had to slip that in. I always considered it 'the' thing in awesomeness. That guy used to get into the comp and fight viruses. What more can an imaginative geeky kid want?

At some point, Zee started telecasting Silver Spoons, Who's the Boss and Different Strokes- dubbed again, of course. I usually missed the first because it coincided with my cricket playing time. Who's the Boss, I used to catch snippets off. I always found the young girl cute and she sure did a brilliant job growing up to become Alyssa Milano. Different Strokes was the one that I followed. I came to know that they've started showing re-runs on Zee English now.

After our move to Delhi, the cable-walah decided to oblige us with Nick, and more importantly Keenan and Kel. Awesome again. It was around then that I started watching Full House too. I think it's good that I managed to watch it while I was still at home. I have a feeling I wouldn't have liked it so much had I started it in college.

You will, of course, have realized, that this list lacked more than a few big names by the time I'd entered college. Hence my earlier admission of discovery. 2-1 changed me from someone who was only vaguely aware of what F.R.I.E.N.D.S. was to someone who has the Rembrandts' title song as one of his many ringtones. Re-runs, re-re-runs and some more re's followed. I went home, and Srishti proved that this affinity was apparently genetic and managed to watch the entire 250+ episodes twice, or was it thrice, in the short period of a week or two. I accompanied her, obviously. By then, I'd adopted the simple and therefore effective policy- a sitcom a semester. Had I been a Boy Scout, I would have received many a badge of good work as more and more of the Lords of the Farmhouse discovered, thanks to me, that they too, had a thing for sitcoms. Coupling, South Park, HIMYM, BBT, That 70s Show, Two and a Half Men etc entered our lives, our conversations and some of our GPAs and left us more happy and content beings.

All in all, I'd say that there are 2 things in sitcoms that appeal to me. There are people who'd rather spend their time watching movies. It's not that I don't really like movies. It's just that I'm a lazy bum. Movies require commitment. 1.5 to 2 hours. Sitcoms allow you 20 minute windows. It's up to you to watch one or even 10 episodes at a go. Plus, each episode is complete in itself, which is not something that a series can boast of.