V-Day - Good day for heart (for a change).

They say that everybody learns from its past mistakes. People try to improve on those so that they dont fall prey same schemes again. We, as normal people, always try to learn for all of our pitfalls but one. It was expecting St. Valentine's miracles.

Flashback

Day 14th Feb, Year 2000 to 2005, Place - Chandigarh.

Most of the times,V-day used to come on working day or should I say studying day. Newspapers, TV, internet always used to remind us of it. Chd newsline used to come up with weird kind of surveys on love-meter with hearts or roses printed in paper back ground. everything used to be gripped in virtual fever. Atleast, in chandigarh, I always felt that it should be declared national (?) festival. There are only two festivals which can qualify for this. (Other one is Holi) Roadsides would be full of gladula vendors, heart shaped balloons (DCH style) and few of teady bear guys. One could see all kind of weird characters on road right from morning. If one group is one trolley, other would come out in truck. Open jeeps, gypseys, bikes without silencers. Everybody trying to impress fairer sex. One would be excused to imagine himself being in the middle of jungle where all the males are trying to show off their assets to impress the girls. It was darling-I am-working-over-time-today day for thullas. They also never missed a chance of playing devils in the cupid's day out. Gheri route always used to first casualty in curfew, other one used to be Punjab Univ. In the nutshell, whole city used to be seiged by lovers and spoilers alike.

Far away from all these colours, we use to spend our days in the balcony of SUSCET. Always trying to speculate which girl is going around with which guy. I must admit that although we were pretty in finding out smokey fires but could never figure out some real ones. After spending first half of the day in winter sun and lunch break in canteen, our harmones used to instigate us in going some where, in search of true love and our destination always used to be Lake. Oh boss, wat a place it was. Girls, girls, girls everywhere. Only problem were the villians sitting with them. Bloody spoilsports, jerks and wat not. After 1-2 hours, our heart used to refuse to pump blood. Too much burn can cause this situation and forced by heart, we used to come back home empty handed ;))) Another v-day gone. May be next time which never came.

Flashback over

Day: Any day of the feb before/on V-day, Place: London

There was no imperative excitement of the up-coming festival. No major news in TV, paper et all. No enthu for it. Such was the indifference here that I never remembered it and today, when the day came, my friend told me that it v-day today. I was surprised. Anyody wud be especially A person like me coming from chd or for that matter bnglr to a place which started it all. Life was normal. Trains, as usual, were full. Offices were working. Schools had kids. No body seemed to be bothered. Morning shock slowly transformed into pleasant evening. After hard day at work, I could see couples were kissing like normal on my way back to home. Nothing new. It is regular affair. No big deal. I went for shopping, did some cooking, now I am blogging and wud go to bed in another 15 min. Mundane end to mundane day. This time st. valentine moved on without giving any heart attacks to me . My dil goes zooooooom zooooooom.

Cheers,

Ashish

P.S. I cant really say that I didnt missed chd today but this change (or lack of it)

was definitely a refreshing.

Memoirs of SUSCET - Stella

'May I come in mam?' I asked with unique innocence that I sometimes feel i can genuinely fake but most of the times it is genuine. It was third day in the row we were late to the lecture which no body in the whole class wanted to miss. In the mind I was cursing everybody I could think of. 'God damn Keshto, aaj bhi late karwa diya', 'God damn HoD. who asked him to keep this as first lecture' but knew that as usual it was me who was culprit.
She looked at her watch and before she cud ask me get out, in came the excuse 'mam, scooter puncture ho gaya tha'. 'Ashish, aaj bhi same excuse. Please go out of the class and close the door behind you' She said in bit higher tone. aye hye, she doesn't even know how to get angry. Like I cudnt always fake my innocence she cud never get herself be really angry. she used to fake it. 'Mam, please' I was embarrassed. I was supposed to be one of her favorites (at least i thought so) 'Please don't waste the time of the class'. class was laughing now. 'Jerks. wats there to laugh' I thought. 'Mam, only one last time' said keshto, who had just barged in after parking his scooter. 'Both of you wait till 10 to enter the class and please leave now'. Both of us knew it was useless to argue and we left for canteen. On the way or in the canteen, we were not calling her names as one wud if you r thrown out of class. We just couldn't.
She was our teacher in final year. We used to call her stella. She got her name from teacher's character in third class Hindi movie (I don't remember movie's name) courtesy one of us ( u know it probably). I think the similarities between her and stella were just teacher's post. Thats it. Ok ok her hairstyle too. but thats it. Our stella had grace, poise, intelligence and she was very sweet. All of us really admired her a lot. She had something, that x factor, which always enabled her to keep the unruly bunch quite. Always. Something, of which other teachers used to be jealous of. We used to put in extra effort to be attentive in her class. I cant imagine that we used to attend tutorials too. Although we hardly studied in those tutes but it was fun. Everyday some different thing. Once I gave a lecture on Yoga in one of those tutes u know. Pats did a lot of paki bashing in those. Those were really good times.
I never understood what was that x factor. Probably, we were impressed that she attempted her hands at UPSC and if I am not wrong, she almost cleared. Probably, because she knew her subjects. Probably, because all of us were of same age group. Probably, she had those naive, innocent and gullible looks. I really don't know and I don't want to know either. We never used to listen any criticisms for her. She was one of few teachers we never cribbed about.Never ever any negative feelings crossed to our minds for her. We just admired her. Though, I must say that she wasn't the best teacher I had studied under no way near that. But she was good. Now, I don't know what she is doing. if she is still teaching thats something she will not need any trainings. She will always have our best wishes.

Nostalgic,
Ashish

P.S. I don't know why I wrote about her that too after such a long time (psst...it took some real brain exercise to recollect her real name. its been so long i have thought of her) but then one doesn't always needs answers to all their questions. do we?