It's a strange world we live in. Full of paradoxes.

Distances are shrinking, chasms are widening.

We are so close to each other, ten digits away, a click away. And yet we are so far from each other.

So reachable. And yet not so.

We understand each other so well. And we don't know each other at all.

We want to be with each other. And we want to be alone.

Everything's the same. And so much has changed.

Everything's so new. But I have been here and done that before.

I am learning a lot. But am I turning wiser? :)

It will all be forgotten in two days. The city will ‘bounce back’, ‘show its resilience’ and ‘give ample proof of its never-say-die spirit’. It doesn’t matter that a few hundred people are no more. A few hundred lives mercilessly cut short, a few hundred dreams cruelly snapped. A few hundred numbers, a few hundred statistics. A few hundred funerals, and then life will be the same again. Because it’ll all be forgotten in two days.

The same old bickering between political parties. The Shiv Sena blaming the NCP for ruining the state. The BJP slinging mud at the Congress for letting the law-and-order situation crumble. Fiery speeches, bloated egos, ulterior motives, heartless politicians, and a mindless public.

But it’ll all be forgotten. Empty abuses, helplessness, anger and rage. There is nothing anyone can do about it. Other than try fighting the system, and giving up one’s own life in the process. Not in one swift stroke of a chopper, or a momentary bang from a pistol. Worse, much worse! Giving up the life slowly, gradually. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Worrying. About oneself, the family. Worrying about whether one will get to witness the next hour.

So one abuses – empty, vacuous expletives that mean nothing, and can do no harm. And then one forgets. ‘Terror strikes Bombay…Again’. The same headlines, the same pictures. We’ve been there before, and done that. And consoled ourselves – ‘It can’t happen to me’. It always happens to someone else, until one day we’re the ‘someone else’ for someone else.

And terror will strike Bombay again. Because we do nothing about it. Perhaps because we can’t do anything about it. Because we’re strong. And brave. And resilient. And we can ‘bounce back’. We are Indians too; we forgive. And forget. A little too soon. Two days is all it takes…

Humankind's unexplicable obsession with twenty-two machine-fit young men running around on some grass, trying to kick a leathery sphere into a netted space between two posts is rivalled only by one other thing: humankind's useless, pointless, and in most cases, terribly humiliating obsession with alcohol.

From the gutters of Guatemala to the ditches of Denmark, man's obsession with alcohol is thoroughly universal, absolutely consistent and completely, completely unfounded. You could be in the darkest alleyway of New York, or the brightest, most cheerful beach in Hawaii, but across the world, the way a drunkard's eyes light up at the very sight of anything remotely resembling alcohol is the common rope that binds nationalities; the only hope that some day man will not destroy himself in mushroom-clouds of nuclear explosions. Common sense and basic decision-making capabilities follow the irrationally enlarged irises, and are the next casualties in man's quest for the ultimate 'high'. The muscles fail next, as the heart deems them unworthy of supplying blood to. And then the brain gradually stops receiving (or accepting, I do not know), its normal ration of nutrition - if the brain exists, that is. The final nail is hammered in when the drinking man drinks, drinks, drinks some more, loses his senses, and collapses in a heap of fat, bones, hair and vomit.

So much so that the other marginally less zonked out mortals have to pick him up and put him in bed. The vomit, in case you're wondering, is still right there. On the floor, in the clothes, heck, its hanging in the very atmosphere after a while. You are in a situation where you are neither conscious, nor unconscious. Not subconsious, even. You think you can stand, but you can't - walking is in a different chapter of the book. You think you are talking sense, but you are not. And you have to be carried from your self-created filth on four shoulders, all of them drunk and swaying. What could be more humiliating, more demeaning? How could it be 'fun'. Or 'addictive'. How could people want to do it again and again? Every morning? Every evening? And every night? Hell, honestly, it doesn't even taste good. Why would anyone want to drink something that doesn't taste good; something that guarantees a splitting headache the next day; something that leaves you messing up your room, clothes and bed; something that - after you've made a holy fool of yourself dancing like Dharmendra to Comfortably Numb - leaves your reputation in tatters?

These are the people who have never driven a car from the heart. They have never approached a corner thinking: "Damn, if I don't take this one at the right speed, I am doomed. My career will lie in shambles". They have never (ever) thought about the ideal speed at which to hit the apex, and the precise moment to start accelerating again. These are the men who don't know the joys of driving, or the joys of anything other than opening a dark-tinted bottle of foul-smelling, bad-tasting alcohol and an hour later, being carried on four drunk and swaying shoulders. These are the men who think that alcohol is a pre-requisite to enjoying Pink Floyd. Obviously, they'd think so. They have never heard Pink Floyd without the senseless haze of booze.

I will not be preachy. Buy all means, and by all means, drink, drink, drink till you zonk off. Wake up next morning with a headache so severe that you barely remember your name. Or how you got the headache. Lose your senses, dance like Dharmendra to Comfortably Numb. Make us laugh. Just don't make us clean up the filth. Or make your drinks! Baah.

And always remember. You are not alone. See those twenty-two guys running behind that spherical thing. And see those few billions who are watching them, jumping up, collapsing, laughing and crying as if their lives depended on whether the little spherical thing goes between the posts into the nets, or over them? They're all with you. Peace be with the world. Never mind that it's alcohol-induced, senseless, hazy peace.

So I wet my pants twice in a single day today. That normally does not happen in the city. It's happened here, though. Twice. In one day.

I hadn't played table-tennis in a long, long while. In addition to forgetting how a TT bat (or is that a racquet) feels in the hand, I had also forgotten how dormant muscles react under sudden stress. Mine, apparently, react with a lingering pain that accompanies every single movement of my left and right eyelids. And then there's the sweat. Coming from the air-conditioned confines of the city, I did not know that sweating could feel so good. After about thirty minutes of running around (ending up playing lawn tennis instead of the 'table' variety - few shots landed on the table anyway) I was drenched, soaked and - for the young men who like their words big - bedraggled. It felt good. Very good, indeed. When I wringed out the sweat from my shirt, I felt like I had climbed Mount Everest, got down, and climbed it again. On foot. And I wet my pants. With the sweat. So there!

The only time I have seen so much grass in the concrete jungle is in immaculately maintained lawns. Everytime I have seen it, it is accompanied by a rather courteous notice - 'Please do not walk on grass'. And I have never walked on grass. So I don't know what dew feels like. I have seen it in pictures. So I don't know how much of it really exists on a grass carpet. I had to find out. And I did. By walking on the lawns, which had no notice board. I was wondering whether I should go ask the security if we were permitted to walk on the grass. I thought they'd laugh at a question as silly as that, that idea was promptly dropped.

About three steps into the plush thick green carpet, and my feet were drenched, soaked, and - once again, for those who love their language jargonised - thoroughly bedraggled. Then I decided to wet my pants. By sitting in the grass. Three minutes into the bliss, an unlikely villain reared his ugly head. The grass poked in a variety of places not used to being poked. Insects hovered around menacingly, some, doubtless, poisonous. Playing with life was not the idea here, and I had to make a run back to the safe air-conditioned insectless confines of the computer centre.

Makes me think about how sadly out of touch we are with nature - the plants, trees, grass, wind, earth and stars. How little we know of them. How little we care. I am not - and I repeat, not - environmentally conscious. I don't think I am environmentally destructive either. I am just plain apathetic. It shames me to say that I really don't care if a thousand trees are being felled for that new stylish mall. I feel a momentary tinge of sadness, but nothing compelling enough to make me sit up and do something about it.

Something, of course, should be done. Otherwise the kids - when they come, that is - won't know how the stars in the night sky shimmer. Or how grass loaded with dew feels when you sit on it. Or how sweat dripping from your shirt feels when you wring it with all your remaining might. They won't have the chance to wet their pants the way I did today. For all you know, they might just go down the conventional road of 'trouser-wetting'. And how bad a thing will that be? Think about it. And plant a tree.

It is a sight I only know too well. After suffering four years in Bombay University's BE program, it's a sight most engineers know only too well. Heads dropping down, surrendering to the seduction of sleep. That familiar drone, that goes on somewhere in the background. That drone you hear, but never listen to. Expressions. Of boredom, disgust, and in this particular case, plain astonishment. This, after all, is an IIM.

The astonishment is not entirely unjustified. People get here by sheer dint of their hard work. There are no quotas to gobble down the seat share without as much as a thankful burp. There are no backdoor entries. So only the really intelligent people make it through. But even they're not intelligent enough to figure that expectation only gives rise to disappointment. They came into the lecture hall for the first lecture expecting a dynamic dude to walk in on time, clip on the mic and go into a rhapsody about numbers, number systems and their ilk. Well, they were bound to be disappointed, really.

Humble apologies go out to Mr Professor Sir, who, undoubtedly, is a master of his art. He just can't teach very well. He couldn't communicate with the class, and something tells me he won't, for the next few months that we will be under his tutelage. Oh damn the expectations, I say.

A non-communicative professor who speaks in a slow, lazy drone can only translate into bobbing heads. The ones that droop slowly, giving into the beauty of dreamland, and then shake up into attention rather abruptly, sporting dazed pupils adjusting to the sight of a stranger droning away to eternity. After four years of tolerating the worst teachers in the country, I only know that look too well.

And then there are the 'enterprising' students. Some tapping away ferociously on their mobile phones, exhorting their mates to selflessly share the agony of the unending lecture. Some looking at the professor without a single blink, lost in deep thought, nodding - perhaps coincidentally - at all the right points in time; a time that seems to have stretched itself like a rugged rubber band. The ones nodding away rather eagerly; needless to say, at all the wrong instances, a nod that says: "No I don't understand what you're saying, even though I pretend I do." The consequence: "So Mr Bhatia, you are a doomed failure at maths." Mr Bhatia, nodding hard, and nodding eagerly: "Yes Sir". And then there are the last-bench dudes, the smart alecs, the young men for whom the world was created, the handsome blokes for whom womankind came into existence. Looking bored, sounding bored - like Calvin says: "Everything bores you when you are cool!" So there. And the faithful-to-our-notes buddies who will be the single-point source for notes on a wide variety of subjects - ranging from "the effects of inter-stellar hot gas diffusion on the ozone layer" to the "consequences of India's ambiguous stand on Iran on the rural animal husbandry industry". Professor's kiddos, the only ones who can redeem his pride for his profession. The only ones who will make him feel like he's accomplishing something substantial in life. Ironically, the only ones who will fool him into that illusory belief.

The air heavy with sleep. The atmosphere pregnant with tired exhaustion. The faces. The expressions that say nothing at all, and in the process, end up saying so much. The bobbing heads. The ill-disguised sighs. Of relief, of disgust, of disappointment. It is a sight I only know too well. A four-year BE was not for nothing :)

It is a feeling I only know too well. Second week of June. Lots of new faces. Apprehension, shyness. Some over-smartness. It's the same every single time, every single place. I could be in the pre-primary section of a municipal school, or in the hallowed precincts of an IIM, some fundamental human reactions are...er, fundamental. So there!

And it happened to me again. As I strolled into our first meeting at 10pm in the 'night canteen'. Interesting venue, that. But nothing else had changed. There still was a sea of new faces, some smiling, some laughing (presumably out of nervousness), some plain nervous, and some pretending to be nervous while soaking in the atmosphere around them. There were glances all around. Some were apprehensive, a few (from the 'dudes' in the batch) were the 'checking out' kinds, directed towards the 'babes' in the batch. So much goes on in those first few minutes, that it's almost surreal. So many first impressions being formed, so many delusions being created - some courtesy the eclectic mix of European, American and Aussie accents being thrown around.

And yet, some day soon, it will all melt away into familiarity, camaraderie, bonding and relationships. Relationships that will each be different from the other. Some will be acrimonious, some mutual, and some, special. Some purely for achieving a purpose, objective and an aim. Some selfless, stupid and driven by the heart. Some that will fade away at the end of two years. Some that will refuse to, even at the end of twenty.

In that room full of young boys and girls - boisterous, calm, collected and nervous, all at once - there exists a world full of possibilities. What can be accomplished, what can be wasted. Who you can befriend, and who you can destroy with your arsenal of stinging sarcasm. Whether you can turn the MBA into a life-altering experience, or make it a waste of two years of your prime life. It is all upto you. Upto each one of us in that room. Peering into each other's eyes, listening, using all the world's experience to separate lies from the truth, to distinguish braggadocio from plain humble brilliance. Judging each other, forming opinions. And then one day it'll all melt away.

Till then, it is all the same. Everytime. From the pre-primary of a municipal school to the lush green campus of an IIM. All the same, and I only know it too well now :)

Just fifteen days to go before I return to the pacifying embrace of motherhood, home-cooked food (I cannot believe I am saying this) and flushes that have a sense of responsibility towards mankind. Just fifteen days to go, and I was allowing myself to get carried away by the helium clouds of complacency that shouted: “You have learned everything that you needed to, oh enlightened one!” Little did I know that they would strike overnight.

Scams, politicians and the general shameless corruption make one puke from the wrong end. So, I generally sit on the pot with a copy of ‘Outlook’. This is going to test my ‘euphemism’ skills somewhat, but sitting with a copy of Outlook somehow makes bowel movement relatively ‘smooth’. It was no different that fateful day. But as I read an intricate account of the in-depth details and insightful analysis of how Sonia Gandhi admonished Manmohan Singh for saying something that he didn’t say, I felt a tingling sensation on my foot. Then on the other foot. The ‘tingling’ was on a gradual, but relentless path up my leg. Let me, at this point, digress from the issue that has not yet been laid out clearly, and let you in on the fact that I am at that age where my idea of a ‘turn on’ is not exactly a 50-year old Italian-Indian hybrid politician. I couldn’t possibly have a sub-conscious crush on this lady. No, it had to be something else.

I had no lenses on, which implies that I was as blind as the Dhritarashtra of bats. Looking closely, I spotted tiny black specs on my leg. They were moving up. Relentlessly marching towards their goal (whatever that would have been). Ant it struck me. ANTS!!!

I’ve lived in a clean house all my life. Ants to me have never meant more than tiny inconsequential many-legged losers. I have never felt scared, afraid or paranoid of ants. Ants, I have grown up to believe, are always meant to be squashed with slippers, shoes, hands, legs, newspapers…even toilet-paper. Unless they are black ants. In which case, they should be allowed to play around you, tickle you, and generally prove their playful innocuousness. After which, however, they must be squashed with slippers, shoes, hands, legs, newspapers…even toilet-paper.

On the fateful day, however, the tale unfolded differently. It is traditionally believed that sitting on the loo unlocks the brain’s hidden potential; it unearths the key to creative thinking in a jiffy. Rumour goes that Sir Alexander Graham Bell discovered that he needed a television, when he was sitting on the pot. How he went about trying to invent it, and ended up with a telephone is a story we shall keep for another day. Anyway, the creative neurons had fired up, and they were making my imagination run wild.

Horizons opened up and swallowed any semblance of sanity (pun unintended) that had been spared in this house. The destruction that these ants could cause was endless. They could burn up the building, eat up the furniture, swallow the clothes; the possibilities were infinite. Wide open now, and not bothering with Sonia and Manmohan, I gave the leg-climbers one final close look. “Well, they’re black ants. They’ll just play around for a while, run helter-skelter like insane buffoons, and disappear as mysteriously as they appeared”, I thought to myself. The thought, needless to say, was very comforting. And the tingling tickle (that had now reached the lower part of the thigh) wasn’t so bad either. One fatherly smile at the playful ants, and I decided to let them be. Not before thanking my lucky stars for not sending down red ants, though.

Only after I wore my lenses did harsh reality deliver the knock-out punch (and reality is getting exceptionally good at this). As the world blurred into focus, I figured that the house had been taken over by them. They had conquered the loo and the four walls and floor of a bedroom. A resolute army of their species was laying siege to another bedroom, ready to attack as soon as the stench from the unwashed-since-three-weeks clothes went away. Worst of all, however, they were all red. If all of them were red, so would the two I had so lovingly allowed to run around on the vast expanse of my thigh. Uh oh, Houston, Mayday, 911! Come on, any emergency term that you can think of!

Since the fateful day, the ants have taken over the bed (they’re bedridden, in a slightly different way), the clothes have been chewed off, the expired-six-months-ago food in the droning-refrigerator-that-is-more-like-an-oven has been digested (by the ants). It’s a sea of red everywhere I look around. And what about those two ants who were running themselves wild with ecstatic joy on my legs? Well, let’s not even go off on that tangent. Suffice to say that ‘Itch Guard’ does not work for ant-bite itching.

Just fifteen days to go…fifteen days to a clean house, scheduled meals, functioning flushes, and a refrigerator that’s cool. Fifteen days to an antless-cockroachless-lizardless existence.

“Hello and welcome ladies, gentlemen and inconsequential scum-beings from the outer fringes of the galaxy”. If I were to have my way, those would be the opening lines of the ‘Exceptionally Deceiving B-School Oscars 2006’. Honestly, if I were to have my way at all, there would actually be a ‘Deceiving B-School Oscars’ every year – “Commemorating the merciless, heartless conduct of top B-schools in the country” – that, of course, would be the awards’ tag-line. And did you ask why do we have a tag-line at all? Well, that is primarily because it is fashionable to have a tag-line for everything today. So I wake up in the morning and start my day sitting on the pot – ‘Classic, Stinky, and nothing else’. I move on to brush my teeth in the wash-basin – ‘Dirty, perennially choked piece of pointless ceramic’. So the story goes about tag-lines, but we digress.

And we come back on track again. Without further ado about stinky toilets – ‘Functioning flushes form fabulous fantasies’, let us get straight to the point and kick off the awards…err, the awards ceremony.

1. Multiple Fraudulent Revenue Stream Award

Symbiosis Group of a xrilliofentiwillion Institutes, All over the Milky Way
This year’s top honours are bagged by Symbiosis – an education giant that has so many business schools on its list that on the latest (and super-prestigious) ‘Maharashtra’s Top 1000 Business Schools’, more than half are Symbi (as it is ‘fondly’ called) institutes. So much for Symbi’s undying commitment towards making an MBA out of every engineer, doctor, lawyer and street-side mongrel!
Symbi snatches the Oscar from its nearest rivals (and quite a few of them, too) by sheer dint of its innovative use of size. While unsuspecting wannabe MBAs dig deep within their cash reservoirs to stitch together five hundred whole rupees to register for the Symbiosis National Aptitude Test (SNAP), Symbi mercilessly snaps all their necks and on the very next registration page asks them to select the institutes they would want to apply to. The catch? You are required to pay in excess of Rs 1,200 for every institute you are interested in. Neat, eh? You bet it is. The money, needless to say, is pumped right back into the system. Symbi builds more institutes to reap more cash which then builds more institutes…it’s a vicious circle, don’t you think? In effect, over the years, Symbi’s repertoire has now expanded to generously include the ‘Symbiosis Institute of Business Technology for Engineers’ and the ‘Symbiosis School of Management for Deranged Monkeys’.

1. Award for Maximum Opaque Black Holes

S P Jain Institute of Management Research, Mumbai
Transparency is not a basic (or even expected) B-School selection procedure parameter, but the boffins at SPJIMR have this year tasted the inimitable high of success, after years of a relentless pursuit of making their admission process as unfathomable and opaque as possible. Group Interviews, questions on ‘character, morals, values and ethics’ were some of the most crucial elements that made the goal achievable. Young men and women applying next year to SPJIMR: the interview questions are some of the simplest you will ever answer – “In case you are offered a bribe to blah blah, will you accept it?” Try answering, “Of course I will. What kind of silly question is that?” At the time of answering, roll your eyes, stick your tongue out and generally act as if the panel has lost its bearings. It will surely ease the pressure for your peers accompanying you at the GIs.

1. Award for Most Innovative Revenue Generation Strategies

Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
When it comes to developing hitherto unheard of strategies for maximizing revenue generated from the sale of admission forms, MDI is in a stratospheric league of its own. None of the institutes, even with their Rs 1,000+ admission form pricing, come close to MDI’s fool-proof methodologies. MDI requires applicants to fill ‘bubbles’ in the admission form in pen. Yes, you read that right. Mistakes, you must have guessed by now, entail our desperate wannabe MBA to purchase a second form. Then a third. And then a fourth. So the trick lies in maximizing the probability of form-filling errors. The answer, just change the ordering of the ‘bubbles’ to start with a ‘1’ instead of a ‘0’. For next year, pilot projects being beta-tested currently include ordering the ‘bubbles’ using a random number generator. So the bubbles will now be randomly ordered instead of 0-9. Ah, I think MDI should be pre-awarded this award for the next three and a half decades.

1. Lifetime Achievement Award for Achieving Nothing At All

Indian Institute of Planning and Management, Swimming Pool equipped Branches across India
Mr Pony-Tail is a mastermind strategist. He has been reading ‘The Art of War’ since he was a little kid. The downer? He hasn’t been reading anything else. He reckoned that by adding a ‘Planning’ somewhere in ‘IIM’, he would convince the youth to ‘dare to dream beyond the IIMs’. Alas, somewhere the planning failed, and Pony uncle just ended up planning his downfall. Lately, Pony uncle’s cheerful visage graces full-page ads in national dailies, encouraging the common man to bet on IIPM’s placement statistics for this year. What better way to create a larger-than-life compelling brand, I say? Master stroke, indeed!
Speculation is rife that next year Pony uncle will take on Harvard, Stanford, Yale and other such pitiful foreign business schools in a fight to the end…the end of management education in the world, that is. His eventful chronicles will form part of a movie titled ‘Tum Toh Thehre Pardesi – A Planman Consulting Mega-success Venture’.

This is, by no means, an exhaustive list of upcoming B-Schools with more than a few tricks up their sleeve to dupe young men and women who want to do an MBA in times when MBAs are paid no less than a crore for a year’s work.

Anyway, we shall be returning to the saga in a while – the view from the other side: ten IE windows open at once, each on a different thread at pagalguy.com; the anxious wait for results; the begging and pleading (on your knees, boy) in front of the higher authorities and the Highest Force; the list is endless. To use a clichéd term – watch this space.

Yesterday was a rainy Sunday evening. I was stepping into a new profession, a new home, and a new life. New friends had laid out a spread of the most delectable…liquor to welcome me into the new friend-circle. Noble thought indeed, but bottles of Kingfisher jostling for space with pints of Romanov was not exactly my idea of a ‘welcome’ party. Couple that with the detestable smoke from an assortment of cigarettes, and this was looking like it would to be a very, very tough journey ahead.

I was wrong. The ‘Booze Binges’ evaporated into nothingness as mysteriously as the first one had appeared – Next Gen never paid enough, I figured. A week into the new life, I also figured it was not likely to be a difficult journey at all; rather this was going to be one helluva roller-coaster ride with the whackiest characters ever seen and the weirdest situations ever experienced.

I was right. It did not take me too much time to blend in with my new colleagues and, rather surprisingly, join the heavy-duty bitching sessions at a level of competency and proficiency that my colleagues had acquired only after ‘working’ hard for a few months before I came. Also surprising was the fact that I – a documented, proven snob – had no trouble in opening up to the threesome.

It is surprising how people can make such a massive impact in such a short period of time. Of course, certain things helped. We were bound by a common thread of interest that was so strong it was almost like a massive iron rope. We were in a small-ish office that was home (and rather literally too) to just about ten people. Weekday evenings, Saturday nights and whole weekends were spent sitting like losers in the eerie glow of CRT monitors (cheap ones). Needless to say, in a setting like this, peppered by the catalyst of having so few people doing generally nothing, relationships and bonds solidified swiftly.

Bonding leads to changes, and it was no different in our case. As we gingerly sampled the others’ choice of music, food and girls (the last one, only figuratively – pun unintended), it was turning out to be a thoroughly enjoyable learning curve, almost like the curves that chic-in-white-with-the-wet-hair-who-got-a-lift-on-one-young-man’s-bike sported. Anyway, Bunny gave up his repeat-till-kingdom-come bouts of listening to ‘Aur kya’…and nothing else. His new Winamp playlist had just one song: ‘Coming Back to Life’ – repeat-till-kingdom-come, of course. Amit was building a reputation (or a notoriety) for demolishing lunch boxes with disdain. Especially when Kartik’s came full of ‘Dhansak’. Kartik, meanwhile, was turning out to be a big ‘hothead across over there’, taking pangas with the rest as if he would be the first to kick the job and ‘b-b-b-b-buzz off’. What an ensemble cast, I say!

It is also astonishing how years of a dead existence often end up as blank pages in the book of life, and but a few weeks of a colourful being can effortlessly fill up innumerable chapters with accounts of thoroughly enjoyable episodes. In many ways, this is what happened to me. While the years from Standard X to Standard XII have been effectively whitewashed out of my memory, it is these last few months that have added a generous dash of eastmancolour to what was a dull, dreary, nerdy life experience. The stories are too many to recount…most of them will now be tinged...

...tinged by a feeling of emptiness, of having to see one of us go off in pursuit of greener pastures (and better babes, though how that will be effected in the absence of broadband, beats me). Life will never be the same again. And though it sounds too filmy to be penned down, it is true. We will go through the motions of everyday office. Once in a while the vacant seat will hit with the hard ferociousness born out of longing. The booze will not stop – it will reduce to a trickle. The bitching will not stop – it will abate just a little. The chuckles will not stop – there will just be one laugh less. Life will not stop – it will trundle along, on three wheels instead of four. You know what the sad part is? Soon, it will have to wheelie along on two wheels instead of three. Will miss you guys!

I have realised that this is increasingly looking like the prayer meeting readout to pray for the soul of the departed to rest in peace. It is not! Broadband lives on, and budget airlines thrive. The Golden Quadrilateral is 95.483% complete. Ab Dilli durr nahin. India is growing at 8%+. Our salaries will grow at 80. Soon we will have all the money in the world to fly down (or ride, or drive) to a common location once every month, eat good food, drink sophisticated wine and bitch about life and wife. We’ll have the resources to meet up once every six months, have a pyjama party, relive the haunted house with the dysfunctional flushes and bitch some more about life and Bunny’s latest flings.

Till then gentlemen...

PS: Mein rehta toh…;)

It is the kind of moment people wait a lifetime for. As I sit in the driver’s seat and stare over the hood right into the eye of the famed three-pointed star, I wonder where the sense of heightened excitement is. Why are my sweat glands hibernating when they should be working overtime to create beads of sweat on my forehead? Why are my adrenaline producers shaming me by putting up this public display of their depressing impotency? Where is the customary lump in the throat? The mandatory quickening pulse?

It is a white Mercedes-Benz E-class that costs in excess of Rs 40 lakh. Note that I eschew quoting an exact price. In the segment we are talking about, it is unfashionable – even insulting – to speak in terms of ‘rupees’. The ‘Least Count’ that buyers in this segment can identify with is ‘Ten lakhs’. On the same lines, whether the car produces 280bhp or 300, whether it does 0-100 in the elevty-fourth xrillionth of a second or three-twelveteenth fraction of a moment is a matter of scarce consequence. Honestly, even trying to find out whether this super-luxury barge is an E240 or an E280 would prove futile, because apart from a tiny difference in badges on the boot, you would not be able to make out. I wasn’t. Well, for the record, this one is an E280. Petrol or diesel, then? And with a Mercedes-Benz, does even that matter? Anyway, a petrol it is.

I am trying to squeeze myself rather clumsily into the elegant leather-crafted driver’s seat. Some debut this is starting off to be. I realise – in good time, of course – that the seat has a few zillion adjustments that can allow every crest and trough of the body to fit snugly into the seat. All of the settings, mind you, are electric, lest you waste your million-dollar-a-minute time trying to figure out which lever on the seat will adjust what. Thirty seconds into the activity, though, and I figure (with much chagrin) that I can’t seem to make up my mind with respect to the precise seat height I want, to go with the exact degree of under-thigh support, to match with just the right amount of lumbar cushion. Confusing already? I haven’t even spoken about how the addition of three more parameters can increase the number of possibilities exponentially. Anyway, after playing around with the switches for a while (and pretending that I can really differentiate between the levels of comfort different settings offer), I reckon it has been quite a while. I cannot allow my debut to sink in never-ending permutations of what the Merc’s magic seat can do. There surely is much more to the car. Or is there?

Time to lift off. Snick the characterless auto-stick into ‘D’, and floor the accelerator pedal. Good night, then. I am almost lapsing into an afternoon siesta; this car is b****y driving itself. On a ramrod straight section of the expressway, I stare at the needles rather desolately. 140-160-180-200 ticks the speedometer with barely a care in the world for the laws of physics or aerodynamics. The tacho needle swings to 6500, swings back rapidly to 3000, and begins its cold, clinical climb back to its peak – 6500. Inside, it is all so insanely insulated, it is like travelling in a time machine. Wind noise, tyre noise and other noises are reduced to mere concepts in textbooks; the sad part is that you can’t even hear the engine note. It’s a different world inside – eerily quiet, queerly disconnected; much like a video game being played in an airtight room at the top of the Himalayas. Not a single vibe transmits through any body part that is in contact with the car, and that only heightens the feeling of numbness that is only just starting to take over my entire body. Suddenly I am not dejected with the abject unresponsiveness of any of my senses. Come to think of it, this is so undeserving in any case.

Two hundred kilometres an hour, then, is reduced to a mere statistic. One of those things you can brag about at the all-guy pyjama parties. So while the entire gang looks up to you with almost-idolising admiration, your conscience nibbles away at the very heart of your er…heart. Because deep inside, you know that even a novice 18-year old – even George W Bush – can go faster than 200km/h on a straight road in a powerful, self-propelling Merc.

My twenty-minute ‘intimate’ interaction with the E280 is coming to an end. There is no drum roll crescendo to mark the culmination of an especially significant event. Well, by now, I am not expecting any at all. If one were to ever try making love to a pillow, it would be quite a lot like driving the E280. In many ways, then, I am somewhat glad that precious adrenaline was not wasted over a pointless drive, which will forever remain a mere milestone in my automotive life; a milestone devoid of all emotion whatsoever.

As the Merc coasts to an eventless stop, my colleagues rush towards me, expecting to find a three-pointed-starry eyed Jayesh staring dreamily into emptiness. Instead they find a Jayesh with a weird expression on his face. Significantly, he has nothing to say. And that does not happen very often. Well Sirs, it took me a while to collect my thoughts; but now that I have, I am having a tough time controlling the flow of words. So what really is new?

‘Two hundred kilometres an hour’ is new, and it has the potential to radically alter one’s subconscious perception of speed. That speed, even if travelled at, for a meagre ten minutes skews one’s perspectives beyond recognition. I step out of the ‘hallowed’ Merc into a diesel-engined Innova, and trust me, it takes me more than a few minutes to get my bearings in place. In the ten minutes that I travelled at 200km/h, my mind had already made changes to what I perceived as ‘speed’. Without my knowledge. Consequently, driving the Innova flat out in fifth gear turns into a restless experience. I keep trying to figure out what is wrong with the car. Why won’t it go ‘fast’? One glance at the speedo – with the needle refusing to budge beyond the 150 mark – and it strikes me that this is just about as fast as the Innova will go. Outside, the entire world seems to be moving in an extended, all-pervasive, real-life slowmo. Words can never express how thoroughly numbing the entire experience feels. With the sensation of speed metamorphosed so rapidly, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how fast I am going just by looking at the scenery whizzing past backwards. After a couple of significantly scary misjudgements with the speed – cornering at close to 120km/h in the Innova – I resolve to keep a close watch on the speedo to re-tune my mind to come back to its senses.

My mind drifts to my sixteen-year old Maruti 800. All of thirty-seven horses, and yet the most thrilling, the most scintillating, the most memorable and the most enjoyable drives. When you have only 796cc and thirty-seven horses at your disposal, every cubic centimetre and every horse counts. Each one plays a role equally significant; as opposed to an army of a few hundred steeds fighting with each other so bitterly that it has to be kept under wraps of expensive insulation.

It is not about a hundred horses, or even about a thousand. It is about the experience, the joy of communicating with a car that wants to get you familiar with her innards, rather than ruthlessly insulate everything. It is not about how quick you can accelerate, or even about how fast you can go. It is about how wide your grin is at the end of the drive. It is that feeling for the car. It is that raw emotion between man and machine; the emotion that logic is so thoroughly incapable of describing. Suddenly, I miss my 800 a lot; much, much more than I have in a very long time.

It is a white Maruti 800 that is, sadly, worth a few thousand rupees. But deep inside, I know exactly what I would choose, given a choice between a white Maruti 800 and a white Mercedes-Benz E280. Every. Single. Time.

Picture courtesy Kunal Khadse