2004 was a life changing year for me. It was the year I changed my barber. On the 1st of January 2004 a friend of mine took me along to his local barber. It was a small shop, nothing lavish. Four chairs, three barbers and two fans. I was skeptical, my previous barber, Prashant, had been cutting my hair for the last nine years. But the new guy, Lokesh, had sophisticated equipment which enticed me. A wonderful electric razor (I know we have these at home, but I didn’t) a ‘facial’ machine and to top it all a vibrator which was used for head massages. Any man who tells you that he doesn’t love a head massage is lying. “Tail maalish” was now an affordable part of my routine; personally I think it comes right up there on ‘the’ list of “materialistic pleasures.”
All these trips to my new adda (Baba Saloon) didn’t help as I didn’t do satisfactorily well in my Standard XII exams. And thus began three whole days of dejection. A big hug and a small peck brought back normalcy and happiness. Its funny how the smallest things in our lives, which make a difference to our existence, are always around us, but we are just too busy looking for them atop the Himalayas. 67% was not what an ideal science student would aim to get, I didn’t too. But I must confess, it all happened too fast for me to react. I had one chance and I blew it! Do I regret it? On most days I don’t, on some I do. These are the few days where I see lost opportunities, failed attempts and a missed chance. On other days when the world does seems perfect, I see hidden ambition, dreams in incubation and an eccentric enigma in the making.
As the monsoons approached, so did a new life, one as a degree student in the Bachelor of Mass Media course at K.C.College. When I was a science student I was used to studying from text books, now I entered a world of no text books, a million reference books and a truckload of photocopy notes every semester! Timings changed, routines changed. A rickshaw from home to Chembur station, a train from there to C.S.T and a share cab from C.S.T to oval maiden was my route to college. Share cabs are intriguing, women wait so they can get the front seat, and men wait so they can squash themselves into the back seat. I never quite understood why men always took out money from the back pockets only after they got into the cab, which meant that the two men sitting at the doors were always in grave danger of being swung outside. If I did manage to brave the aromatic trains and perilous taxis, I still hadn’t conquered it all unless I managed to get into the lift of my college. The B.M.M lecture rooms were on the sixth floor and in the first week itself, no one would willingly climb up six floors, certainly not me. Climbing up six floors meant sweating it out, which wasn’t a pleasant thought. So the lift was a life-line. The lift-man was unique. Unless you produce your identity card, you are barred access into the stool- wielding lift-man’s lift. Now, if after scuttling through your bag you do find the I.D card, you can’t enter until you reproduce an I.D.card holder! Teenagers can get into the Prime Ministers house without security stopping them but we can’t possible get into the lift without a fight.
Group projects are like government offices, everybody is present, everybody knows exactly what they have to do, but unfortunately the tea-break never ends! My first group project was where we had to make and enact a play based on a historical event. We chose to do it on Rasputin, a man known for his Machiavellian ways as well as sexual prowess. We tried to convince our local hero Rasputin into the sex scenes but he wouldn’t agree, looking back now, I think they would have surely fetched us more claps if not marks!
Group projects made me feel important. Until now I was always told to do something, now I was being asked what I wanted to do. Experiencing ‘group projects’ over time taught me an important lesson, it pays to be the first to arrive and the last to leave, you simply get more food!
Halfway through my first semester I was offered a role of a Maharashtrian Government Servant for a short film. I didn’t know what to feel more delighted about, the fact that I was acting in a real short film or that I was playing a father to a ten year old kid in it. This eight minute film took one week to shoot during which I had to wear the same ‘tight’ pink shirt, brown pants and kholapuri chapels everyday. It funny enough walking on the road wearing clothes which are two sizes smaller, to top it I was being shot on churchgate station, which meant a hundred people wanted to look at me and wonder what was so special about me to be filmed! The film did wonders for my ego. I played the role of a Government Servant thrice after that and that of a father four times. What’s funnier is that the guys who made the film walk up to me now two years hence and tell me they want to make a sequel to the film and hence want me to chop my long tresses off!
I ruffled a few feathers around me. I made friends.
In November we left Mumbai for an official field trip to Goa. This, I maintain, is one of the best aspects of our course. We get to visit places where we wouldn’t be allowed to go otherwise and that too with official permission. For example in Goa, we did visit places of academic interest. These took up four whole hours off the 144 hours that we were there! So here I was, in Goa, the land of beaches and beauties. I did see a couple of beaches but the latter were in plenty.
When five guys share a room, there is bound to be stuff which happens and remains a secret with these five souls for the rest of their lives. And stuff did happen. Its fun to realise that some people are ‘unique’ beyond imagination and that there is so much I don’t know about people who I spend half my day, every single day for three years, with.
Academically, I wasn’t down there, but I wasn’t anywhere near the top either. I knew my subjects. I knew my teachers. They knew me. I can’t really say they liked me, they just knew me. Often I have realised, and now I know for sure, I have always been the boy who didn’t shut-up when he should have. Not that I said derogatory things, I just said things which were funny, but may be would have been better left unsaid. I have had my share of trouble for opening my mouth, like when I told Manjula ma’am that I looked prettier with my hair open than she did with hers! No marks for guessing her reaction. But I must admit it was fun looking at her speculate.
In the Second year, I had grown with the course. Most of the people around me were by now dissatisfied with the course. It’s justified I think, when you study 36 subjects, six every six months you are bound to end up as “Jack of all but King of none.” I had my own issues with the course too, but then nothing is perfect. By now my friends and I were making short films on a regular basis. I acted in quite a few. I assisted in others. Around this time I enrolled for a five week course in basics of Photography. This decision changed my life. What started with curiosity, eventually consumed me. I read as much as I could. I clicked around five thousand pictures in the next six months. I attended workshops and talks and most of all I joined a magazine as an intern in October 2005. I still vividly remember the day I called up the asst. Editor of the Times Journal of Photography, Amrita Ganguly and asked her if I could meet her that evening. I met her and started work the next day. Working in an organization which is run by the Times Group and British Broadcasting Channel in collaboration can be intimidating. It was. I am not an extrovert. It took me three days to ask the pretty girl on the table next to mine what her name was. Eva Pavithran. She writes for Femina. I had heard my mom mention her from one of her articles. My first impression was, ‘I never knew journalists were so beautiful’
My fourth semester in college began with a new set of professionals, we are never taught by professors, we are privileged to be taught by professionals. These individuals are special. Anuja Gosalkar taught us cinema. She was brilliant, her horizons of knowledge were endless. David Desouza taught us Photography. He had a very strong aura around him. He attracted interest and emitted knowledge, not just information, knowledge. His lectures were not only about apertures and shutter speeds, they were about literature, history and philosophy. He unknowingly taught me secrets of life. When a professional photographer takes each and every one of us to his studio to show us how things work, I know he’s special.
It was time again for our annual field trip in November. This time it was Rajasthan, we were visiting Jodhpur and Bikaner. I was back to sharing a room with four guys. Insane antics. Half naked men. Open bathroom doors. Unmade beds. A fivesome sleeping in bed every night. Local delicacies at 12 a.m., wild juniors running around half naked, even women! Levitation, head-rushes, sight seeing, bangle shopping. This is just about all that we did in the Land of the Sand. Male-bonding like never before. For some strange reason, when we get together and do stupid things which defy common sense, we are bound together, by a small bond, something more than just stupidity. This something I will cherish for years to come. In Rajasthan I found the happier, funnier and livelier side of Deepti ma’am. A professor who is so meticulous that it’s almost painful! I have personally never seen anyone as organised and disciplined as her. My experiences in the course over the last two years have taught me to trust people and watch my own back too.
One of the advantages I had before taking journalism as my graduation choice is that since the age of ten my father has insisted strongly on a few things. Eat properly. Sleep sufficiently. Its important to play. Its important to pray. Read the newspaper everyday, even if you read it in the toilet, will do, but make sure you read it. Read the Marathi newspaper. Talk in Marathi at home. He obviously taught me to respect elders and those other things that parents teach. But reading the newspaper in the toilet for the past ten years has helped me grow as a person (well it’s a different issue that I have been reading the Times of India all along). Over the past three years I have sobered down. Some things changed for the better. I don’t jump around as much as I used to. I don’t fool around as much as I used to. I ain’t as thin as I used to be. I ain’t the hot dude I was as a two month old with long golden spiked hair. Some things did change, I am not sure for the better! I don’t cry as often as I used to. My waist size is now more that Pamela’s bust size and my hair has grown longer than Manjula Madam’s.
Today i stand on a threshold in my life. Everyday is a new sport!