Ahmedabad blues..(Or lack thereof)

Back in Bombay after a weekend off from the pressures of the job. "Where in the world was Matt Lauer...I mean.. Vikster?" I hear the cry go forth..Well, he (again with the third-person referral! One would think one believed himself to be Julius Caeser or something..He had a prediliction for the same vices one has..wine, men and the need to talk in the third person singular) was in the land of milk, communal riots and Gandhi. Ahmedabad to be precise, MICA to be even more precise.

MICA is the Mudra Institute for Communication, Ahmedabad. A sorta tony place where you go to study adverting, strategic marketing, communication and the lot. Stuff that a lot of very cool people like to study. Not like engineering where one of the primary qualifications is the level of unattractiveness. (Full disclosure: I'm an engineer). Over the weekend, I met tons of very cool, well-adjusted and intelligent people in the age group of 23 to 26. As you can tell, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. That breed exists somewhere in India? You mean I can actually meet intelligent and motivated youth who're also quite hot? Wow!

I met up with and stayed with a regular reader of this blog. Which was amazing in more ways than one. I mean, what are the odds that you meet someone through something (this blog) that's not an online dating site or an online hook-up site and actually get along with the person and his friends? I met some very awesome and friendly people at MICA and had an absolute blast. It was MICAnvas, the yearly MICA college festival and it was so much fun to be able to actually do and take part in all the fun stuff I remember from when *I* was in college (YES! We had colleges in the Jurassic era!). Quizzing, JAM, Dumb Charades, Pictionary, Photography..so much fun stuff. One of my pictures even made it to the top 10 list..I won JAM and came second in Dumb Charades (Made it outta MICA Rs. 1500 richer!). As usual topped the quizzing prelims and crashed and burned in the finals (Is this a metaphor for my life? Awesome first dates and disasterous relationships?).

Being there this weekend made me realize just how much I miss the *fun* part of being in college. I had a blast my 4 years in Engg. School but I sorely miss the absolute lukkhagiri and timepassness of my life then. Hanging out at the college canteen making fun of the badly dressed people (To their face of course! What do you think I talk behind anyone's back? Hmmph!), bunking classes to go watch the latest English film at Sterling (These were the days BEFORE multiplexes and malls), sharing the one Thums-up or Energee we would limit ourselves to per day (Cause we had NO money unlike the rich kids of today). Man, the more I think about it the more I feel I'm from a different generation from most of the people I tend to meet.

I was talking about this very thing with V. How we tend to look at things in a pre-liberalization, pre-cable TV, pre-cellphone, pre-mall, pre-multiplex way...while everyone we meet has no idea what life was like when you had to wait for 6 months to see Titanic because the only 2 theatres screening them in Bombay were booked for months ahead, while no one remembers "Tree of Unity" and "Sooraj ek, chanda ek", no one hums "Mile Sur mera tumahara" anymore, no one replies to "This K-soap opera stuff is insane" with "But you have no idea what we had before", the words "Krishi Darshan" and "Aapan Hyaana Pahilat Ka?" makes no sense to today's generation...I could go on for hours just on the whole pop-culture differences alone..

Excuse me while I go off and feel nostalgic..and pop in one of the pirated Pakistani plays that we used to wait for for weeks...(Tanhaiyaan, Bakra Kiston Pe...)

Current Music:
Punjab - Karunesh

OK. So I absolutely love this song. Lay down stoned outta my mind this weekend listening to this song on repeat on my Ipod. It's the best.