United we write, divided we..err...

The year was 2007. The month probably August or perhaps even September. It could not be October. I clearly recall the stickiness adding to the uneasiness of the situation. The date I do not remember. Two teenagers, just out of high school, were discussing ‘business sense’ against the backdrop of a freshly painted yellow house adorned by a big blue board which read ‘Individual Maths Classes for IIT –JEE by....’Like all other discussions between 16 year olds, which when faced with the slightest of difference of opinions turn into full fledged wars, this one too was heading the wrong way. Egged on by a few other boys also waiting for the Maths tutor who claimed to be an IIT Bombay alumnus (something always debated upon during the entire length of the course specially on days where a particularly peculiar function would just refuse to get integrated by him), all of the same age who though were morally mature enough to know that the tension in arguments like this one needed to be diffused immediately to avoid serious damage but not grown up enough yet to resist the fun of seeing a few blows and slaps, the two of them directed all they knew anything even remotely relevant to the topic towards ascertaining supremacy over one another. And as it almost invariably is with such arguments, this too ended prematurely with the arrival of the IIT Bombay pass out maths tutor (since there is no concrete contradictory evidence as such, we give the man the benefit of doubt) without any consent reached at. Incidentally, this happened to be the first time the two had seen of each other.

As fate would have it which in this case acted in the form of private Maths Coaching Classes to aid the IIT Coaching Classroom Classes (pun intended), the two of them kept meeting again and again. And with time, the hostility let way for a subtle friendship. The place, the schedule didn’t allow friendships. But between Tutorial Sheets and Extra Classes, the most powerful human emotion almost always took over. In an alien and unfriendly atmosphere of Integral Calculus and Binomial Theorem, a passion for rock music and an unwavering devotion to Chelsea brought the two of them close too. From chance encounters at the departmental store to the occasional visit to each other’s rooms, the two started meeting up more often for no reasons obvious; something people termed as time wastage and considered as one of the gravest errors an IIT aspirant could commit in this town called Kota where everything that people cared for began and ended with the Indian Institutes of Technology. An idea both of them were not comfortable with for it was beyond them to sit in their stingy rooms for hours at a stretch and just do math but that’s another story.

The two hellish years passed, albeit painfully slowly, like all bad things in life. Both failed their joint entrance exams for admissions into the IITs.  But nevertheless both got admitted into decent engineering colleges on merit. The story wasn’t over. After sharing their horrid experiences with the much glorified aspects “engineering” they came to know they had much more in common. Like any other not-so-grown-up person cursing the present situation, they claimed that they belonged to the more creative side of this universe (or rather the opposite of what they were in), even ‘writing’ got them high, much more than any of the rusty lathe machines and binary mathematics. The resonance was most pronounced and they knew what they had to do. Reserve a space to put down their thoughts. Maybe just in order to look back at it in the future and laugh at the immaturity the thoughts bore or maybe just for the love of writing. Or maybe just in order to get a ‘life’. The easiest way was to start a blog and that looked COOL, people writing blogs have always been considered to be cool so why not?  Much water has flown in the Chambal (for those of you who don’t know- The Chambal is a river that flows through the town of Kota and again the pun is intended) since that juvenile debate on their first meeting. The two of them or rather the two of us –Siddharth Kotwal and Arunabh Saikia, have moved over Rock and the Blues is what really gets us on now, Chelsea is in the middle of one of its worst ever phases but we still remain faithful to the Blues, Blues music on the other side is well just like ‘crack cocaine’ for us. Connected by the Blues and separated by what we don’t really care; here we come again for this new blog of ours where we will discuss everything from spiritualism to sex!

Happy Reading Guys!! Cheers!!