A Pal of
Mine……..& yet Another One!!!!!
-
Ram V Nampoothiri
“I
LOVE MY FRIENDS, THEY ARE MY STRENGTH. I WILL ALWAYS STAND BY THEM IRRESPECTIVE
OF THEIR DEEDS, AND EVEN I GET SCREWED UP, I DONT CARE COZ IT’S THE NAIL THAT
STANDS UP WHICH GETS THE HAMMERING"
The 'About Me' ramblings in Orkut
profiles usually don't hold much value as one's character sketches, but the
above is entirely true about him.
Short. Well-built. Fast-receding
hairline. White shirt with pink-flowers, or blue with a huge Metallica
print on the back and a zipper over the chest. Designer jeans with carefully
made out tears all over. You can easily spot him from a mile away amongst the
medico crowd, that is if he comes to
college. But his appearance is the least
important thing about him. He has his own unique take on anything under the sun
– from medicine to politics to sports. And that made us hit it off together. I
found that I could converse, debate, argue and laugh with him on anything hours
on end without either of us feeling a wee bit bored. He has this rare gift of
putting people at ease.
His exploits on the cricket field are
widely known. Colour-blind he may be, but he pumped up Anwar into hitting a few
sixes and even smashed a four himself (God knows how?!) on our road to winning
the cup. What isn't known to many is his brilliant chess game. I looked like an
idiot betting against this district
player over a game with one of my pals. I lost the bet, of course, and he won a
bottle of sprite and a lot of my admiration.
Another day, he greeted me with this
question:
“Dude, heard about the quiz?”
“Ya.”
“How about we team up?”
“Sure.”
And off we went, without even a
microscopic amount of preparation between us, sailing through the preliminaries
on top and finishing third in the final. We were the third-best team in the
college, but the fun we had was the best part.
A party freak, he is also pretty good
dancer as we found out from Caterpillars at Genesis 2006. His
remarkable organizing skills came to the fore during our three college tours so
far. Without losing his temper even once, and without a single heated exchange
with anyone he made sure we enjoyed three flawless tours to the max, all the
while having a whale of a time himself. Not your typical burned-out impresario.
Oh yeah, and he occasionally scoots off on unplanned stress-buster trips
with his close pals.
In case you're wondering what's so
special about being a popular, high-spirited college guy, there's one thing
that truly sets him apart from the rest – he stands up unselfishly for people –
his friends, his classmates. All of us
know his super-fast attendance-taking and zipping through the registers, but
only a few know about the mess he landed in as our rep., after we mass-bunked an average exam. The
only time that he has gotten angry was when one of our classmates got beaten up
in a row. In the events and the brawl that followed, he cut his radial artery
and underwent an emergency vascular surgery and hospitalization for a couple of
weeks. All for a pal. And some say a high
made him do all that. I can assure you that he was extremely sober that night
when he went to seek retribution for our mate. ViKu Sir later described him in
the incident as “Look, these are actions which make a difference to the society
we live in. Change for the better or worse I cannot say, but change certainly
he has brought about, and you should all be proud of him.”
There are two kinds of brilliant people
in this world – the ones whose heads rule over their hearts and those whose
hearts rule over their heads. The former become highly successful and famous in
life. The latter touch more lives than others and spread happiness and
contentment, and become a part of our very souls.
“As
we complete four years of acquaintance and friendship, I realize that you
belong to the second group, mate. And I'm proud to have you as a pal. You're
totally COOL, and then some.”
Moving on to the other end of the
spectrum…..
She is
short cute and plump. And Quiet. So silent that, you wouldn’t realize her
existence even when she has been around you for the past four years. She has a
perfect attendance during the theory classes but the register doesn’t reflect
it, and this is probably because the guy taking the attendance fails to hear
her answer her name from the front row, where she sits in all these classes.
Now you know how quiet she is. To make the contrast more obvious with the guy
mentioned in the first part of this article, she dresses in the most simple,
down to earth manner that one can possibly imagine with absolutely no trace of
even an earring in her body.
However the
most characteristic feature that sets her apart from everyone, is the pace of
her speech and gait which, I’m afraid, is really really S-L-O-W. Except when
she’s inside the exam hall answering viva questions where, (as the marks might
reflect!!!) I think she answers them all a little too quickly.
An
extremely God fearing person, she is also a very homely person who gets very very
homesick if she doesn’t visit “Mama” at least once in a couple of weeks. That
she hails from the same city as my hero of the story, leaves my wondering how
different can people, hailing from the same region, who studied in schools very
near to each other, turn out to be.
You
don’t expect to see her on class tours, neither do you expect to see her
dancing during DJ night. You will never see her involved in any sort of sports nor
in your wildest dreams do u expect her to have her own Orkut profile. But you
need people like this in the unit, always. To give you completed records to
copy from, to teach you something in the morning of the practicals and to
answer all the questions put forward by professors during classes to the unit. Why
is it that everybody who notices her, talks to her or studies with her, like
her so much? Is it because of her willingness to help you, her simplicity or
her down to earth modesty? None. People adore her when they see her universal
love for all, and idolize her, when they realize the happiness she gets by
helping out others.
I’ve now described a couple of our
classmates to you. These two superb and extra ordinarily brilliant pals of mine
can’t be more different from each other, whichever parameters you may measure
them with. Except for one. A Heart made of pure Gold.
