This is a guest post by Maurilio Amorim that I found quite interesting food for thought…
Google and search engines are ruining our lives. I’m convinced of it. Sure, we can now find everything we want to know about any given subject by typing a word and hitting search. Now wait. We don’t even have to finish typing the word. Magical internet search engine elves anticipate our search criteria and fill in the rest of word or phrase for us, most of the time with eerily accuracy.
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. – Michael Jordan
The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
To the person who spelled my middle name incorrectly on my birth certificate: I applaud you for your creative license. You took a strange spelling and turned it into an even stranger spelling. You recognized that although I was merely minutes old, I strove to be unique.
To my first grade teacher who looked at my deranged, curly hair and asked me “Doesn’t your mother ever comb your hair?”:
It has been almost a month since I heard the news, but it is still hard to believe that ARK (Atheeq-ur-Rahman Khan) is no more.
August 2001 – My life had just taken a new turn. I had left all the comforts of home and had arrived in Chennai. Hostel life was completely new to me. In fact everything was new – the people, the food, the language – but somehow it was all very exciting as well.
Our college men’s hostel had mainly 3 sections – the main block, the Arabic college hostel block and the MBA block.The main block was the most dreaded. It had all the seniors waiting to get their hands on the newly joined freshers.
The Arabic college hostel block had two dormitories reserved for the freshers – the P dorm and the J dorm – I still don’t know why those dorms were given those particular alphabets as names. I was put up here. Although we didn’t have the best of facilities, it was a fair distance away from the main block(seniors) and we even had a separate mess.
The MBA block as the name suggests was predominantly for the MBA students. It was the most well maintained & spacious of all the 3 sections. It even had attached toilets. Some of the lucky freshers had the opportunity to stay there. Atheeq was one of them lucky ones.
I first heard of Atheeq when someone told that a fresher staying in the MBA block was celebrating his birthday and was treating everyone with Marrybrown burgers. WOW!! Burgers!! I hadn’t even seen a burger in ages. I was dying to have one, especially after having the “amazing” hostel food for some time. Unfortunately my date with a burger didn’t happen that day as well. Apparently it was not just me who was craving for a burger. It was over even before I had stepped out of my dorm.
I don’t remember the first time I actually met Atheeq. Maybe in one of the dorms or in the mess or maybe in college; anyway as time passed we became acquaintances and then friends. He was quite a no-nonsense kind of person. A bit shy but always sure of what he wants. Back in the days in Chennai, Ispahani Center was one of the main hangouts for college students. We friends used to catch a train or bus from college and travel some 30 odd km to the city just to hang out there or at Spencers or Satyam cinema nearby. One evening when we were sitting outside Ispahani, someone offered him a cigarette. He replied with his thick Urdu accent, “Machan I just drank one”. I was shocked for a minute. How the hell can one drink a cig??!! He later explained that he had translated Urdu blindly to English - cigarette peena ~ drink cigarette.
By the time first year was over, it was the end of hostel life for some of us. We friends used to rent small apartments or houses near to the college. We were neither day scholars nor hostel-ites. No parents to ask us why we haven’t gone to college, no wardens to stop us from coming late everyday. (The consequences of that were quite catastrophic but that is another story). Me & Atheeq were never flatmates. I was staying with friends in East Tambaram – our home for the next 3 years. He was in East Tambaram for some time and then moved to a swanky fully furnished 3 bedroom apartment in Kottur Gardens – also our home for the next 3 years. Except for the days his parents used to visit him, at least one of us friends used to be there on a full-time basis. If our place was the focal point of all “fun” activities in Tambaram, it was Atheeq’s place in the city. There are so many memories attached to that place. So many parties, so many jokes, so many night outs. College life would have been definitely much duller without Atheeq.
Time passed, college got over. Me & some friends from college had started working in Chennai. We had moved from Tambaram to K K Nagar in the city. Atheeq had moved to UK and then US to complete his higher studies. I think after college I had met him just once or twice during the next 3 years I was in Chennai. Thankfully it was around this time orkut became popular, through which we used to keep in touch. By mid 2008 I also bid adieu to Chennai and had moved to Kuwait. The orkut popularity reduced and so did my contact with some of my good friends in college. Then sometime in late 2009 I got a call from Atheeq. To hear someones voice after such a long gap, its wonderful. He had called to invite me for his wedding. I had missed some friend’s weddings earlier. This was not something I wanted to miss; moreover the dates were bang in the middle of my already planned vacation to India. It was perfect.
The wedding was in Hyderabad. To call it just a wedding would not only be an understatement, it would be a crime. None of us had ever been to such a spectacular gala event before, and quite frankly the chances of being in a similar one again are quite slim. If he had left his mark during college for most of us, he sure did blow us away at the wedding. The Chennai-Hyderabad air tickets, the stay at the Taj, the entertainment, the venue, the food, the treatment – WOW!!
Next I met him was earlier this year in Madurai during Malai’s wedding. It was so good to see most of my old friends. Never knew that it would be the last time I’m seeing my dear friend Atheeq.
You won’t be just remembered for having all the good things in life. You will be remembered for the fact the in spite of having literally everything you were such a down-to-earth person. You will be remembered for being a good human being, for being a wonderful friend.
I’m sure you are giving a great time to everyone up there in the heavens. Thank you for all the wonderful memories my friend. ARK, Atheeq, Bhai, Seth, Guntur Raja….you will be missed. So very much.
Never knew of this method to cook egg. Tried for the first time. No oil at all and better than the normal hard boiled ones.
Poached Egg
Some pictures taken when the “Sand Tsunami” hit Kuwait on 25th March 2011..
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Image Source: Internet
They say marriages are made in heaven. If yes, heaven for me will always be a small ice cream parlour in a crowded shopping mall in my home town Thalasserry.
Like any normal young male in the “marriageable” age, I always stayed away, as far as possible, from any talks involving the M-word. Maybe it was the fear of life long commitment, maybe it was the thought of giving up my freedom or maybe some bitter-sweet memories of the past. Whatever it was, I was just not ready to settle down.
India is a fast developing nation with progress in almost all walks of life. However, when it comes to the most important decision which will take our generation forward, the majority still stick on to the long trusted form of match making – arranged marriage.
Like most parents from this part of the world, one of the main aim of my folks was to find a suitable partner for their kids. Even before I reached puberty, I remember the numerous aunts in the family asking me what are the qualities I want in my future wife. Talk about catching them young!! It’s still a mystery how I am still unmarried at 28.
Its been a while since my folks have started showing me profiles of prospective candidates to be my future wife. I came up with all sorts of excuses to reject those proposals. Apart from the fact that I couldn’t fall in love with a photograph, I wanted to delay the inevitable as much as I could.
Last year when my good friend Malai announced his wedding plans, most of us friends applied for leave with our respective employers. I managed to get less than a week off, but that was more than enough to attend the wedding and go home and visit my folks whom I haven’t seen for over a year. The venue of the wedding was in Madurai, a few hundred kilometers from Thalasserry. Due to lack of time, I had made extensive travel plans to get home fast and spend a full day and a half with my family before I had to fly back to Kuwait. I could never imagine how important those one and a half days would become for the rest of my life.
The wedding, as expected, was a gala affair. Yes the food was vegetarian, but we were all so happy to see each other after ages that no one complained. Then a few hours before the wedding got over, I got a call from dad. They had managed to get one more proposal and I was supposed to meet her the next day!! I didn’t know whether to go ahead with my travel plans and get home or run away to Kuwait. But after giving it some thought, I decided to take the plunge. It was not like I’m getting married the next day. It was more like a date arranged by my folks.. so why not. 
It was not a traditional “pennu kaanal”. The rendezvous was decided at a popular ice cream parlour in town. Yes I was tensed. I hadn’t seen her pic (for a change), I didn’t even know her full name. I had only heard of blind dates, never knew I would be part of one.
She had reached early. I was stuck in traffic but managed to reach not too late. With some difficulty, I managed to find the parlour in one corner of the mall. The butterflies in my stomach had gone wild. The first time I laid my eyes on her…. it was beautiful. She was wearing a lovely lilac coloured salwar kameez and I just loved her smile. By the time we got talking, I knew she was the one.
This was almost two weeks ago. I had to fly back the next day. I’m thankful to the modern technologies through which we became even closer. We are due to be engaged in a couple of weeks time, and if everything goes according to plan, I will be spending the next new year with my wife, my Silsy.
Ou first pic together..
