Priyan Naik, an esteemed alumnus of BITS Pilani, currently serves as an Adjunct Faculty member at St. Joseph's University in Bangalore. As a columnist and freelance journalist, he has made significant contributions to prestigious newspapers like Deccan Herald and Hindustan Times. In this post, we are excited to share three of his insightful articles for you to enjoy!
A ROLLERCOASTER OF BONDS
PUBLISHED: DECCAN HERALD, 6th May 2024
For a man of relatively short, diminutive stature, he possessed an aura that demanded immediate attention. His parental background was intriguing; his father, a conservative Tamilian, had married a Sikkimese when posted on official duty, which was a tad unusual for an India of the 1970s. Only he attributed his “know-all” aura and his sharp memory to this fortuitous circumstance.
Within our college campus, he was profoundly irreverent, refused to respect authority and conventions, and was not bound by the traditional methods of thinking that the rest of us adhered to. He was instinctive and driven by curiosity, thriving on uncertainty, hell bent on repeatedly stirring the pot and enlivening the drudgery of our student life by constantly questioning the status quo.
He had a love for the bottle, and after a glass or two, he found himself fuelled by the powers of innovation and creativity. His enthusiasm and zest for life were evident in the manner in which he dominated conversations, cigarette in hand. So adult-like, he was an enigma, thoroughly impressing us all, a group of youngsters fresh from school on the cusp of adulthood.
The years took their toll, and soon enough, memories of our college began to fade from our collective memories, overshadowed by our busy work lives. Meanwhile, he had moved and settled down in Bengaluru, where I too lived. But we rarely talked to each other, and all these years, I hardly took the time out to even ring him. “Aren’t we in the same city? We can always meet tomorrow,” was my constant refrain. Importantly, what was there to converse about? The pizazz of our college days hardly seemed meaningful decades later. (The one time I visited him, I discovered he was an excellent cook and could stir up some tasty mutton curry even as he puffed away at his cigarette, a glass filled with his favourite drink within hands reach!)
One wintry Bengaluru morning, his number flashed on my phone screen. Wondering where to begin the conversation after such a long gap, I answered hesitantly, starting to rattle off excuses for not contacting him in months. Only his wife was using his phone to inform his friends that he had passed away after a severe asthma attack.
My heart sank upon hearing this. What an insensitive and self-centred buddy was I? My ears would not take in what they were hearing. I felt guilty, for now it had become a far more serious question of concern for a friend. Did my absence hurt him? What else should I have done before it became too late?
Friends are priceless; one can never be too busy or late for them.An occasional tinkle would have made sure I wouldn’t have cause for regret now. There was only one consolation: he always said life was not worth living beyond 35; fortuitously, he lived to be almost double.
SPICE OF LIFE | Digital yearbook brought us together after 50 years!
PUBLISHED : 16th NOVEMBER, 2022
We found ourselves behaving exactly as we would in our college days, playing to each other’s strengths, struggling through deadlines, putting up with each other’s idiosyncrasies and most important having fun.
While preparing for the golden jubilee celebrations of our batch, we thought a 50-year separation could best be bridged by making a digital yearbook asking all our batch-mates to give details of their ‘journey through life’ and compiling these pages in the form of a diary complete with updated addresses and the latest phone numbers.
This was never going to be easy. When five of us were tasked to develop a digital yearbook, we were bewildered. What was a yearbook all about, not to mention a digital version? How were we to get started? One of the group members promptly opted out, claiming she wanted to ‘chill’ and not be burdened with work specially when out to celebrate a golden jubilee event! Another member enthusiastically posted a coffee table book circulated by an earlier batch. This really was the start point. Our group promptly decided to make a digital version similar to the coffee table book, only make it better to be ‘one-up’ on the previous batch.
Easier said than done. How were we to start, considering two of us were in the US, and the rest spread all over India? It was Google Meet every Wednesday to the rescue, though it took us two weeks to agree on a mutually convenient time across the geographies. Navigating through pitfalls, we eventually agreed on a time and had our first meeting. But 90% of the meeting was spent on figuring out when to have the next meeting? Which day of the week? How long and so on. As for a digital yearbook: What was that?
Several meetings later, with ‘gupshup’ about old friends and discussions on the good old ’70s, taking up 95% of the time, the digital yearbook got to be discussed for barely five minutes. But our Wednesday meetings became a habit. After all, wasn’t this just like doing a project, 50 years ago in college?
One member tried to be a visionary. He was looking for hosting a yearbook on the web in perpetuity, where any member of the group could wake up at any time in the future and fill up a page. This member, the proverbial techie, volunteered to complete the architecture but took weeks of rigorous prodding before coming up with a bare format and architecture. Many weeks later when his process was made available to the group, a simple ‘beta test’ showed the colleagues who volunteered to be ‘guinea pigs’ were unable to even grasp the basic essentials. This member left the group in a huff!
His departure actually accelerated the process with the others getting the leeway to fast forward and come out with a workable solution. A quick beta test confirmed this allowing us to go to the next step of actually collecting the necessary details for compilation.
Nothing beats a set of batch-mates getting together for any task 50 years after separation. We found ourselves behaving exactly as we would in our college days, playing to each other’s strengths, struggling through deadlines, putting up with each other’s idiosyncrasies and most important having fun.
Human nature allows us to adapt to any challenge, even getting together with a disparate set of batch-mates to churn out a digital yearbook.
SPICE OF LIFE | 50 Years later, a bus journey back in time!
PUBLISHED: 17th FEBRUARY 2023
Living spaces in India’s hinterland, the crowds and the traffic have become overwhelming. Its individuals have grown and done well for themselves. The India of the ’70s is merrily chugging along, 50 years later it seems as if time stands still, writes Priyan R Naik
Travelling 200km from Delhi to the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan was bound to be different from travel 50 years ago. A remote destination, even by today’s standards, it would take almost five hours to reach. Travelling by day was preferable to a night bus, which could be pretty painful, the buses usually packed with passengers and no available seat. Holding on to a hand rail while standing never made for a pleasant experience and it was during these times that we wished some rich industrialist would adopt us and spare us this harrowing journey.
Regular bus services touched Bahadurgarh, Rohtak and Bhiwani before reaching Loharu on the periphery of our destination, the bus ride reasonably pleasant as we crossed hamlets, routinely passing huge fields being ploughed with bullocks. Unfortunately, the bus operators had this habit of staying put at a bus stop, not starting off until the conductor in his judgment felt the bus was sufficiently packed. The driver would often ‘trick-start’ the engine to fool the public into believing the bus would leave any moment, while the conductor let out loud full-throated calls “Loharu, Loharu, Loharu…. ” both rhythmic and musical. Their doubtful utility notwithstanding, we felt this urge to imitate these loud sonorous calls, which we most often did.
Half a century later, full of expectations and anticipation we set off again, this time in a chartered bus following a slightly different route via Dharuheda, Rewari, Narnaul and Singhana, supposedly easier to navigate. Passing through crowded local towns, despite being equipped with Google Maps, we could hardly interpret the route amid haphazard traffic signage. The Rewari to Narnaul portion was possibly the worst keeping us on tenterhooks till we hit a roundabout, leading to a flyover, the left side of which brought us back on track. The roads we traversed had the same unending streaks of yore punctuated with gaping holes and patches and pesky trucks overtaking from the wrong side. Farms were full of crops as before, only the bullocks replaced with gleaming tractors. The torturous traffic as we passed through way side towns had to take its toll, what took five hours then, took seven hours to cover the same distance!
Little had changed, albeit the towns looked crowded, several shops visible, all cheek by jowl, one across the road from the other. Individuals had become older, a small cold drink shop that we frequented then, had grown thrice its original size. “Kapoorji” was the owner and his 12-year-old son used to run about then, serving us glassfuls of ‘shikanji’ (lemonade). This son was now 62 years old, pudgy and balding, his smile the same as before. We couldn’t resist asking him whether we could pull his cheeks as we did back then for old times’ sake. When asked why his sons were not helping him with the shop, he told us one was in Germany and the other in the United States.
What of modernity or the 21st century? Living spaces in India’s hinterland, the crowds, the traffic have become overwhelming. Its individuals have grown and done well for themselves. The India of the ’70s is merrily chugging along, 50 years later it seems as if time stands still.
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