This is the end...

My one friend is listening to This is the end, another is teasing her for being emotional (to which she’s defending herself), while the third one is very keen on watching our latest and the last pictures together.

Today is the last day of our (Okay, now he peeped in my laptop and found that I am writing this blog. So, now I would be his next target)

Anyways, today is our last day in the MET Institute of Mass Media, the institute in which we entered with hopes and optimism. I still remember myself blogging about my first day at Met. Today I laugh on the fact that how naively I titled the post ‘Jab We MET’. But, at the same time, I know that five years down the line, I will get touched coming across that post, and reviving those old days.

I am going to cherish all the memories of joy and sorrow, of love and hate, of care and backstabbing, of gossips and bitchiness… everything that we experienced in this vibrant one and a half year.

We found some true friends. We found some fake friends. We realized our strengths. We learnt to combat our weaknesses. We found peace in the corridors, while our lectures were on (and we were outside), we found noise in the library when the presentations were lined up back to back. We realized that we are not going to meet some faces, while we were making promises with some faces you were sure of meeting again and again…. and again.

In the bargain, we also lost a few things. Firstly, the love and care with which our parents used to welcome us home got replaced with fury, irritation (and a few abuses here and there). We lost connect with the outside world, when we were engrossed in our own pretty worlds. But more importantly, we lost all the inhibitions. We lost an invisible boundary that we created around us as we grew. We lost the ‘masks’.

All in all, the journey was full of ups and downs, sweet and sour moments. We lost some things, but we found a plethora of good ones. Thess memories need to be treasured, and I know they would be treasured at some corner of my heart. Ten years down the line I might just laugh over our hooting and catcalling. (Why go so far, I am actually having a smile on my face right now.)

And the reason behind this smile is all the friends that I have earned during this journey. We never made our own closed groups, never! But we all knew that we all are somehow, somewhere connected with each other… that’s the beauty of the M5. And hence, here it goes all you kickass people for making life bearable and enjoyable in MET.

Anushree Sharma – Though I had made friends with a lot of people before I met this girl. This one has been my first genuine friend. With genuine, I mean genuine! If we do a Perceptual Map for M5, I know that we both will be standing on two different poles. But, only a few of them know that we have that invisible axis that connects us together. We hardly hung out together, but we knew what are we going through in our lives.

Payal Gadkari – Thanks to Anu, I met this cuddly-huggable bear. When I met Payal for the first time, I perceived her as a mature, serious type girl, who can easily play a perfect mom. People might think that my ability to judge people is completely horrendous. While the world see Payal as a bubbly cute chubby girl, who always tries to defy the rule of gravitation and keeps falling and bumping into something or the other, for me she is different. Payal is one girl who is more grounded to her roots and is headstrong. Chat with her in the balcony over a Smirnoff, and you’ll realize why.

Nandan Joshi – Okay! This was the guy mentioned above, who is disturbing me time and again and not letting me type. A nuisance. A brat. A wanna be (Yes Nandan, you are!) But, at the core he is that well-behaved and well-cultured boy who listens to his Mamma (not a mamma’s boy though), gets rid of his darling Mohawk for his mother and touches feet of the elders to wish them Happy Diwali. I feel bad for meeting him so late, when our course was just about to end. (The hypocrite himself is writing a note on Facebook now!)

Priyanka Joshi – While I feel bad for not meeting Nandan earlier, I pity myself for meeting this lady so late. We were together for a very short time while the course was on, but something in me says that this would be the longest one for my lifetime. I just love this girl, not for her wit, not for her sarcasm, not for her intelligence, but for her genuineness. Hat’s off to her transparency. Though she seems a very witty person (which she is), she cant play double games. Even if she tries hard, she can’t backstab anybody. However, she has an audacity to abuse you on your face. Stay the same girl (I know you will).

Good memories are created not just because of good friends, but good times that we all spent together. Funny, sad, happy, joyous, thrilling, exhaustive, frustrating, almost all sorts of events, top 10 are as follows:
1.The terror Thursdays (or was it Tuesdays)
2.The time when we yelled with joy, when the terror Tuesdays were over. (while a few of us spotted a man walking out with a tear in his eye)
3.Alifia Mam’s Plays
4.Irani Sir’s presentation – the anxiety with which even real JWTs and O&Ms and Mudras of the world wouldn’t have fought with each other
5.Goa Fest
6.The post-Goa lecture which lasted for two long hours in the classroom, and for weeks in our minds
7.Birthdays
8.Metamorphosis
9.Titlimorphosis
10.And those countless different silly things that we did together

MET was about all this, but much more beyond this!


And, this is how the last presentation of MET Institute of Mass Media M5 ends!
This is the end...

The Last Song of Dusk

Some said he is in the league of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, while some compared him to Vikram Seth. But for me, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi's splendid writing made him a writer out of the world. His adept choice of words and ingenious imagination made Anuradha, Vardhamaan, Nandini and the rest of the characters in his debut novel – The Last Song of Dusk, come alive.

The story starts with Ms. Anuradha leaving Udaipur to marry a man she had never seen in her lifetime. While she anxiously boards the train, peacocks themselves fly to sing a farewell song for her, and from there, her journey of a new and completely spellbinding life begins.

Anuradha, after marrying with a man of her dreams - Vardhmaan, starts loving life like never before. She believes, Vardhmaan was the best thing that had happened to her life, and gifts him a true bundle of joy, their loving son, Mohan, only to know that destiny had completely different plans for his future.

After the death of their innocent son, both Anuradha and Vardhmaan get devastated. The sorrow of their lives creates a huge invisible rift between the two of them. The rift that will never be balanced, the gap that will never be bridged, not even after the birth if their second child. She goes back to her mother’s place after Mohan’s death to seek the song of her life.

Whilst in the quest of solace, Anuradha meets Nandini, a girl who walks on water, paints people’s true selves and seeks sexual pleasure with the beasts of jungle. She loves art and loves even more to become the muse of Khalil Muratta, India’s finest painter who’d taken her in his wings. This bold and wide girl doesn’t give it a second thought when she teaches Khalil how to fall out of love and affiances the son of the Governor of India on the same night. And, while all this happens, Anuradha just observes everything vulnerably, cursing Dariya Mahal, the haunted house which is the cause of all the melancholy she and her family had suffered, except Shloka. Shloka was a mercy done by Dariya Mahal on Anuradha. Dariya Mahal keeps its promise of not hurting Shloka, and then comes the time when Anuradha needs to pay it back. Shloka has to go. He has to leave Dariya Mahal. On the day of his departure, when they both sit on the wooden chaise, admiring the painting that the dusk has drawn on the sky, she sings a lullaby for him.

While she bids adieu to Shloka, she remembers how Nandini drew exactly this same scene some years ago. And that’s when she realizes that the departure of Shloka proves to be the last mourning for her. That’s when she finds the song of her life… the last song of dusk.