An update.

It has been a while. Most certainly.

Firstly, I ain't 20 any longer. I remember that the first post was written last summer, almost exactly a year back. Third year of college happened after that. It changed things, VERY drastically.

It feels almost creepy to reflect on how things have gone since I wrote that post. THAT happened while I sat in a ground-floor room of my Salkia home with a set of assets, worries, hopes and dreams. I sit now in the bedroom of a Los Angeles apartment with a new set of pretty much the same stuff, but one which is somehow very different from the previous one. Dreams have been realized and broken, hopes have been satisfied and disappointed, people have left and arrived, illusions have been broken and created. I guess I'm pretty much the same person, despite the fact that so MUCH has changed...

Am I writing a chornicle of my life in 09-10..? I guess I am, in some sense, even though I don't quite know how it's going to turn out yet. Still, I cannot begin this post without mentioning the first major event that happened after the last time this blog was updated. Mammam, my grandmother and the person with whom I shared the most amount of affection in the entire world, passed away about a month later. I haven't yet written a tribute to her or even mentioned her loss in public a lot, for I never could figure out how I could mourn it. All that stays in mind is how I moved through the days following the loss immersing myself in life with aunts and uncles and parents and cousins, organizing with gusto the 'shraddha' ceremony, spending time with Dadai to somehow push his loneliness away, and crying alone in bathrooms before I took a bath each day.

Still, time didn't stand still, like it never does. Soon enough I was back in college, organizing the freshers' dramatics production for our society, staring with bewilderment at juniors who stood up to wish me and addressed me as 'Sir' (in the precise manner that they had been ordered to by my very dear peers), trying to instill 'tempo' into life by getting football boots and a gym card and failing, as is usual, and struggling with the highly complicated task of optimizing attendance.

Then came August 7th. With it came convocation night. Came Nirmalya Karmakar and the founding of the trio. Came SB.

I am quite certain of the fact that if I had to choose the day that changed my life to the greatest extent, I would choose this without any hesitation at all.

I remember Nirmalya giving me a call saying he was arriving. I remember me greeting him and begging for a taste of weed (which I hadn't experienced previously). I remember our discussions with Bhanu Da and Donu in order to get explicit directions of procuring it, followed by a trip to the infamous shop and attending convocation dinner with the stuff in my pockets.

We moved to my room, invited Sarajeet over, introduced him to Nirmalya, and started preparing for ecstacy. Three joints and about 10 floyd songs later, I began texting her, clueless of whether she would reply this time.

She did, and before too long, I had asked for permission to call her and actually got it. Then signal strength lessened, the call got disconnected, and I ignored her missed call to accompany my friends to JCB canteen for the trademark 'egg-rice'.

The call got repeated the following night, this time for an hour without interruption. Joints got repeated a week later, the night before the 15th august production of our society. The two became parts of my life, the former to a very large extent, the latter to a lesser. And so it went.

Come durga pujo, and I got stood up, returned from Howrah station having cancelled a trip after the train had reached the platform, waged a tough battle against domestic madness (which I eventually won) and returned to college in pretty low spirits. On the train back to kgp grief overcame ego, and I texted her. She made me call about an hour later, and I came to know she had broken up. Painfully.

The rest of the sem was marked by the sinusoidal curve which characterized my mental state, the amplitudes being boundless excitement and hopeless depression. Then came the winter holidays, a trip to Mumbai and Didi's, a trip to Nainital with my best friends, and ever-increasing craziness. Oh, and reciprocation, finally!

January brought with it a new semester, a portrayal of Leonidas on stage with the sizes of my chest and tummy reversed from the original, a birthday kiss and the spring fest.

Oh! The Spring fest! Three days, 8 friends, whiskey, weed, music, football and foot-cricket, laughter and joy, disappointing star nights, night-outs on rooftops, trips to the institute roof drunk, trips to cheddi's drunk AND stoned... I could write pages and still miss out on parts. I should dedicate an entire post to it, as I should to the million other snippets in this tale.

Spring fest ended and was followed by Sarajeet and I, best friends on campus already, finding insane levels of bonding. EVERY evening was spent at Vasky's over tea and cigarettes discussing nonsense and deep and beautiful philosophy (two things I often can't distinguish between). It was heavenly! I am pretty certain I was falling in love with two different things simultaneously.

Then came February. The first Valentines' day with a distinctly likely subject. Confessions of feelings in the lead up. Creative art sent through email as the first gift ever. Speaking from 12 am to 12 30 am over the phone, followed by a break to brush teeth. And the news arriving before the break ended....

The second loss in a year, and the one which was definitely more shocking. Ankik Da, college senior, mentor, friend, stunner, shouter, jumper, singer, dancer, actor, player, scholar, biggest personification of craziness ever, passed away in a bomb blast inside German Bakery on 13th February 2010. Again, I haven't come up with a tribute yet, for I am still clueless about how one writes a tribute to such a person. The shock took months to sink in. It still is, I suppose, as I struggle to believe the fact that a person like him can really be no more.

A week after his passing away came the news that I had been selected for an internship at the University of Southern California. It was the exact same place where he had done his internship in his 3rd year, but I wasn't able to reach him to gather funda.

March saw me bonding closer with sarajeet over tea and sutta, and brought with it a greater amount of workload than any I had experienced before. Bengali dramatics, captained by me, brought a gold medal to our hostel. It was celebrated with whiskey, weed and a trip to forum with arpan and the lady, followed by a movie and the first moves. Project work proceeded with a sense of organization, and for possibly the first time in my life I felt professional. Then came annual drama production, which I bunked. In the process I hurt several people (including myself) quite a good deal more than I had anticipated. The lady got separated by a greater distance and S.T.D calling rates, and got shocked at the amount it grieved her. She returned a week later with a couple of deer (which had very sharply adorned heads) for the two of us, and on April Fool's day came a proposition which was accepted.

April brought with it a new friend, a new involvement between me and Sarajeet, and a conclusion which left more than one person both hurt and fortunate at the same time.

I've pretty much come to the end, and for some weird reason am feeling quite a bit like David Copperfield. In the month of May I took a flight to L.A for the internship I mentioned, and that's what I'm presently in the middle of.

It's a beautiful evening, and I think I'm going to take a walk now.