Mysore Memories...

This one's for the two of you, A and V.. and am not even sure if you'll ever read this!

It was on 22nd of February that I got my posting as "MFGD-Hyderabad" and I can't put to words what sickening feeling it had on me for the next few days.The SWAP portal closed on 25th midnight and I was "sick,tired and frustrated" of being "sick,tired and frustrated" at the end of it. I was myself surprised at the intensity of such feelings, such desperation to get to Pune, a city I had never ever stayed in! I was surprised at my madness because in the past 10 years, Hyderabad was going to be the 5th city I would be living(yeah, Living, not just visiting) in. So, I am very much used to entering a new city completely on my own, making friends for a lifetime, then bidding an emotional goodbye to all of them,packing bags, travelling alone to my new temporary home, making new friends, having a good time again and the cycle continues...! So much so that with the passage of time the word "emotional" had been struck off from the phrase "emotional goodbye". BUT.. THIS WAS GOING TO BE DIFFERENT! I knew it straightaway that this goodbye was not going to be easy by any means.

For the first time in all those years I was afraid of missing my friends. I gave it everything I could to get a transfer to Pune but nothing materialized(apart from an offer to work in Infosys Pune in CME in night shifts, which I outrightly rejected!). I felt like cursing one and all. I felt like quitting the job and finding a new one in Pune. Yes.. all this because I absolutely did not want to miss my newly formed group of 3(Ashish and Vinita being the other two), come what may.The best moment of those days was the 3 of us sitting in one of the food courts, doing absolutely nothing and all of a sudden, one of them would start with,"Jayant, chal na Pune". I hated that conversation then, as it was not going to help in any way but now I miss it badly.I don't feel like entering the food courts here without you guys because whenever I'm sitting alone in a food court here at Hyderabad, I feel the two of you would walk in out of nowhere and start playing pranks at me. I want you to try and snatch my Litchee shake because it tasted much better than your experimental order! I want to be kept waiting for 1 hr after being told to wait for "just 15 minutes". I want to pursuade both of you to keep sitting at FC3 for some more time, despite your eyes crying out for sleep, not because I didn't feel sleepy, but because I wanted to hold on to every single second.I want to snatch the chocolate ice cream from you, not because I loved eating it but because I loved to see your expression and a near-crying face(which,put together with a near-crying voice produced an effect only you are capable of) when someone dared try getting even 1/50th of a spoonful from your cup. I want to keep arguing with you people that shifting to Bangalore is not such a good idea, as getting a swap to Pune is equally unlikely, be it from Bangalore or Hyderabad. I want a totally unplanned outing with both of you, in which we straightaway headed for the exit gate of the campus without having decided where exactly we were heading to. I want Ashish to get into arguments with auto drivers over the nomenclature of eating joints around Mysore and then see his embarrassed face when the auto driver corrected him!

Miss you guys badly. Not so long ago we used to be with each other from 9 a.m. to even past midnight and today, we're so busy that talking once a day doesn't seem feasible.. talk about how times change!!!

Hope... I read somewhere.. is a funny word. It doesn't assure you of anything but it keeps the entire world going...!!!