Old Monk

I used to hate the concept of blogging. Not for any explicable reason but generally I disliked most of the things that Priyank loved. According to him one should always have a virtual identity so that you can make friends globally and can take their help when your wallet gets stolen in a foreign country. I found this reason very cheap for writing a blog. Plus he used to attend bloggers' meets and all which too I found pretty cheap. I don't believe in making virtual friends, for me friendship has to be tete-a-tete and it should be with people having qualities not overlapping that of mine (well some 20-27% overlap is acceptable for me).

Thus began my friendship with Priyank mainly because of the dissimilarities between us. He loves only Old Monk Rum and I like only Whisky and Scotch. He doesn't like smoking and I like to smoke. He believes he is a very good planner and micro-plans most of the things, whereas I hire (read take help) of micro-planners like him and get my work done. He is 25 years old, born and brought up in Mumbai and doesn't know how to ride a motorbike. I have been having stints with motorbikes since I was a kid. He gets nauseatic at the sight or smell of curd and I can't live without curd.

He has a Howard Roark'ish approach at traffic signals and I prefer playing Gail Wynand. Cricket matches don't excite him much and I am a normal Indian. He can call guys as "Sonya" without getting any suspicious looks but I will never call anybody as "Sonya" unless I am getting paid to do that or I am on a bet. He can be suddenly violent (according to a story told by him, he had broken a thief's foot by hitting him with a wooden rod, he is a karate black-belt). I have never hit any one, because I care more for my own bones rather than indulging in breaking some one else's.

He is so much possessive about most of his things that he never shares a bit. I can be possessive of expensive stuff but not for petty things such as caps and hand gloves. (He had borrowed my cap and hand-gloves when we were climbing Rohtang Pass on hired Yamaha RX-100s. But he would have never given me if I wanted such petty things from him). He gets weird dreams where he is chasing to kill any person wearing hand gloves and at the end of dream finds himself wearing one. I too get weird dreams, of being in a war zone, but I have never managed to kill myself like Priyank. He thinks that I am smart and he knows what I think about him, I don't need to explain, we almost always think contrary things.

Now comes the 20-27% overlapping part, both of us like trekking and mountain biking. We like the engineering industry. We jointly believe that 2-3 years of work experience is necessary before pursuing management education. We love Indian classical music. (There's a difference here though, he can play Sitar very well and I don't understand the difference between a 'raag' and a 'taal'). We dislike corruption. We like 'Chanakya' and the sound of the word 'Mitr' as they say in 'Chanakya'. We are equally confused, at times, about left and right directions, but overall we have a really good directional orientation and people fail to appreciate that. We were equally suspicious about a character or rather 'scene' called Gaurav Biware and we used to disconnect phone calls that he used to make to either one of us. But we had our paradigm shifts once we met Gaurav and I am sure when Gaurav reads this blog, he will create a 'scene' to kill us.

I still dislike blogging for an audience, unlike Priyank, but started it for some inexplicable reason. As I can't explain, may be Priyank will know it better than me.