DEJA-VU

If on that cloudy momentous day, back in 2001, when I bid adieu to a veritable opponent, somebody had told me that my nemesis would be back to bite my on the rear nine years later in another continent, I would have laughed harshly on their face. I had just finished the final exams in class VIII and was feverish with the erotic thrill of meeting a new sensual seductress called Ms. French who would be substituting old bushy-mustached Mr. Hindi. However, life has a funny way of serving you lemons repeatedly, sugarcoating it in amorous French (ah, that still makes my heart skip a beat) – “déjà vu”.

So, yesterday I found myself sprawled in a stranger’s living room squinting through the Hindi script of ‘Iss Kambakht Sathe ka kya Karen?’ and acting like I was following, it when all I was doing was waiting for my cue to practice my false laughter, of which I got a lot of practice, I must admit. I can actually imagine my class VIII Hindi teacher, given up on dying her hair now, pointing her index finger at me and guffawing on her rocking chair, which is creaking in unison. Of course, that is assuming she is an avid reader of this blog, which by any stretch of imagination is as incredulous as Colin Farrel getting the ‘Dancing Hero’ tag.

The language barrier apart, I am quite satisfied with the group. At least, it will give me something to do other than listen to the W drone on about Californian laziness, maturity et al. Read some interesting notes of Sriram Raghavan’s ‘Johnny Gaddar’ here by Jabberwock. My interest is piqued and so, will take advantage of Nazi discounted Tuesday movies offer for the first time.

Since I am talking about déjà vu, let me slip in what happened at lunch today – telepathy. Just like the smell of cheese can mobilize Jerry like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix, any sort of Piscean being near a grill can do the same to me. So, needless to say, I got the grilled trout with extra rice instead of the veggies (I am mentally allergic to most of them), and I was thinking to myself, ‘Geez, how Bong is that?’ I am sure both my great grandfathers were smiling down from the heavens, or wherever they are, as I was enjoying my maach-bhaat along with some UEFA cup action on the plasma in our cafeteria. Sure, there was salsa instead of jhol and some stupid teams called Manure and Coma instead of the great Mohun Bagan and a little lesser great East Bengal, but I could very well have been sitting in the Salt Lake stadium having Ileesh in a to-go box. Suddenly, a manger commented ‘Wow, that’s typical Bengali food’. I flashed one of those dumb ‘You are so smart. Gimme a promotion now’ smiles and passed the equally dumb ‘Salsa for Curry’ joke and was momentarily distracted from the insipid game by the polite laughter that resulted.