It was a phase where I spent the best weekends of my life! I was tempted to say the ‘best phase of my life’ generically, but for my better half! After all, it takes a lot of courage to proclaim ‘better times’ in life to which your spouse is not party to! They say discretion is better part of valour. So I will rather stick to ' the best weekends of my life'!
It was my first trip abroad to Japan and I was obviously in seventh heaven. After all, an onsite opportunity in those days was a big thing - rather a matter of effort and fortune with right combination. I had all the reasons to be happy since in my case it was the latter that played all the part! I was on this short term assignment to a project in Tokyo and was ‘accommodated’ in a business hotel in one of the Tokyo suburbs. It (now as I understand) was something similar to a budget version of ‘Extended Stay’. Each room had a kitchen (and by that I mean the stove –ability to cook) and some very basic things to enable the occupant to stay for weeks. Though my company would often accommodate people for months! For somebody like me, whose exposure to a hotel stay could easily be measured with the tip of fingers, it was certainly a heavenly abode!
Not to mention almost all my colleagues staying in the hotel were bachelors, at various stages of their ‘bachelorhood’. Right from somebody like me, who had just begun the ‘journey’ to others who were about to cross the bridge. Every now and then we would have people leaving the place once the project or assignment was over and new ones coming in. But the set of people in any ‘phase’ was the group. And I happened to be part of such a phase. So we had about six of us staying in the hotel for the few months I was there. Every day we would start early so that we managed to get to the office before our clients arrived (well I almost always never achieved that!). If you are in the habit of waiting for your customers to leave, before departing office- you need to take a break. Especially if you are in Japan. We- the poor souls were oriented that way and almost always ended up getting back late in the night. On few of the lucky days, getting back involved cooking for the ‘group’ since everybody took turns. So I had to choose between the devil and the deep blue see, for most of the week days!
But it were really the week-ends that everybody eagerly awaited. It was an unwritten norm to party on Friday nights. ‘Party’ involved booze (for the most),dinner –cooked by one of the enthusiastic members, an occasional movie and the most important ingredient –lots and lots of chatter. It was certainly a way for most of us to unwind from the hectic office schedules and in a larger frame – to unwind from our worries, anxieties of life. So we would have ‘episodes’ from the biography of each one of us every Friday. It was fun, learning and certainly the best way to spend a Friday night in the given situation.
While I could gather (and extrapolate) the lives of most of my colleagues based on the revelations made on Friday night, the one person that often eluded me was Dipam. Dipam Bora was in his late 20s.He was the ‘elder brother’ in the group and generally helpful. Mild mannered, he would speak sparingly for most of the days in the week- rather always, except those Friday nights! Couple of drinks down, Dipam would start interacting freely. Knowing him, we –the chelas (protégé) would often keenly listen to his talk which was full of experiences from his life, some anecdotes and some practical tips for the given situation. For each of our ‘biography episodes’, Dipam had a constant comment. ‘Gosavi!- Jindagi ka hisab kitab utna asaan nahi jitna tum sochte ho !’. The only variable in this was ‘Gosavi’! We would appreciate and clap for Dipam in the ‘sprint’ of the night and Friday nights would pass – well mostly without an argument. Next day, everybody would be busy with their weekend cores. Dipam would become his reclusive self. He could neither remember nor acknowledge to anything that happened the previous night. You would hardly hear any of the philosophy on other days except for his punch line “ Jindagi ka hisab kitab’, which he would invoke occasionally .
My stay at the hotel ended in a few months and I lost touch with Dipam and the rest (well email was not an easy option in those days and often a ‘paid’ service!). As I said, I spent some of my best weekends with this group. I didn’t contact Dipam or the rest because in my memory, I wanted all of them to be just the way I left them! Subsequently, my memories were superimposed with lots of other stuff in life- better and bitter. But that one thing which continued to stay with me was Dipam’s tag line – Gosavi, Jindagi ka hisab kitab itna asaan nahi jitna tum sochte ho! I have had fair bit of my experiments with ‘self’ and philosophy in the years before and after. .Learnt from a lot of ‘Babas’ and Swamis and all the readable English (or Marathi) material that I could comprehend. Also, I often like to read the back of auto rickshaws and trucks for my routine philosophical doses. But the one thing that has helped me tide over in my life is Dipam’s tag line! Rather it would inadvertently be the first thing that I would remember in any situation good or bad!
I have not ventured to translate the tag line here because I believe my literary knowledge is insufficient in this case. Hope the learned (and Hindi speaking) would understand it. For others, I would refer you to Vedas, Upanishads, Gita or any other granth and /or philosophy of your liking for a more insightful revelation. Chances are –some of us, including me may encounter Dipam sometime, somewhere and hear the golden scripts from him! After all-
“Jindagi ka hisab kitab itna asaan nahi hota jitna tum sochte ho”!.
Dedicated to my long lost friend –Dipam Bora. Dipam, wherever you are, May the force be with you!
It was my first trip abroad to Japan and I was obviously in seventh heaven. After all, an onsite opportunity in those days was a big thing - rather a matter of effort and fortune with right combination. I had all the reasons to be happy since in my case it was the latter that played all the part! I was on this short term assignment to a project in Tokyo and was ‘accommodated’ in a business hotel in one of the Tokyo suburbs. It (now as I understand) was something similar to a budget version of ‘Extended Stay’. Each room had a kitchen (and by that I mean the stove –ability to cook) and some very basic things to enable the occupant to stay for weeks. Though my company would often accommodate people for months! For somebody like me, whose exposure to a hotel stay could easily be measured with the tip of fingers, it was certainly a heavenly abode!
Not to mention almost all my colleagues staying in the hotel were bachelors, at various stages of their ‘bachelorhood’. Right from somebody like me, who had just begun the ‘journey’ to others who were about to cross the bridge. Every now and then we would have people leaving the place once the project or assignment was over and new ones coming in. But the set of people in any ‘phase’ was the group. And I happened to be part of such a phase. So we had about six of us staying in the hotel for the few months I was there. Every day we would start early so that we managed to get to the office before our clients arrived (well I almost always never achieved that!). If you are in the habit of waiting for your customers to leave, before departing office- you need to take a break. Especially if you are in Japan. We- the poor souls were oriented that way and almost always ended up getting back late in the night. On few of the lucky days, getting back involved cooking for the ‘group’ since everybody took turns. So I had to choose between the devil and the deep blue see, for most of the week days!
But it were really the week-ends that everybody eagerly awaited. It was an unwritten norm to party on Friday nights. ‘Party’ involved booze (for the most),dinner –cooked by one of the enthusiastic members, an occasional movie and the most important ingredient –lots and lots of chatter. It was certainly a way for most of us to unwind from the hectic office schedules and in a larger frame – to unwind from our worries, anxieties of life. So we would have ‘episodes’ from the biography of each one of us every Friday. It was fun, learning and certainly the best way to spend a Friday night in the given situation.
While I could gather (and extrapolate) the lives of most of my colleagues based on the revelations made on Friday night, the one person that often eluded me was Dipam. Dipam Bora was in his late 20s.He was the ‘elder brother’ in the group and generally helpful. Mild mannered, he would speak sparingly for most of the days in the week- rather always, except those Friday nights! Couple of drinks down, Dipam would start interacting freely. Knowing him, we –the chelas (protégé) would often keenly listen to his talk which was full of experiences from his life, some anecdotes and some practical tips for the given situation. For each of our ‘biography episodes’, Dipam had a constant comment. ‘Gosavi!- Jindagi ka hisab kitab utna asaan nahi jitna tum sochte ho !’. The only variable in this was ‘Gosavi’! We would appreciate and clap for Dipam in the ‘sprint’ of the night and Friday nights would pass – well mostly without an argument. Next day, everybody would be busy with their weekend cores. Dipam would become his reclusive self. He could neither remember nor acknowledge to anything that happened the previous night. You would hardly hear any of the philosophy on other days except for his punch line “ Jindagi ka hisab kitab’, which he would invoke occasionally .
My stay at the hotel ended in a few months and I lost touch with Dipam and the rest (well email was not an easy option in those days and often a ‘paid’ service!). As I said, I spent some of my best weekends with this group. I didn’t contact Dipam or the rest because in my memory, I wanted all of them to be just the way I left them! Subsequently, my memories were superimposed with lots of other stuff in life- better and bitter. But that one thing which continued to stay with me was Dipam’s tag line – Gosavi, Jindagi ka hisab kitab itna asaan nahi jitna tum sochte ho! I have had fair bit of my experiments with ‘self’ and philosophy in the years before and after. .Learnt from a lot of ‘Babas’ and Swamis and all the readable English (or Marathi) material that I could comprehend. Also, I often like to read the back of auto rickshaws and trucks for my routine philosophical doses. But the one thing that has helped me tide over in my life is Dipam’s tag line! Rather it would inadvertently be the first thing that I would remember in any situation good or bad!
I have not ventured to translate the tag line here because I believe my literary knowledge is insufficient in this case. Hope the learned (and Hindi speaking) would understand it. For others, I would refer you to Vedas, Upanishads, Gita or any other granth and /or philosophy of your liking for a more insightful revelation. Chances are –some of us, including me may encounter Dipam sometime, somewhere and hear the golden scripts from him! After all-
“Jindagi ka hisab kitab itna asaan nahi hota jitna tum sochte ho”!.
Dedicated to my long lost friend –Dipam Bora. Dipam, wherever you are, May the force be with you!
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