This sunset is different from yesterday's...

I’m sad. No, scratch that… I’m nostalgic.

Jaspal Bhatti passed away today. By now I hope he’s making fun of the contractor responsible for the gates of Heaven and/or taking offence at the idea that no one takes offence at divine hypocrisy.

The man was, by himself, an idealistic eccentric who simply couldn’t take things the way they were. But at least as far as I’m concerned, he was also someone emblematic of a better time; a simpler time. A time that had Flop Show, Keshav Kalsi and that tune from the DD evening news that's kinda burnt itself into our collective subconscious as a people. A time where all that really mattered was you getting the window seat on the school bus and being deceptively mean to the person you liked.

So maybe it’s just me, but it seems another chapter in a very good story has ended. 

Now this isn’t your average story. It doesn’t have any of the usual melodrama, the usual action sequences and sadly enough, the usual bedroom sequences. In fact, the only distinctive thing about it is that it’s “our” story.

Like any obscure writer, I look around a lot (It’s what we do, we obscure writers).

And I see a lot I was always intent on missing before…

There are no new wrinkles on my grandparents’ cheeks. And yet I know they’re getting older.

These people have given me my parents. And the most horrible baths a kid can ever hope not to have. They’ve given me 10 bucks a day for everyday I’ve spent at their place, so that I could bake under the sun while waiting to play video games.

Not to mention the most effective dressing down ever for throwing about 24 eggs on the nearest wall after a singularly inspiring Tom and Jerry tape.

I guess right now I’m left wishing that life were somehow less complicated. And that I could again play cricket with everyone in the backyard. You know, God bless his heart, my Grandfather always used to let me have 7 balls in every over I played. : )

There are just so many people who never get to know what they’re loved the way they are. What is worse is that there are just so many people who can’t tell they love the way they do.

My academic life had me in the same place for five and a half years. And suffice to say, I hated every brick of it. Every vocal professor, every nonfunctional water heater… everything.

And today, even after graduating, each visit to the damn place reminds me that these things that have taken a new hue. One I wasn’t particularly convinced existed.

Imagine yourself glad to see people you couldn’t stand to see before just because you saw them every day. Or basking in the sweet aroma of the autoclave room just so that you don’t forget it. Eating food Hell itself declared unsafe just so that you can bitch about it… All of it, someday, years later... over a fireplace that has gone out, and people who’ve only just come in.

Life is a series of random occurrences. But then… so are me and you.

And there is no friggin’ reset button. 

P.s. My grandfather only took 5 balls in every over he played. : )
P.p.s I've been using Jaspal Bhatti's "Hit and Trial Hospital" joke as mine for 10 years now. 9/10 would do it again.

It's really the only way...

Unrequited love. That’s when you love without reciprocation.
Everyone has at least once in their lifetime loved unrequitedly. It may have been that time your eyes repeatedly met hers from across that crowded room. Just before she ran to her Scottish boyfriend, Douchebag McVaddaPhone.
Or it may have been when that dude who was being so nice to you asked for advice on how to talk to your best friend and they had to spend all day extracting your pirated copy of Twilight: Breaking Dawn from his colon. By the way, you have weird taste.

If you're still in doubt, there are some other crude tests. These include the “How did I end on this Facebook page AGAIN?” number; the “Whoops, that message wasn’t for you” index and roughly the number of times you’ve come close to doing borderline inappropriate things to your stuffed toy collection.

It’s also possible you feel like asking rhetorical questions. For example:

• Conventional good looks is all it took? Are you blind to inner beauty or something?
• I’ve sacrificed a head of cabbage. HOW MUCH MORE, God?
• No seriously, do you know how much cabbage goes for?
• Maybe she would’ve understood after the 28th missed call?

But then, I stand by the idea that all great love is unfulfilled. More so considering fulfilled love lends itself to circumstances like deciding who’s going to watch the kids and “What? Paneer? Again?”
So celebrate the very real possibility that you’ll die alone. Or that you'll adopt cats and later find yourself hiding in foliage with binoculars; madly hoping that allergy to pepper spray doesn't come into play.

In either case, know this: You may love without tangible cause and hope of fulfillment. But in doing so, you become a martyr. You rise to the idea that you’re inherently better than those who told themselves “it didn’t matter”. You allow yourself hope where others have plummeted to despair.
Make no mistake, you're fighting for a cause. One that is greater than the safety of satisfaction with the present. One that allows you belief in something that will make the world better. And how many people who don’t have bombs strapped to their chests/are Batman get to claim that?

So don’t give up.
And if you do, there’s always Twitter. I will personally retweet all your emo stuff.