It will not surprise anybody, even a stranger who meets me for the first time, that I was never a cool kid. Neither in school nor in college. Not in graduate school. Not after. I just went about my life. I continue to go about my life.
For a while, I was friends with a couple of cool kids in school. Not because they were cool. We were friends, that's it. But then, as it almost always happens in life, we grow up and our interests diverge, and, well, those friends who were cool didn't really stay as friends with me.
Sitting on the deck with a cup of coffee, while listening to the sounds of rain falling on the roof above, I became a tad nostalgic thinking about my younger years, and about the cool and regular classmates and college-mates.
I could not recall the name of one guy who was a star cricket player in college. I mean, he was good. Beyond comparison. I had not seen anyone play that well only a few feet away from me. It seemed like he was bound for glory. He was a good looking guy too. Despite his star-status, he didn't seem to want attention 24x7. A perfect cool guy!
As with cool guys and the rest of us, while I knew who he was, neither he nor did the overwhelming members of my cohort know me. But, I was cool with that, living in my own world. Even my high school teachers did not remember me; Mrs. Manson told me, yes in a phone conversation with me, that she did not remember me. She went on to list quite a few of my classmates though! Cool guys not acknowledging my presence is completely understandable.
What was that cool guy's name?
The older we get, it is not always easy to recall facts. Despite having a reputation for a steel-trap memory, I am increasingly reminded that it is a leaky vault up there, and this cool guy's name had slipped out.
Thankfully, unlike the primitive days that defined humanity until Google came along, now, all I had to do was enter a few keywords and that's what I did.
I was shocked with the result.
Former India and Tamil Nadu opener V.B. Chandrasekhar passed away here on Thursday. He was 57. Police said the body of the former cricketer was recovered from his residence. They suspect it to be a case of suicide.
That was from a news report in 2019.
I left India not long after the undergraduate studies ended. My fading interest in cricket was completely extinguished after I came to America. And keeping in touch with former classmates was extremely challenging in those days before email and cellphone. No wonder then that until this Google search that I had no idea about VB, as he was known, having played for the Indian team.
Caption at the source:
Tamil Nadu batsman V.B. Chandrasekhar (right) celebrates with his skipper K. Srikkanth after scoring a century in 56 balls in the Irani Trophy cricket match against Rest of India at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium (Chepauk), Madras, on October 05, 1988.
He died more than three years ago. A suicide. I would never, ever, have even remotely imagined such a tragic ending for that cool guy.
Every single day is a revelation that life is unpredictable. What will the trajectory of one's life be? How high might one fly, how far will the reach be, and how long will the person be on this planet ? It is all a mystery that is solved only as life unfolds.
It will be appropriate to end this post with a poem by one of the coolest kids there ever was in our school:
Smell of Things to Come
By Vijay Nambisan
A nose is a nose is a nose. Who knows
Those fibres of smell better than I? The scent
Of a book that grows on me, of a rose
Withered by fondling, of newsprint, of drink
Untasted but soon to be consumed, of course
I know them all and know too the gross
Odours of unwashed flesh, of dirt
Shed or retained by skin, and I know almost
The scent of love, because sometimes it flows
Between breast and breast, and my nose
Has nestled there.
When blows the wind above
My senses, I have smelled the clouds grow
Against the sky. One scent remains to know,
The last breath I shall ever take as I.
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