The Training Camp -- Part I

Life is a bitch – Or so I used to believe. But it is beautiful, just depends on how you let it treat you and how you look at it. At this juncture in my life, when I sit in a spacious office but a small cubicle, trying hard to find real friends, and not just work buddies, I am reminded of some of the best phases of my life. I would like to write about them her so that even 30 to 40 years down my existence, I can still be reminded of them.

The Training Camp -- Part I

This is the first in the series of 3 or 4 pieces that I wish to write about the kind of life I had when I was undergoing professional training for my company. I will write about the training and its merits and demerits later on, but this one is dedicated to one of the most genuine and real human beings I ever met. We will call him Rhaxy, for that is what all his friends called him. Pure at heart but with a crooked mind, he knew how to make almost anything work, well almost. He became my inseparable companion at that training camp. Like two comrades working towards the same goal, we used to help each other in anything and everything. A million dollar smile and a “Never Say Die” attitude won him friends all over. But his ever expressive eyes were not able to hide anything from me, and I saw right thru them and him. The beauty of life is that it gives “To Each – His Own”, and I too was no longer privy to my innermost thoughts. Even he could see right thru me, just as I could.

And in that deep lost world I saw a child, a small child left alone to fend for himself. What amazes me is the fact that such a shrewd brain and a computer programmer of such high caliber could be so insecure from within. We enjoyed loads of weekends together and many more friends joined us, but the shadows of his past would always creep up to him, and usually we ended up drinking and listening to Floyd.

Every story has a heroine, and so does this one. Himani Gupta – An average girl, with an average smile, average everything, but that’s who my friend fell for, so could she actually be that average? It was a very strange way in which he liked her. I suppose that even till date she does not know that the guy, who every other girl wanted to talk to, was infact crazy about her. We guys could make fun of any other girl, pass lewd comments and just about anything, but when it came to our heroine, all he said was “Please not her, not in front of me”. I have seen crushes, Yes crush – because it was too short a time span for this guy to actually call it love, but this one is rated among the most pious and true crushes, where all one expects is a chance to talk to the girl, a glance stolen when she is talking to her friends, an eye contact just a second more than usual and that’s all it took to get his heart beat racing.

He knew she had a boy friend, and was pretty serious about him, but still…. I still remember his words… “You need some kind of distraction to keep you from thinking about the things that hurt the most”, and I knew that they did hurt for lost somewhere in the plethora of feelings and the teeming millions, here was this one man, yes a man, who was stronger than the ones I had met and believed in his beliefs, one who could not be swayed from the path he had chosen and one who stood by me in all the actions – Right or Wrong, just because he believed in me. Miss Ya Mate