More on Hardip
Hardip was an atypical Punjabi guy. His hair was cropped short, no moustache and thinly built. He wasn’t particularly religious in anyway, except perhaps just before his exams when he will make the little trip to a temple to offer a little “pooja”. One thing in common with almost all Punjabis that I know is that he was a real hirsute guy! I think just about every inch of his body is covered with hair!
When he first moved into my room, he was already in the second year of his 3 year Bachelor of Pharmacology degree course. He was hardly ever in the room, preferring to spend the time around town or in his friend’s rooms just opposite mine. And together, they can really raise a ruckus. He and his friends (ironically, none of them were Punjabis, they were all from Andhra Pradesh) had this annoying habit of walking around in their under wears! Initially I wasn’t used to seeing a 90% hairy naked guy walking around in my room but after a while, I didn’t notice anymore. He just blended in. Heh heh.
There are a few things that Hardip did that made an impression in my memory. Once, when the monsoon rain finally came (thank God!!!!!), he came back shirtless, soaked to the bone and clad only in his soaked jeans and was almost delirious with joy! Seems that he and his bunch of friends celebrated the arrival of the monsoon rain by doing a little dance in the rain! You know, these people really celebrate with their wholeheartedly! I learnt from them that it is ok to let our emotions take over sometimes and truly enjoy something, even deliriously. If you have ever endured 5 months of a typical Indian summer, you would welcome monsoon rain with much euphoria too! Well, I did, though I didn’t dance half naked in the rain! Heh Heh!
But the monsoon is not all joy. Where I stayed in India, the monsoon rain brings rain….LOTS of it, DAILY…for MONTHS!!! After a while, everything gets damp and moldy. Shoes have little mushrooms growing on them. Belts have a white coat of fungi on them. Clothes were perpetually wet and cold. There was no use for an umbrella in that kind of monsoon as the rain comes in all directions. In the end, I decided to do what most people did…buy a good pair of rubber boots, knee high (like Phua Chu Kang’s boots, only not in yellow) and a good trench coat which makes me look like a mafia boss in one of those Godfather movies. But they kept me dry and that’s what matters. Anyway, the monsoon is another story…so, back to Hardip.
Hardip drinks and smokes….like nobody’s business. But he was kind enough not to smoke in the room (me being totally against smoking and a teetotaler). He drank alot, especially on weekends when he and his buddies go out for a good time. Once, I woke up in the morning, turned around only to be confronted by Hardip’s naked hairy buttocks staring back at me! He was happily snoring away with his face to the wall. Apparently he came back stone drunk the night before and promptly fell asleep on his bed buck naked. I didn’t mention about it and he pretended that nothing happened. It stayed that way. I think both of us were embarrassed by the incident. He never slept that way again!
When “Holi” came, Hardip celebrated it whole heartedly as well! “Holi” is the Indian festival of color. On that day, people go around throwing colored powder on each other and splashing them with water from a bucket! At the end of the day, everyone was in a darker shade of red or blue or green (much like one of those B-grade zombie movies)! It was fun but it could get dangerous. Riders have been thrown off their motorcycles by colored water! This is one day in the academic year that I chose to miss classes. I stayed in the whole day till Holi was well over. I didn’t like the idea of being “colored”. Getting the color off the clothes was a formidable task, not to mention getting the color off any small orifices in the body where it may be stuck.
On “Holi”, ladies will tie little colored strings of bracelets on guys. These strings are called “rakhee”. Basically it tells that guy that the girl is now his younger sister and he has the responsibility to take care of her. I was told that this is a good strategy by some girls who didn’t particularly like to be pursued by certain guys. By tying the rakhee on them, it is a good and polite way of telling them “I am not interested to be your gal but you can be my big brother”. Heh Heh! Pretty good strategy I would say.
And so, Hardip came back at the end of Holi, a much darker shade of maroon as I could remember it, and totally soaked but overjoyed. I didn’t know what he did with his clothes. I never saw them again. He didn’t attempt to “color” me. I would have murdered him if he did.
Hardip has a particularly infectious laugh. It sounded very much like a hyena having a convulsion! And he really laughs a lot! He was easily tickled by any jokes and funny situations.
I think the greatest impact Hardip has had on me was when he introduced me to the works of PG Wodehouse! I am not sure how many of you have read books by PG Wodehouse and if you haven’t, I highly recommend it. He was the creator of the super-efficient butler called Jeeves. His books are filled with typical british humor. And what humor they are! Hilarious would be an understatement.
I have the entire collection of books by Wodehouse (books are cheap in India). Hardip really appreciated me buying the books. He truly enjoyed reading them. When I come back to the room in the night and hear a hyena convulsing 5 rooms down the aisle, I knew Hardip was devouring one of my Wodehouse books! And if in the still of the night when all is quiet and you could hear a pin drop, you hear a sudden burst of roar and laughter plus the sound of a convulsing hyena, you will know that both of us were reading Wodehouse! Try it if you don’t believe me.
One more thing about Hardip, to which I alluded to earlier in my blog when I was sitting for my exam, was the unusual way he would react when he was stressed. Whenever exams are around the corner, Hardip would get stressed up and he would start vomiting into the toilet bowl. It gets pretty bad on the day of exam. It would be a common sight to see him kneeling in front of the toilet bowl on the morning of his exam vomiting and retching away! Quite a funny sight actually. Like a very sick pregnant first trimester Punjabi. And by the time the exam got over, he would have miraculously recovered! I think it was all part of his Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
Perhaps the most graphic memory I have of Hardip was the day when I came home from classes and found him half naked on his bed in a totally convoluted position and humming a guttural tune at the same time. I asked him “Hardip, what are you doing?” to which he replied “Oh, this is the yogic position for expelling air from the intestines!” Ugh! Well, that’s Hardip. I don’t know where he is now. He graduated before I did. Wherever you are Hardip, thanks for adding color to my life! It was sheer fun! J
Hardip was an atypical Punjabi guy. His hair was cropped short, no moustache and thinly built. He wasn’t particularly religious in anyway, except perhaps just before his exams when he will make the little trip to a temple to offer a little “pooja”. One thing in common with almost all Punjabis that I know is that he was a real hirsute guy! I think just about every inch of his body is covered with hair!
When he first moved into my room, he was already in the second year of his 3 year Bachelor of Pharmacology degree course. He was hardly ever in the room, preferring to spend the time around town or in his friend’s rooms just opposite mine. And together, they can really raise a ruckus. He and his friends (ironically, none of them were Punjabis, they were all from Andhra Pradesh) had this annoying habit of walking around in their under wears! Initially I wasn’t used to seeing a 90% hairy naked guy walking around in my room but after a while, I didn’t notice anymore. He just blended in. Heh heh.
There are a few things that Hardip did that made an impression in my memory. Once, when the monsoon rain finally came (thank God!!!!!), he came back shirtless, soaked to the bone and clad only in his soaked jeans and was almost delirious with joy! Seems that he and his bunch of friends celebrated the arrival of the monsoon rain by doing a little dance in the rain! You know, these people really celebrate with their wholeheartedly! I learnt from them that it is ok to let our emotions take over sometimes and truly enjoy something, even deliriously. If you have ever endured 5 months of a typical Indian summer, you would welcome monsoon rain with much euphoria too! Well, I did, though I didn’t dance half naked in the rain! Heh Heh!
But the monsoon is not all joy. Where I stayed in India, the monsoon rain brings rain….LOTS of it, DAILY…for MONTHS!!! After a while, everything gets damp and moldy. Shoes have little mushrooms growing on them. Belts have a white coat of fungi on them. Clothes were perpetually wet and cold. There was no use for an umbrella in that kind of monsoon as the rain comes in all directions. In the end, I decided to do what most people did…buy a good pair of rubber boots, knee high (like Phua Chu Kang’s boots, only not in yellow) and a good trench coat which makes me look like a mafia boss in one of those Godfather movies. But they kept me dry and that’s what matters. Anyway, the monsoon is another story…so, back to Hardip.
Hardip drinks and smokes….like nobody’s business. But he was kind enough not to smoke in the room (me being totally against smoking and a teetotaler). He drank alot, especially on weekends when he and his buddies go out for a good time. Once, I woke up in the morning, turned around only to be confronted by Hardip’s naked hairy buttocks staring back at me! He was happily snoring away with his face to the wall. Apparently he came back stone drunk the night before and promptly fell asleep on his bed buck naked. I didn’t mention about it and he pretended that nothing happened. It stayed that way. I think both of us were embarrassed by the incident. He never slept that way again!
When “Holi” came, Hardip celebrated it whole heartedly as well! “Holi” is the Indian festival of color. On that day, people go around throwing colored powder on each other and splashing them with water from a bucket! At the end of the day, everyone was in a darker shade of red or blue or green (much like one of those B-grade zombie movies)! It was fun but it could get dangerous. Riders have been thrown off their motorcycles by colored water! This is one day in the academic year that I chose to miss classes. I stayed in the whole day till Holi was well over. I didn’t like the idea of being “colored”. Getting the color off the clothes was a formidable task, not to mention getting the color off any small orifices in the body where it may be stuck.
On “Holi”, ladies will tie little colored strings of bracelets on guys. These strings are called “rakhee”. Basically it tells that guy that the girl is now his younger sister and he has the responsibility to take care of her. I was told that this is a good strategy by some girls who didn’t particularly like to be pursued by certain guys. By tying the rakhee on them, it is a good and polite way of telling them “I am not interested to be your gal but you can be my big brother”. Heh Heh! Pretty good strategy I would say.
And so, Hardip came back at the end of Holi, a much darker shade of maroon as I could remember it, and totally soaked but overjoyed. I didn’t know what he did with his clothes. I never saw them again. He didn’t attempt to “color” me. I would have murdered him if he did.
Hardip has a particularly infectious laugh. It sounded very much like a hyena having a convulsion! And he really laughs a lot! He was easily tickled by any jokes and funny situations.
I think the greatest impact Hardip has had on me was when he introduced me to the works of PG Wodehouse! I am not sure how many of you have read books by PG Wodehouse and if you haven’t, I highly recommend it. He was the creator of the super-efficient butler called Jeeves. His books are filled with typical british humor. And what humor they are! Hilarious would be an understatement.
I have the entire collection of books by Wodehouse (books are cheap in India). Hardip really appreciated me buying the books. He truly enjoyed reading them. When I come back to the room in the night and hear a hyena convulsing 5 rooms down the aisle, I knew Hardip was devouring one of my Wodehouse books! And if in the still of the night when all is quiet and you could hear a pin drop, you hear a sudden burst of roar and laughter plus the sound of a convulsing hyena, you will know that both of us were reading Wodehouse! Try it if you don’t believe me.
One more thing about Hardip, to which I alluded to earlier in my blog when I was sitting for my exam, was the unusual way he would react when he was stressed. Whenever exams are around the corner, Hardip would get stressed up and he would start vomiting into the toilet bowl. It gets pretty bad on the day of exam. It would be a common sight to see him kneeling in front of the toilet bowl on the morning of his exam vomiting and retching away! Quite a funny sight actually. Like a very sick pregnant first trimester Punjabi. And by the time the exam got over, he would have miraculously recovered! I think it was all part of his Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
Perhaps the most graphic memory I have of Hardip was the day when I came home from classes and found him half naked on his bed in a totally convoluted position and humming a guttural tune at the same time. I asked him “Hardip, what are you doing?” to which he replied “Oh, this is the yogic position for expelling air from the intestines!” Ugh! Well, that’s Hardip. I don’t know where he is now. He graduated before I did. Wherever you are Hardip, thanks for adding color to my life! It was sheer fun! J
posted by Jimbo @ 12/06/2005 02:38:00 PM
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