A love letter to the unsearchable

The winter holidays when I was 12 turning 13, my mother unable to “connect” with me anymore told me I could have a pen pal and she pointed at the classified section in the local daily. I looked through but instead opted for the up market magazine version and found Pankaj Sood, who worked at the wallem ship management company in Hong Kong. He was much older and perhaps didn’t expect an almost 13 yr old to write to him from Bangalore claiming to have lived in Vienna, proficient in Kathak and sitar, an arts student from the university of Vienna. Too good to be true??

    firstly, I had a lot of strange people living in my head and 2. I loved the Atlas and a proud owner of the 15 piece encyclopedia. At the time I thought it was cool to live in Vienna, perhaps after a Nazi chapter in my school text. Hence, I wrote away feeding poor Mr.Sood lies after lies…he did write back, on scented paper from a foreign land. I was excited, drew hearts and crossing arrows on the back of my book, hummed “chupana bhi nahi aata” under my breath…in all, he was the coolest, he treated me like an equal, he was kind…he liked Hindustani classical and thought this sitar playing, rich Vienna NRI kid in Bangalore was just as equally cool. Sometimes, when you lie you begin to believe the very lies you feed. In reality I was the gawky, fat, zit faced, patchy 12 yr old and an “employed adult’s” attention and company was like hitting the adolescent-teen jackpot. Time passed by, he probably figured I was a lying retard and stopped writing to me. I moved on, the earth rearranged, my waist got smaller, my breasts grew larger, my front yard filled with flowers, I found someone and then a few more and am sure he did too. The only remains were his address and name safely tucked in very tiny script on the last page of my diary. I also believed if I couldn’t read it no one else could…not much to say of myopia either.

    Now, I had to find him…I started with Facebook and the search threw up 500 odd pankaj sood’s, I am definitely not demented to “friend” each of them. I wouldn’t “friend” him even if I did find him. When you find someone you pick up right where you left off (if you can remember where) but the novelty is almost always followed by disappointment. People grow up, experience new things, change. The best friend you played lock and key with is not the same, instead she is a mother of 2 who is holidaying in Goa with other moms of 2 and is extremely worried about her growing waist size. Such is social media it allows you to ‘get to know’ someone by scanning their profile for five minutes. You can quickly grasp political views, favorite bands, and writing proficiency. Sadly, this is good for evaluating the people we meet as adults – we’re getting to know them for the first time and have low expectations to begin with. It’s the ingrained cynicism that comes along with growing up. But would I risk knowing Pankaj Sood is on his second child and first divorce. These newly minted information will engulf the memories I have of him, they have the ability to burn them memories alive.

     I know my curiosity will not be curbed but I am glad there are 500 pankaj sood’s and he could be the guy who “likes” Pinot Noir, Bach and Fante or the pankaj sood who “likes” pink floyd, beer and bongs. I am happy to keep the memories confined to foreign scented paper and pointy handwriting where things went slow and the lighting was always flattering. Be well my dear one.