Back from Delhi's Auto Durbar

Got in from Delhi late Sunday evening. It has been a little over two years since I have been there. I went on a absolute nose-honking nostalgia trip, with all the fervour and misty-eyed determination of a octogenarian enroute to Mt.Kailash. The absurd amount of nostalgia stemmed from memories that give or take a decade cant be a over five odd years. Also, the number of places I wanted to visit were far more than could be expected of someone who had stayed in Delhi for a year and a half and was supposedly busy slogging his ass off trying to earn a worthwhile masters degree.

Yet, there were so many places that I wanted to go and many more people I wanted to meet. The cool college that had unceremoniously packed up soon after we graduated; the rotund dhabba-walla (who much like a djinn, he was even shaped like one, would serve us southerners whatever we pleased); the very salt of the earth - Gods people - our landlords; my erstwhile fellow lodgers; the midnight haunts, like AIIM's, IIT gate; Sector 17 in Gurgaon. My list does not runneth over..

If I were to chalk out a formula to calculate Nostalgia it would look something like this
N = x((Tn1-n) x I x P)
Where : N=Nostalgia;
T=time spent;
I= Incidents worth remembering;
P=people you cant forget
X=emotional quotient of the person (which will vary according to age, lifestyle, sex, etc)
(I am sure it is open to debate and several other factors can be included, but those would be nitty-gritty and broadly categorised into these)

If this formula is to be considered a given there were serious questions arising over my behaviour: a) I had spent a mere year and a half in NCR b) Of places worth remembering – I guess that takes the cake – we seem to have had done something eventful just about everywhere in that city. c) My batch size was a mere sixty! So it was definitely not the number of people.
So I must surmise that we must factor more weightage to the people worth remembering (since I am fairly certain that I am not the wishy-washy character that this equation would otherwise make me seem).So the revised formula stands at:
N = x((Tn1-n) x I x P1.25)
The additional weightage calculated to match the proportion of batch mates I could recall off-hand.

Ahh, now, this part self-portrait of mine does not seem like a Mona Lisa doused with a bucket of rancid water scooped off Mumbai streets.

And, yeah I also went to the Auto Expo 2006. A giant mega exhibition of all things encompassing independent motorized propulsion systems. I spent four days wearing my heels out, trudging from one booth to the other. But it’s the trips in the evenings with friends and colleagues that take most of my grey cell’s energies; memorizing the colour, the smells and the conversations in the snatches of time that we could claim for ourselves. Not surprising…..

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