It was my first time and a new experience!!

It was my first time and a new experience indeed!!

Well, I was in Year II in Stanley Medical College and the year was 1987. It was the summer of 1987 and I was already gelling up with a friendly Shakeel from Pattukottai, amongst few others. Not sure, why, but this humblest of the guys from a distant Pattukottai, near temple town of Tanjavoor, schooled in Trichy or Tiruchirapally, became one of my closest mates that year and he still is!!

I can certainly recall easily the closest mates of that time and they were not many; however Shakeel still remains one of those buddies, probably the only one with humility to the surplus, Intellectual ability to the core, lots of good superlatives and, full of contentment!

Well, we were invited by Shakeel to his home in Pattukottai to spend the summer of 1987, and I was not surely the one to miss the opportunity to get away from Chennai! He in fact was the first one to invite me during those great medical school years and so we started. I have known about Pattukottai, beforehand because of famous communist thinker and lyricist Azhagiri, and also the former president of India, RVenkatraman.

Well, when I said, “We, “I meant, Seshu (now a Cardiologist in Down under), Rizvon (think, is in US now) and me. Well, we were not, especially me to be honest, prepared for the spectacle and fun that was waiting for us in Pattukottai and at Shakeel’s place, over the next two weeks. As I alluded before, until then, it was my first time outing to a far off place, to a friend's place, which I still relish!

Shakeel’s was a two storied house, those days, (the configuration, a bit changed now) with reasonable number of rooms. The main thing, which attracted me on arrival, was a huge library, which his mother stuffed with varied assortments of books with superb tags. Aunty (Shakeel’s mum) was a practising Obstetrician & gynaecologist, those days and was running a big Nursing home, which needless to say has passed over to our friend.

I immediately liked the house and also took a liking to Shakeel’s brother and sister, who became our playmates for card games. The food was wonderful, which I noted was mostly prepared by “Aayamma” ably guided by Aunty. Shakeel’s dad was a successful criminal lawyer then, and there were times, when we even visited him at the local court, plodding his way through the arguments.

They owned couple of cars, a van for personal and renting out use, and also a scooter. Seshu was a good driver by this time in the college and Shakeel too. I couldn’t even ride a scooter then! Anyway, we went around, visiting lots of places, including Tanjavoor, Manora, Adhiramapattinam and smoked lots of ciggies and beedies too. The night dinners were never finished without a visit to the local corner pan shop for, by this time, a compulsory ritual of pan, vethilai followed by ciggi!

Needless to mention that by this time our tummies were getting stuffed with all the sumptuous cuisines and snacks prepared by Aayamma and none of them were spared or left unturned by both me and Seshu!!Two weeks of incessant hogging!!

The pinnacle of the stay would be the weekend parties arranged at Shakeel’s big farm on the outskirts of Pattukottai. Well, it roughly measures a very humble 100 acres (possibly increased in size now!) of just coconut and mangoe trees! There were also,different patches for different seasonal crops, depending on the weather and rain.

Well, these belong to this man, who was with me in medical school and who never owned a car in the city or not even a bike, until his eventual return back to Pattukottai!!

Of everything, my memory is still fresh and livid with a railway track, which almost separated the farm into two halves, and that’s where, we spent most of the time, strolling along, smoking beedies!!

Time is memory and a potent stimulus, triggers, incessantly, those trips along the nostalgic lanes and in this case, along a railway lane!!

Hats off to Shakeel!!!