S I D S E T H @ S T A N F O R D . E D U

Its one of those nostalgic 2AMs, when my wing-mates have taken to the recourse of their beds and I have no one to talk to. I'm the worst when alone - I start thinking about all possible things in the world, not least of it, of the time that has gone past. I try to convince myself that this is one of those days when something (probably a low mood) has made me run back the clock, but with 'one of the days' occuring once too often, I think its worth a second thought. Today is the day when Siddharth Seth leaves India for Stanford. Yeah - they say that life goes on, but somehow when comes to Sid, I find myself contradicting my ideologies of moving on in life without looking back, and pushing forward with new ambitions and motivations.

Sid was this verbose fellow even during the JEE days, when I first met him at a lecture. I thought someone would be really dumb to be an optimist and pay 15 grand for a crash course, after clearing the Screening with a huge 4-figure rank from Nasik, where IIT-JEE was probably just as unheard as feminism is in Afghanistan. Well, what do you know? I spot him during Counselling! I'm positively surprised (blame it on my immature ego), but mellow it down with a "What Rank did you score?"

Cut to the first year at IIT. A week into the first semester, I see him voraciously solving tutorials, one after the other. By the time I am to ask chaps for names of textbooks, the guy is done with the tutorial no.3. Conveniently psyched, I figure that its high time I start studying. First semester blues. I don't remember much of Sid from the first year apart from his academic exploits, but one of the days that I still recall is when Amit, Shaggy, Rahul and I gifted him fruit champagne on his birthday. We were friends - he talked, I listened, on those marathon 30-hr train journeys - but that was not the time when I really knew what a friend meant. One thing I knew for sure - this guy is awesome, yet nothing short of a maniac. Amit and I often used to joke that Sid needs to get back home once every 2 months to get back his sanity. To quote Elloit Carver from the Bond flick 'Tomorrow Never Dies', "The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success".

Our time at the Electronics and Communication Engineering Department brought us closer. His zest for Electronics, I must say, was extremely contagious. Labs were suddenly a lot more fun and classes, with wisecracks all over the place, were enjoyable. Sid's presence initially made me complacent, but as time went past, it only made me push harder. With Sid, perfection is not a passion - its an imperative rule of the game. Of course, there are also flipsides like a positive hatred, or rather repulsion, towards mundane acts like bathing and eating, but did I not mention about the insanity factor?

The summers of '04 and '05 at that we spent together were God-sent. Add to it the week at the Winter Academy in December '04. Its queer, but somehow, we seemed to land up at the same place, in the same buiding, and on the same floor (er, sometimes on the same double-bed too :D)! 'Luck' is probably not the word. 'Divine intervention' - yes. Lets see - Sid's place at Nasik, Centre for Electronic Design, IISc Bangalore, double-bed at Haldia, Microsoft Research at Redmond, Times Square at New York, double-bed (again) at Buffalo near Niagara Falls, double bed (yet again) at the Jersey City Marriot penthouse, casinos and exotic shows at Las Vegas, Universal Studios at Los Angeles, and practically all the time at Kgp. Rewind? I wish..

Special moments - aplenty. Train journeys to and from Kgp, the evening when we got to know about the perfect 10s in Sem-2 (both of us were in Nasik then), at Sid's side during his typhoid stint at BC Roy, the windy night bhaating at Puri beach, Yuva and Lakshya at Bangalore, the ship-ride at Haldia, the MSR selection confirmation, 'Cinderella Man' at Bellevue, gazing at Niagara by night, the night at my place in Bombay after Sid got placed at McKinsey, the night at Maharashtra Bhavan before my GRE (when Sid accompanied a feverish me to Calcutta), the Bhabhi factor during Sem-8... Rewind? God, why can't I?

As Sid takes off, I'm here at my desk, wondering if this is the end. I can end up at a different place and we can still meet up, say once or twice a year. But to be at the same place again? Desperately seeking divine interventions...