Sannabhai is no more.
I didn’t know where to begin this piece. In such
situations, the best way invariably is to say it like it is. Yes, Sannabhai is
no more. Only, it is not as plain, as ordinary, as it sounds. You got to know
who he was and what he meant to us, to decipher the profoundness of this
statement. That’s why for me, a simple RIP message won’t do.
Here’s what Sannabhai was not:
A business tycoon
A celebrity
A politician
So who was he? Sannabhai owned a small decrepit stall
selling tea and bread pakodas in a nondescript university campus. If you right
click to check for the synonyms of the word nondescript, it gives you unremarkable/
ordinary/unexceptional/dull/uninteresting/commonplace/characterless/plain. The
said campus was all this and more. Every year, 40 odd godforsaken students
descended on this campus to pursue a B. Tech. course that almost all of them
wouldn’t even have heard of before.
But the four years that followed, made something
special out of each one of the miserable lot. There was some sort of bare,
grueling magic that brought the best out of them. There was something
fascinating about the whole experience. And Sannabhai was at the heart of this entire
experience.
There was nothing exceptional about the bread
pakodas that he dished out. Neither was his tea something to die for. The place’s
ambience was rustic with a capital R, U, S, T, I and a capital C. It was a
smoker’s zone full of borrowed fags and secondhand smoke. It was a food
inspector’s promotion badge and a hygienist’s test of wits.
Yet, it was also a place where GRE was spoken of
much before it became a default qualification. It was a place where future
IIMites, MICAns, Symbiets would sit and feel humbled as they dreamt big. In
fact, nowhere in the world is a place more unpretentious that was a meeting
ground of a future so promising.
It was our ‘adda’, but we certainly never called
it that. It was more like a hangout for us wretched, frustrated yet insanely
hopeful souls. But I wouldn’t call it that too because of the prejudiced, chic
connotation that the word carries in my mind. And in any case it was much more
than that. It was a Freudian couch, an agony aunt’s column, a career counselor’s
table, a dear friend’s shoulder, a poet’s work-in-progress notepad, a
strategist’s war room. We simply called this place by the name of its owner –
Sannabhai.
Sannbhai is a part of the most beautiful phase of
our lives. And today, though the man himself is no more, Sannabhai will always
be around. Sannabhai, don’t rest in peace. Stay alive and kicking.