Letters from Sydney: Episode 6

Hello All,

Thank you for the overwhelming response to all the letters. I am touched, I really am. I would like to inform that letters 6 and 7 are quite long and simple in content. There'snot much happening in these letters except for the fact that I am just linking all the time frames which had gone haywire in the previous letters (On purpose, of course).

For those who sense a De Ja Vu while reading some paragraphs, dont worry, some of them were
in the previous letters. Its just linking it all up.

As for the content, its not much happening.

Lull, before the storm I guess.

Wait... For letter 8. I would also like you people to guess what's gonna be the revelation in letter 8. Who do you think is the pretty girl in pink... Tell me... I am eagerly awaiting your comments.
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“When the night falls asleep… When all the lights go dim…
When dreams take control of lives… When even saints sin…
Leaving behind a trail of unfinished chores, I keep walking…
Dreaming of another land… of another person… I keep walking…”

I don’t know what prompted me to scribble these lines in my notebook as I sat in the classroom one day. It was quite early and the professor was yet to come. Not many students had arrived either. It was unusually quiet by film school standards. A couple of classmates were listening to Eminem’s Stan, sharing a pair of earphones between them. Vinn, my friend from Malaysia was sketching an animated version of Jodie Foster in his book. It was raining outside, the skyline a shade of dark grey and the sound of water bouncing off the roofs of cars parked right outside the car room dominating the overall soundscape.

I read the lines again, thinking, possibly for the nth time what propelled me into writing them. It was Friday and we were in for a long weekend, with Monday being a public holiday. Heavy rainfall was predicted for the next 2 days. The Sydney weather forecast is quite accurate unlike the ones we have in India. It was possibly the first time in my fifteen days’ stay in Sydney that it was feeling gloomy. The overall ambience was dipped into dullness, nobody being in their best of spirits, everyone thinking of something personal, something sad. People started entering the class with mugs of piping hot coffee in their hands and loads of boredom written wide across their faces.

We all lazed around the classroom; Hasse and Nicolas were playing Tic-Tac-Toe sitting next to me, Vinn was so frustrated that Jodie Foster was now looking like Tom Hanks from Forrest Gump and I was still pondering about what made me write what I had just written. Hasse’s muffled scream broke my thought process; I looked at the two, who were punching each other because of an argument about the rules of Tic-Tac-Toe. Nicolas had supposedly made a three link using a right angle, which Hasse rightly thought, was wrong. As the two continued to abuse each other in Dutch and Spanish respectively, none understanding what the other was saying, our professor entered.

“Guys… you have an off today”, he said without even looking at the class. He, too, was perhaps bogged down by the strange gloom in the air. As everyone was about to jump in excitement and run towards their own houses to catch up on some sleep, he dropped a bomb, something that we least expected to happen on such a screwed up day. “You have to write three movie script ideas. They have to be in by 4:30.” Without even caring to wait to listen to our accusations and abuses, he left. We all looked at each other and the class was boomed with a tremendous echo of the F word.


I stepped out with my mug of coffee. The rain had subsided, the clouds were still there. Hasse and Nicolas were standing outside, arguing about the tic-tac-toe match that had gone painfully haywire. Much to my exasperation, the two were extremely happy and perhaps the only souls in vicinity to be unaffected by the intensely uninspiring weather. Looking at me, they stopped fighting and came near me. Hasse started talking about a black and white film she had seen on DVD the last night. How I was wishing that she hadn’t seen that film. I was so bored that I was actually praying that both of them turn mute for a day. Nicolas who was also not impressed by Hasse’s black and white movie talk changed the topic quickly.

“Nik, you know… I was coming in the train today, I saw this chick… very hot chick… talking to her boyfriend about India…” He said, desperately trying to make Hasse shut up as he continued to speak, “You know what she told him..?”

“How would I know Nic..?” I asked back, very, very, matter of factly.

“That’s true too, how would you know…” Nic said as if he had never heard of the word Sarcasm ever and continued, “She told him… That India is a beautiful country which is located in the middle-east…” Without even waiting for us to react he started rollicking with laughter. His laughter itself was so infectious, that both of us couldn’t stop laughing with him, less on his joke, more on the way he reacted to his own joke.

“And you know what… She was blonde…” He concluded.

On that moment, both Nic and I instinctively looked at Hasse, who adjusted her cap coincidentally just at that moment, making both of us laugh like there was no tomorrow. Embarrassed she looked away.

“I actually cracked a good joke after a long time…” Nicolas continued, making both of us erupt into peels of laughter once more.

“That makes it two good jokes in a line...” he said, I almost rolling on the floor laughing, Hasse laughing too, a bit of embarrassment still visible on her face.

Vinn came out and said, “Guys, up in the theatre in 5… Something important.”

Before we could react, Vinn was in and up the stairs.

“Must be something about the 5 character exercise” Hasse said.
“Maybe” Nic and I agreed in unison. The boredom had gone thanks to Nic’s antics.

Coffee break was over, Thinking about the 5 characters exercise, playing with Hasse’s cap, much to her annoyance, we walked in the lobby, Nicolas gleefully flashing his card at the door to let us in, the Sin City poster greeted us and we walked up the staircase towards the 100 capacity theatre, 15 days after we had first had entered it.

We sat in the theatre when our professor walked in visually worried. He looked at the class and threw the regular smile at us, albeit it didn’t seem genuine this time.

“There’s a problem, Class” he said, looking at all of us.

There was something about the whole of it which made us all get worried. We looked at him and then at each other. No one understanding what to say, how to react. He walked up to his desk, grabbed a glass of water and gulped it down.

“Is the school shutting down?” was the first thought that came to my mind and I realized that I was actually scared to bits at the thought. “Fuck… Fuck… Fuck…” I said to myself, trying to brush the imagination away. I looked around to see that almost everyone was extremely scared. That didn’t come as a surprise especially since all of us were equally imaginative.

The professor then kept down the glass of water and looked up.

“There’s a problem, Class… We have decided to give you guys a welcome party… and I am afraid that there aint enough beer… Who can go with Alex and get a couple of beer crates?” He said and started laughing.

We all joined him. Though I joined the laughter, the thought of the school getting shut down before I finished my course was worrying me. I was literally scared thinking what I would do if I had to go back to India without the degree. I couldn’t leave the degree unfinished; I was scared of such a day. But somewhere I felt nice about going back to India, going back to her. And all of a sudden the lines I had scribbled in the morning made sense to me.

[i]“When the night falls asleep… When all the lights go dim…
When dreams take control of lives… When even saints sin…
Leaving behind a trail of unfinished chores, I keep walking…
Dreaming of another land… of another person… I keep walking…”[/i]

I smiled at the strange bit of intuition I had experienced. I just thought that how would it be to actually see everything that’s going to happen. I just thought about how a person would feel if he comes to know that he’s going to die, and soon.

“I have a friend called Norwik…” I overheard Hasse telling Nic about a Russian friend of hers.

“Norwik…” The name boomed in my ears. “Norwik Dmitri” I said to myself, a smile appearing on my face. I knew I had got my first story idea. What I didn’t know then was that it was going to change my life, forever.

TO BE CONTINUED.