If people’s legacy is measured by the richness of the memories they create, then Chirag has certainly left behind a very, very strong legacy.
Because the memories one has with a person called Chirag are not your ordinary ones, they are the magnum opus ones.
For those in the know, there cannot be the Café Mondy memory about messing with the bill and landing up at the police station without Chirag. He isn’t a part of it. He made that memory.
Like many other memories for a group of us school friends – the trips to Lonavala, the mostly-stag but for Chirag and Neebha trips to Avalons, the every-evening coffee runs to NMSA where we faked our IDs to get in. Or the cricket matches opposite Nalanda where for some odd reason, he would find a way to sneak a win in.
I can’t recall a lot of memories of growing up in my teens or my 20s, without some hazy memory of Chirag in it.
He was the first friend I made when I shifted to Telec, literally the first person of my age that I met.
He was there at almost every college fest, whether it was in Somaiya, RAIT or IIT – it didn’t matter. He would a way to get in and get some of us “lukkhas” in too.
He was at my first wedding. At my dad’s funeral. At Mola’s funeral.
He was the guy who found me my first job when I returned to India, through Fenil at Nielsen. And he was the guy who travelled back with me 2-3 times a week, after work from Parel during that period. Of course, with some fun-filled stops in between.
I distinctly remember the time at Arjun’s place when he admitted to being in a relationship with Neebha and that they would be married.
And I remember the time when he…..well, that is for a lot of us to fill in the blanks of the memories that can’t be written on this blog.
But what you and I certainly can’t erase from my memory ever – is that haraami twinkle. That haraami twinkle which just told you that some mischief was around the corner.
We all know it. We can visualize it – that twinkle which came before the mischief. And then that gregarious laughter that came after the mischief was accomplished. Sometimes we saw it as a spectator. And more often, we were at the receiving end of that mischief.
See the pictures. Especially in the 2000s. It’s there. Its unmistakeable.
And its what I will remember him by – that friend of mine with the “haraami twinkle in his eyes”.
When people pass, some say that they have been called to be with God. That they have gone to a happy place. I don’t know and I frankly don’t care.
Because he is gone too soon. Sooner than any of us thought. Any of us could imagine.
All I can hope for is to close my eyes, look back at the times I spent knowing Chirag from the time I was 10 – through the stairs in Telec, the corridors in Agnels, the basement in Avalons and the smoke-filled tables at NMSA and say “Cheers, yaara. I hope you had a good ride”
Till we meet again
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