Chapter 2. Feeb’s Villa
“Finally”
Edwin said as he stood up from his chair with blue cushion and metallic arm rest on it. I just entered the room with green painted walls. Edwin, known as ‘Eddu’ to everyone; kids, classmates, colleagues, friends, family, every single person. I can doubtfully assert that, you would only come to know his name was Edwin, only if you get to see his official identify documents.
“He looks so adorable, like a little panda.”
Manjusha a common friend of ours used to say every other day when she meets Eddu.
Often I get question, about “who is Eddu?” from anyone who asks me about my past now, solely because it was his name that would be repeated infinitely in all my stories from my past. Of course, not in the romantic chapters of my past, but his cameo appearance was inevitable even in that. Eddu, opened his arms wide to hug me.
Me: “Yeah…. Finally”
I came closer to him to hug him. ohhhhhhh my…….!!!!!!!. He landed his folded fist on my stomach strongly. I fell on that red-colored floor instantaneously. I looked up to his face with tears in my eyes. It did hurt, It wasn’t like that friendship bullying fight we had over the past six years. That punch was meant to be hurting.
Eddu said smiling:“This is for you to remember me when you are gone”
Yeah. After a hell lot of struggles, I barely managed to get my Visa in my hand, 36 hours before my final reporting day at my university in Berlin. I had been informed by the admissions committee that my admission would be canceled If I don’t report at the academic coordinator's office at the university with all my certificates before the final reporting day. Classes had already started a week ago. Sorting out the educational loan and the Visa processing had taken so long, about 6 months, way more than expected.
Finally, that part is done. Now I got to hustle against the clock. If you are one among the graduates from the bachelor universities in Kerala, you will have developed that skill of never panicking when it comes to the hustle against clock. It’s no magic, graduates from engineering universities in Kerala had gone through a very tightly packed educational plan under high pressure. 55 courses over a period of 4 years, which includes 3 subjective exams and 2 assignment per course. It also includes approximately 10 labs courses with one rough record for noting observations of your lab experiment. You have to repeat the same work into a Fair record for no benefit other than to improve your handwriting. This would waste at least 300 hours of your studies. Even today I haven’t understood the meaning behind this practice.
Once you have fought 150+ subjective exams and 100+ assignments with hard deadlines, you never panic against the clock ever after. But the sad part, we graduate from these universities are not readily employable without training even after so intense training. On the other side bachelor studies is much more relaxed in Europe with less than 30 courses for bachelors and less than 15 courses for masters. In effectively bachelor graduates in Kerala are taking more effort than a master graduate in Europe. I should shamefully admit, the bachelor graduates from the European universities learn job-oriented skills in universities and can contribute to the company from day one. This is alarming and something to be thought about the education system in India.
Flight tickets have been sorted out. Now the only trouble was I don’t have time to convey the message even to my close relatives. Email bots at the visa offices are huge fans of suspense thrillers, the emails would often read:
Dear Applicant,
Your visa application has been decided upon. Please pick up your passport (and original certificates, if submitted) at the Visa Section of the German Consulate General.
Such emails would give you an increased heart rate, you will never know if the visa application is rejected or accepted unless to get your passport in your hand from the consulate. If your Visa office is in another city, you will have to live with it for hours or even days until you reach the visa office. In my case, it was 12 hours of bus travel from Kochi to Bangalore and same time back. Due to the uncertain nature of visa, I didn’t even give a clue about my travel to anyone, especially because I had a history of visa rejection twice resulting in missing out a very rare opportunity despite having admitted to Boot-camp by MIT. The reason for visa rejection told by the consulate then was: “You are a qualified graduate, but unemployed. If you are granted visa, you will find a job in our country and will not return back to your home country”. And the funniest of all was the reason I resigned my job. I resigned my job so that I could go to the Boot-camps organized by the prestigious MIT without the strings of work attached to me.
In India, it is kinda rude not to inform your relatives when you go abroad for your studies, especially when you are so close to your cousins. Ideally, one is expected to go see each of your cousins in person and get blessings from them. South Indian families are often so close to their cousin’s, maybe even closer than their own families as compared to Europe. I found it very surprising to know that, there were many in Europe at the mid-’20s who have never attended any marriage functions in their life. One of those reason’s being, they are not invited even for their first cousin’s marriage. However, it’s a crime to miss your first cousin’s marriage in south India. Your family and friend circles are so big that you somehow end up attending 20 marriage functions in an average every year.
However little I had. I had to find time to visit Feeb’s Villa. So did I. I was in that room with that green painted walls in Feeb’s Villa, Edwin’s home. Wait.. is it Edwin’s home? Maybe it was six years ago when I came to this house for the first time. Now it’s mine too, its Manyu’s too, it’s Damu’s too, and it’s Arjun’s home. It’s our Headquarters, the Kaizens HQ. Kaizens!!! that’s what we called ourselves, we started our journey from the 3rd bench from the front, leftmost column in the first year electrical engineering class at Govt. Model Engineering College. Since then we were together.
I came out from that room as Eddu answered his phone.
Eddu: “aah Manyu, We are at my home”
Eddu paused as he listened to what Manyu said and replied.
Eddu: “Okay. See you in couple of minutes”
Manyu, Sreelakshmi, Arjun, and Damu were coming to Feeb’s Villa after their office that day. Sreelakhsmi, We called her Sree. Sree was a trained singer, all her family was. Father, mother and elder brother, every one of them is level- pro singers or plays a musical instrument or both. In addition, to that, she was the gold medalist in academics in her university. She was also very beautiful with a cute smile. Sree is Manyu’s girlfriend and they were to be engaged soon. They were made for each other. ❤
Manyu, was one of the most good looking guys in our university and most talented UI /UX designer I have ever known. Best UI/UX designers have superior observation skills, they see the world differently. This is true outside the design matters, their skills make them best critics in all matters. Their assertions are always rational, and always raise valid questions on irrational facts. So, Manyu is our man in case of doubt, he analyzes the situation the best, but when it comes to decision making its Eddu. He was somehow mentally superior to us. Maybe its because all of us had some weakness, he seemed to the person who had none. Well, he had one, ‘horror movies’. :D
Eddu used to watch horror movies with us, putting his headphones on, playing EDM at maximum volume, so that he won’t be scared with the sounds from the movie. He makes such a havoc every time one of us suggests a horror movie for the night.
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On the other hand, the emotional quotient of our group rested with Damu and me. Arjun had a peculiar skill of cracking a joke out of almost any situation. It might seem near to impossible to crack a joke in the hardest times, he would come up with something that would cheer up all of us.
Fevin: “Kevin, Make sure you call eddu once in a while, He will be very sad for next few of weeks. He was sad for weeks when you left for job to Bangalore two years ago”
Said Fevin, Eddu’s younger brother who studies Medicine. I felt real pain now, it hurt me more than his strong punch couple of minutes ago. After 4 years of college. I had joined a company in Bangalore when Manyu, Eddu, Damu, and Arjun joined the same company in Kochi. Kochi and Bangalore are south Indian cities which as 600 km apart.
Me: “Sure”
I said and kept my arms on his shoulders. I walked down the stairs emotionless to the dining room in his house. I heard the doorbell while walking down the stairs, I was certain it was Damu, Manyu, and Sree. I rushed to open the front door. In Feeb’ s Villa Front door opened to a cozy living room with couches on the three sides. The fourth side of the room opened to the dining room, which had a round dinning table made out of glass and wood. The center of the round dining table had an elevated glass platform which rotates. This was made rotating so that the dishes reached everyone without being passed, you could rotate that elevated platform and the dish is in front of you. We have had countless meals sitting in that dining table over the past half dozen years.
As they entered parking their motorbikes in the parking space meticulously, we hugged out, just like usual. It needed high precision to park vehicles at this house. Since, we made Feeb’s Villa our HQ we had sometimes 5 motorbikes, one for 5 of us, 2 cars from his family and sometimes cousins Eddu’s vehicles as well all in less than 30 square meters sloppy terrain in front of the house.
Eddu came down the stairs behind me hearing we speak. It was time for me to leave. We were waiting for aunty. Eddu’s mom, she was the one which made our friendship special.
Mini Aunty, in her mid 40’s had a magic spell which made our friendships bond stronger. She welcomed us home anytime round the clock. Her warm gestures made us feel at home. I might even have stayed at Eddu’s home more than at my hostel during my undergraduate studies. We spend most of our time after university in his place. We might even show up in the wee hours and sleep at Eddu’s room, she would somehow find out about our midnight break-in and would have prepared extra breakfast for us, the next day. She often cooked for 8 when she had only 4 members at home because she knew we would show up sometime of the day. When the family went out for dining outside they would invite us, if it was for a movie they would sometimes book tickets for us even without telling in prior. Basil uncle and mini aunty had adopted us even without us knowing it. Basil uncle, eddu’s father, we call him ‘appai’ the same way eddu calls which means dad Malayalam.
Appai, in his early 50’s was technically very sound that none of us would even dare to speak anything related to technology when he is around. He would simply expose in the funniest manner, how little we knew in our domains despite us being engineers. Appai was more like a ‘thug life’ father. Eddu’s family would not buy sweets or snacks, if they did aunty would hide it because Basil uncle would finish it off. During Eddu’s school days aunty had kept TV time restriction on uncle more than Eddu and Fevin because appai used it more than others.
We heard the sound of mini aunty’s car, all of us came out of the house to the small space which was meant to attend those visitors who wouldn’t want to enter the house because they might be busy but wanted to convey some message quickly. It’s a very common construction in South Indian houses, unlike European. It’s more like a balcony on your ground floor. You would come out to the balcony to receive your loved ones and guide them inside when they visit you. Here Mini aunty was guided welcomed into her own house by us. All of us had gelled into Feeb’s villa over the years, that we started having the feeling of ‘ours’ to that beautiful house.
Mini aunty and Basil uncle had converted the terrace into a wonderful kitchen garden-terrace farm. They cultivated all kinds of vegetable in the terrace. The house was an ideal example of how to make the best use of the little resources available. Aunty would often proudly announce that the vegetables she cooked for us were produced at the terrace in soil bags while serving us tasty food.
As she entered the house, we followed her to the living room. Aunty noticed that my bag was kept near the couch, and she understood I was about to leave. What happened next was quite unexpected.
“All of your lives will change, you will go far in search of jobs, studies. It’s matter of time that all you would be meet you girlfriends, you… all of you… would get… married, But.. ”
her eyes were full of tears, she was stammering and it was becoming hard to speak to her. We didn’t expect this. All of us were shocked But she continued when all of 8 in the room (Eddu, Manyu, Sree, Damu, Arjun, Fevin, Appai and me) of us listened in silence.
“.. whatever happens, you should…… you should never part!!! It might be difficult when all of you are married and your priorities might shift. But never let go this friendship.Make sure all of you stay together”
Tears rolled down her cheek. Sree came closer to her holding her hands. That moment was so beautiful for me, Sree acted like a daughter in law to her. My mind wept happily, rejoicing we had built a family which was not connected with blood but connected with minds, connected with that magical word ‘friendship’. Mini aunty was a strong woman in general, this is the first time we have seen her being emotional. Maybe it was not meant to be that emotional, but her worries about time and distance weakening this bond made her weak. This indeed did make my eyes water. I’m sure others had felt the same. After all, it was just me who was traveling the rest of the gang was still home. Somebody did mention that to relieve the tension in the air. But, I did understand that me leaving even for a short period of time, did mean something to his family. No, I did mean something to our family.
I stepped out of the house budding farewell and hugging all, about to leave and that’s when Manyu said keeping his hands around sree.
Manyu: “We will let to know as soon as the date of the marriage is fixed. You should come”
Sree: “We will expect you, should come.”
Sree continued as soon as Manyu paused.
Me: “I will” I promised.
A promise made is a promise kept.
Eddu, kick-started his RX-100 the vintage motorbike to drop me at Afee’s home. One last family to visit. I did not turn back to look one last time. I had enough memories that would put a smile on my face even in the darkest hour.
Up Next, in the series:
Chapter 3: “My name is Lami, I have four brothers”
Authors note: This chapter was a desperate effort to build the character portfolio for this story series and I’m not so satisfied with this chapter. I did rewrite this chapter many a times. Please help me improve by being critical on your feedback.
