Not a usual bystander day

Almost everyday you read some crime news in newspapers, some one getting robbed, some one getting stabbed and all sorts of things. Some how, it was always some one pretty much statistic for bystander. I was lucky enough to be a bystander till Yesterday. As news flashed on TV that Doctor Srinivas Akkaladevi was stabbed to death in Pennsylvanian town, I was praying seriously that let this guy be not the one I know. Then news added a detail saying this doc was from Korutla. My hopes dwindled further. After searching frantically all over the net for an hour, TV confirmed the sad news by showing his picture.

Srinivas, fondly called as Gundu in the hostel, was my room mate during eigth class. Very driven and no non-sense guy. One immediate thing that comes to my mind when I remember Gundu was the silly game we used to play in Hostel. We used to play this game, where in you have to rotate a rectangular place 1’ x 6” on your middle finger as long as possible. Gundu was the champion. He set a record by controlling the plate on the finger for more than 2 hours. Following year, we got moved to different rooms followed by which, I left the hostel. We got in touch again after he joined Gandhi medical college. Murali used to visit Hyderabad during his sem.holidays. Visiting Gundu, Ibrahim and Kalyan at Gandhi hostel was a must every time. After a little bit of chatter about studies/future plans/comparisons between Engg., medicine, we used depart with the promise of meeting again. I lost contact after I went to US in ’98. Later, I heard Gundu went there too but none in my friends circle could revive the contact.

During our stay at Gandhi house, we had a competition. Each of us planted two pine trees(sarugudu in Telugu). The boy whose tree was tallest at the end of the semester was awarded the prize. By the nature of those trees, if you nip the main stem, the tree would never recover and was rendered out of competition. The trees were easy preys for stray cattle around the hostel. We used to take pains to build fences to avoid all kinds of threats. At the end of the term, Gundu was the only boy who could guard his tree with out getting nipped and took the prize. God, how cruel and ironic you can be - to nip such a promising life just when it is ready to reap all the benefits of hard work.

Dear Srinivas, you will be alive in our memories and our prayers are with your family and beloved.

-vg

PS: In my earlier post, I mentioned third time is the charm but, did nt realize there was ‘avada kedavra’ curse waiting. Anyways, I will try to stick to my promise and like life, this blog will go on too.