It goes without saying that if you throw a stone in Bangalore, chances are it would hit someone from Kerala (Mallu). Even then, I hardly had any Malayali friends throughout my school life, apart from some family friends. I was delighted to get acquainted with some of them during the course of my engineering and our friendship grew as the years passed. As is always the case, during the final year, we have this frenzied urge to fit into as many groups of friends as possible, spend more time with them and make memories to dote on. We formed a group on Whatsapp, which had three people initially. The number slowly rose to five.

 I will try to introduce all of them in a line or two. First and foremost, there is this person who is the soul of the group, always entertaining everybody with his stories. Then there is the sweetest person who cannot get angry and is a soft target for all the jokes. One person who is too amiable and sensible and another person who is brimming with ideas, feels accountable for mother earth, made up our group. The group conversations were always fun and I made sure I was up to date with everything that happened even if I could not participate. It was our forte to be able to pull each other’s legs, resorting to everything from movie dialogues to past incidents in our lives. At times, there were some extensive planning sessions regarding who among us would get married first, where, who would sponsor the marriage, where would we settle, where would we meet again after a long time and so on. 

 Our first jaunt together was to the Jalahalli Ayyappa temple in Bangalore, situated in a locality which boasts of more Keralites per unit area than any other place in Bangalore.  After offering our prayers, we spent some time in the temple premises taking in the tenor and discussing the history of temples in Kerala as well as various traditions that we follow. We continued our discussion in a park outside the temple. Horror stories were told, which my friends claimed to be a part of. We failed to notice an old man sitting nearby as we made elaborate plans for one of my friends to elope with the love of his life without their parents’ consent. The stranger was offended and retaliated soon, asking us if he would tolerate it if his sister did the same thing. This incident dampened our spirits, at least for a while.

 Another get together and the ethnic day celebration in our college rewarded us with more memories. On the day of the official farewell for final year students in our college, I invited all of them home. It was an evening of merry chatter and singing. Getting drenched in the rain while walking in a pasture close by was a happy addition to our agenda for the day. Our beloved juniors had also arranged an informal farewell for us on the next day. We quietly escaped the proceedings to meet in college and have a ‘wine party’ which was long due. One of us carefully carried wine in a coke bottle to the college canteen and all of us gulped two mouthfuls of it. The thought of CCTV cameras and a watchman who asked us our details since we were on campus on a Sunday, made us slightly anxious. After going back to the get together, while addressing the gathering, I could sense the after-effects of the wine. My tongue reluctantly obeyed me and I was getting a headache.

 We seem to have made the most of our temple visits. We went to the Chakkulathukavu temple in Bangalore to take part in the ‘Laksharchana’ (Lighting of one lakh lamps) ceremony. My friend sang an old Malayalam movie song for us and seemed to have achieved what Tansen did by singing the raag Malhar. The temple and the surroundings were soaked in rain. We lighted the lamps around the temple to make it a spectacle in the darkness.

 Contrary to our own apprehension that we will not be able to continue our amity even after college ends, we met a few months later. We put on paper an off-the-record marriage declaration of one of our friends. It was one of those hysterical exploits that we would recollect somewhere down the road.