If I may allow my earliest recollections to be the melting point of this foreword, I have known Rajarshi Sharma for about the last three years, as the Techie Head of the Internet Service Provider to the Company I was working for then (…when his contact details popped on my Whatsapp screen, the way my then Boss saved it - Raj Sharma, Tech Head, M-NET). We had a Whatsapp Group - the Service Provider and Vendor and our conversations were limited to, if again, I may be allowed to mention here, “No internet at Apollo”, Being working for a healthcare provider, sometimes the messages I sent would be as early as 8:00 am and he would manage to share photographs of broken and cut fiber, due to the ongoing Zoo Road Flyover construction and or the heavy monsoon downpours. Soon after I shifted and I presume the standard “No internet at Apollo” felt different. Much later we connected - a Nerdy Techie and an HR, talking about books, poems, music, movies and writings.
Nandini Ray Baruah
Exchanging our writeups, our association was at another level. One fine afternoon, Raj sent me a document, as an attachment, along with a monosyllable and it read “Read”. I downloaded the 4 A4 size documents, which had millions of thoughts bottled up on those measly pages and I called him and asked, “What am I supposed to do?” “Edit”, he said. We hung up, not a word spoken. From that point onwards till the day I finished editing the last word, (but for some God Forsaken reasons, I still feel, I can edit it better), I know we as a team have evolved. Being assigned as the editor, I had a million questions for him. When Bangalore Dairies started, it was pages after pages of thoughts Raj wrote, from the experiences he had gathered over the years culminating into the life of Wing Commander Rishi Parashar. It was during our lunch break calls, either through Google Meet or Whatsapp call or a simple voice call, we discussed those first drafts and how Rishi would sail through the skies with his Shakti. Those bottled-up sentences slowly saw the daylights, soon after. We did not know where the story would lead to - the life of a flamboyant Wing Commander Rishi Parashar, when we started. Traversing from the snowcapped mountains of Udhampur, where Rishi loved to walk to his balcony every single evening to soak in the majestic Himalayas and the cold air slicing the upper layers of his skin, to being stationed at Hasimara surrounded with lush tea gardens of North Bengal, to Lohegaon in Pune, Eastern Air Command - Shillong, his Alma Mater - NDA -Khadakwasla Pune, AFA - Hyderabad and Bishop Cotton Boys - Bangalore, to connecting with his schoolmates during the 25th reunion at Coorg, reconnecting him to his roots, his on and off chance messages and crossing paths with Hrishita, whose thoughts always loomed largely over him and finally his landing on his home turf at Yelahanka Air Force Base at Bangalore, his journey has been an amazing one, if not a being on a roller-coaster. The friends he made, the friends he lost, the heartbreaks he faced and the fear of rejection; Rishi, from being a gawky teenager playing his mandolin at the School Fest to impress his girl, the only one he had a fixation on, he evolved as a man of honor with the deepest sanctity and one of the finest gentleman in uniform. The King of the sky was at tenterhooks, when it came to the matter of his heart! Stuck between the devil and the deep sea, at times, the choices for Rishi were limited. But he did what seemed the best during that moment. And that is how Rishi traverses, with Shakti, his Rafael - his Old Girl and with his Wingman Kasper. Kasper and Rishi’s bond, I am sure would leave their respective girlfriends/ wives a tad jaded. The icing on the cake is of course Turbanator CO Majithia and his cat and mouse chase with Kasper, mostly the mental chases! Not to spill beans or to let the cat out of the bag, I am thankful to the Author, Rajarshi Sharma. For he felt, I was the chosen one to read the first draft and to meander through Rishi’s life as it took shape, through trials and tribulations - the life of FlyBoy. Summing Bangalore Dairies shall never be easy, because, as you read the characters and how they evolve, from being simple to the more complex, this will leave you intrigued, like it does to me - still!
Scissorhands!