Sajid calling Sajid

Nostalgia is an intoxicated feeling. Its also like a sudden cool breeze on a sultry evening. Nostalgia sends soothing minty musical notes to heart, soul and mind as well.

A recent visit to a movie hall to watch the latest Bollywood biopic, 'Azhar', evoked a monumental rush of nostalgia in me. I would not rate this Emraan Hashmi starer a great movie experience, but I am definitely acting unabashedly biased and would rate it above average on the reason of nostalgia, and nostalgia itself.

I am a passionate cricket follower since the historic year of 1983 when India lifted the cricket World Cup. I was a kid of ten years then. Next year, the country on whose soil India conquered the world, England, visited India for a full series. That India-England series gave birth to one of the most charismatic and controversial personality of Indian cricket, Mohammad Azharuddin.

On the last day of year of 1984, Azharuddin made his international debut at Eden Gardens, Calcutta. The memory of listening to live Bengali commentary broadcasted on radio that afternoon, still loungingly lingers on my mind. I like many other cricket fans, concurred somewhat prophetically on that afternoon itself, that a cricketing star is born on that day. Calcutta is also the city where he scored 5 among his 22 test centuries at an average of 107.5 runs. His next highest number of test centuries scoring venue is Green Park, Kanpur, where he scored 3 among them, including his highest score of 199. Kanpur is also the venue, where he completed his still unbroken world record of three consecutive centuries on debut on the last day of January 1985.

That Azharuddin's cricketing achievements being so intrinsically connected with both Calcutta, my hometown and Kanpur, my work-town for large part of my life, evokes the second reason for my nostalgia.

The third and the foremost cognition of my nostalgia is due to Sajid.

Sajid, my namesake, was my best friend at school. Actually, he was more than a friend. He was my hero, my idol, my icon.

I studied in Saifee Hall, a Dawoodi Bohra patronage co-educational convent school at Central Calcutta. I spend a full 12 years there, from Nursery till I passed my tenth standard board examination. I was a shy, reticent kind of a boy, all-throughout these 12 years. I made very few companions, and even fewer friends there.

But Sajid was my confidante and a trusted buddy, whom you can proudly call a best friend. He got admitted to my school when I was in class 4 and since then has been my classmate. We used to sit together in same bench in all the classes and our camaraderie was build up gradually and strongly. But we were physically and characteristically miles apart. He was handsome - I was demure. He was intelligent - I was simpleton. He was charming and I was borderly insipid.

Sajid came from a modest background. He had two brothers younger than him. His father was a fairly renowned automobile mechanic and owned a garage, but had very high dreams for his all three sons, especially of Sajid and his second son Rashid. Rashid was a budding cricketer. A promising left hand fast bowler and a good left hand batter. He even represented Bengal cricket team at sub-junior level. The youngest Wajid was a small kid then, who incidentally was a classmate of my only brother Sadiq. Sajid's father however was a very inspirational man. Even though he himself was not an academically learned man, he was very much an enlightened person, who had discerning aspirations for his family. Sajid's mother though was an unpretentious woman with whom we never had any significant interactions. She, most of the time was engrossed in her household chore. But she used to make amazing Biryani.

The one thing disparate in Sajid's family, was that Sajid had the physical feature of an royal aristocrat, while the rest were contemptible ordinary. And the one thing that was vividly common among them, was that they were all a die-hard Azharuddin fan. They used to 'eat-sleep-and-drink' Azharuddin. Their aficionado towards Azhar was so stirring, that I too became a part of their fandom.

I lost Sajid. I lost him even before culminating my teen-age. 

We passed our tenth board exam in 1989. I with no great distinctions and he, quite astoundingly, with no great distinction either. I got myself admitted to a college. And he, ungratified and discontented with himself went to a different college. My college ushered my transformation from a timid, reserved, apprehensive person to a self-assured, confident, upbeat youth. I made new friends, inventive buddies and in that new-found freshness of life and escapade from mundane, Sajid drifted away from me. I later came to know that they had left their rented childhood house at Calcutta and built a home of their own at the outskirts of the city. He thus, drew more apart from me.  

I embarked on my professional career away from Calcutta, reason for which my home-city itself had rather meandered away from me. More than two and a half decades has passed since then and I seldom think of Sajid nowadays. Its not that I didn't tried to contact him earlier. I did, but all in vain. Surprisingly, our common friends at Calcutta also are unaware of his whereabouts. Sajid is conspicuously missing on the friends list of all my other school friends in Facebook. 

'Azhar', the movie, precipitated a fresh gust of memories of my childhood. As I yearn for a melancholic saudade, I am compelled to reckon, that eventually I have now become Sajid. His vibrant personality, his luminary attitude, his stamping character, has built the foundation of the person who I am, today.