A room-mate, THE Room-mate

Loaded with 40+ kgs of baggage and zero knowledge of French, I took nearly half a day to reach INSA campus and receive the keys to my new flat, after I landed in Lyon on a chilly September morning for a yearlong stay. Curious to experience the comforts of my new home, I opened the door, only to find a guy, half naked, staring at me with extreme embarrassment. It took me a minute to realize that he was my roommate-to-be, who had arrived well in advance and had settled there already. I thanked God for His kindness, for it could've been worse had I opened the door while he was fully naked (for whatever reasons).  

Well, after sheepishly apologizing in English, I introduced myself to him, told him about my native country, about why and how I reached here, my opinions about the suitability of Carla Bruni as the French First lady or Adriana Lima as an IPL cheerleader, and the strengths of Indian football team. I'm quite an extrovert it seems. But my new roommate, by God's grace, knew only Portuguese; English and French being to him what Honoluluian was to me. But since Brazil is known as Brazil in English, I was able to 'decipher' his nationality. And since his name wasn't the most easy to pronounce, I nicknamed him Edd at that very instant and informed him of my decision, fully confident that he could not protest this blatant invasion into his rights of nomenclature. Initially I had thought of calling him Samba, but dropped that idea owing to its racial (and Gabbar-like) connotations and settled for Edd. It went on rather easily till now.

Days passed by and the colors of fall began to decorate the trees all around the campus. Me and Edd found our bonding in the prowess of Google translator, where we spent some time everyday to communicate with each other and discuss French idiosyncracies and academic chores (PS: only the chores, not the academics). Amidst the changing seasons, days and nights, his appearance seemed like a carving of fate on the palette of history. He was was static, the same lean fellow with a black woolen cap and thick layers of woolens covering the upper half of his body, in sharp contrast with the modest pair of grey shorts that clung onto the lower. Plus a pair of jeans which he used to wear over those shorts everytime he had to go out.

Eddy was an introvert of the highest order, and the only Brazilian I knew who did not drink or party. He had very few friends and even they stopped interacting with him perhaps due to his weird behaviour. One day he told me, on Google translator itself, that his father had been a chain smoker and a booze lover and was battling lung cancer in Brazil. He had come here on a scholarship and his sole purpose was to stay here and receive that money so that he could save most of it and get back to Brazil.

He was a pathetic cook. All he knew was to how make a mess out of beef and pork and fill our apartment with its dizzying smell. Being a vegetarian I used to be really pissed in the beginning but slowly I got used to his ways. Often I used to make him eat things that I cooked, and he was wise enough to switch over to Indian cuisine over time.

Edd used to take bath twice daily even when it was snowing outside, and was in the habit of cleaning the whole apartment every other day. I could never figure out whether this habit was attributed to some amphibian origins or was just a cultural adaptation to the life in Amazon rainforests to which he belonged. Nonetheless, my home was clean and glittering all the time, and thanks to his voluntary dedication, I had to work upon that only occasionally.

Once he told me that I was his one and only friend outside of Brazil. That day I decided to add some more people to the list. I introduced him to many of my classmates and other friends, and he became particularly fond of Saurabh, who was the fellow exchangee and my closest friend there. We often used to take Edd along whenever we went out in the city, and his Portuguese skills added good nuisance value to our desi conversations. Edd soon became famous across the campus, as the weird guy who collided with standing cars and goofed up with his plates, his bags and everything else that he lay his hands upon. He was technically more backward than even myself and knew precisely nothing about how to call home. I gave him my VoIP account and it was then that he realized that it wasn't wise to spend 1.6 Euros/min for international phone calls. I love Adriana Lima, the Goddess of intellect.

His hobbies included asking me day's temperature every thirty minutes, narrating stories of El Dorado (of which I never understood even a single word), irritating me with his pathetic French one-liners and getting up at the middle of the night for star gazing. The last of these was particularly frightening, and my house seemed haunted for a while due to this eccentric behaviour. At times I felt that he missed his native place too much and was finding it impossible to spend the remaining months here. Once he started crying while telling me about his family, and this became quite a frequent occurence, especially whenever he used to talk to them on skype. He did not have a laptop so he used mine, and even this was discontinued after I had to leave to spend my last three months in the Alps.
 When I returned, I found him in a rather miserable condition. He had not pulled the curtains up for several weeks and had completely locked himself up inside. I immediately talked to some of his Brazilian acquaintances and insisted upon them to keep an eye on him for the next two months that he had to stay there. We persuaded him to go out and and indulge in some better pursuits to avoid a further deterioriation in his physical and mental health. Still, I was particularly mad the other Brazilian guys who appeared just too selfish to do anything for him.

I left Lyon for India on 10th May. As I bade him goodbye, to my sheer surprise, he jumped up and clung onto me like a 12 year old kid and started crying. This was the last thing I could've expected and I never quite understood what made him do that. I talked to him and left behind a note in French. As I walked away, I too realized that despite all the weirdness and communication gap, he had indeed become my closest friend during this stay, after Saurabh.

We kept exchanging emails for sometime. In July he sent me a message informing me about the demise of his father. Today, two years down the line, his life is slowly limping back on track.

I really need to visit those rainforests of the Amazon someday.