You people have all heard about or seen Ghajini. Now imagine the protagonist. First remove all the scars and the sculpted physique. Especially around the midsection. Add wild straggly hair on the head which looks like it is supposed to be elsewhere. And glasses. Remove all the stud personality traits and machismo he is supposed to have. And the heroine is not Asin (obviously, if this guy got a girl like that, many of us should be jumping off a bridge right now). So you get a guy who is nothing like the original, except for the short term memory loss. Except no one really knows why he got it. Now just shorten the period when memory is retained even further and you get SK Vijay Adhitya a.k.a Legends, the second member of Room 39.
His achievements always preceded him. The first time I heard about him was in 11th Standard IIT Tuition. People were telling me about this guy from PS school who went to IIT classes all day, studied from a dozen different guides for every chapter, burned the midnight oil, you name it. We were naturally awed, when in the same breath, the guy who was telling us this went off to make fun of him as soon as he showed up. (Boys can be really mean, especially when young and pissed from hours of studying. I blame the education system).
So one day, a chemistry test had just gotten over and I was loitering around with two school friends (Vinay and Ashwin. They will star only in the intro scene). Then this guy came along and started discussing stuff with us. We had had our fill of chemistry for the day, so Vinay, who knew a bit more about his reputation, tied his shoelaces together (Why the hell was he wearing shoes? I have to ask him later), while we watched him ramble on and on, mesmerised. It's not everyday you see a complete stranger come and discuss 3.a.4.i subdivision of the 5th Part of the paper.
When our interest began to wane, he stopped talking , and somehow miraculously noticed his laces tied together. He was very proud that he had found out about our prank, so untying them, he sat us all down on the stairs and continued talking. Now comes the first instance of the short term memory. Vinay tied his laces together again. And this time, blissfully unaware, he got up, tried to take a step forward and tripped, although I think we caught him. Did we? I don't remember.
I met this guy later on in college, and once again, as all Chennai people gravitate together over there, we got to interact with him more. One night, after most of us had gone to sleep, Legends showed up at our room and convinced VK, and Ashwin (a different one) that it would be a good idea to take all our buckets and play some sort of music, and they ended up banging till early morning ( Hey! Word play!). I was sleeping five feet away and heard nothing. On learning of this in the morning, I went and met the genius who had thought of doing this and we got to know each other better.
Later, we started trying out this silly investment scheme called Orange. A few people were interested and when Legends heard about it, he was hooked. He made me speak to a endless line of people, half of whom I hadn't even met, extolling its merits and trying to convince them to invest. It came to nothing, but to Legends that didn't matter. And finally, in the second year, he was in our adjacent room, and from the first day, when he went around bonking everybody on the head with a water bottle proclaiming his blessings, we became fast friends.
From our initial encounters, his boundless enthusiasm and energy to go out and do things and meet people was obvious. I think for every guy I knew, he must have known a hundred. Hence, he was always out. The thing that struck me very strongly at that time was how his lifestyle could be so aptly described by the word pottering (PG Wodehouse), which means to busy oneself in a desultory though agreeable manner. Legends could potter away his entire lifetime, talk about all of it to everyone with equal enthusiasm, and with no idea that he had just done all of that, go out and do something else. I can't even begin to tell you people of all the crazy things he has done, it would require too much writing.
What amazes me the most about him is that he is still the same. He is still the same clueless scatterbrain who can talk about ten things in the same breath. But he never forgets a friend, and makes tons of them everywhere he goes. You don't have to do much - just listen to him, and you will be guaranteed a lifetime of stories and entertainment. So I'll end my summary of this guy with this to say, a phrase he often quotes himself, “Weightu weightu.” Really, I could not think of anything else to end with. No one else probably can with him.
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