Chapter 2: Plant response to elevated CO2 - DRUM - University of ...

We were kids brought up by parents who put us side by side, competing
against each other for nearly everything: grades, clothes, volunteering for school
activities, even at making runs in a game of cricket within the neighbourhood.
Predictably, we grew up comparing ourselves, having only the other as a
reference point so we could never climb out of the loop, completely free from
each other. We both cracked the entrance exam of the Indian Institute of
Technology, chose to stay in the Bombay campus and though he moved on to
software engineering and I to bioengineering, we managed to keep track of each
other’s grades, friends and participation efforts at tech fairs. Perhaps we were
also bound to each other because of this competitive spirit, along that continuum
another, smaller line also ran parallel – that of friendship, for we could
understand one other completely, as bitter competitors often do.
I log off the computer to check for mails in my outlook express box.
Nothing.
I wonder if I am slowly being forgotten by my friends, lost in a flurry of
other things, the here and there, the now and present that occupy the minds of
my school friends, college friends and I wonder if Varun has now occupied that
space. Kapil is already asleep, soft snores rise and fall in rhythm. I close the door,
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