Tso, my actor friend!

I remember Shiyaz, he joined quite late to our college Kristu Jayanti. He worked out regularly, watched a lot of movies, moved in with his girlfriend, walked into class with one book, lot of cool stuff he did. He used to tell our psychology professor “Ma’am I’m gonna be an actor some day, so completing these practical records are not going to help me in anyway. 

I used to ride back with him sometimes on his bike and he showed me how to “sit like a man” on the bike. He enjoyed mom’s fried rice and in exchange I was treated to biryani most days. 

Shiyaz, is now Tso. We ended up working together in college plays and going to competitions where my role was play live guitar as background music. I explored dynamic playing and I still consider this as the biggest training ground in building a strong musicianship and being noted and appreciated for this. This was where I had my second chance with music. Shiyaz was the protagonist most of the time and my music had to sync and give way to his dialogues. 

After college we also worked for a brief period of time in Bangalore. Then we lost touch. 

I organised a Facebook group where I added all the classmates from KJC, Journalism, Psychology, Literature batch and eventually all of us connected on WhatsApp. 

I saw him showing up on smaller roles on some movies, and now he has a new movie out with a lot of screen space. So proud of having hung out with him. The guy who ate mommy lunch and taught me to sit like a man! Shiyaz.