You must have read and heard stories of pen pals who became the closest friends. But have you ever heard of Zoom friends? Those who kept seeing one another every day for months, without ever meeting. One thing to add here is that these weren’t two friends. These were four, who became more than four hundred.

It’s been almost two years. Near the end of April 2020, I received that unbelievable message.

Hi Harshit.
This is Boman Irani.
Neeraj recommended your name for Spiral Bound. I’m adding you to the whatsapp group. Welcome to Spiral Bound!!!

The next morning, I was in a Zoom call with 30 odd people, trying to understand how scenes from Skyfall, In the Heat of the Night, The Untouchables, and a couple more films, were all pointing to the end of act one.

It was interesting, but mostly pretty difficult, to understand things in that first Class. I remember thinking I didn’t fit in this place. Actually if I look at how intelligent some people in the class are, I still wouldn’t be surprised if I join the class today and feel like I don’t fit there. But that I was in Mumbai to learn and pursue screenwriting, and that I had failed to clear the interview for the FTII screenwriting course were reasons that pushed me to stay in the class anyway. And then there was a bigger reason too. This class was conducted by Mr Boman Irani. No, it wasn’t just about that he was a big name. It was also about that he was one of the reasons I had come to Mumbai to become a screenwriter, as he had said in this interview I had watched that one could learn anything and change careers at any age if only they worked hard enough, if they paid their dues. And there was no reason not to listen to him—he had walked the talk.

So I stayed in that class, for days, weeks, months, every single day. There was a lot to learn, including all the humility of Boman Irani that you might have seen, and more. And then there was Anosh sir, Boman sir’s relative, friend, and supposed arch-nemesis, who taught creative writing at some of the most prestigious universities I knew. And then there was Alexander Dinelaris Jr, who was Boman sir’s screenwriting Guru, who talked to us directly for a couple of sessions too. We kept learning from all of them, as well as fellow Bounders, and moved from watching just scenes to watching complete films, discussing their structures and flash points. Things that could be expected from a midpoint and how we had to paint our character into a corner as we approached the all is lost moment were now part of my thought process while watching any film. Even the YouTube videos I used to write for The Better India were easier to structure now.

But there was something bigger that was going on too.

These classes had started in the middle of the pandemic, a tough time for everyone, in various degrees. Days after I had joined the classes, Irrfan and Rishi Kapoor left us (though it doesn’t feel like I was just a few days old in the class at the time). There were COVID scares, infections, hospitalizations, and even deaths in families of fellow Spiral Bounders. And in an odd way, these classes kept giving us strength through it all, kept on bringing us closer. Spiral Bound was becoming a safe space where people could, and did, share their deepest feelings, be it their joys, sorrows or even their fears.

Through it all, we kept hoping that the pandemic would pass in a few months. Sir often used to say that once the pandemic is over, we’d all meet. The pandemic, of course, had other plans.

As for me, I attended almost all sessions for more than six months, until November 2020, when my brother got married and I had to take a few days’ break from the classes. Sir sent us his best wishes, and said he wished he could come in person. We sent him the sweets from the wedding.

I kept attending sessions with a little less frequency, until April, when the second wave of COVID came. To say that it was a tough time would be an understatement, but our class was now a unit that was together in more than learning screenwriting, and like many other people, the class tried to do its best for the people who needed help, especially among ourselves. Our very dear classmate Syed Taqi Imam, who was fondly called Kaukab Saahab in the class, was in a difficult situation, and sir and some of the students tried everything they could for him.

I was a couple of days away from completing a year of Spiral Bound, when my father caught the virus too. After a few days of things being okay, they suddenly started deteriorating for him, and in the first week of May, we lost him. A couple of days later I learnt that about the same time, Kaukab saahab had left us too.

A couple of days after losing my father, I sent a long message to sir, telling him, among other things, that in my living memory Munnabhai MBBS was the only film my father had gone to watch without me. Sir was overwhelmed, and promised to sit and talk some day when things got better.

After this, I tried to join the classes again, but I couldn’t concentrate, and thought it was better to skip classes rather than sit there like that. Yet I kept trying to go back every once in a while, often not learning a lot, but just catching up with what was happening there, and getting an idea of who all were still joining the sessions, while students kept increasing. The once 30-odd student class now had more than 100 students in almost every session, sometimes going much higher. There were some three Whatsapp groups now, and Yogesh, who used to call himself Yojang, but is now Jag-Jag for more than 400 people, was sending session links in all the groups every single day. Also, a poem from Nipul was now a birthright of a Spiral Bounder on their birthday, and Mayur (Didolkar) Sir was still there to answer any query about any book or any film every made. All of these, and so many more, were now so familiar that I could play their voices in my head anytime. But I had never met any of them. None, except the one friend whom I had introduced to Spiral Bound.

The third wave of COVID came and went. I moved back to Mumbai, and then again came back home to my native in UP on Holi, for a few weeks.

And then one day, another message appeared on my Whatsapp chat with sir.

Hi, listen.
Time to celebrate.
You must come.

With this, there was a small invitation picture carrying the logo of Irani Movietone, the timing, the venue, and a couple more details.

So it was finally happening. The ‘meeting’ we had been hoping for since May-June 2020, was finally here. I thanked him and messaged him that I would book a flight for the weekend.

The event was at 7 PM on a Wednesday. A weekday, when the traffic is high as usual, and a lot of people had to come from their offices. Naturally, people would be late. Anyway, who expects people to reach in time for what is essentially a party. But I still reached the location about six thirty, hoping to meet those few who came early.

Here though, I wondered for a moment if I was late. Some 40-50 people were already there, and as people kept pouring in, it seemed impossible to meet and greet everyone you knew. That my social skills are not the best didn’t help the case. It was getting overwhelming already, as every face seemed known, but since I was seeing them in person for the first time, it took a moment, or more, to think of the names for a lot of people. But even as the re-introductions were made and we all talked to people whom we knew very well, not-so-well, and sometimes not at all, the time seemed too less for the sheer number of people there. There were people among these whom I have listened to longer than I have heard my best friend talk in the past ten years put together. There were people from whom I have learnt more than most of my school teachers have taught me. These were people with whom I wanted to sit and talk for an entire day, while all I had was those few hours to talk to some 250 of them. This was by no means enough, whatever we tried.

But try we did. After half an hour of snack time which was almost all about introductions and hardly about snacks, some of the moments from the past two years came alive through some speeches and class videos, bringing smiles, laughter, and quite a few tears. The way everyone stood up and applauded for Boman sir when he was invited to the stage is a moment I have watched numerous times on Instagram, but the intensity of it doesn’t fade away even in these repeated videos.

This was followed by food and drinks, and of course, a lot more re-introductions and chats. So many of us were meeting like long-lost friends, hugging each other, singing and dancing together. And some of us were long-lost friends, in case of people who had not been in class for a while, sometimes longer than a year even. I remember looking around and wondering if I knew this many people even in my brother’s wedding.

Of course, in all of this, the star of the evening remained busier than anyone else. Boman sir was meeting everyone he could meet. He chatted with them, and hugged them, and sang and danced with them, and people kept clicking pictures and videos. The ever humble and caring soul that he is, it was not surprising to see people tear up while meeting him, so many of them, from students meeting first time, to people who have worked with him. In such a busy and slightly inebriated atmosphere, it could only be considered surprising inevitability that the moment he met me, he went ‘Harshit bhaaii…‘. Of course, I knew he’d recognise me, and yet it was surprising to see and hear it happen. He asked me how I was doing and how things were, and even though I didn’t get a lot more time with him (except on the table where a lot of us sang together) and I didn’t even manage to get a photo with him, it was everything I wanted in that moment.

He left the event pretty late. It was actually a long one, by an average party’s standard. But then again, it was by no means an average party. It was a place no one seemed to wanted to leave from. I, who had a flight next afternoon, certainly had a FOMO because I knew that I’d not be able to meet any of them again for a few more weeks, and so, after we all left from there, I decided to join some of them at a friend’s house (by now you know how we define friend here—anyone from Spiral Bound is one), something I’d not have done at any other party with the kind of schedule I had.

And I’m happy I did that. It was just a little more than an hour with some early Bounders, but it was still something I didn’t want to miss, until I really, really had to. I finally left from there around four, with just enough time to catch some sleep, get up in the next morning, and catch my flight.

But the day after was a strange one. All through the way until I reached home, I was feeling an emptiness, that seemed no less than the joy of having lived that wonderful night, an emptiness that I’m probably still trying to fill with the videos and pictures of that event.

I tried to think about it, and realized that it was probably bound to be this way. While sir had kept his word in spite of the scale of Spiral Bound growing manifolds from when we first started talking about such a meeting, it’s just not possible to cover everything that we have created together in the last two years in one day. The length of just the sessions alone has been more than all the time there is in an entire month, and then there is time we have talked to one another outside that.

And then the relationship we have had with another, through these sessions, and outside these, is not a light one. We have seen one another through good times, and more importantly, through bad times. I remember the time a Bounder lost his mother, and I wondered why it made me as sad as it did, but I learned over time that this was how it was now. I now know that the fact that I’ll never be able to meet Kaukab Saahab will make me cry almost inexplicably at times, and there is no surprise if it’s the same for many others. We do need more time with such friends. One of the persons with whom I spent the maximum time at the event was a friend (meeting for the first time, of course) who had been extremely supportive when I lost my father. An hour or two are not going to suffice for these relationships.

The truth is that this event just gave me an idea of how deep my connection with Spiral Bound and Bounders is, and that we can’t even predict where it may take us if we nurture even a few of these relationships. It’s unfair to expect one night to be able to do anything more than just celebrate this togetherness and become a starting point of a journey together. But it can certainly be that beginning, and I hope it does turn out to be that. I hope to meet more Bounders and sit and talk a lot more with them. Until then, there is Zoom, and the lifelong mantra:

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