Rajrupa Gupta's Blog, page 5

T travels (on) Trains

Mecheda Station          We travelled home from college and back on trains during weekends. Howrah was ninety minutes away by that mode of transport. Local trains – maroon and cream with ads of hair oil and Complan painted on the sides.
Saturdays we had half days. After the classes, we took a train from Mechada station to Howrah. The trains used to be pretty empty most weekends but to get it even emptier we always aimed for the 1:30 PM Mechada local. From platform no.4 it started with handful of locals and lots of students going home for the weekend.
Now if you are not familiar with Indian local trains, let me enlighten you. Local trains are a place where you can buy everything from cosmetic jewelleries to flowers to local produce to fruits and snacks to digestive medicines to help kill the acidity triggered from the fried snacks you just bought and ate.
It’s also a place where commuters also play cards, read newspapers and books, knit, gossip and engage in many other activities in between.
It’s therefore no wonder that train was my favourite mode of transport. And I preferred the Ladies Compartment. The trains crossed the huge Rupnarayan River over a bridge making an ear splitting noise and then we reached the first big junction – Bagnan. Hawkers with excellent selling speech (you need to understand Bengali in order to fully understand the fun) quickly filled the compartments here selling everything from safety pins to school bags. But the one I waited most eagerly for was the “Jhal Muri” wala.
Jhal MuriHe made this heavenly mixture of puffed rice, mustard oil, onions, peppers, tamarind and green chutney, spices and chanachur (The hot mix available here doesn’t even come close to representing chanachur, so keeping the name intact). He then put it in a paper cone and topped it with a slice of fresh coconut. I tell you there was nothing that quite came close to this one. I have tried numerous times at home to make Jhal Muri as he made in train but failed miserably.
After I had eaten and licked my Jhal Muri packet clean, it was time for a power nap. I have always found it strange that I slept better in trains. All the sounds around me somehow appealed to my sleep cells better.
Though on some days I read, or listened to others conversations – topics surrounding the monotony of daily lives – children’s school, sky rocketing expenses. Sometimes here and there a recipe or two were exchanged. A little chat about the best time to buy gold or a little venom about the daughter-in-law or the mother-in-law. Interestingly, husbands almost never made the topics. Though just mundane, these ladies fascinated me.

And just like that, the ninety minutes would be over. As the train reached Howrah station with the speed of a snail, their demeanour changed. Their relaxed chatting outlook became focused. As soon as the train entered the station, these seemingly docile ladies jumped off the train with utmost proficiency and set off to their destination quickly zigzagging their way through the thick crowd and disappeared. Most of them never met again, or perhaps they did. It was just me who met new ladies with new yet same stories to tell on Sundays on a train taking me back to my college.
Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

S Savours Spandan

Shreya Ghosal at SpandanSpandan - the annual cultural fest of our college. Three consecutive days of cultural extravaganza in February.
Third years in charge to organize the frenzy. An additional responsibility aside from the campus interviews. Preparations began as soon as the semester started in January.
Hunting sponsors, tracking performers, inviting other colleges, getting radio stations to cover the event, finding important people to be the chief guests, deciding a theme, getting it implemented, drawing up a three day schedule – I tell you it was no less than a madness. But still we loved it. It added manifold to the importance of being in the third year of college.
First Day was always Saree Day!Classes remained closed for these 3 days. The first half of the day 1 was about opening ceremonies, debates, quizzes, several inter college competitions and speeches. But the real fun began after that.
Dance, dramas, our college band and fashion shows sizzled the first half and the second half was for professional performances. We had Shreya Ghoshal, Shaan, Vinod Rathore, Euphoria perform in our college during our four years.
Rupam Islam performing Apart from them we were particularly fond of the Bangla rock band Fossils. So Rupam was a regular visitor to our college. Religiously, every year. Spandan couldn’t be complete without Fossils performing. He stayed in our own guest quarter, ate with us and talked with us in a most un-celebrity like manner. We loved him.
The final half of the final day of Spandan was open floor. We danced crazily through the night while DJ’s played their music. Often the local police received complaints about loud volume of music from the township residents. We tuned down only for a while.
All these were fun but Spandan was more than that. Three days of no class and only fun. A meeting ground of students from all the years and disciplines. Getting intoxicated. Dressing up. After midnight we went to Sher-e-Punjab on these three days. Made fun of each other’s quirks, how funnily one danced or how drunk yet another was.
But most of all to see it conclude successfully, to see people enjoying, to experience months’ efforts come to fruition.

Spandan was our first introduction to organizing things in a disciplined manner. It was a lesson that helps me till date.
P.S: Guess what? While I knew I had some photos of Spandan, I never imagined I'd stumble upon this! A grainy bad one! Yet enough to fuel my nostalgia. I don't know if any of you would understand this, but for my own sake:Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

R Relishes the Rains

           I have always loved rain. And it was even more beautiful back in college. I could spend hours sitting by my window watching the rain fall on the lake. The dust from the power plant that otherwise covered the Eucalyptuses washed away leaving a refreshing green all around. The smell from the wet soil filled my soul up and I sat there watching the rain drops falling from the leaves hours after it had stopped raining.
          The wind always blew strong in our campus. It was particularly fierce when it rained. And the April thunderstorms were dangerous. Yet I couldn’t be deterred. There was something about the rain that always attracted me. I liked to be outside when it rained, welcoming it with my arms spread. When I couldn’t, I always had my windows open. I was not afraid of rains and storms like others were.
          One afternoon I was out strolling through the picturesque tree lined streets of the KTPP Township. It had rained the whole day and the sky was still very overcast. The greenery was refreshing. The streets glittered black. The horse shoe lake flowed and rippled where droplets fell from trees into its water. It was serenity spelled right in front of eyes.
          And then suddenly it started raining again. I didn’t have time to run to a shed. I was standing under a tree by the lake. Not that I minded. I stood there, watching the rain fall, the wind blow and then suddenly I saw something extra ordinary. I saw a long bolt of lightning, bluish white – it came directly from the clouds and struck the sixth tree from the tree I was standing under.
          If you haven’t seen it you probably wouldn’t know how impactful a sight that was. It could have been me, the lightning could have struck my tree. But that was not what I was thinking. I was mesmerized by what I had just seen.
Strangely the tree seemed alright. There was momentary sparks and smoke was coming out but other than that I didn’t see any damage. This was not something I had read. Perhaps the rain prevented the tree from catching fire! I came back afterwards. I was smart enough to take the warning. But I was content that I had seen something I never expected.
Two days later when I went to see the tree again it was all dried and black. The inside of the trunk was hollow. Apparently it had burnt from the inside.
And it was then when the thought visited me for the first time, that it could have been me. I was just lucky. But it didn’t scare me. It thrilled me. For the next thought that came to me was, since I loved rain, was awed by this natural phenomenon, nature was just showing off to impress me more.
Friends called me crazy when I told them. But I was not deterred. I went to that burnt tree when it rained, as often as I could.  
          Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

Q Quests the Quilt

          I had a quilt. My granny had made it. A colourful patch worked one. It was soft warm and very cosy. I always wore it when I slept. But then on a fateful day someone else discovered it. S had come to my room to study and I, by a mistake I would regret forever, let her sleep on my bed under my quilt when she felt tired.
          The next thing I knew is that I almost never found my quilt in my room. Being a big mouth as she was (literally!) she had (only to appreciate as she would have me believe) talked about how comfortable my quilt was to what seemed the entire population. And she even went an extra mile urging people that they should try it when they had any difficulty falling asleep. Because apparently, according to her, this was the reason why I never had any difficulty sleeping. Even with so much caffeine in my system.
          And then began my quilt quest. A name S gave to my endless search for my quilt. We never locked our doors. But I seriously started to consider this. Every time I came back from my evening stroll my quilt was inevitably missing. And I would go round each room looking for it.
          Some days were lucky when I found it in a neighbouring room, some other day the furthest corner.
          On top of that I had a problem. I didn’t feel comfortable with the idea that almost every other girl in the hostel has slept under my quilt at least once. So I planned to take it back home and bring back another less comfortable quilt.
          On Saturday just before I started for my home I went quilt hunting – one last time. None of the room had it. After 30 minutes of searching high and low I found it on the roof, wrapped around S. She said she was hiding because she knew I was planning to take it back and she was not ready to part with it.
          “Okay you have it. But don’t bring it back in my room ever again. I saw R carrying to the loo that day.” I said.
          “Eeek!” she jumped and threw it, “why didn’t you tell me? Yuck who does it?”
          I quickly picked it up from the floor and started to sprint downstairs. At the foot of the stairs I called out, “Because I was lying!”

Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

P Pats Pals

College would have never been what it was if there were not friends. Four years in a residential campus meant a lot of time with friends. I made the best and worst of friends there. Friends who were family and friends who backstabbed. Together they helped me become a better person. My nostalgic trip down the college campus would not be complete if I didn’t speak about them.
Between waking up at 6:30 to attend the 7 o’clock classes and sleeping in the wee hours of dawn, movies, gossips, eating and insane chatting were the ways of life. Often we prepared jhalmuri (an Indian snack) and then ate sitting on someone’s bed or on the roof. Even after talking the whole time in hostel, we still had lots left to talk so we continued in class too. I avoided sitting beside S usually but the days I sat were chaos. Words bubbled out of us like a bottle of soda freshly opened and we could not stop talking even if we wanted to.
One such day, it was the Mechanical Science hour. Don’t ask, I don’t know, why computer students had to read Mechanical Science! Anyway, RSP, our professor, was young. Just out of university himself, still pursuing his research, his tolerance level was low. He spotted us, head bent together, busy talking. With a perfect aim, he threw a piece of chalk and it hit my ear squarely. The pain was sufficient to keep us quiet for a few minutes but not more than that. And then we started again, oblivious to the lecture, oblivious to the absolute silence that befell. Suddenly our heads were grabbed and banged together! Teary eyed we had to move to different seats!
          I fought with the same girl over a bottle of water one other day and we didn’t speak to each other for a week. But then I came back to hostel from home after the weekend with homemade Mohanthal (an Indian sweet) and we were friends again.
          This was how sweet our relationship was. We had survived a lot of things together. Heartbreaks and disappointments, unfulfilled wishes. But she stood by me no matter what came our way. In that process we grew a cherished friendship.
          So many such friends, so many such stories. They may be the scope of a novella, but definitely not this post. But they all speak of the same thing. That friends were what made the college fun.

          And I am grateful to each one of them for my coming my way and staying in spite of everything.
Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

O Observes the Obnoxious

Boys, I tell you, can get from being cute to repulsive in a very short while. I speak about those obnoxious morons here whose only motto in life seemed to make others miserable.
          In college we had plenty of them. Boys who thought that you spoke with them, make friends with them only because you “liked” them! And when you denied having any such inclination, they looked horrified, dejected for having fallen for false charms to get themselves played with! Exhausting!
          Perhaps because I had a brother at home and all my cousins were boys, I have gotten well with boys always. I have never quite been what they call “girly”. I always went on “boyish” adventures with my brothers. And I hadn’t thought that it should change when I started college. But I was wrong.
          Boys there were so naïve! And perhaps needy too! But venomous at the same time! And the combination made them obnoxious.
          You take an hour and a half train journey home with them and they assume you are “in love” with them! How can you not be? You spoke so freely with them for ninety whole minutes! I mean come on!
You spend a three hour long computer lab with one discussing assignments and projects – you must be “in love” with them! You have an evening phone conversation or exchange few friendly texts – you surely are “in love”!
          They didn’t take much time after that to come with a formal proposal of dating! Weird right? But hard truth!
          But the real drama started after that! They didn’t take well to refusals. All sorts of rumours were spread about you, your “character” and your reputation of being able to falsely “lure” boys to your charms grew!
          Yet, funnily, there was no dearth of such willing boys ready to fall for your “charms”! Seniors and batch mates alike! It made us girls wary of even talking to a guy!
          So yes… boys in my college were obnoxious! But most of that came from their naivety I think! They were living in their own wells lacking better knowledge of the world.
          Yet I made some wonderful friends (who were boys) there. Some of whom I am still in touch with while most of them have drifted away obeying the demand of the time. 
          Wish I could relive those days again! I would take naïve obnoxiousness any day over the shrewd ones I deal with now.

Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

N Nails Nescafe

Semesters meant coffee. Pulling all nighters was not easy. Surviving those few weeks was only possible by having caffeine run through your arteries.          We – my family, had always been the staunchest of tea drinkers. When guests came we made that special Darjeeling tea. But never coffee.          My love affair with coffee started early in college. During the very first semester. Before that, at home, staying up late studying was never an option. I was a good girl – early to bed, early to rise type. But suddenly now it seemed everyone was staying up late and getting up late. And there was no choice really, since no matter how we all tried, we ended up chatting most part of the day. So yeah, burning those midnight oils were really necessary.Coffee helped me like a charm. It was a magic concoction. A spoonful of coffee powder, some milk and sugar did wonders to my drooping eyes. I was so excited, that the very next morning I walked at least a mile to the shop outside the campus and got myself few small sachets of Nescafe.After the semesters, during the holidays, I got myself a small electric kettle with the sole purpose of making coffees. That committed I was going to be with coffee.As years passed, my small sachets of coffee graduated from small bottles to big tall ones. Milks reduced to barely few drops. Cup sizes went from small teacups to tall mugs. And slowly I started to prefer my coffee black. But even as I started to like my coffee, much to my disappointment, it wasn’t as effective as before. I needed coffee more frequently if I wanted to stay up. By the seventh semester it had started to work as a sedative! But then, which engineering student has her heart in studying for an exam by the time she is in her final year?Anyway, as yet more years passed, Nescafe still managed to remain my best friend. Helping me day after day to trudge through the ordeal – meetings, deadlines, deliveries – it was always there! But that’s for another day.So, back in college – during semester days the corridors smelled of fresh coffee as it brewed inside every room. Some borrowed my kettle while some used immersion rods to heat up water. Coffee with maggi were the ultimate comfort food one could eat. Almost all books carried the brown ring marks because we all had the annoying habit of making them the coasters underneath my cup.

Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

M mentions the Matron

         Did I mention we got a hostel matron in our third year? No? I see. I probably didn’t because her coming to live with us inside the hostel was one of those few disappointments we suffered during the four years of college.       She was a retired central govt. official. While she ought to spent the rest of her days resting and relaxing, our director somehow convinced her to take up the challenge to tame his wild girls. Now we didn’t know anything about her until we saw the sprawling checkered veranda being partitioned with plywood to make room for her sitting room. Yes, she was going to stay right there with us inside the hostel!
Amidst lots of resentments she came to claim her place as the matron of the ladies hostel. We watched as she moved her furniture and luggage. She was wider than she was tall. She wore a black sleeveless blouse showing her flabby arms off and a blue saree. In the afternoon she ordered a cup of tea from the canteen. In the evening she ordered a room service from the canteen! Later she fended off few girls who were talking to boys outside the gate. Even later she called an impromptu meeting in the hall and lectured about how the new discipline was going to be!
Now you don’t teach a bunch of girls over eighteen disciplines. By the end of it we’d had it. So it began. Our Matron Bhagao Andolan!
We started slowly. More often than not, after at least midnight, some or the other girl started to get scared of something they saw. Some complained they saw a snake in their room, while some others claimed of having seen someone sneaking in their room. And they didn’t seem to find anything else to do about it than to come to the matron. Because after all, she was the local guardian! She had herself let us know that!
As time passed, we went up a notch. Along with the night scares, we added cat fights. Everyday a pair or more girls visited her complaining about petty fights they were having about boyfriends to shoes. Sometimes she had to come up to the rooms to “stop” two girls from killing each other.
We staged scenes so that the cleaner found liquor bottles from her room.
And then when we thought we had her, we staged our finale – after all the lights went off in the teachers’ quarters and the boys’ hostels, we tiptoed and locked her door from outside, and switched the main off. And then a chaos broke.
Noise erupted from every nook and cranny of the huge u-shaped building. Everyone started calling her loudly complaining of something or the other. Some hammered her door calling desperately to help. Some made barking sound, some fighting sound, some quarrelling really loudly.
Following morning, the director called us and said that we should feel ashamed of ourselves for behaving so silly! But we didn’t care, really! We were young and we were naïve, selfish and bad!
The matron didn’t last long. We were so un-cooperative and hostile that she couldn’t survive. We were happy!
I had never really thought about it after that. But right now, while writing it, I realized that I don’t like at all how we were back then! We were a bunch of selfish arrogant people who were a real pain in others backsides.
I realize now that I would have liked to apologize to her if given a chance. But alas, I don’t even know where she is now. Or whether she is alive!           Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

L likes Love Shuv

Speak about college and not mention love! Why, that’s akin to a sin. Because college was more about love than studies really! So yes, this post is about love and those love birds that flocked our campus.
Oh well! Where do I begin? There was every type of love as you can imagine. But more than the love itself, it was observing the love birds that pleasured me the most.
In Engineering the boy girl ratio is a skewed one. Computer Science was one of those streams where girls were more in number compared to streams like Electrical Engineering. Yet, we were just about fifteen girls in a class of sixty. So it only made sense that girls enjoyed a lot of attentions. While some became quickly involved and committed with older students or classmates, others enjoyed the attentions a bit more and yet others didn’t simply entertain it. But by the time we were in our third year, most of us were in a committed relationship! Imagine!
Most followed a set pattern. They lived through the day by texting each other. Afternoon they met and spent the evening together, eating out, walking the campus or sometimes sitting down talking on those culverts. Then they returned to their respective hostels and then engaged in an elaborate telephonic conversation that often lasted through the wee hours in the morning.
The second type was those who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. They were often caught in dark corners of the road, behind the bushes. People often felt embarrassed to sit beside them in class, train, bus or auto rickshaw alike. They often gave the impression of breathing in each other breaths. Watching them had kept me worried for a long time about what I should do if A started behaving that way ever! Lot of funny scary embarrassing stories circulated these couples. I could never validate the truths and so won’t divulge here but they remained quite unfazed by all that.
There was yet another type. Perhaps the type that repelled me most strongly. We called them the husband-wife type. They were so full of each other that they followed, “Don’t see others, don’t listen to others” with all their hearts! And if they both belonged to the same department, same year, you can imagine how annoying it used to get! Why, we had the misfortune of having one such couple in our class. They sat together during the lectures holding hands. They went to lunch and dinners “together” (at the same time) even though they lived in different hostels. The girl had a small induction stove in her room where she often cooked foods for her “man”. We hated her for not sharing those with us.
True, we didn’t need to bother. We should have let them be. But during college days being nosy was “In”. And making everyone’s business your own was “Cool”! ;)

 Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

K Knocks Killer Punches

          Adrenaline. A dangerous thing. Makes people do all sorts of things. When you are young it’s more rampant than ever. It makes you foolish, reckless. Removes the trace of rationality. Makes the blood race to the head, flooding on its way, the capability to think.
          It must have been that, otherwise, there wasn’t an explanation I could find.
         Towards the end of our third year in college most of us had already got job offers. With those offer letters in hand, we felt lighter, happier and freer than ever. We hardly studied and somehow thought ourselves elevated in ranks. We were naïve and pompous.  
          The semesters were going on. In less than a month we would be the senior most students in the college. In spite of all the reasons being there for us to be air headed, we girls had decided to finally start studying for the semesters. Because job offers or not, we still needed to pass the exams. Boys, however, still avoided any contact with the books stubbornly.
          One such night while I was trying to concentrate on a particularly difficult chapter of Computer Networks, I heard hurried footsteps. All were running to the terrace. Apparently, in a drunken dispute, third year boys, with a sudden sense of solidarity, had attacked the second years. And the girls were running to the terrace to get a good look.
          As we watched, within five minutes, chaos reigned supreme. Everyone beat everyone without discrimination. Some over enthusiastic third years took it upon themselves to destroy as much property as possible. Second Year students’ property of course. Broken PCs, beds, suitcases, torn shoes and shirts littered here and there.
          And then it was all over. Just like that. By the time the hostel warden reached the scene, everyone had retreated to their rooms. As if it had never happened. Except for the horrible proof that those debris carried.
          The wounded from both the Years were the obvious give-aways. But apart from that no one was caught. Amazingly, even after all this, no one betrayed names. No second Year student accused any third Year and vice versa. But those who were caught were taken to the police station. They spent the night in the lock-up. In the morning, two hours before the start of the exam, college bailed them out.
         If we girls thought that after knocking each other’s senses out with those killer punches they will not see each other’s faces again, we were wrong. Soon we saw them again, boys from the second and third Years, together, discussing laughingly – about that night!
          Now, this was a killer punch on our faces! “Boys!” Was all we could say!
                    Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random