Rajrupa Gupta's Blog, page 6

J Jeers Jealous Jesters

Jealousy destroys. Doesn’t it? While most of the times you destroy yourself by it, if you are vengeful enough you can destroy others too. In our first year we all witnessed how a seemingly simple turn of events can cost lives.
          The start was typical. There was a beautiful girl P and there were a few boys. Two of them particularly adamant. B was her fellow first year – one she was friends with. The other, S, was from the third year.
          S wanted to evaluate the situation. He wanted to know whether B was a friend or boyfriend to P. So one evening after dinner S called B in his room. A few of S’s friends joined S. They too wanted to have a glimpse of B since stories of B’s arrogance and boasts of having political connections were already doing wild rounds in the campus. 
          When S learned that B and P weren’t officially dating, but, B was inclined towards that possibility, he decided to use the advantage of being a senior and tried to scare B off using some strong words. S said that P preferred him over B because he was older, handsomer and more mature. In a dramatic climax to this meeting, S warned B to stay away from P, because he was never going to win her by his arrogance.
          B returned to his hostel, dejected and jealous. He wanted P. And he was willing to do anything to anyone who came in his way. That night while lying on his bed, he devised a perfect plot. Shrewd as he was, he was going to punish S beyond he could imagine.
          Next morning, B went to the College Director the first thing in the morning. He took names of all the third year students including S who were present there and submitted a written complaint accusing them of severe physical torture. He went so far as accusing them of singeing his eyelashes with cigarette lighter while keeping him tied to a chair.
          This was a serious thing! Something the director couldn’t ignore as a normal riffraff among students. An inquiry commission was set up. B’s parents stubbornly stood by their son. S and his friends tried to convince the commission and we signed petitions. But somehow due to political pressures or some other reasons they didn’t win.
          S was banned for life from our college. And others were suspended for a year. A police FIR was made against them. This meant that getting a job was also not an option. B was happy. He got what he wanted.
After this, everyone left B alone. Truth be told, everyone was scared of him. P saw a plethora of opportunities and plenty of power games in him. He was the one who could do anything for her. Soon, within a very short time P started dating B. There was no sense of guilt anywhere. Only the triumph of achieving one’s end by whichever means.

          S and those other students were forgotten and the days wore on, much like before. I, who had always been taught of greater justice at home, learned that the reality was very much different than those ideals and values.
Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

I Idolizes Ingenious Engineers

          Ingenious indeed. I believe Engineers are a fantastic thing that has happened to the world. Look around you. Right from the electricity that serves you day and night to the social media you can’t live without are all some Engineer’s gifts to you. I love being an Engineer. I enjoy developing software that people use in their daily lives. It’s good to idolize ones profession, but when there’s too much of it and when others do it much more than necessary, it becomes a nuisance.   Our college was situated within a small industrial town surrounded by villages. Many men and women from those villages often earned their living in and around our college: some worked in the canteen, the gardens, the hospital, some were the cleaning staff and some other were in general maintenance duties. Some had their own businesses of selling stationary or snacks.
          Now, while we didn’t have any delusion about ourselves or what we were going to be, these people seemed to think that to be able to study Engineering was the greatest achievement one could have in their eighteen years of life. They raised their children with the sole purpose of making engineers out of them.
          From the railway station we rode a unique looking vehicle called trekker to college. The drivers who drove those thought that too. Often they called us to the head of the queue even when we were paying the same money as the others.
          No it doesn’t stop here. There was a famous temple some 50 kms from our college. We went there to worship the deity before the semesters! :P (Another very important reason was we had never tasted better dal puri anywhere else). And guess what, we got VIP treatments in the temple too. We were given the opportunity to go in front of the crowd of devotees and offer our prayers.
          Now this attention made some feel that they owned the world. They began thinking that they could get away with anything. While all these people were idolizing the profession we were going to be in, they thought that they were being idolized.
          Therefore trouble broke in more often than not in our college. Ingenious engineers surrendered quite often to hotheaded dumbness. Or sometimes suffered brain freeze due to their excessive coolness. During those 4 years of college I have seen numerous such incidents that made me question whether those involved really had a brain. While some other incidents made me marvel at the shrewdness of their minds.

          In my next 2 posts I will talk about 2 such incidents that made no sense to me. Till date I don’t know why they did what they did. But I learnt that losing your mind was altogether too easy. Even for ingenious engineers!
Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

H Hustles Hostel

          Hostel, the dreadful word, signifying staying away from one’s home and family, somehow holds a very special place in my heart.
          But it was not always the same though! I absolutely hated it the day I entered the campus. I was nothing short of eye-popping-ly shocked! There were cows grazing the fields across from the Administrative Building. Wilted winter flowers spread ugly in the heat of summer and a street dog was curled on the front steps.
          My frustration only deepened when I saw that the main college building was a humble u-shaped three storied structure whereas big buildings upon bigger buildings of student residences (hostel) sprawled as far as I could see.
          I still remember crying my eyes out when mom-dad left on that fateful evening two weeks later, leaving me with my new roommate. First year hostels were secluded from the reach of older students – the administration doing whatever they could to protect the newcomers from being bullied. Not that we could escape all the time. Remember the library I spoke about?
          Anyway, all the rooms were identical with two windows, two steel cots, two wardrobes, two desks and two chairs. Yet, each room adopted the personalities of their occupants with time. My room had green flowery curtains and I used Disney bed sheets. My roomie had a pink fascination – pink posters, pink coffee mug, pink slippers, pink bag and pink bed!
See I am straying already. A novel is not in the scope of this post. So I will just finish with a story.
          On each side of the long corridors of the main hostels, were the bathrooms which, contrary to the popular belief, were cleaned and bleached every day. Outside the bathrooms, we had a huge wash basin with twelve taps. Gigantic mirrors hung from the wall above it.
Now these mirrors attracted a lot of monkeys! Black faced long tailed monkeys. They expertly slid through the small square openings on the opposite walls and smudged the mirrors black!
One day, in our final year, we had the second half of the day off. While most liked to take a refreshing nap, some weirdos like me preferred to read a book instead. So I went to borrow a book I knew was changing hands a lot in the hostel. The current owner of the book was sleeping when I entered (by rule, we never locked our doors when we were inside, asleep or not).
I took the book that was there on the table, left a note and was just leaving when I saw an extra-ordinary thing. A monkey, a very big one, with a face as large as the moon was sitting on the window sill and looking intently at my friend. My mouth dried as I saw what he was trying to do! He was extending his hand inside the room trying to reach for her face. I don’t know why, but I knew that the aftermath of it wouldn’t be good.
In a split second, on impulse, I threw the book at him. It smacked the window, did its job of scaring the monkey off. But it did something else too. It fell with a loud flapping noise on my friend’s head. She woke up with a violent start and the words I was greeted with!
Even after I had described the whole incident I didn’t get the least of sympathy. She simply said, I should have found some means to ward the monkey off quietly!

So you see, that’s how stressfully eventful our hostel was. Where each day was full of struggles, fun, taken for granted friendships, laughter and love. Where we became friends for life, became a family from an unknown bunch of people thrown together.
Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

G gobbles Grand Feast

If eating outs were fun, eating in sometimes was fun too. Especially dinner on the last Friday of every month. Because then the cook uncles of the hostel canteen treated us with a mouth-watering feast, called the Grand Feast. 
They cooked elaborate courses as a thank you gesture toward us for bearing with the “normal” meals for an entire month. Well, no, that was not the reason. I was just kidding.
The dinner hours were 7:30 – 9:30 pm. While on the other days the server uncles swatted stray flies waiting for people to arrive till at least 9, on the days of the Grand Feasts, they were at the advantage of having a long line of waiting girls with empty trays in front of them!
Each month they alternated between Indian and Indian version of Chinese food. It meant, we got either Biryani or Fried Rice to go with Chicken Chap or Chilli Chicken. Some vegetarian starters and the mandatory Rosogolla and vanilla ice cream for dessert!
Confusing combination of food. But we loved it. Sometimes we went to the feast together. 20 odd girls from our class, we’d all go together, occupy a long dining table and eat as if compensating for a month’s worth of missed dinners.
For this one day, we easily forgave all those watery dals and bland curries. We even felt proud for our cook uncles. And it seemed perfectly normal to get into an argument about – who cooked better? The boys’ canteen cooks or ours!
Silly things, really! But of immense importance to me. For its only the small things known to be the most efficient in fuelling nostalgia. And as I write it, my heart goes to the manager uncle, who always had a small bag with a smaller handle wrapped around his wrist. The way he remembered each of ours choice in food – “she does not like that type of piece of chicken, give her that.” Or, “Oh no not the deep fried ones, she likes her potatoes steamed!”

I don’t know if he is still the canteen manager there! Seven years is a long time! Isn’t it? Yet why does it feel like yesterday?
Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

F Fancies Fear

Back in college we were suckers for horror flicks. When someone rented a DVD from the DVD rental store outside our campus, the entire hostel knew about it. We then gathered in one room, everyone together and then watched those A, B, C grade movies in those old-age desktop computers that we had!
One of those days someone rented the movie Ju-On (the famous Japanese horror film?) and the words spread like a wild forest fire in the hostel that it was the scariest movie we had seen so far. Since we were so many and there was just this one DVD, we divided into groups. Girls who claimed themselves very courageous agreed to watch the film late at night. Others watched it in the afternoon after classes were over.
So that night, a cold foggy one in mid-January, around 20 girls gathered in our room around twelve o’clock. We screamed, closed our ears and eyes several times, bit our nails half their size and were gathered too close to each other! But then something happened.
Just as the scene where the protagonist was readying to open the door following a knock played, there was a loud knock on our door too! We paused the movie but hesitated to open the door. It was past midnight and all our nerves were frayed enough.  Whoever was outside knocked again – louder this time. The one sitting closest to the door had no other way but to get up and open the door.
And then in our room entered the ghost from the movie Ju On. White as death, with long black hair hanging all around, white dead hands extended and making the typical bizarre sound. The one who had opened the door was already fainting and while some screamed at the top of their lungs, most of us had only our mouths open in silent screams. Somehow we had moved even closer, almost on top of each other!
And then something even more amazing happened! The ghost dropped its bizarre sound and started pleading us to stop screaming and waking others up in a perfectly normal human voice.
We stopped screaming, of course, but we were still too nerve wrecked to register the fact that she was just another student dressed as the ghost with the sole purpose of scaring us. It took us many moments to collect ourselves. But it was only next morning when we could laugh about it and appreciate the girl for having it in her to get made up exactly like the ghost in the movie and leaning on our door listening through the movie waiting for the right moment to knock!

Anyway, that was the start. This prank became an instant hit amongst all the students. Sometimes it achieved the desired effect but sometimes it became a farce. Like the incident that finally termed this trick too old to continue – when someone in the final year boys’ hostel entered another’s room dressed as a ghost in the dead of the night, a shoe was thrown square at him causing a big red bump which he sported on his forehead for at least a week!
Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

E Embraces Eating Out

You must be thinking - why does this girl want to talk about eating outs? Were there no other E’s exciting enough to share? Trust me, there were many such Es, like the other letters of the alphabet. Studying in a residential college for 4 years does leave behind a plethora of memories.
Then again, for a Bong middle class girl, coming out of her home for the first time, like me, everything was exciting. Every experience of the new life with new friends became eye opening. So eating out was exciting too! One of the reasons being my mom’s insistence on home cooked food. Eating out meant the Phuchka (an Indian snack) or those heavenly chicken- egg rolls from the Park Street corner or the Mutton Biryani from Arsalan during Durga puja.
College was like coming out of those shackles of having to eat home cooked food always. Little did I know then that it was not long before I would start craving for my mother’s home cooked food! But that’s for later.
During Tuesdays and Thursdays we ate out. Because they served eggs in the canteen! Even though later, through much worse conditions, I have come to appreciate the food they served in our college, I hated those boiled eggs in that watery curry back then.
Our college was situated adjacent to the KTPP Township and by the NH41 highway headed straight to a famous tourist spot by the Bay of Bengal. Mecca of street foods as Indian highways are, our own NH41 was no exception. Dotted with several dhabas (many of them gave us a 10% discount if we showed our student ID), there was no better place I could have chosen to study.
There was this place, a nameless street food joint that made fabulous chow mein and one half-plate cost only 5 bucks. Like every other Bong, I too had a sweet tooth so I topped the meal off with two langcha-s (don’t know if you get it anywhere else than West Bengal). If we had to treat someone (we liked to celebrate smallest of small things), this was the cheapest place to go to.
Then there was Drive-Inn - a smallish restaurant beside a petrol pump, with tiled roof. Their butter chicken was worth dying for. And literally, we often risked our lives by crossing the highway in dark while giant trucks sped past us. 
But my most favorite place was the famous – Sher-e-Punjab! Every other day, I went to eat there. I went there in the morning for breakfast (only during the luxurious final year), evening snacks, lunch and dinner. And more often than not, we caught glimpses of TV and film celebrities stopping to eat there, on their way to spend the weekend by the Bay of Bengal.
Even with proper seating available inside and in the garden, we preferred sitting outside on the charpoys, eating with our hands, talking to the truck drivers, listening to their fascinating stories while biting off a particularly hot green chilli.
The bill never crossed to the other side of Rs.100. Till date, after nearly seven years, after eating at almost all the restaurants of Chennai and now Chicago, I have rarely tasted anything as good as that for ten times as much money.
If our college was fun, for foodies like us, having so many eating joints in the vicinity definitely contributed a great deal to it.
Where did you go to eat most when you were in college? What made it special?


Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

D Dreads the Door

The door looked quite plain really. Painted white with a brass doorknob, it stood seemingly harmlessly against the whitewashed wall. In fact it was so inconspicuous that you wouldn’t even look at it while passing by.
Yet it was the scariest thing during the first year of our college. For it separated the sane and the insane. Crossing the threshold meant experiencing something sinister. Or so we were warned, many times, by fellow classmates who made the mistake and went looking for what lay on the other side, enslaved by their vain curiosity which bothered them like a stubborn itch.
Thankfully I had heard enough stories to quench my thirst for information and I never felt the need to go looking for it. But how long after all, could I escape? Not very long apparently! Soon the first semester was knocking on the door and it was becoming increasingly imperative every day that I must cross the threshold and soon.  
Because you see that door led to the library – a place you must go before the semesters if you wanted to have books to study. And the library was the traditional place where the older students ragged the first years! It’s seclusion was ideal to find an isolated corner to sit around a green first year and try to boggle him/her down. No real physical harm like other stories but a thorough psychological rip off.
So one day I went, along with few other girls from my class. We took a moment there in front of the door and then pushed it open. Before we could even get to the shelves we were called to different tables to sit with different groups of students.
The next hour ensued and I was tested on my presence of mind to its limit. Tricky mathematical jokes, some other puzzles and many more such things interspersed with a personal interview. Exhausting. But a faint sense of pride too after cracking those geeky PJs. Like this one? 

You know, µ as in coefficient of friction? Get it? You say non-sense? Totally. But a little geeky too. Isn’t it? Maybe this will make sense? 

Noooo please don’t leave as yet. I am almost done. I swear. 
So, our seniors were geeky. And they tested the library goers on their geekiness. Once you crossed the threshold you were considered one of them. You were welcomed with open arms into them. From predators feasting on you, they became your best facilitators. And so after that session in the library was over, I was showered with numerous well-meaning advice about how to make most of the next four years.

That afternoon I returned to the hostel along with handful others with the air of a battle winner. We had, after all, ensured our way into the cult. No more dreading the door. Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

C Cries Cheating

What did you say? You have never cheated in an exam and you are an engineer? Well, I don’t believe you. You can never be a true engineer unless you have mastered the art of cheating! Copy and paste should be the two words you learn to chant like a mantra! After all, that’s what’s going to help you earn your bread for the rest of your life!

Now if you have brought your snobby nose down and recognized that there’s no reason for you to be so snooty let me tell you how we did it back in college!

Well, in college, we were all very busy! We had hot gossips in the night, sleep to fight the fatigue during the day, movies to watch, the entire campus and nearby localities to stroll, restaurants to eat at and so many other interesting things to do than to study. So apart from doing the mandatory assignments that the professors set, we never sat down with an open text book before us.

It was then no wonder that we could never finish our syllabus. Seven days before the final semester exam when we remembered to sit to study it was always already too late. What other choice could we have than cheating?

It’s not that we never tried honestly! The whole of the first year. We studied day and night during those seven days trying to read everything, remember everything. But soon we realized that united we stand, divided we fall.

And then it all started. We divided the entire course among two or three people with consecutive roll numbers. And the rest was history. Copying from the one in front, yet maintaining individuality – if this is not superior skill then what is?

Boys were two steps ahead – they kept small chits of papers scribbled with notes everywhere, in the loo, in the folds of shirt sleeves, inside the socks!

Believe it or not, we all benefited from this arrangement. We got better marks and the superiority of our intellect level was established.

But things weren’t rosy always! Oh no! Teachers never became teachers munching on grass oblivious to the rest of the world! So they shuffled our seats! They shuffled our seats before each exam so we didn’t ever know whom we were going to sit next to! So we were forced to study the entire thing ourselves.

During one such disastrous day, I had my environmental science exam. The subject we always neglected with so many other heavyweight ones around. I had studied very vaguely during the night before between packets of instant noodles and cups of coffee and now was seeing black before my eyes! Literally!

The test paper asked to write a short note on Hydrosphere. I remembered reading about it, about the ratio of saline and fresh water, about the water cycle in some remote unreachable corner of my brain. I was suffering a black out - my hand wasn’t translating my mind into words.

Desperate I asked the one sitting before me. He was someone I had never spoken with before, yet he was kindhearted enough to let me copy his answer. He shifted a little on his side so that I had a better view of what he wrote! He had several statistics written down and it looked impressive!

I started copying, “The hydrosphere is situated just above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. It has a very stable temperature profile - with warmer layers higher up and cooler layers farther down. At moderate latitudes the hydrosphere is situated between about 10 km and 50 km altitude above the surface!”

Wait a minute! Above the surface! Hydrosphere! Surely the boy was also having a brain freeze! Worse than mine! He had confused between stratosphere and hydrosphere! Now it was my duty to save him from writing such obvious wrong answers even if I could not help him with the right one!

I leaned forward the second time in five minutes and was just about to tap his back when the guard saw me! You can imagine what happened next! I wrote the rest of the exam sitting on the lecturer’s desk on the podium at the head of the classroom!

I still don’t know if the boy got to correct his mistake or not! But that day I learned that, even though copying is good (it saves a lot of hard work), it should only be to build upon what you already know! ;) 

Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

B Begins the Beginning

2003. The year when it all began. The JEE result was just out and it showed that I had fared well enough to get into a college I liked. It also meant that I would get to study computers! Yes, computers! That elusive thing! How nice it would be to learn to write actual codes to make that damned thing do as I wanted! To make that superpower actually listen to my commands!
Then the day of counselling arrived! Those who aren’t aware what it is, let me tell you, the counselling is kind of a fest! Students gather, colleges gather, they distribute glossy brochures trying to influence students and then students are called according to their ‘ranks’ to ‘pick’ a college! So there I was, with 1000 other students on the scheduled day waiting to be called.
But things weren’t turning out the way I had thought. I had already picked my college but everyone else seemed to have picked it too! There were only 60 seats for God’s sake! And if that wasn’t enough, I found that I had forgotten my rank card at home.
You aren’t half as correct if you think I was tensed. I was hyperventilating! I hadn’t a second choice! My dad rushed back home while I sat with my head held between my hands. Each minute more and more seats filled up and every passing moment brought me closer to not being able to make it to my choice of college. Thanks to my famous forgetfulness! Really! How could one forget to bring one’s rank card to one’s own counselling?
Anyway as I sat alone in a corner and wallowed in self-pity an old (very old!) man approached me. “Hi”, he said.
“Hi.” I shot back. I was in no mood to talk to anyone.
“I heard that you want to study in CEMK?”
“I do. But I sure don’t see that happening. But how did you know?”
“Oh the entire hall knows! You are the girl who forgot to bring the rank card!”
I was already on the edge and this old person had decided to rub salt on my wound. So the whole hall now knew what a n irresponsible person I was! A pathetic irresponsible girl who forgot to bring the most important piece of paper to her counselling. Fine! I knew that already. And I was going to pay a dear sum for it. I knew it too. But why the hell did he have to come to me and lay it so plainly before my eyes? Couldn’t he just let me be? Like the others, clicking their tongues silently and shaking their heads! Perhaps he was a sadist, I thought. 

And so I retorted, “Great! The entire hall knows! Such a pity I am! I know it. But what are you doing here? What do you want from me? Who are you by the way?”
“Oh I just came to ask you if you would like me to save a seat for you in CEMK? But if you’d rather have me go…” the old man smiled and feigned to leave.
“Wait!” I said pitifully. I knew I was clinging to straws. “How can you save me a seat? How is it possible? Who are you? Why would you help me?”
“Let’s just say, I am an important person in the college and I can save you a seat if you want! If you had your rank card with you, you would have taken it already isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes”, I said. I was desperate now. “Can you really save me a seat? Would you do that for me?”
“I will, if you wish.”
I then almost pushed him to go and save me a seat.
My dad arrived 30 minutes later. I approached the CEMK booth and learned that I was already confirmed, unofficially. Thus I got into my college as the 60th student of computer science. The old man was there and he winked at me when I smiled gratefully.
Months later, on the day of Fresher’s to be precise, I met the old man again! Imagine my shock and embarrassment when he came to address us first years as the Principal of the college!

I would never know why he chose to come to me on the day of my counselling but that day I learnt that everything has a way to find you if you want it badly enough! 

Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random

A Annotates Alma Mater

Today I start the April AtoZ challenge 2014. The idea is to post everyday in April except Sundays about topics that start with the letters from the English Alphabet. April 1 is for A, April 2 is for B and so on! If you haven't already joined, here's where you can.

A blue building nestled in tall green Eucalyptus trees and surrounded by a clear horse shoe lake. Whenever I think about my college, this is the picture that is most vivid in my memory.
I have been blogging for almost two years now and this is my first year of participating in the AtoZ blogging challenge. I had decided to work on a theme. But after scratching my head to the point of risking plucking most of the hair out I was yet to find a suitable topic on which I could write 26 times! All different yet similar.
And then I knew, what could be better than to write about those wonderful four years where so many stories were made, where my life was shaped to be as it is now? What is more suitable than to tell about the place where I made lifelong friends, met my husband and took the first step towards becoming a professional from a student?
Unbelievable it is, but in last two years of my blogging, I have never written anything about my college, my Alma Mater. Perhaps because, everyone else was so busy writing about the same thing! But I feel I would do injustice to those wonderful memories if I don’t preserve them, if I don’t put them down in words.
So for the next 25 days, I have decided to overdose you with just 25 (there must have been, how many? A million at least?) of the wonderful memories I picked up during my four years in college. 
My college, a residential one, inside the tree shaded campus was everything one could ask for in her college. The KTPP township just outside provided a perfect residential calm setting. A blue horse shoe lake flowed around the entire campus.
Because we lived so closely together, our teachers were more than just professors staying out of students' reach. We often visited their quarters for casual chit chats and high tea. Our hostel maintenance/cooking staff were aunties and uncles to us and they knew all of us by our names.
Four years later, when we left, we cried, because we were leaving. But they cried too because we were leaving! That's how it was, less like a college, more like a family!

It really isn't a wonder then that the nostalgia sucker in me is choosing to revisit the best nostalgic days of my life through this challenge. 
Love,

© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved

Riot of Random