| Table 1.1: First Impressions: Names | |||
| Maurya | Himanshu | Pratik | Sonu |
| Sagar | Dipesh | Sunit | Ashwin |
| Ritesh | Megha | Amruta | Dipti |
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H&M; the Beginnings:
1. H-and-M, the beginnings. Himanshu’s
side of story:
Movies, out of an inescapable sense of melodrama, drill into us that
the beginning of anything significant has to be dramatic. When Karan-Arjun
met they had hallucinations of their past lives. When Simran-Raj (DDLJ)
met it was in a speeding train with Raj holding out his hand for Simran.
You just begin believing that when you are first meet someone of any
real importance it's going to be accompanied by roaring thunder, blinding
lightning bolts and unmistakable vibes in the core of your soul.
Nothing like that happened when I first met Maurya. In fact, the first
meeting was hardly a meeting. We were waiting in a never ending queue
at VJTI, waiting to secure a seat in engineering in Mumbai University.
Maurya was 2 persons ahead of me. Of course, he wasn't Maurya for me
quite yet. For me, he was just a fat blob who might take the last seat
of Parshavnath Electronics and Telecommunications, free seat. Not that
either of us was too eager to be going to that college. But for similar
reasons, PCT-EXTC-free was the best among the worst left for the dumb
people like me who had managed to get a measly 91% in PCM in board exams.
It was 3 a.m. As I inched closer to the counter where I had to finalize
my admission my heart was racing. A handful of the seats were left.
And I noticed that the fatso (in his defense, he was never quite fat.
Today he is bordering on being "frail") ahead of me just shifted
from Konkan Gyanpeeth or something like that to PCT EXTC. Arghhhh...
I winced. I made up my mind to crush the guy to engineer-to-be ashes
and toss them away with all the religious rites and rituals in the nearest
gutter. Thankfully, that was not needed. I got through Parshavnath Telecom
Free...
That was the first encounter. I realized that the guy who I had cursed
like crazy for the most anticipative 2 minutes of my life was Maurya
Patnaik in course of regular day-to-day college life. Once college started,
the only thing I thought of him was that it was really funny the way
he pronounced his own name... "Maaooorya".
Through out first year, we hardly talked. I was still reeling from the
shock that I had to settle for a college like PCT when I was trying
for the IIT. Also, I was giving a soon-to-be-unsuccessful second shot
at IIT-JEE. And no one in college mattered a smattering to me. The only
person I really talked to was Pratik. And Maurya happened to be his
lab partner. So there were times when Maurya would come up to Pratik,
ask something, and leave. If i were sitting right there, he wouldn't
even as much glance in my direction. I found that a bit anti-social.
I mean, come on, if you go to a person, ask him for a pen, and he doesn't
have one, you ask the person sitting next to him. Things didn't work
like that with Maurya. At least not as far as I was concerned. Maybe
it was because of whatever impressions he had formed of me. Not that
I cared at all.
I could never have seen guessed that of all the people in the class,
I would really hit it well with Maurya. But things worked out like that.
In the second year, as we settled down into a group, Courtesy the romantic
tangles and complex group dynamics, Maurya and I started sitting together
most of the times. His sense of humour cracked me up. He watched Cartoon
Network too. Loved super-hero stuff. All factors why two people become
good friends were in place!
Maurya was the reason the remaining three years were not boring at PCT.
Laughter they say is the best medicine. Then Maurya is the best doctor.
He really kept the viruses like Katne and Mahajan and Dongaonkar from
giving me a brain fever. Not that I would not have survived PCT without
Maurya. I probably would have been a lot more cynical. And I sure would
have been my engineering in a different light. Today I can think about
my engineering days, and laugh over them. Had it not been for Maurya,
I probably would have just regretted them.
2. H-and-M, the beginnings. Maurya’s
side of story:
When smart people make stupid observations, it’s the pristine
unadulterated variety. It’s almost as if the smarter you are,
the more inane and ridiculous your comments sound; especially in hindsight.
And not even Mark Twain was spared this little whim of fate. Sample
this gem: ‘Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no
influence on society’. Hmmm…let’s run that by one
more time… Naked people have little or no influence on society????
I’d beg to differ. But let’s give credit where it’s
due… clothes do make the man. And if you stroll into a college
that looks down upon t-shirts, wearing a flaming red shirt, six-pocket
jeans and an ear stud, what does that make you? Well for starters, someone
you wouldn’t ask for a pen if you needed one. Seriously though,
it would have to be someone with a healthy rebellious streak in him.
And boy, did we get to see that over the years in Mr. Himanshu Modi!
While a lot of us were too jaded by the transition from college to hell,
Himanshu went straight into engineering mode. First up was the ‘Himanshu
script’, English which looked like Arabic, with two finger spacing
and any word that took more than a second to write promptly left out.
If you were unfortunate enough to be copying your assignments from him,
you would have had to do a glass trace since everything was indecipherable.
Then there was the pen in one hand, weary head rested on the other pose;
what the casual observer might have interpreted as a picture of concentration.
A closer and prolonged look however would have betrayed the complete
and absolute lack of movement, which wasn’t really surprising
seeing as how he would actually be fast asleep. The whole thing was
so convincing, even fellow students would keep on talking to him long
after he had passed on to the realm of dreams. Unfortunately, ‘fellow
students’ also included me. As I didn’t exactly have 20-20
vision and hated wearing specs, for the whole of engineering, I was
dependent on this guy for taking down my notes. Sample conversation:
What’s that on the 4th line? … Hey, what’s written
on the 4th line? … zzzzzzzzzzzzzz… @#$%#$@.
Throughout our engineering, whatever he did and whatever he said was
characterized by one thing; disdain for authority. So maybe rebels are
a dime a dozen nowadays. What’s rare is someone who can walk the
line between not caring about people’s opinions and caring a lot
for their feelings. And Himanshu personifies that balance; which is
just as well, considering that the same cannot be said about his mental
state.
Pratik:
I had known him before PCT. And I knew him to be a quiet, recluse kind
of a guy. Was quite ok to hang out with. Could have a sense of humour
if he chose to display it. But there were these times when he would
be all quiet and the reason he would give was “I am conserving
energy.” And then there would be times he would talk about stuff
you would absolutely not want to hear. Like about someone’s clothes
were too tight and all. On both occasions you would feel, like punching
his molars down his esophagus.
He could be fun when he chose to.… There were days when we would gang up and watch movies at his place, complete with all the "pharsaan" and naashta. Ofcourse porn wasn't allowed at his place. Which was a bit of a dampner at times. But mindless action movies were fun too. And the guy has been a great help, especially to me. There was this one time when I had lost my Mechanics journal. I was worried, and a bit more than peeved at the thought of having to write the whole journal again. And I had to spend a couple of sleepless nights at his place, because he had the assignments I had to copy from, and he had some of his own assignments to finish, which he had lost along with my mechanics journal (i confess, all my fault). Ofcourse, that meant depriving pratik of his sleep too, since I had a lot more work than him to do, I would keep pushing him, to stay up for a bit more. And he did stay up for a bit more. He has helped me in real terms too, by drawing diagrams for me as I burned paper writing the assignments. Of course, I was not the only beneficiary of his generous nature. But then, I can't write on that other person's behalf. :)
One other thing that especially stands out is his relationship with his parents. He absolutely adored his parents, and his brother too. And his parents were pretty cool too. When a dad takes his kids to a dance bar, you can not help but envy that guy. And everything he said or did, was keeping his parents in mind. I am sure he would never do anything to hurt his parents. Maybe for a person who seeks justification in hurting his parents might say that its easy to not hurt your parents when they are as cool as Pratik's. But then, from all I know, Pratik never vented his frustrations on his mom. Or didn't have any ego clashes with his dad. That probably was because of the respect that he had for his mum-dad. Something I hope my kids imbibe from Pratik uncle. :))
-Himanshu
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Sonu:
When I first knew him, he was Nitin. Gradually his pet name, Sonu, caught
on and know him as that ever since. Sonu was another one of those IIT
aspirants who couldn't get through. He was hopeful about getting a call
from IIIT when PCT had started. He carried a bag which was big enough
to accomplish the "around the world in 80 days" feat. I found
him perennially depressed with the fact that he had to join PCT. None
of us was happy. But he was as forlorn as Himesh Reshammiya singing
"suroooooooor". That too 24/7. That kind of ticked me off.
Then one day he started bluffing about the fact that he missed out on
national level wrestling because he was underweight. "Underweight!!!"
I wondered. "By wrestling does this guy mean "sumo" wrestling.
That's where he could be underweight. Not in any other form of any sport.
My dealings with Sonu went far beyond
the first year. Despite the fact that we had no common subjects, and
no common classes. The unfying factor was, well, CAT. We burned plenty
of oil, eroded erasers, and shortened pencils in the quest for IIMs,
all together. It was mind-boggling to see Sonu juggle his time between
KT exams, regular exams, and CAT preparation. Whew... Had he not had
the KT's that he had got he might have ended up in an IIM. But it doesn't
really matter now. Because he is destined to be world famous at 28 according
to an astrologer. Ofcourse, astrologers do not distinguish between famous
and infamous. We will just have to wait and see which one it is.
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Sagar
The first time I had seen this chap, flashing his pearly whites and bounding
around our class, I had him pegged down for one thing: troublemaker. Imagine
my surprise when my potential ‘class hooligan’ soon took over
the mantle of ‘class scholar’. Just goes to show that Mr.
Gladwell should be locked up somewhere he can’t spread his brilliant
ideas.
As far as surviving engineering went, Sagar was our class’ answer
to Himanshu. Actually, Himanshu was in our class, but I’m sure if
he hadn’t been, Sagar would have been our answer to him. Well I
digress. Sagar’s core expertise was companding. No, not the one
used in transmission. It was his own inimitable style of compressing a
topic down to a few important points, memorizing those ‘i-m-p’
points, and then expanding those points during the exams to reconstruct
the original topic. Much to everyone’s chagrin, (except his own),
the reconstructed topic bore little resemblance to the original. But let
us not get into semantics.
Apart from referring to females as ‘he’ and ‘his’
etc., Sagar’s other great love was asking detailed and long drawn
out doubts to our professors. If Ritesh and Sagar came into their element
during any one single lecture, we could rest assured that there would
be no further teaching. It would take them the better part of an hour
to articulate their doubts, link up each other’s doubts, and solve
those doubts…all on their own. The poor professor would have been
reduced to cringing by the blackboard, waiting for the bell to ring. Of
course, this was not the only reason behind his notoriety.
-Maurya
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Dipesh:
Most of us would have had the misfortune of having some rather unsavory
nicknames heaped down upon us by generous classmates. And would have
been none too pleased with the majority of them. Our ‘ranti’
though hated his nickname with a vengeance. Which wasn’t surprising,
considering that the nickname conjured up images of some wild, nostrils
flaring desperado. And nobody would like a nickname that describes him
perfectly. Just kidding.
Dipesh was one of those heart-on-their-sleeves people. He must have
been the one person (other than Teku), in whose case the first impression
was also the true one. A serious busybody, he would have been shocked
at the idea of anyone shirking their duties. Dipesh was also our group’s
official ‘procurement’ guy. Using his ‘connecshuns’
with the Gujju female community, he would always have the latest assignments
within hours of them having been issued. Where the Gujju girls copied
their assignments from is unknown. Unsubstantiated rumours had even
suggested that they actually wrote their own assignments. This was of
course never verified.
-Maurya
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Sunit:
"How old is he??" is the question that first struck me when
I saw Sunit. He had an overbearing personality as he stood towering
above everyone else. Maybe I give that impression to people to. But
here was a guy, who matched, and outdid me a wee bit, as far as physical
dimensions were concerned. And with his moustache and all he could have
passed off very easily as a professor into 5 th year of his job. I couldn't
understand most of what he said. I was convinced that the sound waves
he produced got reflected back to the larynx from his lips, destructively
interfered with the new sound waves and what resulted was, as we call
in telecommunication engineering, a 50 Hertz noise. At first I thought
it was just me. Then when I would ask someone what was that joke Sunit
just cracked, and mind you, I would ask someone who had laughed, and
that someone would tell me he had no idea what the joke was. Then why
was that person laughing?? Probably because Sunit does come through
as a guy who you do not want to anger, even by accident, much like the
weather Gods.
Sunit could be really street smart at times. And at times he would be
clumsy at interacting with people. He had the ego the size of a blue
whale. And as fragile as a papad. It hardly took anything for him to
get hurt. And then he would go to his bench and eat his 7-course lunch
by himself. His non-communication pact with Pratik, which was implicitly
signed when Pratik dared to shove him to avoid recieving "birthday-bums",
is now an established PCT lore. I was never great friends with him.
But If I were, it would have been way more difficult than having a girlfriend.
Hope he doesn't take offense that easily now.
-Himanshu
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Ashwin:
Every college has one guy, who cracks PJs after PJs, absolutely undeterred
by the thought that people might be laughing at him rather than the
joke. Ashwin was ours… And really speaking, most of his PJs were
good. Atleast they made me laugh. And I kind of took it as a personal
challenge to come up with an answer to his PJ riddles. (One of his best
PJs was: "What is a game played to find out the sexiest man? Answer:
Super-Erector. That's a take on a game called "Super-Selector which
was quite a rage in those days) But there was more to him than his PJs.
The word "straightforward" must have been invented to describe
him. In the clutter of ass-holes at PCT, the guy really stood out. There
was a time when Maurya, I and Ashwin used to sit on the same bench.
Now that's the equivalent of 10 riders on one motor-cycle. I still marvel,
and am amazed that we could pull off the feat. Thank God the benches
didn't crack under the weight.
-Himanshu
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Ritesh:
Two words to describe him: quintessential gujju. Over four years got
to know him better and better. And he managed to live by his first impression.
In the first year, he was a strong proponent of arranged marriages.
Ended up marrying his engineering love Megha. A heart-warming story
I say. It's nice to know that two people who totally doted on each other
ended up together.
He was responsible for giving his group the name "lassi gang".
Technically, he got chas to college, unfailingly, everyday. Got awed
by every little thing he saw. He doubted himself a bit too much for
his own good. He always felt that he was not good enough. He felt he
had very "weak power of observation". I remember him standing
up in one seminar, and asking the speaker that people around him have
such amazing observation skills. Why didn't he have that… he complained
with a quiver in his voice. It this self-doubt which made him go "tum
log to mujhe pagal hi samajte ho" whenever he made an irrational
statement (for example, he had once said Andheri girls are taller than
Borivli girls. As a member of the guy fraternity, he had definitely
let us down by going around measuring wrong dimensions on a girl. And
I hope I have not offended any feminist out there) and we didn't agree
with him. Hope he will improve on this someday.
His academic skills, on the other hand, were something he was quite
confident about. He had an inquisitive mind. No one would be spared
from his scientific queries, which make even Newton's question "Why
did the apple fall?" look tame. And when I say no one, I mean that.
Even the professors at PCT were subjected to his barrage of questions.
He would end up making them look really stupid. I guess that was never
his desired outcome. In some corner of his brain he probably did actually
think that PCT profs were skilled to answer his doubts.
But yeah, the guy worked hard as far as studies were concerned. Have
witnessed first hand the way he set about to hone his English for the
ongoing CAT preparations. Commendable. You had to look at his newspaper,
and you would find whole of it underlined with words and phrases that
he didn't know the meaning of. And he would assiduously go through the
dictionary to get their meaning, and then write them down. Now that's
commitment for you.
-Himanshu
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Megha, Dipti and Amruta:
By the time I got into PCT, I was almost a misogynist. Courtesy, the
33% girl's quota. From that point on, the only thought that entered
my mind when I saw a girl was… you are the reason I have to go
to that stupid college named Parshavnath. And as far as girls at Parshavnath
were concerned, I saw them as a huge "class" of people, with
a diminished intellectual capacity, studying at the mercy of a grossly
ridiculous and unjust quota system. And that was the only impression
I had about any girl in PCT.
Ofcourse I have outgrown that. And I definitely do not think any lesser
of the fairer sex. All the girls at PCT too did quite well for themselves.
Megha, Dipti and Amruta, much like a cheerleading trio, or would they
prefer to be called Charlie's Angels, were always together.
Megha, again like Ritesh, was so gujju. No wonder they two look so wonderful
together, one of those made for each other couples. Started of her engineering
run with some KTs. Ritesh ensured that that didn't happen again. Thus
highlighting that atleast in some cases there could be a man behind
a successful woman.
Every now and again we run into people whose last names make us purse
our lips so that we don't burst out with laughter in their face. Amruta,
Amruta Bhombe, well, I find her last name funny. Or maybe I am just
too childish, much like Joey Tribiani, and find any last name beyond
shah, patel, modi and a handful of others, to be funny. But seriously...
Bhombe?? There was this one time when I, Amruta and Dipti were talking…
and suddenly Amruta said that we should call each other by our last
names. My heart jumped with glee at the opportunity and I went, "so
Bhombe what's for lunch." The last-name plan didn't have a very
long life-cycle, much to my disappointment.
I began believing that Dipti would be one hard woman to talk to. Not
because of anything she did. It was because Amruta told me horror stories
about her dad and how he wouldn't let her talk to guys and stuff. I
always had heard of such fathers. Didn't know I would be friends with
someone who actually had such a dad. I distinctly remember the days
when we would call her place on her birthday, half shaking with paranoia,
in case her dad picked up the phone, and ready to fling the PCO headset
and run for our lives in case her dad came out of the receiver and shot
us with down 35 mm caliber pistol. Life got easier when she got a cell
phone of course. Last heard, she is one more of those rebel converts
inspired by the song "lose control!!" and defying her dad
whenever he seems to want to be in control.