Archive: The Beginning

I am kind of tired expressing my own feelings and incidents through my blogs. From now on I have decided to add anecdotes of incidents not encountered by me but my near ones, such incidents which I enjoyed listening to and would try not to forget. The world of blogs would be a good warehouse to archive these files. Of course I would not spare the stories from my own views and I would add a small note of critical appreciation at the end. Let’s kick off:
This is a story which I recently heard from my grandfather: A page from his childhood days, year 1940. My grandfather lives in a small village and in those days the village was smaller – I mean remote’-r’. He used to study in the local pathshala (Lower primary school) with a handful of other extremely studious pupils. I glorified them ‘studious’ because in those days education was a luxury which could not be afforded monetarily or was considered an absolute non-necessity by most. Result only the most ‘studious’ few were seen with books. The school had a single teacher; ironically he was also the administrative officer, principal, and even the peon - The sole person responsible showing the path of light to the villagers. The adversities of the monopoly given to such teachers are well documented in a number of Bengali movies. However the teacher in my story was dedicated to his job. One day he had some personal work and hence announced a holiday in the school. Upon getting an unexpected off in the mentioned day, my grandfather was roaming around under the hot summer sun with his marbles, trying to find a suitable partner for a marble tournament. This is when he saw two persons dressed in non-rural clothes-one of them in suits-coming up to him. They asked him the direction to the school and seeing it closed they asked my grandfather the reason for it. For the readers who are still wondering about the identities of these persons: one of them was the school inspector and the other was another dignified person from the school board. And yes they were not expecting the school closed. My grandfather took the responsibility of calling the pupils from their homes and in the process ended up gathering quite a large crowd of curious onlookers. In fact a large part of the village was soon seen inside the school premises. If you are wondering how such a large crowd could find a place inside the school building, let me tell you that the school building was mostly open air. The inspector kept himself busy asking different questions, thanks to the hard work of the school teacher, the pupils were up to it. This got the inspector visibly happy. It was around this time one could see an old man coming running down the lane. In fact he was not running, he was hobbling because of his corn affected foot. It was the school teacher. He had not got the time to put on his shirt and was bare chest. The moment he reached the classroom he started pleading guilty and was inconsolable. The inspector was however very pleased and he did not complain. It was soon known that the school teacher had applied for the school to be graduated from Lower Primary to Upper Primary and the inspection was solely for that reason. The graduation certificate was granted.
This is however one part of the story. Let me give you a few facts: the school teacher used to live around 10 kms from the school. In those days there was no bus service and he had to walk that distance. He had some personal work on that day (the reason for announcing the holiday). One should wonder how he got the information of the inspection and how he could run the distance with his injured leg. My grandfather says that the teacher -after finishing his work- was resting in his home when he had a dream. He saw goddess Kali was pinching him and informing him of the inspection in his dreams. This got him running, I mean hobbling. Super Natural!!!! Are you not convinced?? Then maybe you should believe it was telepathy a page from para-psychology. Whatever it was it saved the day for an otherwise extremely committed teacher and also the school. The same school now stands in the village which achieved some more levels of graduations since that day. It is now a higher secondary school and of course not open-air. How the funds were collected is another story.

I am in a boring slumber

I hate my current stage. Yes I do!!! Now I miss those busy hours, the pressure of solving cases, appearing for quizzes preparing for interviews. Surprised?? This is life..Nowadays I am practically jobless, getting bored to hell with nothing to do at home. And to add that I am not being able to blog for the want of a net connection at home. Today I got so desperate that I thought that I would blog sitting inside a cyber cafe. Frankly it is a time when I have so much to write about the political scenario and the gimmick called IPL. SAD!!!!
A typical day in my life consists of getting hold of the TV remote and constantly surfing through the channels. The only saving grace is my synthesizer.
I want to get out of this slumber. And yes one more info I have been posted in Kuala Lumpur and that has hammered spirits down further.

At the end I am HAPPY

Hupps!!!!
That exclamation is much bigger and pronounced than those 5 letters. A journey that started in 1985 when I walked into my first school holding my mothers hand is about to end. And the journey seems accomplished. The road was not easy, was long, but full of memories and I know I am going to miss it.
Thank God, Thanx to all the well wishers I have been able to sail through the recent course of adversity :: Getting a good job in the final placements. For your information Bain & Co was once again kind enough to give me a shortlist and one more from Frost & Sullivan. Pretty dismal considering that I did not get one from the other 6 companies. (I am talking only about day 0) But at the end while Bain did not find me good enough FnS did. So finally I have cracked Day 0 at the final placements. Frankly something to feel happy about...Accomplished!!!!!!!!!
Moreover the location is London, a city that I loved being at, during my summer internship. Alas!! my partners in crime during that time would not be with me this time. But hopefully the new crowd would be as much fun to be with.
I am now absolutely convinced of two phrases :
1) All's well that ends well
2) In the long run everything falls in place.
While the former is true for everybody the latter has been absolutely true for me. At this moment my life seems extremely fulfilled. Frankly what more to ask?? And hence for the last three days I have been genuinely HAPPY.

Last JBS performance?? Perhaps!!!

Could not resist putting this up over here. Though the performance was not the best, but my only performance which has been recorded. And then it was all nostalgic.






Should post a few more, once I get hold of them. And please to encourage :P

Been There Done That

Nowadays I am feeling that sense !! Yeah Deja Vu ... Life once again has become extremely hectic and for a change I have taken studies a little seriously for the time being. The pressure of preparation, some added responsibilities :: everything together makes me remember the innumerable number of times I have been through this. Only change is that now I have got used to it.
Meanwhile my Germany trip is done. Was an wonderful experience walking through the snow, feeling my fingers freezing up and not being able to talk because of the cold. Made quite a few friends over there and the last night party was awesome. But it was for the first time that I had the language problem when I went to a local store to buy some stuff.
I know this blog is a little diversion from my usual philosophical ones and that is because I don't have much time in finding the reflections of philosophy in my life nowadays. Trying to be practical and fight out the externalities, believe me the battle had not been more difficult before. I hope I am soon able to write a blog expressing how I have flown through this adversity like I have always done.
Are you wishing me the BEST!!!!

There's something that money can't buy

Isn't that absolutely true. Felt like reminding you all the recent ad-campaign of VISA where you get to see a group of friends throwing the hotel bill away to one another and the same group in their balded age snatching the bill. Nostalgic feelings. Perhaps one would say that we are still at the former stage or still some time is left before we reach the latter. But, for us by which I mean people like me who had grown up in hostels from the kindergartens such reflections come in early. Yesterday was such a day.
It was a get together of a few of us who spent the most beautiful part of their lives, grew up together under the same almamater Sainik School Purulia. And it was in honor of a very close friend of us who is in India on vacation. The moment we met those strange old feelings were back, there was so much to re-enact from the diaries of our school days. The same old leg pooling. Tell you what each of ours fathers had some special place amongst us in those days. I was simply surprised to find that we still remember those revered names and the associated masalas :P. And how much we loved our hostel superintendent. An example of his greatness can be found in my last blog. We were together for about 5 and half hours but never felt like departing. In the end when the restaurant bill came the sight was absolutely similar to the VISA ad, of course the latter part. In the school days the same 'we' would go the cafeteria and cheat each other to feed our own stomach in some others account.
I am still having a heavy heart. Thank you Sainik School Purulia for giving me such a wonderful set of friends. Thank you for making us all think alike, thank you for giving me some people for whom I can say yes they care. I feel lucky, I really do. For some of you the story might seem similar. If only I could make you feel the DIFFERENCE - the selflessness - !!!!!!

Wishing & Hoping for a better year ahead

Let me be optimistic (I know that sounds utterly pessimistic) that the new year would be prosperous and would have much better things to offer than 2008. With the usual New Year wishes the query that one gets at this stage is how the New Year celebrations was. Thought of blogging it down. In fact I am trying to blog down all my New Year celebrations as far as I can remember. My friends who have been part of these "years" let me see whether you remember those days. Incidentally I get so much response about my blogs from different people but none is a little patient enough to pen them down. Anyway I am a little lost in which way to start. I mean going up the memory lane or down. Which way would keep you interested enough to keep reading the whole post. (Marketing Strategy!!!!). Let me start with the oldest ones.

1994: Class VI. Was into the first year of my hostel life. But was not in hostel because of Christmas vacation. In fact my transition into the new year was inside the sleeper class of Puri-Howrah train. Yes I was returning from a trip to Puri with my family. I so very well remember the emotions cooking inside me at that time. The vacation was about to get over and the thought of getting back to the hostels was killing me.

1995 - 1998: These were the next four years of my school-hostel. The Christmas vacation was done away with after class VI and my new years were celebrated in School. Ironically there would not be any emotional doldrums, in fact I would enjoy the days to the fullest. We used to have our school annual sports week culminating with the annual day in this period. This used to be a helluva of an affair and would take me more than just three lines to talk about it.

However in between these four years two of the years were special and anti climatic to each other.

1997: Phew!!! I had just been suspended from the school for slapping someone. According to the guys parents it was an attempt to murder. Thankfully my parents gave me a lot of moral support, and did not have much damage done apart from the suspension for ten days. The period of suspension got over exactly on 01/01/1997 :)

1998: Ahem!!! A few months back I had met a creature from some other planet. So you know New years are meant to sent messages of well being to such creatures. ;). And emails having not been the standard in those times, this poor fellow had to wait for the postman. 31st December night it came. (Quite a coincidence) But it fell into the hands of my friends and a period of "you know what" started. And finally when I got the letter in my hands our hostel superintendent calls me up for making commotion inside the mess and writes a long letter of about 10 points to the headmaster complaining. One of the points was that I was creating a group among the boys to go against him. I was quite a politician you see ;). A new year to remember.

1999-2000: Yes I was muggooo...I had nothing to think about during this time apart from books & IIT JEE. And frankly I don't have vivid memories of what I did.
2001 was spent in frustration having done miserably in IIT JEE mains again my memory chip is blank.
Is anyone thinking about what happened to that creature? The loser I am, books became my paramount importance and the creature was left to get to get lost into oblivion. I know I am not doing any good by saying this :D.

2002-03: The happiest two new years that I spent and not meant for blogs :). Sorry Mates.

2004-06: The days of IIT had started long back. The last three years were different from first two. These wold be the period when I would just be back from Inter IIT sports meet. And relaxing the new years at home.

2007: New year in Pune!!!! Celebrated like a true working man. :) Got the hint??

2008: New Year at IIM Calcutta and the most shitty one I have ever had. We went to aquatica in the night and it was an awful experience.

2009: Perhaps the best New Year celebration till now. I played my keyboard for the most of the night along with the other members of the band. I was inebriated and it felt awesome playing music around the bonfire. Once the show ended we had a nice walk around the campus, and the finally the night ended with the usual cursing of our luck, the economic recession & the job scenario. Harbinger of things to come

Hey I am again getting pessimistic, let’s be optimistic for the New Year. Oh Common!!!!!!