Finally ...I am a XIMBian!

Hi! its been over 2 &1/2 months since i had written my last blog! And I must admit that a hell lot of things have changed since then! All my friends who were a few miles or so away from me are now out of reach! The place I used to study at has started to consider me as an alumnus! A few priorities of life have changed entirely! But all these have almost happened to most of my other friends, so what’s new? Yeah! There's a unique thing that has not changed for me....I am still a student!

A student of business management at one of the institutes where I'd always wanted 2 b...XIMB! Its not even a week now that I've joined XIMB but I've had a feel of it. The three days of induction made sure that I have landed in a different world and here the focus is on us coz now the country knows about the institute and are looking forward to its performance!

The first hostel life experience till now for me has been great as I'm in the 1st floor where the entire floor is inhabited only by me! Before u start envying let me tell u the other 15 dwellers of this floor are all PGP-II students.. better known a seniors.. so after they come back maybe in a couple of days, my opinion is subject to change! Coming to the rooms and all.. the hostel rooms are freshly painted and clean, with all single rooms and a well maintained corridor and bathrooms the ambience is quite nice! The mess is also good with food that can probably never taste good( I still miss my Mom's homemade food)! There are all sort of facilities for recreation also & very little to complain with around 16 girls staying in the gents hostel in one of the floors of a block this time!

Coming to the classes, I find a great flaw in them and believe that is the only flaw noticeable .They are AC rooms ;and after lunch how can they punish the students by asking them to sit there and ask them not 2 sleep!The auditorium ,the place where we have spent most of our time barring the hostel .is one of its kind and is very comfortable ! I don’t mind it being AC coz its so large that even if u r in the 3rd or 4th row..u can manage 2 sleep evading the speaker , and I am glad to say that i've successfully done that for a couple of times.

Now coming to the most important thing- my peers .Well by now I've made quite a few new friends apart from the good old ones I had before, but the threads are still very weak ,I believe every1's waiting for the classes to begin so that the strengthening process starts soon. The thing that catches my fancy though, is the variety of backgrounds and the variety of roots of people who have joined this place! Its amazing.. I am really looking ahead to be with all sort of people from the entire country to get a feel of a lot of things about which I hardly have any idea.

Friends, joining XIMB has pumped a new enthusiasm into me in a very short period! The loss of friends and the feeling of loneliness in me is vanishing slowly but surely, thanks to ximb. I dont know about others but frankly I craved to be here and here I am! I just hope that I can get the maximum out of it and then feel proud to be a XIMBian! I'll come back soon...

The Last Interview of the season!

Hi guys! Sorry for being monotonous but at this stage of time its almost impossible for me to write anything else other than my interviews. Life had never been so busy for me & traveling never so frequent but I still love life & I still enjoy traveling, irrespective of the conditions.

After my interview of XIM, Bhubaneswar on 1st March, I’d to go to Purulia(my native place) to attend a marriage on that very day. After a sleepless night on the 2nd of march I’d to move to Kolkata the very next afternoon. Then straight away I started off for Ahmedabad that night within 1 hour of reaching Kolkata. Two more days of journey followed by the MICA interview.Then an entire day of freaking out in Ahmedabad. Then the very next day off we went from Ahmedabad to come back! Another two days of train journey & we landed at Kharagpur at 1 am, ensuring that there was no sleep for us that night. Finally back I returned to Bhubaneswar by probably the most wretched train of the world. A few days at Bhubaneswar & again it was time for me to go to Kolkata for the TAPMI interview. Really, at this point of time I was feeling that I should have got a season ticket for Kolkata this month. Finally after the interview I returned back to Bhubaneswar to be greeted by my college exams from 21st March!

But wait a minute! I’m not done, in fact I’m yet to start! This post of mine is going to be about my Tapmi experience. Chances again aren’t too bright from any sorts but actually I somehow enjoyed this interview. The atmosphere wasn’t too great as it was a Sunday & a chance to enjoy the greenery of St. Xaviers College, Calcutta was wasted. But I still enjoyed my time thoroughly as I made quite a few friends & talked to almost everyone present there.

We were asked to reach by 9am & the GD started off by 9:15. Our group had 19 people & as if this wasn’t enough, we were given the topic, “Discuss the captaincy styles of Ganguly & Dravid”. Before I could say something I was already hearing a lot. Kolkata is already obsessed by sports as I’ve written in my previous posts & most of the localites were getting too emotional, but the bottomline stayed that by hook or crook, no one should let anyone else talk. I tried to make my point after a minute of the GD & was successful in having the group listening but hardly for 5 secs. I could make my full point heard only after about 5 minutes. I then preferred being a listener & tried to moderate a bit when I could see that the AC in the room was also unable to bear the heat. Finally I could make another point about imaginative traits of a captain to a silent group but as soon as I was done, everyone blasted at me & I had absolutely no idea if they were supporting me or opposing me. The scene got so unruly that the two moderators had to intervene in the middle & restart the discussion but to no use at all.

Finally they asked each of us to give three points about the discussion & I spoke exactly 3 sentences & said “that’s it!” because most of the people extending their 3 sentences were cut short by the moderators.
Then there was the GD write up & we were asked to summarize the GD in 250 words in 10 mins. God knows what everyone did as how do u summarize something that you’ve never heard. I jotted down a few things that I’d heard & rest was masala added. I couldn’t write my own views coz time ran out. Then they collected the sheets & we were taken into the next stage, the extempore stuff. Man the topics in the beginning were pretty easy like “Amitabh, the real icon”, “smoking in public places”,etc. Most of the people were doing well but were speaking for less than 2 mins when the time allotted was 3 mins.My number was 14 & there were two topics before me that got really funny. The first one was “Jessica Lal murder”. The guy who got this topic spoke for 3 mins because he was narrating the entire story of Jessica Lal, he was doing a real story telling session & the best thing was he kept on saying “the son of the MLA”, coz he’d forgotten Manu Sharma’s name. The next funny thing was that a guy got a topic “ murder of Manju Nath….”, and he didn’t know who this person was ,actually even I couldn’t make out till I was told that he was the IIM Lucknow guy. But this guy had some real guts, he spoke for over 2 minutes on the topic & spoke about everything that’s going on in this earth , but Manju Nath! Finally I got the topic “Can Infosys survive the global competition?”, I was more than happy as it was in my domain & had a really nice extempore with a right blend of facts & ground realities of Infy.I measured the time just right as my friend said that it was just over 3 mins & I ended it before being stopped by them! I was really satisfied by this one.

Finally we were thrown out of the room & were asked to come in sequence of our numbers so I knew that the day would be long for me. I was told to come after 2:30pm but I stayed along as most of the others did. Each interviews lasted for about 20-30 minutes. The general view was that they were stressing everyone out with a few out of the block questions & situations. I was both happy & disappointed to know that there was no one with an engineering background in our panel. After a long wait upto 4pm I got my call.

I got in & was first asked, “Would you like to sit or stand?” I said that I would be comfortable sitting but if they wanted to judge me while I was standing then I would be ok with it. They didn’t ask me to sit & I kept standing. I was asked to submit all the photocopies of my certificates & I was doing that standing, I believe I wasn’t looking uncomfortable. A couple of questions about my certificates also were answered by me standing. Finally the younger of the two asked me to sit & I did. They asked me to introduce myself & just as I was about to complete I was asked the difference between a group & a team. While I was doing that I was asked some irrelevant question by the other person & I obliged him by answering & as I ended the other guy asked me to continue on the group vs. team. I was working hard to remember the questions asked by them. I knew that this was their style of stressing me. They were hardly computer savvy people & I got to know about that by their quality of their technical questions. I took pleasure in saying Linux as my favorite subject when I was asked to. I tried to my best to cash in when they asked something about that as they didn’t even know that Linux is open source. They asked me about my tie which was red in color & tried to intimidate me by repeatedly telling me to describe my tie. I tried my best but failed miserably. At one point I was holding my tie & staring at it, thinking what to say!

Finally they came to some ethical issues, asked me what was done in my college if a person is found sending a sms in the class. I said this never happened in our college(sheer bluff) as it’s considered to be dissent. He asked me what should be done in such a case. I said, the mobile should be taken away & the student should be given a strong warning. Then he said what if he does this again, I said that the higher authorities should me informed along with the parents , etc. of that student & he should be fined. They were intent on stretching this & said what if this happens again, I said that this time the mobile should be taken away completely & the student should be punished by suspending him from college for some days. The younger guy was laughing at all my answers as if I were doing Samba before them. I tried to keep a straight face but probably I was smiling a bit at times also.Then they said, “Do you know what happens in Tapmi for such a case?..... The person is thrown out of the institute at the very first instance, believe me, thrown out of the college & this has actually happened, do you want to study in such an institution?”. After a pause I gathered my senses & said, “Of course sir, why not, Big institutions like Tapmi are big only because of these kind of stiff rules & I believe that rules are meant to be followed at least as far as you are a student.” They asked me a few more ethical things like cheating in exams & what was meant by blacklisting etc. before asking me abruptly “So, how much do you rate yourself in this interview out of 10?”, I said without a blink-“8”.He said “Thank You” and stuck out his hand for a hand shake & I made my exit with a smile!

I really couldn’t make out anything out of it & everyone said that my interview had lasted for over 20 minutes although I still feel that it was below 15 mins.

This has been another of my long blogs probably the longest, but the experience had to be shared so as I always say if you have gotten this far reading my entire post then please make a comment! Ciao

How to hit your foot on the axe!

Life had never been busier before! In the last part of the last month(February), I’ve been so much involved in various activities that, its difficult to remember what exactly I’d been doing at this time of the day, yesterday. Traveling has never been so hectic & so frequent for me. After attending the GD/PI call from NIRMA on 23rd Feb at Kolkata, I had to get back to work for the XIMB interview that was to be held today. The Budget & Railway Budget were almost on the tip of my tongue. I hardly had searched for current affairs topics this diligently ever before! But all of this homework were thrown into the trash bin, nothing paid off as I went for my GD/PI today from 9am-11am at XIMB campus.

First of all we had the GD. 7 candidates, around 7 minutes, 3 panelists, 1 min thinking time, 1 minute wind up time( but the group never wrapped up ), Topic: Is nuclear collaboration with the US desirable for India
I did well to come in 3rd & gave a new point of international scrutiny into our fast breeder reactors not being acceptable. I talked for 3-4 times & tried to give a concluding sentence at last but wasn’t allowed to complete by others. We actually had no wind up at all…..maybe I rate myself as 2nd or 3rd.
We had been called as per our percentiles & I was the second in the group so my call for pi was also 2nd. The guy before me is a friend of mine since quite some time. His interview went well & being an electronics engineering student, he was asked electronics based questions & he did well. He was asked 4 GK ques out of which he answered 2 & missed on the other two!

My turn came & I went into the room. First they asked me to introduce myself in 1 minute. I was also asked to speak things not mentioned in my form. I felt a bit awkward for that 1 min limit yet I did well but missed about my family background. Thankfully one of the 3 panelists asked me to put light on my family & I did that. As I mentioned cricket in my hobbies at last, one of them asked who’s the present captain of England, I answered. Then they picked up my essay which I had written in the XAT exam & asked me my views on brain drain. I answered & maybe this was the place where I showed that I could communicate well, the initial jitters were done away with & I was speaking fluently now. I believe my views about the problem & possible solution was also acceptable & appreciated by them. Then came the academics part, they asked a few things like virtual memory & the process of swapping in a microprocessor(swap I tried to link with linux swap partition but he stuck to microprocessor & I finally accepted that I didn’t know much about it).I answered the virtual memory part well. He asked I more thing which I answered confidently but I don’t remember what. Then a question on registers of microprocessors & program counter, I said I couldn’t recollect. Oops! earlier I was asked the full form of ICICI bank & I couldn’t recollect that too. I kept saying that there’s some industrial & investment in there but I couldn’t really remember. Then he asked about Spywares & I tried to cash in. I told him the works done by a spyware & stuff & when asked about the anti-spywares, I named 2-3 as I already have a good number of spywares & antispywares(useless) in my pc. Maybe this was the last thing I answered confidently.
Then he jumped to GK, asked me, CM of Delhi-----I thought for 1 full min before I recollected & almost shouted Shiela Dikshit! Man was I relieved or not! Their wait of that 1 min paid off for me but this was just the appetizer! They asked me how many women CMs do we have in India, I couldn’t remember anymore! Some more anxious moments, they gave me hint who’s the CM of TN, I couldn’t remember & kept quite. Then they asked me who’s the Vice president of India, I said Bhairon Singh Shekawat, asked from where is he, I said Rajasthan,one of the three smart men(they always look smart when they are on the other side of that table!) tried to confuse me by saying that he’s from MP but I stood my ground, so he asked which party, I said BJP. What was he? A renowned politician of Rajasthan(What a precise answer! LOL). Then they asked me the CM of Rajasthan, & hell broke loose when I said(god knows why?????)---Om Prakash Chautala. They laughed as if I was performing in the Laughter Challenge. I smiled & said, “sorry sir I just got confused!” One of them asked me the capital of Gujrat, I said Ahmedabad & then changed it by saying Gandhinagar! A few more questions which I don’t even want to remember! A few I could answer & some with which I failed miserably.

Had I seen the CM list earlier then it would have saved me but who had known that they would hit me at this point & that too in this way! I surely knew that Vasundhara Raje Scindia & Jayalalitha were the CMs who could have meant much more than CMs to me but at that moment my memory deceived me badly. But that’s no excuse! The fact is that I’ve just kicked a golden opportunity at my feet with the maximum power possible!

My interview lasted for exactly 15 minutes as it did for all of us in our group. In the end they said the clichéd line “Suvra! it was very nice talking to you, you have done well & all the very best to you & please send the next man, ask him to stand outside and tell him to come in when the bell rings”.

So with this I am past my interview of a real premier management institute of India, but now I should just be happy that I got this far & really do away with the hopes of studying here because I’ve made a mess of it already! Pray for me guys! Only your good wishes can prove me wrong.

When the Mamus Mamued me!

Hey all u people, guess I’m back before I was expected to. Actually I got a very important call today! No, it wasn’t a call from any coveted B-School but was even more important than that to me. As I slept late last night as usual, coz today was a holiday for me so my plans were to sleep till late, but that wasn’t to be. At 10am or so I got a phone call & as my mother told me who it was on the line, I sat up straight to attend the call!

On the other side of the connection was a police official calling me Suvra Kant ‘babu’ & delivered me the news that I had to be there at the police station for the verification required for my Passport application. Boy, Was I happy or what! I shall be celebrating the 1st anniversary of my plan of going for a passport very soon. The poor passport form had to bear the loads of my overweight books in some corner of my book shelf for about 6-8 good months! Then poor me had to pass the trauma of filling the form & yes I also had to act like a ungootha chaap to give the thumb impression in all the forms. Then, again the forms had to wait for their companions in form of the other certificates for about a month or so. Finally many thanks to my neighbour uncle who deposited the same for me in the passport office. As if this wasn’t enough, I heard scary stories from people who said that they had been waiting for months for this prized call!

On that aspect I was lucky enough as I got the call in a span of just over a month & I didn’t mind getting up at 10am for that(on a holiday). I got ready & dressed just normally to go for the verification coz I’d heard that if they get to know that u r from a well to do family(even if u aren’t), they pounce upon you. So ready to go to a police station for the first time in my life, I took Rs.50, change from my father as I thought that if they asked for something then this would be it & then I would always have the excuses of being a student and all. But I really wanted to see how they would go about it, as I’d heard about these enough but never been in such a position before.

As I reached the police station a lady inspector/havildar/sub-inspector(sorry that ends by vocab on police officials) was taking a report of a poor woman of some kind of brawl in her house or something. This lady reminded me of all the corrupt police officials I’ve seen in the Mithun movies. She kept on interrogating the woman who was slowly getting jittery in replying the absurd queries of the lady-whatever. I interrupted her to ask for the person who had called me & the lady-*** showed me the way very politely, couldn’t believe it really, this lady could be polite also! Still overhearing the resumed conversation between the two women, I went into the room of the two people who searched my form out & asked me for my original certificates. I had not brought them then, but I still had a feeling that they could do without it just looking at their attitude but I insisted on getting them from my house as I felt that this would require an extra ‘malai’ over that Rs. 50 note later on. So off I went & got back to this place in a while. Now there were no one to lodge any complaint but we had an uncle & aunty who had come for their verification too. Simultaneously my verification also started & all sort of historical questions were darted at me. One of the two men wrote all the details on a small piece of paper & tried making sure that I was the real Suvra Kanta Roy. Lastly that uncle, aunty & myself were taken to that lady-whatever. I never expected this, but she was the one to look for the identification mark & all that stuff. First she asked the aunty that what was her profession & this apparently smart aunty replied “rosoi!”,it was nice to see someone using her sense of humour in the police station . I mean I felt that this was a really cool answer! Then I was interrogated for my details & as I said that I required the passport for joining into Wipro, I could imagine that lady thinking, “so here we have a nice bakra!”.

Finally all the formalities were completed & I was sitting alone before the two hungry wolves ready to pounce on their prey. I kept my face straight & was waiting to see how they would ask for the bribe. The one who had been writing finally spoke out & said that as I was going to join Wipro soon so I would be needing the passport pretty soon, I said that I could do well if I got it by june or so. He looked more concerned & said, “yeah that means quite early”. I kept quiet. Then they started speaking to each other, one said to the other that what would he do with this one, would he send it to Khandagiri or solve matters there itself, the other said that since babu(that is me) would need it early so he would have to solve matters there itself. Then they talked a bit of technical stuff related to my passport that were bouncers to me. I tried to act absolutely innocent, listening to them like I’d come right from the kindergarten. They continued with their useless stuff more so that I could understand, but I acted like a 7yr old in a topless bar. I wanted them to be straight & clear. I wanted them to earn their bribe from a student & wanted to see how shameless they could get.
At last he spoke out! He said so sir u may go, & just take care of our babu so that u have no troubles at all & u get ur passport soon. The exact words in Oriya were, “Au ama babu katha tike bhujibe jemiti ki aapana ku apankara passport ta subidha re mili jiba!”. While I took out my purse, I saw the lady-whatever entering the room to join the feast & what the hell! That Rs. 50 note had vanished from my purse. There was a Rs.10 note & another piece of 100. I expected all eyes to be on my purse & I didn’t look up to confirm! Just took out the 100 note & tried handing it on to the so called ‘babu’. He indicated me to keep it on the table, as if he was not even involved in such a dirty job, just because I wanted to feed those morons coz they were my girlfriends in the last birth, so he was reluctantly accepting it. I quickly left the place without looking at anyone. As I put my hand on my chest pocket to take my glasses out, I found the Rs. 50 note. Realizing that I’d made a loss of 50 rupees just because erratic allocation of places for different notes, I tried to console myself by feeling that maybe those extra 50 rupees would get me my passport before I celebrate the 1st anniversary!

Really, this was the first experience of mine of this kind. While seeing the Rs. 100 note on his table, just for a while I remembered the tehelka tapes. I’m really tempted to blame the system but no, we are all corrupt. No one cares to take the risk of revolting. Nor do ‘they’ care if someone refuses to pay, the file just won’t move thereafter. No one knows exactly how to break this deadlock, every student like me doing such a thing for the first time must be feeling a thorn piercing somewhere but no one knows the location of this thorn & how to take it out, or may I say we never even care to know because it doesn’t pierce too hard on us. Think about it!

Rang De Basanti

Friends, I really enjoyed writing my first movie review for Chocolate & still enjoy reading it again & again because I think I could crystallize my thoughts perfectly in that post & get the message to u guys! Don’t know how much u people liked it but since then I’d thought about giving a film review for many a films that I had seen. But each time I refrained from it coz somewhere or the other each of them couldn’t meet my expectations. But this movie overawed me in all aspects & as the punch-line (even movies are products these days) goes “A generation awakens” I too seem to have woken up!

No marks for guessing the film, its Rang De Basanti! I was really looking forward to see it but had enough apprehensions about it coz Aamir Khan’s last movie had promised too much & delivered too little. As I entered the theatre, the atmosphere appeared to be different. It was a matinee show & as expected the crowd was young but more importantly, they sounded young. After Dil Chahta Hai, this was the first time I saw people creating a enjoyable environment out of the movie. All the one liners were greeted with warmth & songs were accompanied with synchronous chants! A few groups were dancing on the floor. The viewer really starts envying the lives of these carefree, blithe characters who live life like most of us dream of. Every aspect of the first half makes us feel that life is meant to be enjoyed & in the course if there’s something worthwhile to do, then that can just be a part of the game.

The lifestyle fabricated by the director for the 5 students of Delhi Univ. easily wins hearts. The other characters including that of the foreigner have also been knitted well and no one feels a need to figure out who the lead hero or lead heroine is. Now this in itself is an achievement as Indian movies are attributed to have well defined lead actors right from the beginning & Rang De Basanti already starts as a trend breaker.

The music & the songs shake u at times, both literally & symbolically, especially if u r in a theatre equipped with dolby dts sound system. But the only complain that I had was that some of these songs aren’t continuous. There are pauses giving the movie a more polished look but for this reason the songs doesn’t stay with u forever! Coming to the casting part, as u wud expect, all the actors have been allotted roles judiciously & everyone does justice to their respective parts.

But the best part of Rang de Basanti is the way it’s story has been synchronized. I mean, history is shown to be repeating itself & most soothingly the history is served to the audience in a very witty way in order to keep away ennui. Then like a free flowing river the story moves on those lines of history & slowly the audience makes out why that history part is necessary in the film. According to me, whatever the movie, Rang de Basanti tries to convey is loud & clear. Even a little child can see it for himself. Most of the time our works miss out on this aspect only.

There is a message in the movie & its nothing too new, yet we love disregarding it time and again. It says that if something has to change, its we, the youth who have to do it. Just playing the blame game never helps. We are the most powerful components of the society & to resurrect this decaying system, only we have to rise out of our domains, which probably is the only thing we like about this country or system. As this famous dialogue from the film sums it all up “ no country is perfect, it has to be made perfect!”

Well, if u have not seen the movie & u read the above para, the message & stuff, then u r bound to feel that many a films based on such an issue has already been made. Yes! Maybe more than a dozen of them. However, Rang De Basanti stands way out. The way things have been depicted, the manner in which the story has been organized, the commitment that every actor renders to the project & impeccable direction makes it a once in a blue moon movie.

As I conclude this post, I still feel sad that in spite of such an effort, Rang De Basanti would not be liked by a good part of its target audience itself, the youth. The people to be blamed are not the viewers but Bollywood itself as our Hindi film industry have never taught their audience to learn something from a movie. Any film with a relevant message unmistakably goes unnoticed or at least the message goes unheard! So if u ask an average youth about Rang De Basanti, be prepared to get the answer “Exciting first half, but a rather boring 2nd half, ***** shouldn’t have died!”

Back to my old den...

Hey guys! Here I am, back after a gap of over a month now. Let’s start off with a small question for all of u; How strong are ur memories of the time when u were about 3-4 years of age? If u r’nt an elephant then I believe that all u can recollect are a few broken pieces of isolated events that were either too good or too scary on ur part. And if ur parents keep telling u abt ur childhood then it would be slightly better than what I mentioned above. Now just think what would happen if suddenly u r taken to that time again & everything comes before u as it used to be before! No I’m not going to give a lecture on a time machine but am going to relate to u how I felt when just this happened to me, when I went to Shillong last week.

Although I was born at Calcutta, Shillong is the place where I spent the first 6 years of my life. After leaving the place I never got a chance to visit it again until last week. My memories about Shillong were too sweet because I enjoyed the warmth & beauty of the wonderful place. The people around me were great and life was fun, coz I spent very little time of those years in school, yet the school too was like that of a picnic spot where even studying was fun. Our house, besides a thin stream of water flowing by a spring with a small cement bridge to cross it, had its picture firmly imprinted in my mind. My best friend then, Kutu & our games of playing Ram & Lakshman in the Ramayan(the most famous T.V. serial then) were very much in my agenda of thoughts when we left for Shillong from Guwahati last Tuesday. The pine jungle close to our house had a graveyard & even that looked scenic to me then, coz I was never told what were burnt there. I could remember a lot of things but I kept feeling restless coz every bit of memory was blurred & the only thing that I remembered clearly was the Elephant falls which was a regular picnic spot for the families which resided nearby including ours.

So we decided to go to the Elephant falls first & then move on to our old house. As there was no plan for a night halt so we could visit limited places. Everyone of our family were excited about the trip. We reached the spot & here we got our first shock. The falls which used to be broad & so natural has now turned into a cluster of narrow streams falling from a height. Even the altitude looked less than before as everything had been concreted & the natural touch was difficult to find. I kept wondering how could they limit the flow of the vociferous waters into a rather meek spring. Needless to say it disappointed me, yet I loved being there just because I could be there again! We quickly moved on & I was eager to enter the city. What I saw, at first, made me feel that I was never a part of the same city before. It looked to me like a well developed city with all facilities starting from pubs to shopping malls! People wearing the most mod outfits & roads full of expensive vehicles. Precisely the coziness of Shillong was difficult to make out. Finally I managed to spot something that mapped with my remembrance. The buses there have a frontal projection like trucks & a characteristic chimney outlet, letting the smoke out skywards on the front panel. There used to be a Police bazaar which was still there but in a new avatar. Traffic rules seemed to be too stringent as a traffic police almost fined our driver for spending just abt 30 secs in a crossing to decide which way to go.

Everything looked different but still I felt that this was a very known place to me. I tried to remember things about places that apparently had been a part of my daily life some time back, but could do little to soothe myself. Finally after some toil, with the help of some of the localites we reached the house where we used to live. Earlier the road from Umpling bus stand to our house used to be a road of boulders & mud, on which probably only my Dad’s lambretta could move. But now our car had no problems reaching our old house & it has become a bus route now. On the way my Mother showed me our regular grocery shop & houses of people who were close to us then, sadly none of our known ones stayed in Shillong anymore. I also had a glimpse of my sister’s school & the way to my school. I quickly recollected a scene of me walking to my school with a raincoat on along with my mother with an umbrella which was anything but manageable. Shillong used to be a place with over six months of rains a year. I say ‘used to’ coz we hear, now that has changed drastically.

As we reached our house, everything in my mind started to get organized together & the colourless & jigsawed picture started to get prominent. A lot of things weren’t the same, yet I had absolutely no problems in identifying them. The spring was still there, our garden space where my parents used to grow great flowers had been cemented to accommodate a car. The pine forest hardly had an existence & the graveyard had been abandoned even by the corpses. A middle aged person was there outside & as my father told him that we used to stay there 16 years ago, he welcomed us to the house. He turned out to be a Bengali scientist & said that he’d been staying in that house since we had left the place. What I was excited about was that I could get a glimpse of the house again & I had a look at the bedrooms & the kitchen. The drawing/dining room reminded me the position of our old Sonodyne B/W TV & the dining table. The verandah outside used to be the playground of me & Kutu. Time & again our cricket ball used to fall in the spring & so we had a special stick with a net to get the ball back.

So many other thoughts about my life then, filled my mind & I was just so excited. No one to meet though as almost all there had transferable jobs there, like my father & sooner or later they had left. I got Kutu’s father’s phone no. & I don’t know if I’ll ever call him. I wanted to stay back & examine every tit bit of that area. I wanted to see my school again & visit the most beautiful church in Shillong, I wanted to go to the cinema halls called Salty & Rhino where I loved to watch films, and what were my films? The posters of the movies that hung outside. My neighbours used to take me there(walking distance) & return with me satisfied of having seen an Abitabh movie in a flat 20 minutes time! I wanted to visit the grocery shop owner, Pal uncle who used to give me a chiclets packet for free every time I visited his shop with my parents. But time was playing the spoilsport & we had to Shillong before it was dark. So after taking a couple of snaps of our old house we bid goodbye to our old den & headed our way back to guwahati.

I still fancy about being in Shillong for ever. What if we’d stayed there, what if we had never left the place! Yes after being in Shillong again I miss it again, but when I think of what I’ve received from all the places where I’ve stayed after Shillong then I feel I may be asking for too much. It’s still a great place to be but probably, God allotted just six years of my life to Shillong, rest is history!

My 15th post

God knows why I am getting so nostalgic about this year even before it is past me! So much so that I’ve penned(keyed) down the 2nd poem of my life, on this year. As it is, poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea & I still believe that it is not mine either. With the course of time I’ll do away with it but now since I’ve lots of time so maybe I’m resorting to this madness. If u don’t like it, just ignore it…..

YEH SAAL

Teen so paisath dinon ka anokha silsila,
Achanak se hi khatm hone ko chala!
Haan in dinon mein bahut kuch jala,
Par is saal se humein kya kya na mila!

Meethi baton se bhara yeh saal,
Rishte naaton pe khara yeh saal,
Khaas logon se hhara yeh saal,
Aisi yaadon se jada yeh saal!

Phir bhi kuch baatein khatte the,
Phir bhi kuch naate kacche the,
Kuch logon ne dukh baante the,
Kuch yaadon me bas kaante the!

Har raat ki subay to honi hi thi,
Har baat ki wajay to honi hi thi,
Har roz suryoday to honi hi thi,
Phir bhi sab kuch, anhoni hi thi!

Jaane kya kar gaya yeh saal
Kudrat ka bichaaya yeh jaal,
Dikha hi gaya apna kamaal
Baaki rehe, to kuch uljhe sawaal!

Jo beet gaya use jaane do,
Nayi dishaoon ko samne aane do!
Taaza umango ko dil pe chane do,
Apne chehre ko phir se muskurane do.

Banke tohfa ek naya saal aayega,
Aur tumpe woh muskurayega,
Zakhmon ko tumhare, pyar se sahleyega,
Aur sare gham udake le jayega!

Ummeed pe to sari duniya tiki hai,
Isliye ek ummeed humne bhi ki hai,
Ab aap logon ki baari hai,
Ummeedon ka silsila aise hi to jaari hai!