Chapter 1: Himgiri Express
Himgiri Express stood proudly as its daily wont on Platform no 8 of Howrah station - there was only one station in those days before the authorities had put to fruition the burlesque idea of increasing the congestion of the already incredibly congested and polluted environs of India’s largest railway station by constructing additional platforms in a new complex for the South-Eastern Railway on the southern side of the existing area - ready to leave on its daily sojourn from the mouths of the Ganges to somewhere very near its source. I was filled with a nameless fear tinged with some anticipation of what the future beckoned. I was, after all, leaving the cosiness of the city I loved like a sweetheart, the innumerable friends and relatives and most importantly the comfortable feeling that only comes with spending a lifetime in a place; for a city that I had never set eyes upon, the environs of the university I was going to about as familiar to me as fresh clean water to a particularly lazy pig, and above all, the acute realization that I was about to face what almost every engineering student in Indian colleges has to face for the first few weeks of his hostel life - ragging. I already had had a small dress rehearsal of what was in source for me at Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur where I had gone to fill up in descending order of interest the discipline of engineering I was most interested in and the college of choice.
To the uninitiated, the Joint Entrance Examination for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology located at Kharagpur, Madras, Kanpur, Bombay and New Delhi and the Institute of Technology located within the Banaras Hindu University campus at Varanasi is conduced yearly and the 2000 odd students selected are deemed extremely lucky and intelligent ( in my case, the declared feeling amongst friends and immediate family on hearing about my selection was almost totally luck and almost no involvement of intelligence and to the more envious lot, a computer error). I had the fortune of going to the selection - called counselling - at IIT, Kharagpur with my father who insisted I take up Chemical Engineering (he loved and still loves reading anything he can get his hands upon and he pronounced after due scrutiny of the varied magazines and other literature that this is the Engineering discipline of the future).
My father’s presence did nothing to intimidate the college students enjoying
the opportunity of interacting with the freshers, some of whom would be
taking admission in their College, and thus they went hammer and tongs at whoever they could lay their hands upon. I was called aside by a group of seniors at the end of the preliminary counselling session conducted by the Dean of IIT, Kharagpur; and was asked by a spectacled moron standing at the forefront of the group and who had difficulty in speaking without pronounced pauses probably to search for appropriate words; to name of the last blue film I had seen. Here I was, an Iyer Brahmin, wide eyed and innocent having led an extremely sheltered life with assorted uncles and aunts and other relatives, and thus had absolutely no idea of what the other guy was talking about. For want of better comprehension, but with the fear of sounding naïve, I was about to blurt out none, when I remembered that I had seen Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea a few days back and figuring that nothing can be bluer that a movie shot almost entirely underwater gave the honest down to earth reply.
‘I can think of one actually.’
‘One, eh… which one’…one of stragglers asked.
‘Twenty Thousand leagues under the sea’, I replied.
The next thing I realized was a feeling of being in a cage surrounded by laughing lunatics in probably the same way as a chimpanzee in a zoological garden enclosure feels, when spectators spend good money to watch it lead a normal day to day existence, carrying about its mundane affairs like eating a banana which some good Samaritan had handed over or jumping through the hoop which the zoo-keeper had so thoughtfully provided for in its cage.
‘ A fresh one’, somebody declared in the conglomeration, which was gathered around me.
‘Bugger was actually serious’ another exclaimed looking at me abject wonder in about the same way as a batsman would when Anil Kumble actually turned the ball from leg to off.
‘Abe , naya dhakkan aya re’ one of the assembled crowd exclaimed excitedly to another group which was enjoying a nice tete-a-tete with another bedraggled fresher.
At this, the other group which I suppose was looking for fresher (pun intended) pastures trotted over to where I stood looking at me with not little curiosity . I was trying to figure out the reason for this extreme reaction to something I figured was a routine answer to a routine question, when the same answer and question was repeated to the new group who also seemed to enjoy it thoroughly.
‘Abe, pondy nahin pada kya’ another asked. Loosely translated it means ‘Haven’t you ever read a pondy?’
Before I could configure enough strength and ask him to kindly elucidate - I was not about to request to inform me what special precautions one takes to read in a Union Territory - my father came looking for me and exclaiming that I had to fill up some more forms.
When, with a feeling of much mystification at the peculiar ways of the senior world in the IITs I followed my father out, I could feel the eyes of the seniors following my movements with sheer amazement.
‘Abe , yeh to BHU mein mar jayega’ I overhead someone informing his neighbour with a hand extended in my direction.
This incident added extreme fear in my already befuddled mind about the fears of ragging and the treatment I would have to face at the hands of my seniors. I had heard horror stories of midnight raids on the freshers’ quarters by packs of seniors and indescribable acts of horror perpetrated on them and
this incident only heightened my fear.
I had just finished reading Alice in Wonderland on the train journey from Kharagpur back to Calcutta when, probably as a result of extreme reactions brought upon by perusal of this enduring classic and the close encounters with the seniors during the course of the entire afternoon, I felt the urgent desire - much like the first impulse of Hindi film actors and actresses to break into a sad song during moments of distress - to write a poem and this is how it turned out to be:
You have no notion how horrible it will be
and it will be no great fun you will see
when they take us in and throw us to the deep IITian sea
where the seniors shall be waiting with unconcealed glee
and in spite of our entreaty and our heartfelt plea
shall dip us head first into the deep ragging sea.
Such were the thoughts that July night as I stood at the entrance to Platform No 8 at Howrah station waiting for Himgiri Express to come to a slow halt at the very edge of the entrance was and seeing with unseeing eyes hundreds of people wandering around in all directions and the air was punctuated by assorted sounds in Bengali, Hindi and the occasional cry in English.
My youngest uncle, who had been chosen by consensus in my family, to perform the good Samaritan act of depositing me at my new address broke into my reverie
‘Raja, don’t start drinking out there’.
I looked at him and nodded in the typical south Indian way where a horizontal motion of the head means Yes and a vertical shake No.
‘And don’t mix with bad company. Look for boys from good background from Brahmin culture without any bad habits’.
Again an affirmative nod from my side.
‘Come let us get in’ my uncle said and to this choosing action to words, I proceeded to get into our compartment holding on to the large suitcase which contained enough clothes to last a month, followed by, holding on to a large overnighter which contained among other things a bottle of home-made pickle and a set of bed sheets and pillows; my uncle.
I made my way through the throng of people standing in the passageway and squatting on the seats, finishing last minute monologues and taking advice from their friends and relatives. As is the custom in India, any departure by loved ones is almost always accompanied by lot of crying and emotional display, an exercise in sorrow and the more one cries at the time of departure, the more his affection is deemed to be. And as usual, the whole family deems itself necessary to present themselves in all the bridal finery for the visit to the Station and a ritual send-off for their loved ones.
Somehow I managed to make my way to our berths - one middle and an upper berth - followed by my uncle looking much the worse - with his notoriously long hair - after the battle to get to our berths. My uncle pointed to the upper indicating that I should climb up without any delay and panting in sheer exhaustion kept down the overnighter, sat down on the berth and mopping his forehead with a large towel, observed
‘Place gets more crowded with every passing day. You would think the whole city has managed to make its way to the station to see somebody very
loved go off.’
I pointed out that there could be no greater fan of the city than yours’ truly and grinning in a particular way my uncle found most irritating said ‘Why missing Usha already ?’ referring to my uncle’s secret sweetheart.
I got a baleful glare in return and an admonishment to try and get some sleep as I had a tough day ahead . Shaking my head I lay down on the berth my thoughts once again going to the perceived ordeal ahead and wondering how a man in his early youth can sleep with the prospect of facing the hangman’s knot the morrow.
Sunlight was streaming through the open window and making my eyes blink in sleepy fury. Suddenly I realized I had fallen asleep sometime in the night and had woken up due to my uncle’s incessant desire to make me share a cup of coffee with him. I got up from the arms of Morpheus and blinking away the last vestige of what had been , in the context of my anxious state, a remarkably good night’s sleep, I reached for the cup of morning coffee which my uncle had so thoughtfully purchased from a passing vendor. I could see that my ability to sleep in the midst of all the commotion prevalent in all Indian trains in the late morning- it was close to ten- had drawn the attention of my co-passengers and they were looking at me with a mixture of amusement and amazement.
‘Good Morning’, my uncle declared.
Wondering what was so great about the morning in which I was being sent to the place where all newcomers get a solid welcoming party from the seniors, and preparing to face the day in much the same way as a philosophical goat would when faced with the prospect of being introduced to the friendly neighbourhood butcher, I slid down to the lower bunk and stretched out for the cup of coffee. I sipped the coffee with some trepidation and muttered ‘Horrible. Wonder what will happen in the next four years. Can’t brew a proper cup of coffee. Imbeciles’.
‘Better get used to this. Its all you will get in the next four years. It was extremely important for homegrown dicks like you to get a taste of the real world.’
Coming from my uncle whose only claim to fame was not leaving Calcutta for all the best job opportunities in the world, it sounded extremely funny. I however preferred to quietly finish my cup of strong medicine and went off to the toilet which, as I was apprehending, looked as if an entire herd of buffaloes had just defecated in it and not washed up. After all, the stomach rules the bowels and the morning coffee is the catalyst that ensures the early morning ebullition of my large intestine. Muttering under my breath and preferring to wait and see how the hostel ones would look like, I came back and meeting my uncle’s triumphant gaze, knew the early bird had indeed cleared its bowels of the unwanted worms.
For want of better things to do, I climbed up to my bunk and to no one’s surprise was back in the arms of Morpheus in a jiffy.
To the uninitiated, the Joint Entrance Examination for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology located at Kharagpur, Madras, Kanpur, Bombay and New Delhi and the Institute of Technology located within the Banaras Hindu University campus at Varanasi is conduced yearly and the 2000 odd students selected are deemed extremely lucky and intelligent ( in my case, the declared feeling amongst friends and immediate family on hearing about my selection was almost totally luck and almost no involvement of intelligence and to the more envious lot, a computer error). I had the fortune of going to the selection - called counselling - at IIT, Kharagpur with my father who insisted I take up Chemical Engineering (he loved and still loves reading anything he can get his hands upon and he pronounced after due scrutiny of the varied magazines and other literature that this is the Engineering discipline of the future).
My father’s presence did nothing to intimidate the college students enjoying
the opportunity of interacting with the freshers, some of whom would be
taking admission in their College, and thus they went hammer and tongs at whoever they could lay their hands upon. I was called aside by a group of seniors at the end of the preliminary counselling session conducted by the Dean of IIT, Kharagpur; and was asked by a spectacled moron standing at the forefront of the group and who had difficulty in speaking without pronounced pauses probably to search for appropriate words; to name of the last blue film I had seen. Here I was, an Iyer Brahmin, wide eyed and innocent having led an extremely sheltered life with assorted uncles and aunts and other relatives, and thus had absolutely no idea of what the other guy was talking about. For want of better comprehension, but with the fear of sounding naïve, I was about to blurt out none, when I remembered that I had seen Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea a few days back and figuring that nothing can be bluer that a movie shot almost entirely underwater gave the honest down to earth reply.
‘I can think of one actually.’
‘One, eh… which one’…one of stragglers asked.
‘Twenty Thousand leagues under the sea’, I replied.
The next thing I realized was a feeling of being in a cage surrounded by laughing lunatics in probably the same way as a chimpanzee in a zoological garden enclosure feels, when spectators spend good money to watch it lead a normal day to day existence, carrying about its mundane affairs like eating a banana which some good Samaritan had handed over or jumping through the hoop which the zoo-keeper had so thoughtfully provided for in its cage.
‘ A fresh one’, somebody declared in the conglomeration, which was gathered around me.
‘Bugger was actually serious’ another exclaimed looking at me abject wonder in about the same way as a batsman would when Anil Kumble actually turned the ball from leg to off.
‘Abe , naya dhakkan aya re’ one of the assembled crowd exclaimed excitedly to another group which was enjoying a nice tete-a-tete with another bedraggled fresher.
At this, the other group which I suppose was looking for fresher (pun intended) pastures trotted over to where I stood looking at me with not little curiosity . I was trying to figure out the reason for this extreme reaction to something I figured was a routine answer to a routine question, when the same answer and question was repeated to the new group who also seemed to enjoy it thoroughly.
‘Abe, pondy nahin pada kya’ another asked. Loosely translated it means ‘Haven’t you ever read a pondy?’
Before I could configure enough strength and ask him to kindly elucidate - I was not about to request to inform me what special precautions one takes to read in a Union Territory - my father came looking for me and exclaiming that I had to fill up some more forms.
When, with a feeling of much mystification at the peculiar ways of the senior world in the IITs I followed my father out, I could feel the eyes of the seniors following my movements with sheer amazement.
‘Abe , yeh to BHU mein mar jayega’ I overhead someone informing his neighbour with a hand extended in my direction.
This incident added extreme fear in my already befuddled mind about the fears of ragging and the treatment I would have to face at the hands of my seniors. I had heard horror stories of midnight raids on the freshers’ quarters by packs of seniors and indescribable acts of horror perpetrated on them and
this incident only heightened my fear.
I had just finished reading Alice in Wonderland on the train journey from Kharagpur back to Calcutta when, probably as a result of extreme reactions brought upon by perusal of this enduring classic and the close encounters with the seniors during the course of the entire afternoon, I felt the urgent desire - much like the first impulse of Hindi film actors and actresses to break into a sad song during moments of distress - to write a poem and this is how it turned out to be:
You have no notion how horrible it will be
and it will be no great fun you will see
when they take us in and throw us to the deep IITian sea
where the seniors shall be waiting with unconcealed glee
and in spite of our entreaty and our heartfelt plea
shall dip us head first into the deep ragging sea.
Such were the thoughts that July night as I stood at the entrance to Platform No 8 at Howrah station waiting for Himgiri Express to come to a slow halt at the very edge of the entrance was and seeing with unseeing eyes hundreds of people wandering around in all directions and the air was punctuated by assorted sounds in Bengali, Hindi and the occasional cry in English.
My youngest uncle, who had been chosen by consensus in my family, to perform the good Samaritan act of depositing me at my new address broke into my reverie
‘Raja, don’t start drinking out there’.
I looked at him and nodded in the typical south Indian way where a horizontal motion of the head means Yes and a vertical shake No.
‘And don’t mix with bad company. Look for boys from good background from Brahmin culture without any bad habits’.
Again an affirmative nod from my side.
‘Come let us get in’ my uncle said and to this choosing action to words, I proceeded to get into our compartment holding on to the large suitcase which contained enough clothes to last a month, followed by, holding on to a large overnighter which contained among other things a bottle of home-made pickle and a set of bed sheets and pillows; my uncle.
I made my way through the throng of people standing in the passageway and squatting on the seats, finishing last minute monologues and taking advice from their friends and relatives. As is the custom in India, any departure by loved ones is almost always accompanied by lot of crying and emotional display, an exercise in sorrow and the more one cries at the time of departure, the more his affection is deemed to be. And as usual, the whole family deems itself necessary to present themselves in all the bridal finery for the visit to the Station and a ritual send-off for their loved ones.
Somehow I managed to make my way to our berths - one middle and an upper berth - followed by my uncle looking much the worse - with his notoriously long hair - after the battle to get to our berths. My uncle pointed to the upper indicating that I should climb up without any delay and panting in sheer exhaustion kept down the overnighter, sat down on the berth and mopping his forehead with a large towel, observed
‘Place gets more crowded with every passing day. You would think the whole city has managed to make its way to the station to see somebody very
loved go off.’
I pointed out that there could be no greater fan of the city than yours’ truly and grinning in a particular way my uncle found most irritating said ‘Why missing Usha already ?’ referring to my uncle’s secret sweetheart.
I got a baleful glare in return and an admonishment to try and get some sleep as I had a tough day ahead . Shaking my head I lay down on the berth my thoughts once again going to the perceived ordeal ahead and wondering how a man in his early youth can sleep with the prospect of facing the hangman’s knot the morrow.
Sunlight was streaming through the open window and making my eyes blink in sleepy fury. Suddenly I realized I had fallen asleep sometime in the night and had woken up due to my uncle’s incessant desire to make me share a cup of coffee with him. I got up from the arms of Morpheus and blinking away the last vestige of what had been , in the context of my anxious state, a remarkably good night’s sleep, I reached for the cup of morning coffee which my uncle had so thoughtfully purchased from a passing vendor. I could see that my ability to sleep in the midst of all the commotion prevalent in all Indian trains in the late morning- it was close to ten- had drawn the attention of my co-passengers and they were looking at me with a mixture of amusement and amazement.
‘Good Morning’, my uncle declared.
Wondering what was so great about the morning in which I was being sent to the place where all newcomers get a solid welcoming party from the seniors, and preparing to face the day in much the same way as a philosophical goat would when faced with the prospect of being introduced to the friendly neighbourhood butcher, I slid down to the lower bunk and stretched out for the cup of coffee. I sipped the coffee with some trepidation and muttered ‘Horrible. Wonder what will happen in the next four years. Can’t brew a proper cup of coffee. Imbeciles’.
‘Better get used to this. Its all you will get in the next four years. It was extremely important for homegrown dicks like you to get a taste of the real world.’
Coming from my uncle whose only claim to fame was not leaving Calcutta for all the best job opportunities in the world, it sounded extremely funny. I however preferred to quietly finish my cup of strong medicine and went off to the toilet which, as I was apprehending, looked as if an entire herd of buffaloes had just defecated in it and not washed up. After all, the stomach rules the bowels and the morning coffee is the catalyst that ensures the early morning ebullition of my large intestine. Muttering under my breath and preferring to wait and see how the hostel ones would look like, I came back and meeting my uncle’s triumphant gaze, knew the early bird had indeed cleared its bowels of the unwanted worms.
For want of better things to do, I climbed up to my bunk and to no one’s surprise was back in the arms of Morpheus in a jiffy.
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