Silence so Priceless

Right now I am feeling very happy. Its 5 am in the morning. I got up just an hour ago, to study Law. If I think about the possible reason why I am happy, probably I wont be able to think of any, but for the first time in IMT I am getting one thing which is priceless. Yes I am referring to silence. IMT is so full of noises and distracters, that I feel lost in this noisy world.

Now when I have silence in the outside world, I can feel the noise that is there within me. At times listening to the noise of our inner self is very important. It makes us think about the choices that we have made… it makes us think about our future life and many more things.

When I was a small child, in the morning I used to go near the river Ganges( My house was on the bank of the river, in Allahabad) and I used to sit at its bank for hours watching the flow of the river. My servant “jokhan Bhaiya” was always there with me. He used to think that I was crazy. He used to call me “babu”. Every day he used to tell my mom: “memsaab lagta hai bade hoke babu sadhu na ban jayein” (Madam I think babu is going to become a saint after he grows up).

Since then I have tried my best to spend some time alone. The moment I came to delhi I made sure that my flat was independent without any background noise of loud music. During winter after coming back from CL I used to sit on my huge terrace. Again I had a servant cum driver named Riyaj. He used to lit coal…yes lot of Imli ka koila..thats wooden coal…and I used to stare at the distant horizon trying to think about nothing.

After I came to IMT the only thing I miss the most is silence and solitude. I try to go for long walks, that’s the only time I am able feel the silence. I never get a feel that this room belongs to me. I haven’t shared a room for last six years so I feel quite uncomfortable in sharing it now. Specially when I am sleeping I need total darkness and silence…which I think is going to be a dream in IMT.
A dream...

"Celebrating Life"

Garlic bread with cheese
Cream of Chicken soup
Garden salad
Non-veg 7 toppings large pizza with extra cheese
Country feast Veg pizza with extra cheese
Ice Tea

This is what we had at pecific mall tonight. Me, Deepak and Gaurav went there to celebrate. No it was not any birthday, no one was getting married either. If Kshitij anand is a brand then its positioning is with the punch line:

“celebrating life”.

For last three days I was feeling heavily depressed. There was no specific reason, or may be there was some reason about which I didn’t want to talk about.

Then I had this huge FAM project, and I was not getting any clue about how to go about it. So I called my girlfriend, she is very good in accounts and her father is one of very famous CAs of Bombay. Her grandpa is also a CA. So she is having accounts in her genes. I am telling all this to people who make fun of me in matters relating to accounting, once I meet my gf I will learn all the fundas of accounts and then I will outsmart all those b.com grads.

So I called my GF and I asked her to do some research on revenue recognition. She is taking her mid sem exams these days. But she agreed to do my project. God has made GFs that ways only. They always wait for their BF’s call, or mail or scrap. And they are always ready to please their boyfriends.

And I am such selfish creature, I gave my work to my GF and went to pecific mall. As Gaurav puts it, to do some competitor analysis.

After a long time I was riding my bike for such a long distance. It was fun, I took my camera with me, we clicked lots of pictures( again to mail them to my gf). None of us had much cash as initial plan was to eat Mcdonald burger only, that would have costed us 80 bucks, but we ended up spending 800 bucks, thanks to debit cards. Did someone say “impulsive buyer behavior”.

The Mysterious Girl

I wanted to write next article about Mathew, but he wanted me to edit most of the things so I decided that I would write about him later.

Before I start writing about mysterious girl (MG) some background information is necessary. I want to provide this information to my readers that I have a Girlfriend. Those who find it impossible to believe that a FUS( Fat, ugly and short) guy can have a girlfriend, for them its useless reading this blog.

I have a girlfriend for six years now and everything I do, I do it for her. For example I picked up this name Omkara on orkut. Actually whenever I ask my girlfriend whether she would marry me or not, she used to say “Pata nahi”, meaning I don’t know. So I told her that in case she decides not to marry me then I will kidnap her in typical omkara style and I will imprison her in my ancient haveli in my village. Then this name Rhett should also be very obvious to my readers. Next time whenever I meet my GF I will treat her the way Rhett treated scarlett O'hara in “Gone with the wind”. So the bottom line is I am as committed to my Gf as Osama is committed to terrorism.

She is a cool girl, takes everything sportingly. This T-shirt that I wear, with “you remind me of my next GF”, this was gifted to me by her on my last birthday.

I cant write much about my Gf as I have promised her that my first book would be about my love story.

So I was telling you about this MG. One Friday, when Omkara was released, I asked Deepak to accompany me to watch Omkara. He plainly declined, saying that he doesn’t like movies much. And Guys, I am such a big movie fan and I have made PVR so rich by watching so many movies in delhi that they could construct Spice world in Noida. In other words they have used my money.

So that Friday I went to Noida spice world, yes alone. Those who don’t know me let me enlighten them, I like watching movies alone and I have watched 99% movies alone only. I love being lonely.

That Friday night I could not watch Omkara as it was houseful. I came back to my hostel feeling as disappointed as Sachin feels after getting out on Zero. That night me, Mathew and Deepak drank Vodka. This Mathew Video thing happened that night only.

Next day I got up at 1:30 and while going for lunch I had decided that I was going for the Movie, 3:40 show. I was sitting at the so called dining table all alone. Then suddenly a very beautiful, elegant and graceful girl came in front of me. She was holding a plateful of Thali and searching for a place to sit. She said hi to me and sat in front of me. A girl saying hi to me was like Mussarraf getting nobel peace prize. I replied back in as decent manner as possible. But this song from the movie road, “Hi jo boli to babu ko bekabu kar gayi re”, was already playing in my mind.

So MG was accompanied by her roommate. Her roommate was also beautiful and sober. Her roommate was from IB and MG was from HR. Suddenly they started talking to me. Talking to a girl on lunch table is the most difficult thing in IMT. I had to concentrate on so delicious Food, had to evaluate how beautiful the girls were and at the same time I had to sustain the interest of the girl. And I am very poor in multi tasking.

MG was feeling very homesick and depressed too. What a common thing between me and her. Then we talked about Ghaziabad law and order situation, compared it with that of metros like delhi, Mumbai and kolkata. In the process she told me that Friday night she went to watch Omkara but couldn’t get the tickets.

For the first time I was enjoying my conversation with a girl in IMT. She sounded mature. Most of the time we talked about the movie Omkara, again the common thing was that both of us were big movie fans. She liked movies of Govinda and me of Rajnikant. The whole conversation was so interesting that I didn’t want to leave the table, so I kept on eating more and more missi rotis, and I was eating it very slowly, chewing It properly. After eating 12 missi roti I had to get up otherwise I would have soiled my pants there only.

After getting up I went to the wash basin, thinking and wishing that this conversation would have lasted longer. Before I could have kept track of my thoughts I was in front of her again and I said something which will embarrass me forever.

I said:
“I am going for the movie, if you want you can come along.”

Both MG and her room mate were stunned by this offer of mine. I mean they hardly knew me. Her roommate who was very nice to me till now (As she was from my home town), looked at me with those I-Know-U-the-deadliest-despo-of-Dynamic-city-of-Ghaziabad looks.

I was already regretting about my offer. I was expecting some harsh reply from MG. But through non-verbal communication she said: “What a silly boy you are”

She asked for my phone number and she said that she will give me a call if she decided to go for a movie. That’s the beauty of HR people, when they say No it sounds like almost-a-yes.

I knew she would not call. That call never came but let me tell you guys, FUS guys like me also have high hopes at times.

Finally at 3:40 I bought my ticket, and watched the movie. I thanked MG for not coming for the movie as movie had such awesome dialogues like Kood M*******, and songs like Bidi jalayle…I almost started dancing. I would not have enjoyed this movie with a girl.

Then after coming back from the movie I met Deepak, and I narrated the whole incident of me and MG to Deepak. Deepak looked at me the way we look at smashed earthworms. He said: “ What have you done, You are from IIT and you are not supposed to do such an act.

“Bas mistake ho gayi yaar, but don’t tell me what an IITian is supposed to do”

I mean, I am fed of being told what iitians are supposed to do and what they are not supposed to do. People tell me Iitians r not supposed to go to Indian potty, they are not supposed to eat with their hand. Are iitians not supposed to be themselves? Last thing that IIT would have taught us was how to behave in a social set up. I guess all It taught was to set examples and change the rules of the game so that others could follow.

So Deepak gave me the verdict that this MG would think that I was desperate.

“very soon every girl in IMT would stop talking to you thinking that you are despo. And what will happen if tomorrow you take an HR elective and she becomes your project partner?”

“I won’t ask for any project meeting and I would do all the project work all alone then.”
“What should I do to repair the damage”, I asked.

“Now don’t look at MG and don’t try to engage her in any conversation, may be slowly she will forget”, he said very thoughtfully.

In my entire life I was considered a nice harmless guy, so this new label of despo guy was making me anxious and nervous.

On Monday I spotted MG in acads block, as per plan I started looking away. But she said a big hi to me and straight away started asking: “how was the movie” I told her about the movie including kood wala dialogue and why I liked beedi wala song so much. She was pretending that she didn’t think of me as a despo guy. I was feeling relieved. I asked her if she had watched the movie. For ten seconds she couldn’t answer and then she said, “no I haven’t watched it and now I am not planning to watch it as it’s a very rusty movie”. Her eyes betrayed her. She was lying to me. I could read her mind. Did I tell you guys that I am a mind reader. I could not understand why she was lying to me. “May be it’s a convention to tell a lie to despo guys” I thought.

Then very slowly and gradually she stopped talking to me, through her non verbal communication it became evident that she had labeled me as a desperate guy.

Just before QTBD mid-sem I was feeling sleepy, lot of course had to be covered. A sudden idea came to my mind. “if she considers me a despo guy let me show her that I am despo”. I thought. After all we all become what society labels us. Ask any criminal he would tell you that. So on that QTBT night at 1:00am I sent an sms to her asking her to come for a cup of coffee. I am sure even if I would have asked any of the security guards, even he would have refused a coffee with a despo like me. I thought she would not reply. But she replied and bluntly told me,”look you don’t deserve a coffee with me”.

Instead of feeling sad at being turned down I felt happy with my new label…despo guy.

Since then I keep sending mails to her. No I don’t send those “please send it to ten million people or nothing will happen in your life” kind of forwards. I send personalized mails, yes long mails. She never replied and whenever we meet in mess or acads block both of us communicate only non verbally. She looks at me with disgust and I enjoy my new label.

I am reproducing one of my mails as it is. I am looking forward to my readers’ comments, but please don’t ask the name of the girl, I might be required to do some elective with her.

chhoti malkin,
aapko hum gareeb ne ek chhitti dali thi, uska jawab nahi diya aapne. Khair chaliye kauno baat nahi sayad aap kaam-kaaj mein mashgool rahi hongi...hum to khalihar(jobless) aadmi hain, is liye hamne socha ki aapko ek aur chhithi likh dein aur shukriya aada kar dein hum gareeb ko “Hi” bolne ke liye. aapka sevak
Budhi heen

As usual she never replied….but IMT I am loving it!!!!!!

Two Evils

Taking forward introduction of characters, I want to introduce two more characters. One is GV and other is Mathew. These are two evils of IMT, very touchy about me saying anything about them on my blog.

About GV, This guy has lived in Hostel for almost entire life. Whenever I meet him our discussion is centered around either girls or which brand of daru to drink on coming weekend. Drinking alcohol is the only thing that he plans in advance, rest of the things just happen by chance.

Whenever I encounter him in the mess, with his wide lively eyes he would say:
“Boss daru peete hain”
If I nod affirmatively he would say, “Lets drink xyz this weekend”.
He would say xyz in such a style as if he is talking about blue label, but xyz happens to be some cheapest daru in town given to Jawans on our siachen border to keep their bodies and heads warm and cool respectively. I normally don’t drink anything less than signature( Yes I have classic choices), so each time I have to turn down his request.

Second thing unique about this guy is, he refers to girls as chicks. I mean be it any girl, he would call her chick. I am sure if I take him to my house and ask him to meet my one year old daughter, he would smile mischievously and he would say,

“Kshitij, you have got a nice chick.”

But believe me guys, this guy is such a sweetheart, even if he calls my wife or daughter a chick I won’t mind. I will tell you why. He is a real “friend-in-need, friend-indeed” kind of a guy. In every Economics Quiz he sits next to me and he makes doubly sure that I get as many marks as he gets. (He is having Eco background.)

Once I was feeling heavily depressed and there were three quizzes lined up the next day. I thought of going to Deepak’s room. But I wanted to give Deepak his own space and I didnt go to Deepak’s room. I sent an sos message to GV. I didn’t write anything about my depression but this guy sensed it. He asked me to come for a walk. This was around one am. Just by looking at my face he knew that there was something wrong with my mood. He didn’t ask anything about my problem, that’s called ideal companionship. I mean when a guy is depressed, the last thing he wants to talk about is his problem.

So that night GV talked about Chicks in his life and other interesting stuff, but you know the best part was he never showed any hurry to go back to his books. I mean once he knows that you are facing some problem his problems take absolute backseat. That night we talked for about two hours. Needless to say next day both of us screwed up our quizzes.

Guys, Stuff related to Mathew will rock the whole of IMT, so wait till I take his permission.

introduction of characters

First things first, If you spot a guy in the campus wearing only barmudas…its not a pagal imported directly from Ghaziabad railway station, Its not a new professor either, Guys its me. Dhobi has stolen all my pants and shirts and I am left with only formals and shorts. I know those shorts are really short. Me going to mess wearing those, is like Mahatma Gandhi going for evening prayer in his dhoti.

I am starting this new blog about IMT and my experiences with truth. When I came to IMT I was very lonely and depressed. Somehow I was not liking this place. For first few days I didn’t speak to anyone. I was withdrawing in my own shell.

Then during Outbound training, I was looking at people doing crazy things and seem to be enjoying. I mean it’s really funny to watch a girl crossing the web of nylon wires (Assuming there is current in it) and all the guys helping the seemingly helpless girl in crossing the web. They call it team work.

The whole outbound was so funny but I was feeling too depressed to even move a bit. Most of the time I was observing people and I was missing my IIT days and my CL days.

Then in one of the exercises one had to introduce himself. I saw this guy Deepak. He is a guy of average looks, innocent eyes and innocent spectacles. I would not have noticed him as he looked so average. But this guy gave his introduction in style, with lot of one liners, amazing sense of humor. And the best thing was he could laugh at himself. I observed him through out the day. This guy was home sick too. A person good at heart who can’t say no to anyone, who had seen lots of ups and downs in life. By the end of the day I knew that I have a friend for life.

From next day onwards I started enjoying IMT, my sense of humour was back and then started the silsila of non-stop one liners and laughs between me and Deepak.

SALSA:

They have started salsa classes here. For last one year I wanted to learn salsa. For Salsa you need a partner. I knew, search of a partner would be futile for me. After all who would like to dance with a short, fat, bald and depressed guy like me. As I had expected, all the girls were booked even before salsa classes were announced. I asked Deepak to be my partner. He jumped away from his bed and gave me those are-you-a-homo looks. With a cool mind I gave him my reasoning firstly why I can’t be a homo and secondly how badly I wanted to learn salsa. As I told you this guy can’t say no to anyone for almost anything, so he agreed. Finally we reached the venue for salsa. I felt even more depressed watching those beautiful girls with their handsome salsa partners. I tried to hide my depression with my humor and one liners. Those two phoren imported students were going to teach us salsa. Btw I have a crush on one of those French girls, yes the one with long hair. Then a girl named Urmila came in the dance room. She was searching for a salsa partner. In order to check who was more ugly between me and Deepak, I asked urmila to choose her salsa partner. Needless to say she selected Deepak(Deepak being less ugly). Now I was the only stag in the whole dance room. I came out of the room… the song Jindigi ka safar hai ye kaisa safar... playing in the background of my mind. I guess Deepak sensed it and he also came out of the room. I was back to normal again, then half the people present there were thrown out because room was too small for romantic steps of salsa. I felt so happy, like a saddist…I mean I felt relieved that even handsome guys were not able to learn salsa.

Then In the evening we met Aritri in DD’s room. She was coming straight from salsa classes. I told her about my desire to learn salsa. She readily agreed to teach me. I liked her immediately. She reminded me of my sister in many ways. First of all she is very caring, gives me lot of respect and she carries lot of energy around her which makes the whole environment very jovial and light. I can say anything to her without being conscious of the fact that I am talking to a girl. I like to tease her by calling her princess of Bhutan. Actually she has cute small eyes which make her look like a citizen of Bhutan. She calls me Kshitij ji. Now I have asked her to call me Kshitij Da.

Well something about DD. He is the most handsome guy of our section, if not our batch. With his spectacles and all he looks very calm cool and focused guy. Let me confess here, guys I feel so jealous of DD, especially whenever I am sitting on the first floor of library, sunset time and suddenly I see DD going for a walk with a gorgeous girl, DD holding hands( of course his own hands). Whenever with a girl he walks very slowly, a distance between mess and IMT gate takes almost two hours. Scene is like, DD explaining finer points of life, giving lot of Gyaan, and making 3 dimensional pictures in the air with both his hands, hardly looking into girl’s eyes. And girl looking into DD’s eyes almost non-stop, thinking about his handsome looks and lively eyes at the same time pretending as if she is understanding the conversation.

One day I was telling Deepak how much I feel jealous about DD’s walks. Deepak told me a very funny thing. He took a long puff from his sutta and said: “Kshitj u don’t know it, but all the girls find you handsome too and they are eager to grab your attention.”

This was the most funny thing that I have ever heard. I knew Deepak was trying to console me and I felt happy about it. I asked him about the reasons behind his statement. He could not give any reasoning apart from the fact that I ask intelligent questions in the class. I told him that one man’s intelligent questions might be another woman’s stupid questions. I still remember how Divya scolded me for asking too many questions in MM class. I still feel scared thinking about that. And now whenever I ask questions I make sure that I am not waking anyone from their priceless sleep.

So after getting encouragement from Deepak about me being handsome, I asked him a question. I asked Deepak that If I asked a girl to go for a walk with me, would she agree. To prove his point Deepak told me that no girl can resist a walk with me. That was like too much. I sat near our mess and asked every girl (whom I knew) to go for a walk with me. To my surprise half of them agreed. I felt happy after a long time. I asked DD, Deepa, Aritri and whole of our gang to join for a walk from IMT gate to Kavinagar. It became like a dandi yatra. I tried my level best that everyone was enjoying. And you know guys, when I want to entertain people then I am the best entertainer in IMT.

Here let me confess one more thing, why I am seeking attention of girls…I mean its not that I want to enter into a relationship or anything. In fact a relationship would be the last thing that I would think of in IMT. I am happy with my life and don’t want to put it into a mess. It’s just that I don’t want to spend my last two years of college life without interacting with girls. And here let me confess one more thing, all said and done, girls do bring in a different perspective on any problem in hand.

In fact I make it a point that I interact with everyone. Be it a guy or a girl. And I get to learn new things from everyone. I get lot of feedback from people and I try to improve myself. For example DD is very good in oral and written communication. He was my partner in debate prelims, from him I learned the importance of practice and research. It was amazing to see him handling his anxiety.

One of my friend named Manik lives in my wing. From him I learned how to constantly innovate new things. Till now I have not seen any guy as proactive as Manik. He is handling STP…making new computer games. He is a perfect material to become an entrepreneur. He has designed a new game of car racing and he has put my picture on the game as he wanted the driver of the car to look aggressive, ugly and drunken.

Deepak gives me lots of honest feedback. For example he told me that I am suffering from that image of a teacher who is always giving unsolicited advice. He told me that instead of treating my batch mates as my friends, at times I treat them as my students.

I found this feedback to be true, but I cant help it. I mean Aritri and Ankit must have been in playschool drawing paintings of their house with wax colours when I was flirting with girls in APS Lucknow.

Here I met PP’s sister. PP was my batchmate in IIT. To remind guys of IIT 2001 batch, PP was Cultural Secretary of our batch. Ya you got it right, Prashant Pandey from banaras gang. So after meeting PP’s sister I again felt like a big brother. She reminds me of PP’s broad smile and pleasant personality. Although she is having two years of work experience but she looks quite young.

Another case in point Amrinder, he was my student in CL. He offers so much of respect to me, at times I feel embarrassed. In any birthday party before eating his share of cake Amrinder makes sure that I get a cake. Guys let me confess here, chocolate cake…I mean anything made of chocolate, be it dark temptation of black forest… I can even kill a person to get my share of chocolate.

So after getting so much respect I tend to go in that gyaan mode, where I am telling people what to do and what not to do. People like Aritri, Deepak or Ankit like to be guided. But in most occasions I am not able to make new friends…I mean I am not able to connect to new people.

This is going to be endless process…ya both improvement in my personality and writing on this blog.