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.