Jo Barse Sapne Boond Boond.....

Prologue

Nainon Ko Moond Moond Kaise Main Chaloon? Dekh Na Sakoon, Anjaane Raastein, Harini finished her rendition to receive a standing ovation from the judges in the finals of Indian Idol. “Before you head back to your seat, tell us what those drops of dreams are, covering your eyes?” the anchor asked Harini. “I am preparing for CAT, I would like to crack it and get in to IIM-B” Harini replied.

“Vidya come down and eat your dinner” her mother was shouting standing just on the third step of the staircase that led to Vidya’s room in the first floor. “Srividya if you don’t come now, I am going to bed now” Vidya’s mother was almost yelling in the middle of the night. “Mum, it’s just 1 o’clock I will come in some time, you go and sleep” came Vidya’s voice from the floor above. At around 2.45 Vidya came down to take her dinner and the thought that she was eating a little too early than her routine crossed her mind. She had been preparing for CAT for the past two years; her mother had insisted her that she take the exam in 2022 immediately after completing her Bachelor’s from IIT Powai however Vidya did not want to take any chance and prepared for two years after IIT. She was vaguely stuffing the food in to her mouth, she ate any food just for nutrition, her taste buds had parted ways with taste seven years back when she was preparing for IIT JEE.

This year CAT was taking a different Avatar, potential Top Notch Business Gurus would touch their answers on the Exams & Evaluation tablet from apple, the iAnswer and no more online exams on some old computer systems with intel I9 processor and LC displays. Vidya started late in her regular academia. But she never worried about the time which she lost before she joined the normal school. She delivered nothing less than excellence throughout her schooling and IIT days. Her mother was so confident that Vidya would make it to IIM the first time she took the CAT and when Vidya said she finally decided to take the big bad exam her mother had already tweeted “My daughter is on her way to IIM – B”.

“Mom I topped the English and Math sections in all the four mock tests that I took” Vidya said restlessly while unwrapping a big energy bar. “I know you would do well in English and math, tell me about cognitive thinking section.” Her mother said. “Yeah I topped it twice, other two times Nishant scored the highest in that section” Vidya replied not really worrying about that. “By the way D day is just two weeks away so rest up and take care of your health, you need to be in good health to take the exam” her mother advised. “B The W, did you know I will be taking the exams in iAnswer? We will just touch the answers” Vidya said. Her mother came close to her and placed both her hands on Vidya’s disappearing cheeks and said, “I know how good you are, you could close your eyes and still mark the answers to perfection” and tears started to roll down from their eyes and the deafening emotional silence was disturbed by the call on Vidya’s mobile. “Hey dad, what’s up”? Vidya answered the call. “How is my daughter getting ready for IIM? Have you completed your shopping and all that to go to Bengaluru? When should I look for an apartment in Bangalore for my sweetheart?” Vidya’s dad asked her and she responded with blush and with irritation all at the same time “Dad, thanks for your confidence. But I am yet to take the exam”. “I know how good my daughter is, she has a vision which is not just hers and how she has been toiling day and night to get through the exam, by the way I have already bought the gift for the future CEO of some top notch company.” He said. “Really? What is that? Also when are you coming to India?” she asked her father. “I will be there just one day before your exam to drop you in the exam hall and the gift is Apple iSee, the brand new eye ball motion sensing mobile” he said with an uncontrollable excitement.

On the day of exam like promised Vidya’s father was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car waiting for Vidya to come, who was still eating breakfast. Couple of minutes later Vidya and her mother both came out and popped in to the car. “Vidya can you please close that laptop and focus for some time” Vidya’s mother said, obviously she was worried that her daughter had not slept for three straight days. “Yes Vidya, give some chance to others..” Vidya’s father couldn’t wait for Vidya to come out of the exam hall so that he could hand her down with heriSee. After some wading through the traffic they arrived in the centre. “Vidya, I am sure you are gonna bell the CAT, so come back ASAP” her father said with a huge smile.

After what looked like a decade of wait, Vidya came out from the exam hall with tears in her eyes. “Vidya what happened?” her mother asked. “Vidya, congrats on making it to IIM” her father said with his hand stretched out holding iSee gift wrapped. She did not talk to both of them and went straight back to the car, her parents did not question her and went back to car and drove back to home. She did not speak any word and she knew her silence would be broken exactly three hours from then thanks to iAnswer which starts the evaluation as and when the candidates start answering the questions.

She was watching some old episode of Indian Idol on you tube and there was another minimised browser window connected to IIM home page which she kept refreshing every now and then. At around 5 PM she clicked on a bookmarked link that connected her to Indian Idol Finals of some old season. One of the two participants started to sing the all time hit Jo Barse Sapne Boond Boond from Wake Up Sid. Vidya minimised the youtube window while listening to the singer singing her song to victory. A refresh on the IIM page took too long to revert back and after some seconds the results link appeared out of nowhere and she instinctively clicked on the link still listening to the song from the minimised youtube window, after a couple of seconds Harini’s eyes found the register number they were looking for on the screen and after an alt+tab Harini’s eyes were wet as they were looking on the screen and the anchor was asking “Before you head back to your seat, tell us what those drops of dreams are, covering your eyes?” Vidya closed her eyes and heard “I am preparing for CAT, I would like to crack it and get in to IIM-B”.

Epilogue

Jo Barse Sapne Boond Boond Nainon Ko Moond Moond Kaise Main Chaloon? Dekh Na Sakoon.Vidya was sobbing those lines again and again in her mother’s arms “Mom, I have lot of vision but I do not have a sight. Every girl my age types on computer but I am on Braille.” Her crying was interrupted by telephone ring which her father answered. There was a girl Harini who passed away few hours ago and the call was from Shankar Nethralaya

Ode to S4

My iPod was in total control of the situation and was pelting nothing less than high octane music; thanks to the genius playlist Yakkai Thiriwas playing and genius himself was building towards arguably the best vocal outro. With each beat towards the end of the song my legs were automatically taking me towards the main entrance of Bangalore City Station and the song ended just at the right time when I reduced the volume to hear the legendaryYatrigan Kripya dhyanstuff and there was a reference to ghadi number dho chey char shoenye on platform number one. Since I beat the departure time by a “massive” 8 minutes I couldn’t really encourage the thought of a sojourn in the bookstall which I always visited giving a fake hope of some sales to the guy who manned it. I quickly strutted towards S4, escaping every physical contact from every direction showcasing greatest possible stealth. Right next to the door a huge chart, courtesy Arun Ice Cream was stuck with all the confirmed names. I was intrigued with the rather Outré action of the guy who was checking out the names as he scrolled his fingers vertically upwards and with almost machine like precision pointed to a girl’s name and started to scroll horizontally to right and tapped twice and walked in to the compartment with total displeasure.

I was scrolling my fingers on the chart just seconds before the engine weekly whistled some 19 compartments away from me before it set off on its routine to relocate some thousand folks from Hyderabad to Chennai. I stepped in to the compartment resembling the guy from that tooth paste ad displaying every tooth I had, yes her name was Joshna.V.Reddy and yes she was my co-passenger. I entered the compartment from the far end and was worried the train might reach Chennai before I reached my seat on the other end and it took what looked like a decade for me to arrive in my seat and with a loud thud I landed in my seat whilst not forgetting to display my tooth. The opposite seat was still empty however a bag was there and I consoled myself that she was somewhere in the train and will be back; after couple of minutes of eager waiting an antiquated aunty came and sat right across me. Why on earth would she do this to me? She was called Joshna.V.Reddy and yet she looked older than Eve’s eldest sister. My mouth closed ceasing to expose the tooth even to my brush and paste for next 14 hours until I reached Madras.

I went inside S4 following the disappointed guy with my thumb voluntarily pressing on the volume button of my iPod and my ears struggled not longer than a jiffy before starting to process another excellent number from Delhi 6. Without much of a struggle I settled in my seat and drifted to some past memories.

She was now scrolling her fingers on the chart and with a grand smile tapped on my name and entered the compartment. With CIA like intelligence I followed her just after noticing her name in the chart. Neha Khurana found her seat assigned by some random computer at the convenient corner closest to the lavatory where she could savour the delightful blend of some organic carbon compound locally called as the phenoil with a variation of aqueous urea. Seconds later I was sitting in my seat and the timing was almost perfect when she got up and left immediately, loudly whispering “he sits on two seats”, I could see the relief on her face as she left, she did not have to sit opposite to a guy sitting in two seats or she did not have to savour the lavatorish aroma for the rest of the journey or may be both.

I was staring at the empty seat opposite to me while thinking how I stopped to take note of the opposite seat passenger’s name or age or gender. There had been too many occasions when I had disappointed other girls who came in to the train expecting to find Brad Pitt for a co-passenger and on several occasions I had tasted my own medicine when I was expecting to find a Rachel Green, I must confess it was bitter.

The entire recap stuff brought a small smile on my face and it remained there until I came back from a small siesta. With one ear still tuned to the songs which my iPod was spelling out and the other ear trying to make out any possible message conveyed by the rumbling rail carriages, I became alert and saw a pink bag hung in front of me, an unfinished cup of coffee and a book marked Bittersweet by Danielle Steel on the small stand in between. I instinctively went back to an acceptable seating position and the siesta invited me again. Perhaps one hour in to the journey at around 3.30 P.M when the train was entering the borders of TN I was suddenly wide awake thanks to the sun who suddenly started to be hot and there was no bittersweet in front of me, instead I noticed a femina positioned classically on the face covering below nose, with a ray-ban goggle covering the eyes and the duppatta was taking care of head.

I was scared to look at her fearing her ray-ban goggles. The golden rule is never try to “Stealth Stare” someone wearing goggles unless you are wearing a goggle yourself.When I was thinking there was no way for me to get a sneak preview behind the iron curtain I heard a mobile phone ringing and was sure it was hers’ since that part of compartment was otherwise empty, my face immediately twitched in to a wicked smile that never manifested in totality as she was already answering the call through the hands-free. All I could do was curse my friend who was working in the R&D division in Nokia that was responsible for hands-free design. At around 4PM, femina had slid enough to reveal the lower face which started its descent some 15 minutes back.

Whichever part of brain that was responsible to gauge someone’sbeauty quotient had already kicked in to action and was giving its report. She was beautiful. She momentarily woke up to sit back in the position she started with and did not go to back to attend the nap, instead she pushed Famina deep in to her pink bag and took outbittersweet again. She directly went to her book marked page and started to read. Coffee and book for travel? That was totally my style I thought.

The journey was getting in to that place where there will be a certain moment of displeasure and it came near the Biriyani City – Ambur. The coach that was almost empty till that point was now filled with those men who speak in a base voice and wear only white shirt and #574F43 pant. A guy who looked like a professional chain snatcher came near our seats and did a small evaluation before deciding to sit next to her or almost on her and the remaining seats got filled too. Just a couple of deep breaths would have made some one high thanks to the alcohol that was evaporating along with the CO2 that was coming out of his mouth. I could no longer take it, after all she was the girl who drinks coffee and reads novel while travelling, she was totally my type, so I had to offer her a seat swap; atleast the guy who was sitting next to me was sitting next to me and not on me. I gestured if she wanted to swap seats and briefly her threaded eyebrows curved just enough to make itself appear above the goggles which was otherwise buried behind the coolers and in the same time two earrings with danglings started to move back and forth in unison.

A second later I was sitting in her place with the big bad guy’s hands on my shoulder, “Enna pa, papa bayanduchu pola? Adhu irukkatum nee enna avlo periya paruppa?”, Well what do you answer for that question?. I was thinking illa sir, konjam kye eduthuttu pesunga romba bayama irukku. Thankfully he was so drunk that he forgot the fact that he had a question that was still open. He fell asleep with his hands on my shoulder and was weighing more than a ton. After some quality earth moving he was on the floor. We both sighed looking at each other.

The peace inside the train was disturbed by the guy who was lying down, he was eating some imaginary delicacy and was chewing something with every muscle in his face trying to move in all directions and the peace returned with a huge phhhoooooowwwfollowed by some more chewing noise from his mouth. We both looked at each other and started to laugh aloud without any noise escaping; we both did not want to wake up the sleeping beast. When I looked out it was dark and the train was crossing Perambur. Two more stops and then Chennai central. I took my back pack and plugged back the ear phones of my iPod in to my ears which had slipped out during the earth moving. When the train was near Basin Bridge,chandsifarish from Fanaa started to play and I saw her tweaking her pink bag and we both stepped out of our seats carefully not to step on the beast which was most likely on its way back to Bangalore the next day morning.

Near the exit she looked back and mouthed bye and I replied with a smile and we got down to walk towards the station exit and the song was towards the outro and the famous whistling bit started when I realised I did not know her name and I was automatically running towards S4 where the guy who entered with displeasure in Bangalore was tearing down the chart in to bits.

Bloody Moron. My iPod was playing the brass band version of Emosanal Attyachaar.

T.G.I. My Birthday :)

It all started 25 years back on a gorgeous Thursday morning around 7AM; yeah that was when I did my debut on my vocation as a “Person”. What before that? Well, my sister used to do this “What were you in your previous birth”, once she said I was a load pulling donkey and on a different occasion while playing the same game she said I was a beautiful Russian girl as if there are ugly girls in Russia. Obviously I stopped playing that game from that point, perhaps she might have told I was Martin Luther King or the bad moustache guy from the world wars or even the world’s oldest tortoise which was still alive, and in any case I settled for the “beautiful Russian Girl”.

For so long my childhood was not too happening at least I do not remember scaling Mt. Everest. I was hospitalised twice during my tiny tot days, once I was totally blah so I was hospitalised and on the other occasion I was kind of blah so I had to be hospitalised. As I was getting older I was also diagnosed with “Tonsil “. Well this I must say has left an everlasting post mark on me, while getting treated for Tonsils I was prescribed, apparently with steroids and now I wonder where I miss placed my six pack ab? I was told after the operation they would feed only ice cream and only because of that I accepted to enter the operation theatre. It was true in a sense, and when I came out of the operation theatre I realised my worst night mare was manifesting itself in the tangible world, my sister was being fed with all the ice cream. Even today my father and my sister talk about how they had to go to Aaditya (one of the decent restaurants in Madras) and eat all the good food, on their way to hospital with a small cup of ice cream, now come on – I was the one who got operated. And then my sister learns to ride a bicycle, suddenly I was on the pillion seat with my foot inside the wheel.

When I was really young only couple of things really mattered to me and cheered me, of course when the news reader in All India Radio announced the schools would remain closed due to heavy rain that did bring in cheer but the true happiness came on the day of Diwali when my father used to get up early along with me to go out and fire the loudest of the fire cracker just to see the smile in my face and the other occasion was Dec. the 12th. My mom never missed to bring chocolate bags. The year long wait would reach the peak just on the eve of 11th when I used to eagerly wait to see the bag in her hands. The happiness multiplied when I arranged the “Caramilk” toffees per colour, blue and red in the heart shaped transparent box. Now don’t even get me started on how everyone liked the red one. In 1994 though it was a double bonanza, I claimed the “Bhramachari” Status just one day before my birthday and I was upanayanam-ed

Like most of the Indians I “would” have written Cricket in the religion field in any application form in those days. I still have the memories vivid, of me literally crying when India was humiliated at the Eden Gardens by Sri Lanka in the 1996 world cup, such was my passion towards the game. I wanted to join the Indian national cricket team some day. My dad encouraged me thoroughly and he used to come with me to St.Bedes’ where I used to practice for almost three years. He had such high hopes on me and during the Initial days of my coaching he used to accompany me every day. At some point I stopped playing in St.Bede’s and started playing for a different club and that was my peak cricketing days when I set a series of personal bests in bowling and the best being 4/0 which was recorded in Indian Express’ sports column. I have a feeling that my sister still believes that I can bowl 180 kmph and that I would make it to the Indian squad. Well sweetheart I am sorry, I no longer aspire to be a cricketer. I also used to practice Karate during my school days and went on to claim a green belt after which I won a South India level tournament in Kata, immediately after which I lost my interest in Karate.

I started in a school called Sir M.Venkata whatever, I myself am not impressed with those days. I don’t mind saying I was not such a performer in Sir M.Venka blah, possibly it was because of the school itself. At some point my mom thought that I was a goner in studies because of my almost Sourav like scores during his bad days. To Saurav fans, if this helps my scores were disappointing than his. My dad used to worry that someone from the ruling party might come looking for me since I was brutally murdering Tamil time and again in all the exams. My true alma mater is Karnataka Sangha where I joined from my 6th grade. That is when I started to get a feel of what actual education was. That was also where I made some real friends and these guys are still around for me. This is also were goddess Saraswati placed her boon offering hands on my head and gave all her blessings, I passed out from my 10th class with a decent score and for those people who know my sister’s legendary performance I bet her fair and square in English (only). When I was in 12th I knew I was not going to make it to any of the top medical colleges however I missed JIPMER by a mere 3 marks. I did not have much of a confusion in choosing between Anna Univ, IITM and BITS since I did not get a call from any of the afore said colleges.

My college days were too uncanny initially but later on I got used to that flavour. I met three of my best buddies in college and one carried forward from my school. Exam days meant that all five met in my place for “group studies”. I am not really sure how much of that time really went in to preparation, but the time spent remains as a colourful collage in my mind. Like any group our group had its break and comeback etc. Even during the college days my stability in being unstable continued, suddenly I wanted to be an entrepreneur and next minute I was preparing for GRE, only to become volatile again and to think should I open the GATE and bell the CAT? For those who don’t know me I did not do any of it. I sat for placements. The first company which I appeared for was Alfon, only one gal was selected from our college and I am not a gal. The second one was L&T Infotech which I would eventually crack three times. Then my eventual company came to recruit, well this was my “gold coated with platinum” opportunity to take myself to my sister’s league. With all the blessings from my parents I would have cracked it with my eyes closed then you could construe how I did with my eyes open.

Completed my college and was waiting to join my first company, what seemed an eternal wait ended after almost one year after I passed out from college. Every day was a torture during that one year when I was at home, not only for me but for my mom and dad as well. I used to pester them about why things were not really going in my way. I and my mom used to sit in the terrace and speak for hours on several things. I used to feel very bad on my inability to pitch in and help but my mom used to constantly tell me things will be alright very soon. In one occasion the “Anti” in the next door typically eves dropping in to our conversation congratulated me for finally making it to L&T thinking that it was my first job offer(which was my third one with L&T during my wait).March 31st 2008 marked an important milestone in my life, I joined my company.

The clock ticking with its varying pace, hasty when I wanted it unhurried and dawdling when I wanted it to zoom has taken me through the trough and the pinnacle which I have thoroughly enjoyed. My mother waiting to feed me every morsel of food in my mouth pointing to the moon even today, my father who still loves to answer “which is faster, cheetah or leopard? Which is bigger Ganges or Godavari? , my sister who still sets benchmark for me and inspires me to raise my bar to join her league and friends that I can totally trust and relatives who are always there for me, life has not been “just sweet” but a “pair of sugar coated lips” for me to kiss  . My first 25 years have had both Kodak moments and not so Kodak moments but they will all remain as a beautiful montage for the rest of my life.