Thanks to all the trust put in me by my family and friends, I cleared IIT-JEE in my first attempt itself. But since my rank was on the lower side, I joined the lesser preferred Department of Architecture at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Papa distributed sweets everywhere, Ma went to all big and small temples in Sahibganj and Ashu just couldn’t stop bragging among his friends. As I rode the train to Kharagpur, I remember sitting by the window and weaving sugary dreams. Life was sweet and I was ready to take a bite.
To be very true, it is possible to write an entire book about my four years at KGP. Those four years had so many incidents that defined to my life to a certain extent. I was a guy fresh out of the walled precincts of RKM; and KGP was an eye-opener in all its senses; the panacea to my naiveté and timidity. Within the initial few months itself, I had already made a lot of friends, many of them being girls. These new friends of mine were different from the RKM guys. They were wild, gregarious and most importantly, knew how to lie. While at one hand RKM guys were too direct on face, these people were diplomatic. Some of you might argue that a true friend needs to be forthright and blunt but for me, the white lies of my new friends helped me carve out a new identity for myself in a few months itself. I took up hockey, dramatics and creative writing and as the crowds cheered at my first play, I realised that being successful is more like romance than ego.
Life was like the computer games we played back then; a bump here and a bonus there. The best part for me was that I was able to digest both its sour and sweet part with equal ease and that made my experience still tastier. I had numerous crushes on different girls, many of them reciprocated the feeling, few of them went out on dates with me, some of them became my girlfriends but none of them was able to win my heart as Shilpi had done. Despite all my learning in this new phase of my life, I was still not good with girls. Most of my romantic endeavours ended in break-ups and breakdowns. Somehow, Shilpi was still that mirage I was running after but none of the girls were able to meet up to my illusions.
Due to my good academic performance in first year, I was allowed to upgrade my department to Industrial Engineering and Management. IEM was a ‘just for guys’ department and that made us more carefree and fun to be. Since there were no girls around, we did not need to impress anyone and so by that logic, could bunk classes, sleep during lectures, forget the assignments and be late and tousled. We were a close knit group and some of my closest friends were formed in this department. Pulling each other’s legs was our favourite pastime and it was quite a common sight of us sitting by the Nescafe and analysing the features of the girls from the management college inside the campus. Another circle of friends was from my hostel Radha Krishnan Hall of Residence, especially my wing. We had a lot of fun together, by either travelling to Calcutta, the city of joy and rosogullas or staring aimlessly at the mighty ocean on the nearby beaches. Apart from all the fun we had, KGP also introduced me to internet and movies, especially the critically acclaimed foreign movies. Part of my personality, good or bad, can be traced to my exposure to this window to the world. As they rightly say to sum it up, ‘you can take an IITian out of KGP but not KGP out of an IITian’.
As the years passed by, I kept on evolving into someone I must have hated a few years ago. I was flirtatious, opportunistic and plastic. I somehow loved making fun of girls (we called them non-males) on their faces, maligning my close friends’ names as part of dirty hostel politics and being thrown out of classes for sleeping. When I look back now, I see a lonely loser; too desperate to become the part of the ‘cool club’. One temptation which I was thankfully able to resist was of the forbidden; alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and one-night stands. The same continued during my internship at Indian Air Force, Kanpur where I was about to be taken to jail for picking up a fight with a local shopkeeper. I was slowly heading towards a morbid, dark tunnel which led to nowhere.
Just when I was about to become Satan’s slave forever, I got a call. And unlike Chetan Bhagat’s miserable potpourris, it was not God, it was Shilpi. It had been nearly four years and I had apparently forgotten her. It was sheer chance that she had called me thinking it was her brother’s number. The old me had never mustered enough courage to talk to her but this time, we talked for next half an hour as if we were closest of friends. She talked about herself; dreams, her fears, her failures and I talked about how I missed being the lost invisible and shy myself I was in Sahibganj. Somewhere deep in my heart, the old flames re-kindled and within a week, I broke up with my so called girlfriend. Despite all my moral descent, I was still a honest person when it came to love and needed to be ‘single’ to play my cards on Shilpi.
Meanwhile, my family at Sahibganj was having a peaceful life. Ashu was really good at studies but somehow wasn’t able to crack IIT in his first attempt. Since Papa was very busy, Ma decided to take him to Delhi so that he could prepare further. The day she was leaving for Delhi, Papa fell unconscious on the platform. But, he was normal within minutes and smiling like always. Things went on schedule and I brought Ma back from Delhi after Ashu was well settled. When we came back, we were shocked to find Papa ill. He had fever for a week but he had not told anything to us. With Ma’s constant attention, he started regaining his health. I returned back to KGP for my final year. But that very night, I got a call from Mamaji, my mother’s elder brother, that Papa had a heart attack last evening and was seriously ill.
I rushed back home to find that he had already succumbed to the attack. Ma was uncontrollable and Ashu was on his way from Delhi, completely unaware of the tragedy which awaited him. All my grief of losing my Papa needed to be repressed so that my family could handle this moment. For the next few months, I did the same as I swallowed all my pain to ensure that my loved ones could get back to their feet. Mamaji offered to take Ma and Ashu in their house till I completed my studies and got a job. I tried my best to be the guardian I was expected to be but somehow expectations have no boundaries and I guess I was not yet ready. Since Ashu was not able to study at Mamaji’s place, Ma shifted to Patna in a rented house. Those were really tough times as every one of us was trying to do the same thing – bury our angst and get back to life. But every time we were alone by ourselves, we cried and we all knew that. Due to his sociable nature and amiable demeanour, Papa was the lifeline of family and friends. His death had affected every one he had ever met. Ramadeo Babu aka my Babaji was not able to handle the shock of losing his younger son and peacefully died in his sleep six months later. In a way, Papa’s end was the beginning of a new phase in our lives; a phase full of difficult challenges and equally difficult choices.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Chapter 5 – The Mirage that sold a Monk
Teenage is just like an April downpour. It comes out of nowhere, drenches you in its magic and then leaves behind a completely transformed world for you. And it’s not half-childhood half adulthood as many might like to believe, it is an absolutely different stage of existence, physically as well as psychologically. It’s a time for experiences and experiments, for frivolity and frustration, for delusions and decisions, for logic and love. You are suddenly not that carefree kid anymore. You start to daydream about all those feelings you once laughed at. You gradually begin to question the things you once found obvious. Despite all the censorship the monks imposed, teenage was no different for the RKM boys. Since there were no girls around, the guys developed crushes for tennis players, movie stars and even, news readers. Many of them tried to cross into the forbidden territories; some found it fascinating, some repulsive and some even got caught and punished. Teenage in RKM stayed much longer than normal. It was one of those rare April downpours which went on and on.
But, I was different. While my friends were still struggling to understand the sudden changes in the nature of their dreams, I was trying to unravel the mysteries of spirituality under Bishwaroop Maharaj’s able guidance. We often discussed the ‘true meaning’ of God, happiness, soul, divinity, life and beyond. Despite all attempts by Papa to show that no one (not even a monk) was free from desires, I still wanted to join the monastic order and plunge myself further into the ocean of mysticism and theology. I often wondered if I had skipped the stage my friends called ‘teenage’. It was in the October of 1998 that I finally realised that my teenage had not gone astray. It was just that my teenage had arrived a little late for me.
I had come home for my week long Pujo vacations. It was a usual crimson skied Sahibganj evening. I was idly standing by the balcony when I saw her for the first time. There she was; someone I had never seen but seemed to have known since ages. In one word, she was just ‘flawless’. Chocolate coloured eyes, a body sculpted to perfection, an exquisitely gorgeous face and an enigmatic smile. I just kept on staring at her, mesmerised and speechless. I could clearly hear the loud thumping of my heart as it sent strange vibrations all over my body. My throat felt parched and there was this funny little gurgling ache in my stomach, which I can still feel but somehow can’t explain in words. I don’t know for how long did I stay there this way but it felt like aeons. It was as if weathers, years, civilizations had come and gone as I stood there looking at this splendid piece of art. Within seconds, all those years of discussions with Bishwaroop Maharaj became meaningless. Spirituality seemed like a big lie and the so-called ‘mirage’ seemed like the ultimate truth. As teenage crept inside, the monk in me retired to the concealed corners of my head, never to return again.
That night I asked Ashu about this girl, who had completely flooded my brains. He told me that she was the youngest daughter of the Sinhas, our new neighbours. He also added with a mischievous smirk that she was younger than me and Ma liked her a lot. I still remember that I didn’t sleep at all that night. I kept on looking out of the window at the moon and weaved the dreams of my future.
For the remaining five days of the vacation, my time table was scheduled to her clock. I knew the exact time when she came out for her morning walks, when she left for school and when she played badminton. I also remember stalking her on my broken bicycle to her school and trying to advertently overhear what she was chatting with her sisters, sincerely hoping that she talked about me. But, somehow she never seemed to notice me and we didn’t have a single direct eye contact in those five days. When I came back to RKM and told the whole incident to my friends, they simply laughed at me. Never before had an RKM guy fallen in love with a ‘real’ girl and everyone knew this for sure that I had no chance at all with ‘a dazzling looking girl who didn’t even know that I existed’.
When Bishwaroop Maharaj heard about it, he was infuriated like never before and asked me in clearly put words, “Aayush, you have great potential in you but you seem disillusioned by the chimera world of this Miss Bhayankari (Miss Dangerous). Now, you have to choose between the two – a life as a monk in the service of humanity or a life caught in the murky swamp of short lived desires.” I didn’t take more than a second to answer this one. Some of you might see it as foolish to forget my so-called ‘purpose of life’ for a girl I barely knew but sometimes it makes more sense to let your destiny be crafted by your heart rather than brains.
But shy as I was, I never got enough courage to approach her and tell her about my feelings. Forget telling about my feelings, it was tough even talking to her. The moment I started talking, my voice got choked and I sweated in buckets. Be it Calculus equations or the day’s weather, any topic she started with me ended in a strange stutter from me. Though most of my friends thought that Shilpi was just a passing dream, there were some of them who encouraged me a lot. One of them was Shanku who always told me that the only way to win her heart was to get into an IIT. There was this urban myth that only a dumb girl would turn down a proposal from an IITian.
I was never amongst the class toppers and was ranked 9th in my class when the Xth results came out. A place like IIT was a distant dream for me. I wanted to do graduation in World History but Papa wanted me to prepare for IIT-JEE and so, I also joined the herd. Most of the RKM toppers left for greener pastures like DPS RK Puram and DAV Shyamali after the Xth exams. Despite having an offer from Mother’s International School, I decided to stay and do my +2 at RKM. I was like the worm who was scared of the world outside his cocoon. Since all the toppers were gone, suddenly I became one of the more intelligent ones of the batch. That helped me gain more confidence and let me take a shot at questions which I would have otherwise not attempted. Debu (my best buddy during those years) and I would study for hours together; solving problems and then, many a times, fighting over our solutions. Both of us loathed outdoor sports then and we would skip the compulsory sports hour by hiding beneath our cots and solving Physics problems in a torch light. As my class ranks started soaring, I had a new purpose now – I wanted to get into IIT and then propose to Shilpi.
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