Chapter 6 – Eight Point Someone

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.