Wonderful Calcutta??

It has been a little over 8 months in Calcutta (or they say Kol-kata) and this place has failed to amuse me. One of the earliest cities of India is a big failure now in terms of development. We have immense population here, there is no dearth of people around here. Statistics reveal that the population here is more than a crore (count Howrah area as well)! That's a very huge number. 
Let me present it this way. Conveyance - no problem! This place has abundance of buses, taxis , shuttles, autos etc. The oldest metro runs in Calcutta but does not cover the pace at which the city is growing(when i talk about growth, by default, take it as population growth. The economic growth here is negligible, below par other metros which have come after this 'city').
Culturally- not diverse (as a metro should be , you will find only Biharis as outsiders)!
City Life- Centralized near and around 'Park Street'- the posh area of this place, its really posh with automated traffic lights(its a big deal in W.B, this city runs on manual traffic guards still).

Politics have been the famous subject of West Bengal, so famous that even small kids talk and when they grow , they do! I didn't know what trinimool was before i came to this place. I also came to know by a localite here this state used to be abundant in resources, money etc. And now it is debt-ridden! Then what the hell happened in 20 years that brought this condition. Let me put it in this way. Everytime the party changes, the infrastructure changes- or suffers a setback. A new metro construction has been stopped due to some political conditions( Sorry! I don't want to get arrested, pardon me for not telling the reason till I am here). So this metro is going to take - O wait! - years till the old party comes back again. Its a big DRAMA!


However this city has its own beauties. The old Writer's Building, the old Jute building etc. If you love history, you ought to visit the place. Under development has help preserve some of the oldest buildings during East India company time . The Howrah Bridge is still a wonder.

Cost of living- Decent or low. Calcutta is cheap in terms of money. Food is the favorite pass time of people. They eat and booze and eat. Maach(fish) is another thing people are crazy about .You just need to go any random shop and ask for maach, chances are more than 70% you nail at correct shop!

Climate - This place is never cold and always hot. I remember , the coldest month here is December when the temperature dips to 15degrees (yes, you read it correct , 15). Who on earth calls that cold.
Summers are very humid and this place can turn into salt producing machine in no time. Atleast my formals turn white every night.!

Last Day in College

Here is a break in sequence. (I apologize for that, i'll complete the sequence after i write the post).
Today (17th of May 2011, tuesday) is my last day in college.

I remember the first year, how much i hated this place. And now, infinite love! How gently my heart weeps! I just want to be here.

The thing is i just want to live a life where u can go to lallu's at 11 pm, prayag at 2 am and naini bridge at 5 am for some more years. I just want to play under the scorching 44 degrees sun for some more years. I want to attend the lectures for some more years. I want to... :(

Those four years , those masti ! seriously man! I am going to miss them all.

May be ,This is how the things work .
(This is my last post from 172.31.100.29 ) :(

Second Year (2008-09)

IT all started in mid July. This time with bit serious about studies, i planned not to do masti? (What was i thinking?) . Although later on things didn't turn out as planned , the masti was even more this time.
My room mate was Ashish Sethi and we were allotted room no 119 in malviya hostel. 'Deluxe room' as they call it because it was penultimate to the bathroom- the shallow swimming pool. Near to our room were the toppers of tronix on one side , the water man(i'll tell u why) on the other . The bathroom would always leak due to its poor sewage , water all over (and not just the water , water+brush-spit+facewash+handwash+.....). Water man didn't care whatsoever about the water on the floor. He would jump through them as if it were the water from first rain. That guy was one such piece .
MSc(Material Sci) was the subject of concern this year. I knew rest others would be easy to get. Right from day 3, studies were on ! And yeah, i started sitting on first bench to study .

AND THE D-DAY was over. Started with masthi (yeah! masthi , minddd it! rascala!) , we used to borrow the bike from a senior in our wing and would run it till its throat gets sore.On a college road, we would touch 90kmph.That wasn't all! Water -man (mootad, as we would call him) has a mopet. We borrowed it too. This time with a maximum speed of some 40 kmph(lol, old mopet it was!). I even ran the mopet through gutters in out college.

It was in second year i came to know about MAAL ROAD. It is the MAAL ROAD that would save us from the threat of extinction due to boredom in final year. I'd say, MAAL ROAD was brought to our college by the terminator from future! .Anyways, as the name implies a road where MAALS walk to college . I know i have not done justice to the definition , anyways i know u got the meaning.

Here is the map. From out hostel, we have a direct road leading to main building where lecture halls were there and an indirect path through GYM, MAAL ROAD to mail building. 2nd year, and we were following the direct path to lecture halls . After all, there was a JOSH towards studies.

First bencher i was. The other first benchers were:
Vaibhav Bansal/Baby
Ashish Sethi
Nimit Jaiswal(Occasionally)
Atif(Occasionally)
Anshul Sharma (Paonta)
Anshul Sharma (Later on , he moved to sit on the desk behind gals)

We would solve the problems given to class , we'd answer to questions given by the proffs. We wold sit with a library book open. Afterall, we were first benchers.

The Era of Ragging

X(some senior) :'Oye b***we! Naam Kya hai tera bey!
I: Deepak Pandey
X: Abe saale ,sir neeche kar,third button,thir-third button dekh!
I:Yes Sir
And he was walking with same pace as mine.
X: Abey saale B***n C**d, belt pehna hai! Tere ko rules nahi pata be m****r c**d.
I: Sorry s...
X:Sorry kya hota hai bh***i k. Utaar belt, abhi k abhi utaar.
I: Sir pant dheela hai, nikal jaayega .
X: Utaar be M****r C**d.

And i had to take my belts off the formals.
This was just one of the incidents which i remember the most. There are lot more when we were playing MPL(Its MNNIT Premier League, Cricket league). One of the incident was when we were made to field even during out batting.

However , Ragging was cool! I kinda enjoyed it . And what was the harm. They were never physical.
The guy 'X' was so deeply(if i may say!) moved by my respect towards him that he called me for a Room call the following day and actually gave his number and some books of second semester.
And Yeah! Everytime from now onwards, we would share a smile and some jokes whenever we passed by. I used to mock his tone (he was a saharanpuri guy with a typical 'jatt' tone) which he thought was natural for me too! To mention some funny such words :
Ball- Bole
Test-Tast
Bed-Bad
Pen-Pan
Topper-Toe-per

The Era of ragging lasted mainly between August - November 2007 with some bits in Second semester . By the mid second semester, I was BOND(as they used to call) among many seniors (and among a lot of final years of that time too).

July-August 2007

It was just a week into college and I was like suffocated . We were cut off from the outside world. Near to our hostel was Narayan Ashram on one side and the townsite of Govindpur on the other. I was curious to see Allahabad, yeah i was . So came the day . Jumped the walls of hostel to the outside world. A relief as soon as i landed into the interior of the Ashram.

Now was the time to see Katra, the shopping hub (LOL) of Allahabad. With all the calculations in mind to return during lunch, i caught this funny allahabadi auto, the so called 'VIKRAM'. Believe me ! this auto consisted of a body placed on a thundering motor. At one moment it will give you the feeling exactly like when you sit on a plane , a supersonic place! The noise ! Half the noise pollution in this world is accounted by allahabadi Vikrams. With such a ride, i reached Katra. Now what! All chaos. Scorching sun above ! 11 am in the morning, Allahabad is nearly 36+ degrees during July.All i could see was three roads ! Each one leading to nowhere near my purpose , the purpose of scavenging Katra. University Road it was which became my destination. After walking half a kilometer i was into the book hub of allahabad. Thousands of Books , Hundreds of Shops. H.K Dass -I bought it ! A couple of notebooks for the semester too. I used to write on my 12th standard notes earlier. Now i had the personal notebook for college ! Twas 12 am and i had to leave , i asked one of the vikrams passing by to stop.

Autowala:'Kaha jana hai bhaiyya ' (in typical Allahabadi tone)

I:(Damn! I forgot the place's name)'Baiyya college jaana hai,tagore hostel jaante hain?'

Autowalla: 'AAiye baitheye.(pointing inside the auto) Are bhai thoda jagah do,aap aage aa jao(to some man)'

Such is the auto of allahabad. Everytime a new passenger sweeps in, the old ones are reshuffled.

I:'thik hai bhai'

Vikram: gad gad gad gad gad gad gad dhad dhad dhad (till i reached near the streets of tagore).

In the auto, i met with a second year senior-Harshit Patel, Mechanical. Needless to mention, he was one nice senior i met first in college.

He: 'Motilal se ho?'

Me:'Yes sir'

He:'First Year?'

Me:'Yes sir'

He:'bahar kaise aa gaye ?allow ho gaya ?'

Me(with a grin):'No sir'

After a bit of intro and infos.

He:'koi problem ho toh mera number le lo , ragging wagging ho toh mera naam le kar bol dena ,nahi hoga'

Me: 'sure sir. Thanx sir'

and then i took his number .

We reached near Narayan Ashram. He left with all those 'dassna'(so we call now ) and i was left alone.

And then i had two options : To wait for the line of the first years and then somehow hop in to reach hostels or to follow the track back:jump the walls.

I chose the first one and the bunk was better than the N D Pandey's Chemistry Class.O believe me ! That guy can himself hardly listen what he talks. Near to zero decibels .

That was Friday and the for the next couple of days , i was joined by many partners.Civil Lines, McD. And yeah! half a month and i already started to hate mess food.

Day 1, July 23, 2007

Counseling, and i am in Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad (MNNIT). Electronics and Communication Engineering it was! Thousands of new faces and a fear of ragging amidst the joy of the new life . All is well!

Room Number 100 with four awesome room mates. Abhinav Tripathi , Ashish Sethi and Diwakar Yadav. Fun began from day 1. The WWE fight , who doesn't know it! We were masters at it with all the moves. Needless to mention ragging started from day1.

We were protected by thousands of guards .

Abe be**n C**d, sir niche kar , Bh**di k shouted one of the seniors

For the first time after so many years such were the words , i grinned.

'Kya be bha**e, hansta hai saale . RC laga dunga . Aur ye baal kaun kaatega , tera baap!'

We reached to our respective classes and then to hostel. Note that we were still forced to walk in lines between abuses and protected by Guards. So this was our route- Hostel to college to hostel and that's it .

Needless to mention , there is this hilarious guy, Pentium zero in Tagore Hostel , the 'co-founder' of Gupta Canteen. That guy , sometimes i feel , is from CID . He asks same question over and over to test your consistency .

And the first day gave the very first friend of this college - Vaibhav Bansal(Rotlu, as was his name back then!) .

We(me and vaibhav bansal) shared this common routine. Every saturday and tuesday(after freshers) we would visit Hanuman Mandir and Narayan Ashram . Yes , before freshers the only place to hang out was terrace of Tagore !

Day -53(yeah! minus 53 it is) May 30,2007

All the hard-work (notice!) and the prayers(again mark!) paid-off . With an All India Rank of XXX3 in AIEEE ,i was all set to enter the world of the 'holy hell' otherwise known as college.
Happy! i bet i was . A week earlier class 12th results were out and i got a good percentage . So May 2007 was turning out to be the month of joy for me.
Some moments in life are worth remembering and some you can't forget. So here is the picture. It was 11:45 pm , May the 29th, 2010. I was busy deciphering(!?yes i actully was) the radio circuit .( Pardon me Marconi) and then it rang. It was my friend. 'Tujhe nau hazaar pandrah aaya'.
I: 'sach bol?'
He: 'abe sach mein'
I:'tune kitna foda?'
He: 'X'(I don't exactly remember, sorry panks!)
I: 'congrats yaar . Ab kal treat hogi badi waali.'
He: 'haan be . Koi idea kaun saa college milega?'
I:'Abe mainebhi pehli baar hi lihkha hai AIEEE'
After some more talks we finally hang up.
And then i spread the news among my relatives at 12:30 am . After celebrations , all but me went to sleep . I could'nt sleep that night . All i was thinking was 'college me ab nahi padhna, bahot ho gaya . Ab masti'. The next morning , i went to cyber cafe to verify my rank personally.
Name : Deepak Pandey
AIR:3XXX.


O Yes! I shouted only to notice that people were staring at me !