Tripping: Chapter 3

This is part 3 of a series, scroll down for earlier parts

The incident in the car was a sure sign of things to come. The rest of the trip was to be dominated by the myriad ways of Gopaljee. It was obvious he had been up to much since we’d last met him in Kota. At every juncture on that trip, he surprised us with insights into what was, probably, now his life.

Take for instance the first night, when we went out to dinner at a place near our resort. Most of us had been introduced to alcohol in the year or so that we’d been in college but were still in the phase where we were eagerly gathering knowledge and experience around it. Gopalji however, was already learned in the matter. Or, at least, he seemed more and more so with every proclamation he made that night.

“Brandy is the illegitimate, and older, sibling of all whiskeys” he told us while still relatively sober.

A few drinks later, his views on marriage became public.

“Drink now guys, drink now like there’s no tomorrow. Once you get married, your wife will give away all your booze to the watchman.”

One of us was naïve enough to ask him, “Why the watchman?” I’m convinced it wasn’t me.

In an instant, Gopalji responded with a hiccup, “Who else do you think she’ll be cheating on you with? The watchman, it’s obvious.”

After yet another couple of rounds, Gopalji offered us his most precious gem of the night.

“Dekho yaar,” he said with the air of one who knows much more than his audience. “Everyone knows that the only, and only, route to good sex passes through the brown glow of a Jack Daniel’s before it ever reaches a woman”.

Then, in the style of a great Maharaja at the end of a beautiful literary piece, he pulled out his wallet with a flourish and pushed a fifty into the palm of the waiter nearest to him.

His gesture may or may not have explained why every waiter all the way till the exit saluted us on our way out. It may or may not have explained why, in a drunken gambling session that night, Gopalji kept borrowing money from Munnu. But it certainly explained why, the next morning, Gopalji’s wallet was lighter not by a fifty, but by a thousand and fifty.

I mentioned gambling, which is what we did most of the time owing to the absence of absolutely anything else to do in Daman. I also mentioned alcohol, which is what Gopalji did most of the time he gambled. That, and the sudden and untimely loss of a thousand on the first night, ensured that Gopalji fell into the most obvious of gambling pitfalls - trying to recover one’s losses. The net result, at the end of six days, was another thousand sized hole in his wallet and an even larger one in his ego.

Indeed, Gopalji had only two real states on that trip. One was drunk, and when he was in this state he did much of what forms the meat of this story. The other was the state commonly known as ‘just sobering up’. In this state he did just one thing, he complained. His complaint was such, “Arey fuck yaar, you bastards forced me to drink again! Now I have a splitting headache. You guys are too much yaar. Ahh, I need a brandy to clear my head”.

Understandably, this state quickly gave way to the first one.

I doubt, however, that even Gopalji would try to explain away everything that happened in Daman that year in the name of alcohol. For instance, the incident outside ‘Dara da dhaba’ with the taxi driver.

The taxi driver I speak of is the same guy who had ferried us from the station to the hostel. Yes, the same guy, even after our little ride got him pushed out of a moving car. So miserable was the state of Daman’s taxi industry that the guy jumped up in joy when we asked him to be our chauffeur for the remainder of the trip.

Anyway, one evening outside Dara’s Dhaba, Gopalji stumbled out of the car, still reeling from his tea time quarter of Signature (the financial losses had caused Jack Daniels and Co. to give way to far more mass market brands). He let the rest of us enter the Dhaba as he waited by the car. Then stepping up to the driver’s window, he gave the driver a wry little smile.

The driver responded with a nervous smile of his own. The look on his face said, quite simply, “The last time you had that look on your face, I remember falling out of a moving car. What will it be this time?”

Gopalji then snuck out a tiny bottle from his jacket and waved it at the driver. It was the quarter of Signature, with a sip or so still in it, clinging to the bottom.

“Here, this is for you, take it” he said generously.

“No thank you Sahab, I don’t drink, thank you.”

“Arey come on yaar, what are you talking about. Here, don’t be shy now, its all yours.”

“No no sir, I really don’t drink, thank you very much,” he said as firmly as a terrified taxi driver in Daman could.

Gopalji would have nothing of it though. He took the bottle and thrust it into the cabbie’s shirt pocket. Gopalji had the same demeanour one has while bribing a government official, while the official acts as though he’s doing one a favour by accepting it.

The driver, who figured that it was just easier to accept the damn bottle, stayed quiet, looking foolish with a tiny bottle sticking out of his shirt.

After a terribly large meal at Dara's, Gopalji cornered the driver again.

“So… now that I have made sure you have a good party tonight," he said pointing to the bottle, "why don’t you do me a little favour?”

The driver stared at the two sips in the bottle and wondered what kind of party it would have helped him have, even if he did drink.

Gopalji didn’t wait for the driver to respond as he continued, “Nothing much really, I am sure you get requests like this every day. No big deal at all.”

The driver stayed quiet, presumably out of fear.

“Basically, my simple request is – Why don’t you arrange a girl for me tonight?” said Gopalji.  

A girl, he said. A girl. The rest of us were just a little way down from the cab when one of us overheard Gopalji asking the cabbie for a girl.

“Gopalji’s asking the cabbie for a girl”, said the eavesdropper.

“A girl? Like a girlfriend?” asked another.

Tch tch, such little kids we were.

“No, you moron! A girl, like a girl for the night.”

Aghast, some of us ran back to Gopalji.

The driver was holding the quarter out to Gopalji, obviously quite distraught, “No please sir, I don’t know any girls, please, just take your quarter back and let me drive home to my wife and kids. Please.” Looking back, I remember the driver’s helpless expression as he said this and it’s safe to say that he sorely regretted having ever met us at all.

“No no, let it be. It’s okay, you take the bottle. It’s fine if you can’t get me any girls”, said Gopalji, very obviously hurt by the driver’s thankless behaviour. 

Having heard this conversation on getting there, for a few moments our shock momentarily transformed itself into nearly parental anger. We weren’t sure, however, what we should be more pissed off about, Gopalji seeking out hookers or him trying to get our driver drunk while he was at it.

A girl, Gopalji had said, likely just for the night too. Gopalji’s new life or whatever that was, obviously had more to it than we thought.

Also as inexplicable, was Gopalji’s little cameo at the Ghazal (plus dinner) function we crashed the next night. Only kind of drunk, Gopalji walked up to the organiser of the Ghazal event and mumbled something in his ear. The organiser nodded and smiled the false smile of an organiser, while pointing towards a table with both arms. I’m not sure what Gopalji told the guy and am even hazier on what the guy’s response was. Next thing we knew, however, was that Gopala had jumped up on stage and grabbed the mike. For the next five minutes, Gopalji treated that sombre gathering of drunk Ghazal lovers to ‘Jaana O Jaana’. Sure, the mindless automatons at Indian Idol may not have been able to appreciate the delectable rhythm of Gopalji’s first song, but the fat ghazal singer, put on hold thanks to Gopalji, clapped along till every lard of fat on him could feel Gopalji’s pleasant vibrations. As for us, we initially froze in horror seeing Gopalji on stage. Soon, however, we realized the audience was high enough to have hummed along to anything from Michael Jackson to a cat wailing. And Gopalji was a lot better than either, who cared what Indian Idol said. 

After the success of his performance, Gopalji drank with animated abandon that night. At some point, he came up to me and started to whisper, in a voice suddenly sober.

“Arey Sushant, you know why I do all this? Do you?”

I didn’t, and he proceeded to tell me.

“Sushant, soon after I’m out of college, pitaji will have me married and I’ll have to take care of the gaddi as well. These are the only years I have to have a good time. U.P. is not Mumbai you know, it's not even Delhi. Life will be very different post marriage.”

He slunk away before I could answer, and proceeded to be drunk again. 

There are many other little stories I could tell you from that trip, but the gist of each is in the same general direction. We were stumbling into adulthood, in a way progressively more cockeyed with every step. On this trip, one of us went looking for a girl, on sale. On subsequent trips, only more could happen. Little did we know then that these could be, in fact, the best years of our lives. 

Many more trips happened after this one, and they continue to this day. Those are of course, different stories. 

Tripping: Chapter 2

This is part 2 of a series, you can find Chapter 1 and 3 on the timeline

In the cab, I sat near the window at the back, diagonally across from the driver. Three others got in the back seat with me - Satpal, Sarthak and Anvesh on top of both of them. Munnu and Gopalji sat in the front with the driver. Gopalji hasn’t had an introduction yet. Well, Gopalji was Munnu’s cousin who we all knew from Kota. He’d shown up for the trip at a virtually no notice and with the whisper of an invite, in stark contrast to the minefield of difficulties that we had to skip around for all the others to be there. More importantly, he was a top notch entertainer, intentionally or otherwise. Bespectacled, sickly thin and with a hairstyle that he fondly referred to as, “Arey, Salman Khan in Tere Naam yaar”, he had us constantly worried. Worried that all that hair would cause his slender frame to topple over from being too top heavy. His habit of breaking into a frivolous swaying routine as he sang Jaana O Jaana, a song he had composed for Indian Idol 2, didn't do much to allay our fears either. Interestingly enough, the 'ji' in his name is not a suffix I’m attaching for respect, it’s just part of his name. Yes, back home in Farrukhabad, people of all ages called him Gopalji, including his parents.

Anyway, the cab being older than the invention of the gearbox, had one of those sticks in the side of the steering wheel for changing speeds. Gopalji sat snuggled in between Munnu and the driver, in the place where a regular car would have had a gear. With Munnu still weighing in the triple digits at the time and the driver being a regular roly – poly Patel, Gopalji’s svelte figure was a huge plus.

As the cab rattled along the highway, we began to see Daman for what it really was. Industrial sheds littered the landscape. The kind that looked like they were unprofitable despite being illegal. All around the factories was a grassy swamp interspersed by industrial wasteland. The water body in the distance was the Arabian Sea, if the driver was to be believed. It’s resemblance to a dumping creek was uncanny, however. At the edge of the water was a frothy, mud coloured strip of land. The driver told us that the locals called it ‘the beach’.

For my part, I tried my best to act like Daman was, in fact, the paradise that I had expected it to be.

“Guys look, a puddle with grass”, I pointed out excitedly at some point.

“Woah! Did you see that palm tree?” at another.

From the front, Gopalji asked the question I knew he’d been itching to ask since we’d left Mumbai.

“Yaar Sushant, how come there are no girls on your trip?” he said.

“Girls? Seriously Gopalji, girls? Why would there be girls? This is an annual guys only trip, hasn’t anyone told you?” was my response.

He wasn’t satisfied, “Par yaar Sushant, what kind of trip happens without some nice girls?”

Suddenly Sarthak cut in with, “Gopalaa, it’s becoming quite clear to me why you showed up all the way from Kanpur at half a day’s notice. Girls eh? Who do you think we are, pimps of some sort?” 

For some reason, that got everyone howling with laughter for the next couple of minutes.

While Gopalji may not have known it, my argument around this being a guys only trip wasn’t as obvious as I made it out to be. Before our first trip, we had contemplated having a trip which also had girls on it. Having spent some critical formative years in Kota, however, between us we knew a grand total of three women and one other by association. Moreover, our confidence in them accompanying us on a trip, just like with almost anything else to do women, was unmentionably low. So in a moment of manly pride stemming from not wanting to face certain rejection, we decided to not invite any of the girls we knew. I remember how it had happened.

“So are we calling any girls?” Anvesh had asked cautiously.

“Girls….hmmm..”, was Satpal’s only reaction.

There was a long pause before Munnu spoke up.

“Abey girls will spoil the fun, it won’t be the same with them around,” he said, rescuing us all.

I blurted out my relief, knowing fully well that if we did call them, it would have been Satpal and I who would have actually done the asking, and by that would also have been the ones who would have faced the rejection personally.

“Yeah yeah, good point. Very true, very true, male bonding and all.” I had said.

“Exactly, I’ve been wanting for this to be a guys – only thing all along”, was Satpal’s excuse for a cover – up.

And that was that.

Getting back to where we were in the cab, conversation was happening all around.  Gopalji and Sarthak were talking about all that had transpired with him since we’d last met. If I remember correctly, it was some very interesting stuff too, but more on that later. Satpal and Anvesh were chatting up the driver and trying to figure what we could see and do over the next few days. I oscillated between the two conversations while holding on to the door, just in case it burst open from all the pressure against it. Munnu, however, was uncharacteristically quiet. His only contribution to the banter was a mild grunt every few minutes. Also, I think things on the front seat had gotten rather cramped because every now and then Gopalji would pause in the middle of his story, look at Munnu and complain, “Munnu yaar, give me some space, I’m practically in the driver’s lap.” But Munnu would do no such thing. Instead, he would nod lethargically and let out yet another low grunt.

With time, it became impossible to ignore that Munnu’s share of the front seat was beginning to get disproportionately large. Based on what Gopalji reported from the front seat, Munnu was apparently gradually spreading his legs wider and wider apart. This was causing the feather-weight Gopalji to be pushed up against the driver. All the while, Munnu’s grunts continued, slowly but surely getting louder and each lasting longer than the one before it.

“Munnu, what’s going on?” asked Satpal from the back seat when his grunts became loud enough to disrupt conversation.

Munnu didn’t reply, but grunted some more.

“Err... Munnu?” continued Satpal.

Seemingly oblivious to the question, Munnu spread his legs a bit wider, pushing Gopalji virtually onto the driver.

“Munnu, what the.....what’s going on? Seriously...” I yelled out from the back.

Munnu finally decided to speak up, “Uhh, nothing nothing, hota hai sometimes..ughhh....when I go out of town …...ughhh....”

“Huh? But what exactly is happening?” we quizzed him.

“Nothing nothing...open the windows...” he mumbled.

By this time, Munnu had spread out some more and now Gopalji was very much where the driver should have been. The driver, of course, was virtually flattened against the door. He looked something like a wind sock, the edges of his limbs hooked onto the steering wheel and the pedals, but the rest of him stretched out in the direction of the door.

Munnu arbitrarily started speaking again, “It’s nothing.....just …..a ...uggghhh.... a physiological reaction …..nothing...just open the windows yaar”

That cracked us up properly. For the next couple of minutes, the four of us in the backseat couldn’t stop laughing. I held on tightly to the door near me to stop myself from falling out from all that laughing. That’s how funny it was.

“Munnu...”, said Sarthak, between chuckles, “Munnu! Hahahaha, ‘a physiological reaction’, hahaha”. He paused to laugh some more, then continued, “man.....I never ever thought I would hear you say big words like that man. This is hilarious, where’d you pick that up?”

I knew of course, and answered, also between laughs, “The bastard’s been studying for the GRE, that’s where he’s picking up all this fancy talk. Man, I miss the old doodhwala Kanpur fellow we used to hang with earlier.”

Of course, Gopalji, who was facing the full force of Munnu’s physiogical reaction, wasn’t the least bit amused. Now that Munnu had spread out even further, Gopalji faced the very real danger of having his rib cage cave in. He moved the only part of his body that he still could, his neck, twisting it backwards and nearly spitting in rage yelled out at us, “You fuckers..... you think this is funny?”

Our chuckles only enraged him further. Munnu continued to grunt.

Later that day, we got to know more about Munnu’s issue and on all subsequent trips we made every attempt to account for it. Munnu’s problem, which was yet to receive a name, was quite peculiar and more than just just a little embarrassing. To put it in as delicate a way as possible, one would say that a change in the weather caused a disproportionate change in Munnu’s temperature profile. To put it perhaps a tad less gently, one would say that that a change of scene made Munnu somewhat testy. Abandoning any attempt at subtlety, one would simply say that venturing out of town hit Munnu below the belt, hard. But if you still haven’t got it, then for your benefit - Munnu’s problem was that his balls heated up dangerously every time he left the city.

Like I said, we only got to know this later that day. In the cab, we hadn’t realised that the reason Munnu was spreading his legs outwards was to allow the heat from between his legs to dissipate somewhat. It also hadn’t struck us till that point why Munnu insisted on keeping the windows open despite the rain. The only thing we did notice was Munnu needing progressively larger amounts of space on the front seat. Poor Munnu, he was just trying to save the lives of all the little kids who he someday intended to create.

Sitting in the back of the cab, I knew that with so much pressure building up in the front seat, something had to give. I remember thinking that perhaps the door would burst open, the car was a relic. If not, then Gopalji’s rib cage was likely to break. But instead, what really happened was once again the doing of Munnu. Having wrestled with the heat for all this while, Munnu had reached tipping point. While earlier it had been a matter of safeguarding his future children, it was now a matter of saving his pants from catching fire. The concern now being far more immediate, drastic action was warranted. At least Munnu thought so. So, in a moment we all remember with the vividness of a Van Gogh, Munnu let loose. With a loud grunt and a powerful snap, he spread out his legs to their fullest extent. The situation in the front seat had been volatile even before, and the snap was all that was needed to set it off like a firecracker.

Directly in the line of impact was Gopalji. When Munnu’s leg hit Gopalji with that incredible power, the laws of Physics demanded that Gopalji accelerate in the direction of travel of the leg. However, that direction was blockaded by the roly poly driver. Hence there was only so far Gopalji could travel in that direction. When he collided with the driver but still had plenty momentum left in him, the laws of Physics had no choice but to instruct him to travel upwards, instead of outwards.  So to summarise, Gopalji flew outwards in a blur, then hit the driver and bounced gently upwards. The driver, meanwhile, had been hit by the high speed flying object that was Gopalji. He flew outwards towards the door.

Then the driver slammed against the door and was stopped dead by it . The car lost control for a bit before the driver found his bearing again and took a hold of it, bringing it back on track. He then yelled at Munnu in Gujarati and asked him to behave himself. Yeah, that's what happened.

Actually, that's not what happened. That's what I wish had happened. But it didn't. 

In reality, the driver did slam against the door. Unfortuantely, the door did not stop him dead in his tracks. The door, after centuries of good service to the car and it’s occupants, burst at the hinges and fell away onto the road. The driver, who was still in motion, had no choice but to follow. Gopalji, who had been lifted upwards briefly, chose this exact moment to fall back down and land in the spot where the driver had been a moment earlier, at the wheel. He grabbed the wheel with both hands and looked back at us. His trademark ‘punchline expression’ was pasted on his face. Eyes wide, mouth visibly holding back laughter, as he got ready to deliver the gem that he was sure would get everyone rolling on the floor, at which point he would have to hold back no more and could join the others in the hilarity.

“Arre yaar,” he said, pausing for effect, “I have a driving license, but can’t drive for nuts.”

Then he continued, “Yaar Munnu, can you touch my chest and check please, I think I may have cracked a rib or something.”

With that, Gopalji burst out laughing and began, much to our horror, driving.

While I’ve described the events after Munnu’s snap in detail, it’s important to note that they happened in little more than a flash. In so short a time, in fact, that the four of us on the back seat could just about gape in amazement at what was happening up ahead. We stared, with our jaws hanging out, speechless, as Gopalji cackled away at the wheel of the car. 

As the car rattled along and Gopalji’s laughter subsided, there was no sound in the car except the one coming from Munnu. Having spread his legs out, he now sounded like a pressure cooker gently blowing off some steam. With his head turned up high and with a satisfied expression on his face, he was busy letting out an unending:

“Aaahhhhhhhh....”

To be continued.....

Tripping: Chapter 1

This is Chapter 1 of a series, you can find chapters 2 and 3 on the timeline

The plan was simple, and cliched. The gang would meet every year and head for a trip. The gang, of course, was the bunch of stunted personalities who feature in most of my stories. I would have referred to us by our collective name except we had none. And it’s not as though we hadn’t tried either, we had. It’s just that even we had to admit that something like “The Musketeers” or “The Marauaders” would be pushing it, since there was so little we did in the way of musketeering and even lesser in the way of marauding. Having said that, our self respect would still not allow us to be called the “The Kota Hang - Outers Group 2004-2006”. So we remained nameless, torn forever between pride and practicality. But yes, that was the plan in a nutshell, that despite us having been strewn into different engineering colleges across the country, we would congregate at the end of every academic year and head for a trip together to any of India’s numerous worthy holiday destinations.

The plan had its roots in the success of our first escapade. Right after the end of our engineering entrance exams, Munnu, Satpal, Anvesh and I landed ourselves in Goa. It was our first trip together to Goa, actually our first together to anywhere but Kota. Over the next seven days, in that quintessential boys to men trip, we got introduced to most of what would be the fundamental focus of our lives over the next few years. Booze, gambling, women (or the desire for women, if you want to be excruciatingly accurate), we saw it all. But most importantly, for the awkward nineteen year olds that we were, we got our first taste of real freedom. That legendary trip ensured that we would to try to replicate it over the next many years, and so the plan took birth.

By the second year, however, I as the de - facto planner for these trips began to realise how painful it could be to get a few jobless sophomores in one place at the same time. The obstacles were endless and the variables infinite. Satpal, for instance, had a curious kind of problem. No matter what time of the year we planned out the trip, he always claimed it was very likely that his sister would be in Kanpur just then, and hence there was no way he could commit to a trip earlier than a couple of days before it actually happened. This may even have been fine, if it wasn’t for the fact his stinginess was the stuff of legend. (I’m not exaggerating, for instance, we all know that on all 'boys to men' trips, everyone hires bikes, or at least cars. We on the other hand, thanks to Satpal’s perpetual cost cutting, had to go everywhere in Goa State Transport buses. As you can imagine, our pissoff was unimaginable.) So whenever it was just a couple of days to the proposed trip and we hadn’t made any bookings thanks to Satpal’s sister issues, he would realise that the ticket and hotel prices had gotten ‘way too high’ and we wouldn't end up going at all.

Sarthak had other issues. While he was fundamentally eager to go on the trip, he was forever dragged down by his tendencies. His tendency to say 'no' was prime among these. Yes, Sarthak had a problem uncommon to most men, which was that his default response to virtually everything was ‘no’. Once he’d said 'no', of course, it would take forever to convince him that he wanted to do exactly what he was so profusely arguing against.

Munnu’s situation was graver. Somehow his university had decided to schedule its semesters and examinations entirely at odds with all other university calendars in the country, making it difficult to schedule anything at a convenient time for him. In fact, in the third version of the trip, Munnu actually came along with us in the few days of study leave between two exams.

Finally, Anvesh also tended to provide some resistance. Being a hardcore Gujju, he’d seen practically the whole world as part of large Patel Travels group tours and his perpetual complaint was that he’d already been to whatever place we were considering.

In short, everyone seemed to have some ridiculous problem with either time or place. Now I’m not telling you all this to justify why I chose Daman as the location for our second trip. I’m not, seriously, you have to believe me. I’m not even denying that I may have briefly thought that Daman was a virgin beach paradise, superior to Goa in natural beauty and inferior to it in night life, but only just. I’m not denying that I thought that. Come on, haven’t I admitted that a dozen times already? I may also have had no clue that Daman was just a haven for poor souls from Gujarat, who couldn’t drink publicly in their own state, to get sloshed. I may have not known that. Yes, despite all my detailed online research, I may still not have known that Daman was just an overly large and incredibly cheap bar. It is possible that I didn't know that. Although it’s been so long now that I barely remember. Look look, I’m just saying that when you’ve had so much trouble finding the right place and time, and an opportunity opens up which could work for everyone, you’ve got to grab it straight up. That’s all I’m saying, you’re with me on this one right?

So, we decided to go to Daman. For six days. The first group of people in all history to spend six entire days in Daman. But we didn’t know that.

We reached Vapi station early in the morning. The train ride was a long discourse about how Indian Railways had done great work in the Mumbai - Ahmedabad belt and how our journey would have taken so much longer just a few years earlier. All this courtesy Sarthak, who was a certified member of the little known and easily forgotten Indian Railways Fan Club. Satpal was the only one really enthused by any of this, and he cut in every now and then with a “Haan yaar, the tickets were also damn cheap”.

Outside the railway station, Munnu and Satpal took charge of how we would get to the hotel. Yes, Munnu, who made it a point to bargain everywhere, but especially at places with fixed prices, like prepaid taxi counters. And yes, Satpal who, as I mentioned earlier, let slip no opportunity to protect his family's vast, almost royal wealth. With the two of them leading the effort to achieve transportation, we should have expected what happened next. 

Thirty minutes later, a dilapidated white ambassador appeared from somewhere. The kind of model that you'd only have seen in 40's movies. If it wasn't covered in mud and if it hadn't been falling apart at the ends, I'm sure some poor fool would have called it 'vintage'. With a total capacity of five, Satpal and Munnu had estimated that it would suffice for the six of us, plus the driver of course. Despite all this, I was relieved to see the cab. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was definitely going to be cramped. There was also a good chance we’d end up dead in one of those ‘Overloaded car loses control on NH - 7. Five dead, one critical, one missing’ type of stories. But all in all it beat the hell out of having to travel in a state transport bus. For one, it didn’t involve having to avoid pan spittle from the conductor’s mouth. It didn't involve having to listen to loud, live folk music that you would be compelled to pay for later. It didn't even involve having to push back the gag reflex aroused by a distinct scent of urine from somewhere under your seat. But most importantly, it sure as hell didn’t involve trying to keep enthusiastic eunuchs on the next seat from grabbing your privates. 

And so we set off ..

To be continued...

Placement Saga

The broadband connection in the house was screwed, as usual. Like most things from Reliance, it was available at a ridiculously low fixed rate per month. Also like most things from Reliance, it probably cost you more in blood pressure, hypertension and heart disease treatment in the medium to long term.

Anyway, after yelling out the usual few rounds of "Fuck Reliance! Fuck all your mass market products! Fuck!...", to no one in particular, I picked up the router and threw it around in disgust. Then, also as usual, I spent the next thirty minutes trying to figure out if the connection was cold because the Ambanis were swindling me or because I'd wrecked the router. Soon though, I realised that this time around I actually needed the internet for more than just checking my Facebook account. I needed it to apply to jobs as and when they opened up on the IIT Bombay placement website. To make matters worse, the placement cell had some sort of strange blitzkrieg policy going where they would open up an application for maybe five, six hours and then close it again. Nuts, if you ask me, but that's how it was. To put it simply, if you didn't, by some chance, log on to the placement website within that five six hour window, then your chances with a particular company could be lost completely. Once again, nuts right?

So I had to make sure I was updated at least every couple of hours. I couldn't count on friends either, no one could count on friends during placements. The competition was intense, cut throat and dirty (ok maybe that's completely untrue, but then most of friends already had jobs by this time and were so busy getting sloshed that they genuinely couldn't be counted on). Instead I decided I'd give my password to my Dad and he could check it regularly from the office or on his phone or through his secretary. Needless to say, my Dad (along with all of family, right up to my cousins thrice removed) was incredibly anxious that their boy (me), who'd been valiantly interviewing for jobs since day one of the placement season, get one at the earliest. My grandparents couldn't sleep, my Mom walked around the house looking visibly worried and my Dad kept saying "Arey theek hai yaar (Chill, it's no biggie)", for no apparent reason. As you can imagine, all this put great pressure on me to feel worried or at the very least, to act worried. So I tried my best to seem like part of the mourning. I relegated myself to the confines of my room where I was supposedly scouring the internet for opportunities and networking with contacts. Truth is, I did send out a few (unanswered) emails here and there, but for the most part I respectfully closed Facebook whenever my Mom popped in to make sure I was well fed and cheerful. In the evenings, I would step out to "discuss strategies with Sud". Somehow most of these discussions tended to meander from the course we had charted out in our parents' minds. In addition to (or instead of) talking 'strategy', we may have spent entire evenings laughing about how Sud had blown his chances even with Esha. This may even have happened with Sud getting progressively drunker and drunker till the point where even he thought this was hilarious and started pulling jokes on himself. But nothing was better than the fact that Esha would usually be around laughing along with everyone about how he blew it even with her.

Alright, getting back to that password I gave my Dad. I was asleep when he called me. Yes, asleep in the middle of the day – a privilege of the unemployed. I picked up the call in something of a daze.

"A new offer has opened up, BPCL", he said.

"BPCL? Isn't that a PSU?"

"Arey what's wrong with the public sector. Besides it's not the average sarkaari place, I know some guys there. You remember Hemant Sahi, your friend from Noida? His Dad worked there for many years before Reliance, remember? It's a great position too, management trainee, then regional manager in a couple of years..."

(Gentle snoring)

"Hello? Hello, are you there?"

"Yeah.....yeah yeah I'm awake, I'm completely awake, I was just thinking about what you said... yeah...."

"Ok, I was saying it's a great position, you'll be have six hundred guys working under you in a year's time. They're even paying 8.5"

(Gentle snoring)

"Hello? Hello?"

"......Yeah yeah, just thinking, just doing some thinking....."

"Yeah they're paying 8.5, I'll sign you up then..."

(More gentle snoring)

"Ok cool I'm signing you up"

.....

I forgot all about this conversation till a few days later when someone called me saying I'd been shortlisted for BPCL.

BPCL?

What?

No there must be some mistake, I never applied, never signed. I didn’t even see the…….Oh….

NO! No no, no no, there’s no way I could work there, no way. I’ll become a Babu if I work there, nope no chance. I can’t, just can’t. My career will be ruined, I have big plans, what the…!

One might ask how it really mattered if I was shortlisted. I could always choose not to show up for the interviews, right? Or I could show up and make a complete ass of myself and get rejected, right? Or even if I did land a job I could still apply elsewhere right?

Not really, no. The institute had all kinds of rules against that kind of thing, all of which were premised on two somewhat fair ideas. Firstly, ‘if you didn’t want to join then you shouldn’t have applied’ and secondly, ‘once you have a job, you can no longer apply for more jobs’.

So if I didn’t show up after being shortlisted, there was a chance I would get reported to the placement cell. If I turned up and made an obvious ass of myself, I could get reported to the placement cell. If I showed up and told them that there was no way I would join them, I could still get reported. So what if I got reported? Well, being IIT Bombay, they had some devised some particularly harsh penalties for the reported and I was sure they would take great pride in executing them too. Things like not being allowed for the next few companies in line, or being thrown out of the placement system for a month, or you know, something of the sort.

Yeah, I didn’t want to get reported.

So I had to do what anyone in my position would have had to: convince the company that they didn’t want me. Given the significantly large number of companies that had already rejected me, I figured this would be a fairly simple task, certainly a lot simpler than getting them to accept me.

And so I went to the interview only slightly worried, thinking I had my bases covered and that within a small period of time, I would return successful with a simple “We’ll keep your resume on record if we’re hiring again in the future”. I had prepared well to not get this job. I’d made sure I didn’t put on a suit, not even a tie. Presentability was usually a plus, we couldn’t have that. I made sure my black leather shoes weren’t really black, but a dusty shade of grey. My trousers a little ill-fitting, my shirt not very new and to add that final touch, I carried my resume in a sickly little file, as opposed to a nice folder.

Like I said before, subtlety was everything. It was prudent to come off as a doof, but dangerous to seem like a prick. The trouble with pricks is, they piss people off enough for those people to look deeper. And when they look deeper, of course, there’s always the risk that they’ll discover that the prickiness was just an act. Doofs on the other hand, have that remarkable property of boring the hell out of everyone. There comes a time in any interview with a doof when the interviewer does some serious thinking about what in the world he’s doing there. At this point, nine times out of ten, the interviewer will end the interview and his own suffering quickly and the doof will be out of contention. One the rare occasion, one time out of ten, the interviewer will end the suffering and just give the doof the job. I was playing on that, on the higher odds – nine times out of ten. Which is why no suit was good but no clothes was risky. Dusty grey shoes was a good idea but bright green slippers wasn’t.

Or so I thought.

Things changed quickly when I reached the venue. I looked around me when I got there, curious to see who the aspirants were and if there were any others who were faced with the same strange situation that I was. At first, it was difficult finding anyone I knew. I mean I recognized the faces around me, but couldn’t put names on too many of them. Faces I’d noticed in the peripheries of classrooms and the shadowy corners of laboratories in the previous four years. People who despite being in the same batch, same courses, same hostel even, were completely unknown to me. People who, in short, I’d never bothered to mingle with.

Anyway, after a little while I began to notice the same vein in many of the conversations around me and it began to give me my first shivers. All the guys there, or at least all those I could hear, didn’t want this job! They were all people who had applied blindly to whatever applications were opening up and by the time they realized what they’d gotten into, it was too late to back out (Once that five, six hour window was past, one couldn’t withdraw one’s application to a company either. For the third time, nuts right?).

Like I said, things changed quickly when I got there. I entered thinking I simply had to let any of the far more worthy candidates waltz through and take the job. Within ten minutes, however, I realized I was trying to lose to people who I had a definite edge over for a job that even they didn’t want. The tables had turned quite completely. In the dark corridors of the metallurgy department, I suddenly seemed like the most able, most qualified, most presentable candidate. For all my subtlety, I realized no one was wearing a suit or a tie. Most shirts too, looked older and dirtier than mine. Compared to the others’, even my shoes were examples of diligent polishing. I actually even spotted a couple of guys in green slippers. Hell, even my tardy CPI of 7.2 was among the highest of the lot.

I was doomed.

I knew right then that it would take something spectacular to get out of this one. It was one thing to fudge the group discussion or the interview but when most of the competition also intended to be mute, my guess was the resumes would become a strong deciding factor.

Hence I was doomed.

Drenched in cold sweat, heart pounding, I was a wreck. In the middle of all this, I wish I hadn’t heard this conversation happening a few feet away:

“You know what happened with Lovely Professional University last time right?”

“What?”

“They screwed my wing senior pretty bad.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Well he didn’t really want to join them, so when the Lovely Professional guys asked him at the end of his interview if he’d actually join…..”

“What’d he say?”

“Well he said “no”, of course, quite honestly.”

“Ok, and then…”

“Well they selected him anyway. Just to fuck with him, the spiteful bastards…he wouldn’t join them, so they killed his chances elsewhere as well….”

“Holy….”

“Yeah, screwed him over properly, they did. He lives in Bhatinda now, teaching numbskulls like us, only younger”

“Shit….Bhatinda….”

After hearing this “lovely” story, I quite gave up and resigned myself to the future. Visions of fat, bald, paunchy men who commanded six hundred others like themselves swam through my mind as I waited for the process to begin. Soon we all started moving towards a room where the BPCL people apparently were, about thirty of us in all. Without meaning to be, I was at the head of this group. We got there to find someone, a lady, standing with her back towards us. She was dressed differently from what I would have imagined. Open short grey hair, denim jeans, shorn at the ankles, a sweatshirt and waist pouch, the behind of which was visible; she looked nothing like an interviewer. She turned around when she sensed there were people behind her. She had big glass rimmed spectacles and through the lenses one could see that her eyes were completely out of focus. She stared around for a bit, seemingly unable to fix her eyes on anything. Then with one sweep, she yanked her head into a position pointing straight at me. Her eyes too, suddenly found focus and were now fixated directly at my forehead. She looked distinctly deranged, and dangerous in a way that only a deranged person can be.

Before we could react, she shrieked out in a high pitched yell, “You can’t come here like this, you can’t come here. You can’t come here……..if you come here, then you can’t go.”

Already on edge with the prospect of working for BPCL, her words rang out in that dark corridor like a deep evil portent. It was just that tiny catalyst that was needed to push all of us over the edge.

I’ve seen many scrambles and scuffles in my time but none like this one. Not a moment had passed since she’d uttered her ominous words than we were all already running. Running as fast as we could in that mass of thirty. One on top of the other, scrambling to get away, scuffling to get ahead, pushing, shoving but all the while moving away from her.

We ran for a long while, till we realized we’d probably been spooked by some crazy old lady who’d wandered into the metallurgy department. Or at least that’s what the others felt. To me, the appearance of a crazy old witchlike lady was a sign, a clear sign of the calamity to follow. Not just a sign, an omen. I walked back stoically to the metallurgy building, knowing fully what awaited me and that I could do nothing about it.

Soon the actual BPCL people showed up. They were only about three hours late, which was quite early by PSU standards, I’m sure. The lady who was giving the briefing droned on for almost an hour. I saw the stack of resumes she was carrying, and noticed mine right on top. Of course, sorted according to who they wanted most. But never mind, I’d already come to terms with. It probably made sense just to bow down gracefully.

After telling us about the five hundred different allowances that made up our Rs. 8.5 lakh annual compensation, she started talking about the various safety norms in the oil industry. At some point she told us about a guy who’d met his end at an oil field near Mumbai. Apparently, a great deal of oil managed to spill itself on top of this fellow and then caught fire. In his panic he jumped off the rig and into the water, hoping the water would douse the flames. But of course the oil continued to burn irrespective. Later the coroner reported that the cause of death was drowning and not burning.

For some reason the other candidates in the room thought this was hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing. The BPCL lady looked around a little stunned but continued as best she could. She went on to tell us about how all candidates should meet various fitness criteria etc etc.

“We only hire people above 5’5”, with no history of chronic ailments and if you wear glasses then your power should be 3 at max”

Hold on a second, what was that? Glasses with a power of no more than 3?

I paused for a bit, allowing her to move on to other mundane safety issues. Then I paused some more and wept a little. Then I remembered that this was a moment of glory and that it was my duty to make such moments momentous. I got up, gathered my things, and walked to the front of the room. I interrupted her between sentences and began to make it momentous.

“Err…excuse me…,” I cut in.

“Yes?”

“What did you say about the glasses again?”

“Umm, you shouldn’t be using anything higher than power 3 lenses”

“But I use a 3.25 ….and your form said nothing of the sort and..,” I protested.

“Yeah I know, we’re sorry. Actually the guy who…”

“No but you guys should have mentioned this earlier, I got my hopes up unnecessarily”, I said.

“I’m sorry, the oil industry’s safety norms are something we’re helpless against.”

“So there’s no chance then?” I asked with a completely straight face.

“Afraid not”, she said. She seemed genuinely sorry.

I considered rubbing it in a little further with a “Not even a desk job somewhere, something that doesn’t involve oil safety?” but then decided against it. Asking her that would mean being a prick. And like I said before, being a prick was dangerous, because then she may go to her superiors and ask them if I could, in fact, apply to a desk job somewhere. So I let it pass and walked out a man again.

At some point later, Sud called me to ask what had happened.

“You got out of that BPCL thing right?”

“Yeah man, no biggie.”

“Cool, how’d you land into that kind of trouble in the first place?”

“How else dude, fuckin Reliance…….just fuckin Reliance…”

Looking back, what’s funniest is that for a guy who had no job (and didn’t get one for another sixty days of placements), I was pretty desperate to not get this one. That winter I often imagined coming back to as a recruiter some day. Last Sunday I got that opportunity, just a year after my own placement season. I even interviewed some of the applicants and saw them go through the same trauma that I and so many others have been subject to over the years. Apply today, interview tomorrow. If you make it – drink like a fish, if not – apply again.