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...

3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 4, The End Of The Beginning

This is the final chapter in the series, scroll down to find earlier chapters

The morning crept up on us. Momentous mornings always seem to arrive before you expect them to.

Quarters.

Butterflies.

Adrenaline with a crazy gung-ho high.

Anticipation.

Nerves.

Three guys cheering for us, two of us in the team.

The next few hours went by in such a flurry that it in hindsight it seems unreasonable to think that so much happened in that span of time. The morning began when we all woke up to find Suddu completely dressed and ready to leave. When we told him that he was up and ready way too early for the debate, he informed us that he was going elsewhere.

Else where? This was the first time we’d broken, where the hell was he going? He wasn’t going to watch the debate? He wasn’t going to be there to cheer us on? Bastard! Too sleepy to say much, we bid him goodbye. While leaving he mumbled something to the effect of, “Oh comeon guys, I’m assuming you’ll win the quarters and I should be back in time for the semis comfortably, alright bye, see you at the semis.” Sure, he was assuming we would win the quarters. Like we won quarters everyday, like it was no big deal.

Later we got to know what prompted Sud to cook up such nonsense. He was going to meet a girl. Some girl he knew from his stint at LSE. Like I said earlier Sud’s experiences with the ladies have been terribly disappointing, to say the least. Which is why that morning when he realized that this girl wanted to meet him, he found himself in a deep moral dilemma. On the one hand he wanted to hang in there for his team, on the other hand was a woman. A woman. Suddu had been looking for a woman for many years now. So drastic had his desperation become that he saw a prospective partner in every female now, with little regard for quality, compatibility, age, anything at all. Suddu often exclaimed, with much self pity, “I’ve never even held a girl’s hand and I’m nearly twenty two!” Sud reflected on all this early that morning and it came rushing back to him in frightening detail. The choice was suddenly a simple one. He was going to meet the girl. Of course, he had to justify missing the debate, more to himself than anyone else. Suddu likes to do that, justify things to himself. So in his mind he envisioned Shobhit and me as Denny Krane and Alan Shore. The opposing team (ranked 1^st thus far), in his mind, became a couple of school kids who would be flattened easily by us and he would be back in time for the semi-final. All was good, life made sense and Sud skipped away happily.

A couple of hours later, the rest of us were at the debate as the motions were released. We met our opponents and after the mutual cancellations, we arrived at “Pornography is good for women on the whole” as our motion. Ironically we, the so-called desperate engineering guys, were opposition. Anyway, before you knew it, the twenty minutes of prep-time were over and we entered the tiny classroom.

They made their first speech and it was nothing like we expected it to be. Their case seemed to be modeled on the notion that pornography was protest against patriarchy and this protest made it a symbol of the liberation of women. The problem was, however, that they didn’t say so in so many words. They kept trying to sell the idea that porn was choice, porn was freedom, porn was occupation, porn meant equality. A little confused, I got up to make my speech. Controlled aggression, I told myself, controlled aggression.

I went sequentially, trying to take down every point made by them thus far. The response from the adjudicators seemed to be good. They were nodding at just the right times, noting down stuff at what I believed to be our stronger points, laughing along when I made a joke. Seven and a half minutes later, things seemed to be going well and I sat down again. The government responded next in their deputy’s speech. His seven minutes added, in my opinion, nothing to the debate at all. No new lines of attack, no new arguments, not even rebuttals of any value. With respect, it was a redundant speech. Smelling blood, Shobhit rose to give his speech. They were on the defensive. In most debates, this is the turning point, when one team has the distinct advantage and can go all out on the offensive. In the three member team format, I often give the whip’s speech and know exactly what it’s like to be in this position. Shobhit did exactly what he had to, he nailed in our points, cementing our edge. He had all the time in the world too, since there was nothing new from their end. The adjudicators were clearly on our side by the end of his speech. We were making the other team bleed now, dragging them by the neck. Cross questioning, which was our forte, hadn’t even begun and we were already in the driver’s seat. We could see them giving up too, their shoulders were sagging and their smiles had disappeared. Cross questioning went well too, we answered well and they were defensive all along. As far as I was concerned, their game was up. Anything they said in the closing could only be a perspective on what they had said during the debate, and we were confident all that was well covered.

There was a slight glitch just before our closing. Neither of us was prepared for it, each had assumed the other would be handling it. In truth we weren't used to delivering the closing so shortly after cross questioning since we had been government for most of the tournament, giving the second closing. Here we were opposition and the closing had just sort of crept up on us. Anyway, I made the closing and it went as well as it could have given the circumstances.

Then came the next glitch. The guy in the other team came up and delivered a fantastic closing. He introduced new matter disguising it subtly in the form of perspective and shifted focus from the meat of what the clash in the debate had been to certain seemingly irrelevant constructives mentioned in passing in their first speech. Most of all, he harped on how we hadn’t tackled the symbolism attached with pornography that they had spoken of. After his closing, I experienced my first chill. But we were still more than confident of victory and left the room to the adjudicators.

Outside, everyone who had witnessed the debate seemed to regard us clear winners. Pranay also expressed his confidence freely. We expected it be a quick and easy decision for the judges. Fifteen minutes later, none of the judges had left the room and we began to get just a little bit worried. Pranay’s views were now, “If they give it to the other team, it can only be because of that closing.” Thirty minutes in, things got pretty tense and we were all going through every bit of the debate in our heads to see where the difficulty in deciding who could have won may be arising. Finally after forty minutes, the judges were ready. As I walked into the room Pranay yelled out from behind us, “They can’t give it to you, the government made just the symbolism constructive and you didn’t answer it.” With that ominous message still in ringing in my ears, I entered the room behind Shobhit.

Suddenly the room was full of all kinds of weird things. Dogs, airline seats, headlights, brawling drunkards. Then just as soon, they disappeared and were replaced by five very quiet panelists. The head panelist, or chair, stood up and everyone went very quiet. He asked us to take our seats and we did. Not a sound was made as he cleared his throat.

“The decision is a 3-2 split” he said, and paused for effect. A long “ohhh” went around the room. Then he spoke again, slowly and deliberately, “The side receiving three votes is…..the government” That was that, we lost our first ever quarterfinal on a 3-2 split. One more vote and we would have made it, just one, but we didn't.

A section of the crowd broke out into cheer. Our opponents came over and shook hands, and our tournament ended there.

Meanwhile, in another part of town a young man was just about to meet a pretty brown eyed girl. She came from around the corner and walked towards the café where they were supposed to meet. He took one look at her and was floored. She was even more beautiful than when he had last seen her at LSE. As she walked towards him, he felt the same stirring that every young man has felt at least once. Oh the twinkle in her eye, the curls of her hair, oh the gentle delicacy of her gait. Heart pounding, beads of sweat forming on his forehead, he knew it was love. When she reached him, he blurted out, “You look….you look really great….”

“Really?” she replied with a smile that only worsened the fellow’s condition, “I do hope my boyfriend agrees with you, he’ll be joining us here soon….you don’t mind, do you?”

Flummoxed, he began to mumble incomprehensibly. “Boyfriend!...Boyfriend?....but I skipped my friends’ debate for this….I missed the debate!”

“Sorry?”

Suddenly he delved into his pocket and fished out his phone. He fumbled with it on the for a few seconds then put it to his ear, all the while mumbling under his breath. When someone picked up at the other end, he started off, “I’m coming for the semifinal, I’m just leaving guys….I’ll be there soon enough, don’t worry I’m rooting for you fellas….I’m coming. ” When he finally stopped talking, the person at the other end told him that we hadn’t made it past it the quarters. On hearing this he sat down slowly and held his head between his hands. For the next few minutes, he just kept shaking his head from side to side, completely ignoring the girl's concerned banter. After a while, he resigned himself to spending the afternoon with the girl of his dreams, and her boyfriend.

Ahh, poor Suddu, how could he have known. She had looked single enough on Facebook and we had seemed like such a strong team.

Teams from our college consecutively made it to the quarters of two more tournaments right after this one, losing each time on a 3-2 split. The jinx was finally broken at IIT Delhi when our team (Shobhit, Pranay and myself) went all the way to the finals and finished second. The team then went international to the Malaysia Debate Open and reached the semis, losing, once again, on a 3-2 split. The same team will compete at the Asians Debate this May. This will very likely be this team’s last tournament as Shobhit and I are set to graduate soon.

Suddu, meanwhile, has established himself as an adjudicator of repute, ranking very high at the Malaysia Debate Open and being chosen to judge debates up till the semi final. He is also adjudicating at the Asians in May. He still hasn’t held a girl’s hand.

3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 3

This is chapter 3 of a series, scroll down if you're looking for the earlier chapters.

Some of us, of course, take this freedom a little too seriously, as the story will show.

Back to the where we were. The six of us were walking along Rajpath after Shobhit and I made the break. Suddu was sulking. Suddenly we noticed a group of well dressed people, perhaps just out of a club, looking at us. Not looking, staring at us. In the way that one might stare at a dirty dog that’d sneaked into a presidential party. Quite obviously, we were a little taken aback by their unfriendly demeanor and more than just a little confused too. We looked at each other, befuddled. That’s when we realized that we were only five, not six. Pranay was missing. It didn’t take long to find him, however. The strangers’ stares alternated between us and a point behind their fancy car. We followed their stares and there he was, standing just behind the car with his back towards us. Legs spread out wide, hands disappearing to the front of his body, somewhere near the abdomen, a sound similar to a small mountain stream pervading the otherwise silent night.

For those who don’t know, Rajpath has lush lawns on either side separated from the road by foot high milky white pillars connected to one another by chain link. After Pranay’s little misadventure, one of those pillars is now a sickly brownish yellow instead.

Extremely embarrassed, we put on our best “Oh we didn’t know him, Oh we just happen to be wearing similar sweatshirts with the same college name on them, we’re just the five of us, we don’t believe in urinating on Rajpath” smiles and walked away quickly. Pranay meanwhile whistled the sweet whistle of relief and walked past the strangers nonchalantly smiling at them. When he caught up with us, we expressed our extreme disgust at his distasteful behavior. Shobhit told him off for his peeing in public and for the desecration of our sacred Rajpath. Suddu repeatedly said, “Yuck dude, yuck”. Salhotra shook his head in disappointment. Pranay, of course, couldn’t understand this at all and defended himself with arguments that are unwelcome even in a debate.

“Isn’t this a democracy? Don’t we have real freedom? We should be free to do what we want, it’s Rajpath! I say we should all pee on Rajpath to send a message to those trying to destroy our freedom. I’m going to call it ‘squirting against terror’ or…’piddling for protection’ …or….” he let out in a tirade against all those who thought public excretion was incorrect. I’m not sure what part of this was Pranay and how much the liquids in him were talking but in any case I felt the need to step in at this point. To try and convince him in a gentle, patient, logical and completely non judgmental manner about what he was doing. So I went up to him and said, “Pranay if you ever bring that thing out in public again, I’ll break it. Not kidding. No seriously, I’ll personally rip it off.” Ever logical, Pranay couldn’t deny the weight of my sound argument and looked convinced that peeing in public was not a good idea.

After spending the next couple of hours in the lawns outside the Rashtrapati Bhawan, it was time to head back. Thanks to his Facebook addiction, Shobhit was wont to click pictures all over the place in what he believed were realistic poses. As expected, on the way back, he kept instructing us to “stand here, look that way, put your arm around this one” etc for the benefit of his camera. In his attempt to recreate the evening in its entirety, at some point he asked Pranay to pose as though he were relieving himself.

Pranay had other ideas.

“It looks quite obviously fake unless I unzip.”

“So unzip then”

“Only if Suzie is willing to make an exception”, he said looking at me with a wicked smile.

“Yeah ok, but just for the camera”, was my reluctant answer.

At this point, Pranay turned his back towards us, blatantly unzipped and before anyone had the slightest idea what was going on, created a huge puddle right in the middle of the road. Then he turned his head behind, looked at us smiling and with a hint of madness writ on his face intoned, “Freedom”.

Life is funny. Sometimes what you think is a rabbit is actually a snake in disguise. Other times, who you thought was a civilized Khar boy turns out to be a public urinator. But life plays its finest card when the Khar boy thought you were clicking a picture but you were actually shooting a video. That’s right, we have a video of Pranay piddling on Rajpath. As you can imagine, this puts an enormous amount of power in our hands. So great is this power, in fact, that I have no idea what to do with it.

This perverse turn of events had a profound impact on Suddu. While he’d been sulking all evening, now he just couldn’t stop. He was literally bouncing up and down, yelling all the while. Imagine a chubby, ninety-something-kg, near bald guy rising and falling while intermittently screeching out, “Dude he peed on Rajpath, he peed on Rajpath. Dude dude dude, he peed on Rajpath…..he peed on Rajpath hahaha, he peed on Rajpath…….duuuude.”

Most folks would agree we’d already had a pretty crazy time that night but like other things on that trip, it wasn’t over just yet.

Tired, we decided to head back and get to sleep. Which is when we discovered that Delhi isn’t quite Mumbai when it comes to getting a ride back home at two in the morning. For the next forty minutes we tried stopping every rickshaw or cab that passed us by. Some of them didn’t want to go where we wanted them to. Others just wanted to go home. With time, our frustration grew and so did our madness. Beyond a point we start hollering out to virtually any vehicle in sight. We must have seemed pretty nuts, six guys yelling out to everything on the road. Some drivers even acknowledged our requests with a polite display of their middle finger. Still, intoxicated by our recent adventures and compelled by lack of another option, we kept calling out.

At some point a bulldozer appeared. The kind they use in construction, mechanized arms at both ends and a small glass cabin in between where the driver sat and controlled the whole thing. We thought it was funny to call out to it for a ride. You can understand our surprise, however, when the huge machine paused suddenly, took a U-Turn, then headed in our direction.

The driver couldn’t have been more than 25 years of age. He leaned out of his window and asked with a smile so fresh it seemed out of place with the 2 am setting, “Kahan jaogey bauji? (Where to sir?).”

“Kahin ley chalo yaar (Wherever you might want to take us)”

“Chalo aa jao (Hop on then)”

And that was that, we were riding on a bulldozer in the middle of the night on the streets of Delhi. Some of us sat on the huge wheel covers, others crowed in the cabin with the driver. It was interesting enough that this bulldozer was moving on a 5 lane high speed expressway but what made the experience particularly special was that we were driving in the direction opposite the traffic. Oh yes, we also had no idea where we were going. Ever so often, a car would come speeding from the opposite direction and honk loudly. The driver, unfazed, would then scare him off by raising the mechanized arm in front of the vehicle threateningly.

The driver, Aazam Khan, was as talkative as a schoolgirl. In the short while we were with him, we got to know he was from Gorakhpur and that he had a brother and an uncle in Mumbai, not far from where we lived. He was ambitious too, and would be off to the gulf soon, to pursue greener pastures. His one complaint with his current life, though, was the loneliness that came with driving a bulldozer around the city at night. That explained why he seemed so thrilled to be doing us a favour. Awesome fellow, Aazam Khan.

At some point we crossed India gate, where armed guards stood around with rifles pointed at anyone who happened to cross in front of them. Spotting this speeding bulldozer with six ruffians hanging at the sides, they raised their guns and took aim. For a moment everything froze. Even Aazam Khan’s ever-present smile seemed to fade. Then as we came closer they realized we could hardly be a terrorist threat and broke off into the raucous, uninhibited laughter that only law enforcers are allowed to have.

Anyway, we got back to the hostel after a ride that beat anything else I’d ever been on. It was quite a night but something else lay ahead of us. A quarterfinal was scheduled for the morning and for once we were in it. We went to sleep hopeful and elated but with little idea that an entirely new chapter in life was about to begin for all of us.

The Delhi story wasn't over just yet, not by far.

To be continued...

3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 2

This is Chapter 2 of the series, scroll down to the next post if you're looking for Chapter 1...

continued....

[The cab that took us to our accommodation had a weird set of headlights. More accurately, there were flashlights attached to the front where the headlights should have been, three on one side and two on the other]

The next two days saw us competing fiercely for the elusive break. We made constructives, refuted arguments, cross questioned aggressively, made closings, did everything in our power to win each of our debates. Each team had five debates before the break, one on one with another team. The top eight teams went through. If one achieved a score of four wins versus one loss (4-1) it was mathematically impossible to not qualify and we were targeting that at least. At a score of 3-2 however, qualifying would be difficult since a large number of teams typically tie at that score and then the ones with the highest speaking scores go through. Not more than one or two 3-2 teams can make it, mathematically.

The first day ended in mishap after we lost our second debate. That left us at 1-1, meaning we would have to win all three debates the next day to qualify. Towards evening, I began to notice a peculiar something about my teammate Shobhit. He seemed to be hanging around one particular adjudicator quite a lot. She adjudicated our first debate and I thought she was reasonably good. However, when she was reassigned to us for the second debate, I wanted to call in an objection because I thought we could do better. Shobhit however was vehemently in favour of having her judge us. I tried convincing him that in a close match she may not be the most rational adjudicator around and that she seemed to construe arguments to her own liking. He would hear nothing of it though and kept insisting that she was the “right person for us”. I dropped it then because clearly, his belief in her far overshadowed my skepticism of her talents.

[We witnessed a bar-fight that night, three guys teamed up and beat two others. It wasn’t fair, it was three on two]

All through the next day, Shobhit seemed to be spending an extraordinary amount of time with the adjudicator girl. I would sneak close by in the hope of catching juicy bits of what I was certain was a debate fling. However, each time I would hear nothing but detailed discussions of arguments, their rebuttals, case statements etc. To say that the rest of us were completely puzzled would be an understatement. I mean, this was Shobhit, and the last thing he spoke to random women about was debating. Sure, he hit on them regularly, flirted incessantly and tried to “pick them up”. I’m also sure he regarded doing well at debates as a way to further his cause with the ladies. But discuss cases with them? Not in living memory. This was a first, by far.

We won debate number three next morning but tragedy struck in the fourth round. A head-adjudicator took forty five minutes to come to the most abhorably abysmal decision in debating history. He ruled against us citing numerous points, all of which had never been mentioned in the debate. Badly stung, we complained about him later, only to find out that he had been admitted to the hospital almost immediately after speaking to us. At any rate, that left us at a pathetic 2-2 with little or no hope of qualifying. Beaten and demoralized, we entered our fifth debate to find Shobhit’s adjudicator woman waiting for us.

The next hour we spent angrily contesting the idea that pre-marital sex was bad for Indian women. In debating, as in any sport, the result of the previous round often influences one's performance in the next. Thanks to the fiasco in round four, we were inclined to be just a little vindictive in the fifth. Through the course of the debate, we did a lot more than present arguments. We mocked the opposition's claims, we ridiculed their points, we ridiculed them, we made a mockery of anything and everything they'd said. Shobhit spent some four minutes out of his seven joking about how foolish it was to claim that contraception may not work. I dedicated my entire closing to how the opposition's style of debating represented a crafty expertise in the art of digging one's own grave. To summarize, we managed to ruin their evening quite completely. Towards the end of the round, we knew we’d won, but we also knew that we were out of the competition. 3-2 wasn’t going to cut it, especially since one of our victories had been a split decision. So we accepted defeat, Shobhit took refuge in his cigarettes, Suddu began to sulk (his team was also at 3-2) and I began planning to lift the team’s spirits with a little spirit.

After a somewhat morose dinner, the breaking teams were announced. We couldn't get ourselves to seem very interested and clapped along politely as every team was announced from the first position downwards. Little did we know that as we looked on uninterestedly and waited for the formalities to end so we could get out of there, our lives were about to change forever.

At eighth position, the last of the breaking teams, the only team to get through with 3-2, all the way from Mumbai, was us. We broke, for the first time ever. We broke. To everyone else it was nothing, to us it was a historic moment. We broke. More than a year after the formation of our debating society, we broke. All the effort, the travelling, the night-long practice sessions, the unending research, the case making workshops, the daydreaming, it all suddenly seemed worth it. We broke!! We stood around in a stunned kind of silence, disbelieving. Shobhit said later that night, “It’s a funny feeling, getting what you’ve wanted for so long, it’s a funny feeling.” For my part, for once I was at a loss for words.

But we broke.

Of course, we still had no idea how it had happened. There was no way our speaker scores could have been high enough, and numerous teams must have tied at 3-2 for sure. We took a look at the tabs to see what had really happened.

Turned out our speaker scores were high, very high. So high that though we’d qualified at eighth position, our speaker scores were at position four. This was largely due to three of our debates. The simple minded may conclude that these were debates where we did well, and scored well. To the even slightly more conspiratorial mind, however, the presence of “Shobhit’s adjudicator girl” at each of these debates would seem like more than just a mere coincidence. At any rate, we were through!

[We had a hard time leaving the dinner venue because there were five dogs blocking the entrance, three black and two white. This was the signoff in the 3-2 messages, I assumed.]

After the initial jubilation, we headed out for what would soon be a memorable night on the streets of Delhi. After the guys had had enough to drink at some place called “Blues” in Connaught Place and were significantly loosened up (except Suddu who was only sulkier after the drinks, if anything. His team hadn’t gone through), we headed out to cover the trademark Delhi-trip-sites. Just like no trip to Germany is complete without a Münchener beer-garden, no debating trip to Delhi is complete without a celebratory walk amidst the high houses of Indian democracy at Rajpath. We do this every time, to breathe in the freedom that comes with being an Indian and to experience firsthand most of what we debate about. We go from the Rashtrapati Bhawan at one end to the India Gate at the other. It’s something else, walking in the shadow of the parliament, intoxicated by liberty and inebriated by alcohol.

Some of us, of course, take this freedom a little too seriously, as the story will show.

To be continued...

3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 1

This is part 1 in a series of 4 parts. Scroll up for later parts....

In the north of our country, storytelling is not just a way of life but also one of its basic necessities. A man may have no qualification, no job, no woman, he may be penniless but he’s never really poor unless he’s out of stories, at least not up north. Anyone who’s been there will know what I’m talking about. Come sundown, the towns and cities retire from their bustle and scatter into little groups. In these groups they narrate tale after yarn after anecdote, the stories being rooted equally in fact, fable and hearsay. Around their fireplaces they gather, and listen wide-eyed. The lady of the house serves an unending stream of tikkas, kebabs and pakoras. The grandfathers tell tales from the partition, the grannies stories from the Mahabharata and the dads recount old Tendulkar lore from the nineties. The mommies do their bit with the story of how Mrs. Sharma next door hasn’t fed her family anything but khichdi ever since she had her second child.

One might wonder what business these people had doing any of this when they could be watching Ekta Kapoor’s gems on TV or surfing the internet mindlessly, just like the rest of the country did. One might ask what sense it made to spend every evening doing something so utterly unproductive and useless, especially in the midst of a recession.

Without offence to anyone, the questions are laughable at best. As anyone with even a slightest sense of the Indian north will tell you, this ritual is not optional and storytelling is not a choice for the people to make. Such a way of life is pre-ordained by the land and its rich history. The more logical will tell you that this is how things inevitably are when a region is so gloriously encumbered by hundreds of intermingling cultures sprouted from all parts of the last 5000 years. They will tell you that when there is a tale around every nukkad and a legend surrounding every mohalla, then no other way of life is preferred. Nay, not preferred, possible. No other way of life is even possible.

Many of you disbelieve me I’m sure. You think I exaggerate. So did many of my friends in college, especially the debating ones who thought they could argue against this evidence. Then the epic Delhi trip happened and they never doubted me again. This is a story from that land of stories.

3:2

We were a motley group of six, travelling to Delhi for the same reason we always did, to debate. Turns out most of the good parliamentary debates in the country happen in Delhi. Ever so often you would find us aboard a low cost airline or a train headed to Delhi to try our skills at some national debate. To be honest, we were minnows at these competitions, historically disadvantaged (no seniors had ever been good at this and therefore we had no-one to coach us) and educationally challenged (engineering doesn’t help much with debating, and we were often up against law schools). Yet we participated often, and practiced eagerly, in the hope that we would, one day, some day, far in the future, perhaps, maybe, hopefully, God willing, amount to something at a national debate. To complicate matters, the institute didn’t pay a penny for all this travelling, in fact they didn’t even approve of us skipping lectures and labs to attend these debates. If that wasn’t enough, our debating society wasn’t granted official recognition by the cultural council either. Damn, they didn’t even let me mention it on my resume.

But we still debated, risking attendance, cajoling professors into letting us miss that one lab, adjusting marks for that one quiz, passing us this one time. We still debated despite getting severely clubbed by the competition on each occasion. There was something noble about it, not giving up at something you really wanted to be good at, despite biting the dust so many times. And there was something innocent in the way Suddu, at the beginning of every trip, still believed that this would be the one where he would finally “get it with a girl”.

Anyway, this time around we were there for the Premchand Debate, Hindu College’s national debate. As always, we dreamt of breaking. For the uninitiated, “breaking” in debating terms refers to making it past the league stage of a tournament, into the quarterfinals. Few teams from our college had ever broken at any debate, and none at Premchand.

[The airplane taking us there was oddly asymmetrical. It had three seats on one side of the aisle and two on the other.]

As soon as we landed in Delhi, we began to see representatives of the storytelling culture. These people are everywhere. They seem to be ordinary citizens performing ordinary tasks but in truth they are the appointed upholders of the tradition of storytelling. The ones dressed as taxi drivers tell unending tales of “fuel price hike” and “having to come back empty” and “how the poor man suffers”. The ones pretending to be bathroom attendants sing ballads of how the government forgot to pay them and how tips from good Samaritans were keeping them alive. Then there is always the one who is dressed as a software engineer fallen on hard times. He tells a good tale and is the chief of the storytellers. To listen to his story you have to pay with your baggage, though you’re usually unaware of this little detail till the narration is over and you look behind you where your bags used to be.

In Delhi, storytelling isn’t a mere pastime, it’s an industry.

[The cab that took us to our accommodation had a weird set of headlights. More accurately, there were flashlights attached to the front where the headlights should have been, three on one side and two on the other]

To be continued....