Memories from the golden years of my life (16)

After a long time ... but here it goes!

Quizzes ... they were like the constant sword hanging on us from the day we entered IIM L. They were the weapons in the hands of each professor to ensure that we were spending our precious nights studying .. not sleeping. Alas ! If only they knew that their happiness will last only for the first two or three terms (obviously now , I am not speaking about myself .. for me it lasted till the very last quiz we had .. which was in MIR - Managing Industrial Relations. Thats another story in itself!)

As it turned out to be .. our batch was called the ghissu batch by our seniors. The fault as anyone might have guess lay only with their batch. These guys (our seniors) had pissed off some of the profs so much that the profs had been forced to give dhakas and fuckas in wholesale. As a result a total of some 50-60 students were thrown out of their batch after second term as they had flunked! As they say .. no one can hide the truth ... the news travelled and it travelled fast. Even on our fresher party in Delhi (remember Ambassador Shounak?) people were asking all sorts of questions which they were not so eager to answer. Obviously .. our batch was scared as hell ... From day one .. each and every student started mugging up ... anytime in the night you go to library ... you could be sure to find it fully occupied .. the profs also responded favourably to our batch .. we soon came to be known as the best batch in years ....and this troubled our seniors to no extent.

As a batch, I would say our relations with our senior batch were rather not so good. I remember once having a discussion with Murgi (he was a hostel inmate and indeed a nice person to know who was unfortunate of repeating his first year at IIML) about relations with seniors ... Now his opinion was that our relations with seniors were excellent thanks to those 40 odd guys who had come back to repeat first year ... he said that they used to hate their seniors ... Pity i could not tell him we too :) ... as few of his best friends were from the senior batch and i am sure they would be anyday .....

There were more stories of friction between our batch and the seniors ... let me put down one here ... Suddenly one day we get a mail from senior batch that our batch is not really helping in maintaining cleanliness in the campus .. and that we leave cups lying on tables at nescafe shop ... and generally litter around ... now this speaks for itsef (I want comments from you Manish on this)

Had started writing about quizzes ... but it turned out to be something else only ... all for good .. more about quizzes and exams next time :)

This too was a golden period ...

I rolled off from GGSRL project today .. The mail I wrote to Piush and Sohini ... More on this later

Hi Piush & Sohini,

Just wanted to say thanks for the wonderful time that we have spent together on this project.

What began as just a project in the dingy UCO bank office turned out to be one of the best times that I have ever spent at work, both professionally and personally. Thanks for supporting, developing and sometimes protecting me.

Will cherish fond memories of our now famous potty jokes, joe pjs, all sorts of cheap talk (which includes "peeche se" and "beach mein"), our animal farm (goggi, doggi, hippo, rhino, kitty cat), the insignificant others (uncle bum, chuha, toothpick, tina, sita and the frustrated gang), our special capabilities, the daily hogging (of all paranthas, samosas, mad angles and the current hot favourite pass pass) and and the constant cribbing and bickering about anything and everything on earth!

Hope we will get a chance to work with each other again in near future! Wishing you both a great luck for all your future endeavours!

Warm Regards
Gautam

"We part only to meet again!"

Memories from the golden years from my life (15)

The few of those who do take the pains of reading my blog must be pissed with the gory details of my foot infection going on and on since the last 3 blogs. No more of it. I'll come back to campus life. I have already spoken about three of my subjects and their professors in first term viz. Manac, BIO and COM. Let me put down a few words about the other three before I go on to describe the Mid terms. The other three were QAM, ECO and LAM.

Ok ... now QAM and MANAC are considered to be the two most painful subjects in IIML. for the simple reason that these subjects can earn you what is commonly known as a "Dhaka" or "Fucka" any time! More so because of their professors. Well strangely enough, I found the QAM professor to be really nice - Abhijit Bhattarcharya. He knew his subject really really well. But we were like all scared of him as he had given a lot of Fs last year and was (as we had heard from seniors) a demon in disguise. Anyways .. I like to form my own opinions and I found him to be really good. The less we say about his counterpart "NKG" the better ... Kyun Manish? We had also come up with a name for him ( do you remember Manish? .... put it down in comments :)) His famous "Oooouunn .. I dont know any exampules" was repeated by us many a times during lighter moments. Manish and I had did not even have one professor in common .. While we had some oldie (whose name i cant remember) for LAM (Legal Aspects in Management) .. Manish's section had the pleasure of studying from Mr. LAA (with whom Manish shared a very "special" relationship in second year :) )

The third one was Eco. We had an excellent prof. whom i will respect through out my life .. it was really a pleasure studying from him .. Rest in next blog!

Memories from the golden years of my life (14)

I have always heard ... that there is a lot of strength in your parents blessings. And it was proved this time ... once again. I had told mom dad about my feet .... and it did make them worry like anything ... to the extent of finding unknown relations in Lucknow! However, thankfully i did not require to use those relations. There was a girl (rather an auntie would be more appropriate) called Mukuli in my class. She was about 32 years old, had about 7 years of experience and looked absolutely stupid (well ... it all changed later :) .... i think ill dedicate a full post to her sometime later). Now Mukuli was suffering from fever from sometime .... and she had a doubt that it was jaundice .... she appeared to be scared to death ... and wanted to get her blood test done .... and apparently there was no facility in campus for the blood test to be done .... and that day we were discussing about our own problems ... when she said that she wanted to go to hospital to get her tests done but was scared to go alone. Now even though i was dying with my feet in that condition ... being a man .. i offered her my help (of accompanying her) ... Now let me make it very clear ... that the help was offered with no wrong intentions in mind :) ... Actually I wanted to show my feet to someone ( as none of the medicines were having any effect whatsoever) ... and I had no clue about medical facilities in Lucknow. This was not an easy decision for me ... as my first mid term exams were just 5 days away ! ... and I guess only Manish would know what wasting one full day in those circumstances in first term would mean ... but i had little choice so i went with her after BIO class...

The hospital was first of all not at all difficult to reach. We had taken campus bus which dropped us till 3.4 .. and from there we took one of the vikrams (pooled autos) .... Well the hospital looked as if it would fall anytime ... I had my doubts if this would be of any help ... still we paid 50 bucks each for check up ... and went to our respective doctors ... Now this is one lady to whom I will be indebted for life ...We have such wrong impressions about govt. hospitals ... tell you what .. the kind of treatment this lady doctor gave me .. even the most qualified professional doctors would not be able to give ... may be this was because of the fact that i was in IIM... which had a real huge prestige in Lucknow ... Anyways ... she removed puss from my blisters .. which were all over my feet .. applyed betadiene ... bandaged my feet .. and with all the bad puss gone properly .. i was feeling very much better .. she also wrote a few medicines ... some of which were available from the chemist outside the hospital and the rest i had to get from purana chauraha .... finally mukuli also had her tests done and we came back ... and i then knew ... i had seen the worst as far as my health goes for years to come .... and things would start becoming better now .. God bless that lady doctor ...

Memories from the golden years of my life (13)

Well ... the golden year did not seem golden right just now. In fact, when I look back, I would perhaps remember these moments as the darkest moments of my life ... it seemed to me as if I will have to let go of my dream ... of doing my MBA from IIM ... Yes! .. It was that bad ... that medicine from Rangan had done its damage. My foot was in the worst possible condition ... actually not foot but feet .. The infection had spread across both the feet ... i had sort of boils filled with disgusting smelling water all over my feet. I just could not walk as that bursted the boils on the bottom of my foot and I was covered in that smelling liquid ... But I had to attend the classes .. thanks to 80% attendance rule at IIML. I remember ... it used to smell a lot and hence even though a sandal would make things simpler for me ... as i would be able to keep my foot out in open ... I still used to wear shoes to classes .. so that its not embarrasing for me ... as well as inconvenience for others ... I still remember Diwakar's (my classmate who used to sit next to me) reaction the day it was at its worse ...

Srimurugan Veluswamy (commonly called as "murgi") .... one of my classmates as well as hostelmates ... one day suddenly called it my bday in class (i am sure it was just a joke) .... but the tussle that followed .. ensured that my feet went from bad to worse ... I had almost emptied the bandage and dettol provided by Manish (thanks!) ... Since I was nursing my foot without proper directions, care and with horrid wrong medicines ... I had an irky feeling sometimes as if its going to spread to my hands also ... one or two days i could see small irritation marks on my hands also ... i could still give exams ...without my feet ... but if something happened to my hands ...

I cried in my room ... all alone ... asking God why had he done it to me ... and if I could not complete my studies ... why the hell had he allowed me to come here ... All this time I had kept everyone at home oblivous of all this ..... But now i decided to let them know .. I needed their blessings to carry on ....

Memories from the golden years of my life (12)

We were standing at Aliganj ... also known as the Purana Chowk ... Me and Manish. This was the first time we had come out of campus together ... for a strange purpose ... to buy my medicines ...

I had developed an infection in my foot ... which was going from bad to worse. It all started with an itching in between of my foot fingers ... then i got wet in the rain ... and the itching area soon converted into a rash! Slowly the rash was spreading to the areas between other fingers. I realised that this could be serious (and God damn it .. it was pretty serious) ... and i went to show it to Rangan (and this was the biggest mistake i could have committed) ... Rangan was the doctor hired by our institute .. He was the strangest creature I had ever met ( well not really :P ... I have met many more stranger creatures ... But amongst doctors .. yes). This guy did not even open his mouth once during the entire period I sat with him .. Just scribbled a few things on paper and handed it over to me. Even when I asked him .. what exactly is this ... he just mumbled something I could not understand ... Later on I came to know that people went to him only when they wanted to die :P

Back to Aliganj .. we were here to get these very medicines prescribed by Rangan! It was very kind of Manish to come with me .... this is one good thing about this guy .. he does try his level best to help people whom he doesnt even know properly .. Agreed we had been neighbours for 3-4 weeks now ... but still ... we had not yet developed the kind of bonding that we had later ... Or maybe this was just the beginning of that bond ... So there we were standing at Aliganj .. I had managed to get a few medicines from the small shops there (later on came to know there was a huge medical shop just nearby!) and we were waiting for the bus .. and I was praying that it does not rain ... as that would make my foot worse ... but it did rain ...

To all friends ...

Happy Friendship Day ... to all the friends whom I met in my this journey called life ...

I was reading one of the newsletters from campus the other day and I came across this line written by one of my juniors. And it truly portrays my feelings today ....

"We may chat on phone ... we may meet occasionally ... we might even spend some time with one another whenever our ways cross each other ... but we will never be all together at the same time .... at the same place ...."

This .... is the truth of friendship .... yet there is another one ....
"You may call a friendship so .. only when it has passed the test of time and separation"

Only a friendship which is able to sustain separation .... and still be as strong as ever is worthy of calling a frienship .... Three cheers to all my friends ... Thanks ... for giving me strength ... Thanks for being my emotional and moral supports ... Thanks ... for leading me to the right way ... and guiding me at every important or less important step of my life ... Thanks ... for being my life ....

To my friends (From the beginning)

Dhiraj Motwani
Navneet Jain
Varun Kumar
Shounak Ray
Yuvraj Sikriwal
Priyanka Saha
Manish Peter
Avichal Agrawal