Diwali Celebrations @ISM Dhanbad

It is my first blog of the final year. It has been a long time since my last blog update. I had been kind of busy these days. During this period a lot of things happened in my life. I did my internship at cairn energy and then also got placed in the same company through campus selection. All set and done, I had made up my mind to be at home on this Diwali (Nov 13.2012). For last 4 years I’ve been away from home on this most special day. But something turned up and I had to cancel my ticket.

So today’s Diwali will be my 5^th of its type at ISM,Dhanbad.On previous 4 occasions I missed my home a lot. Home felt even more beautiful on all those occasions. This time again the nostalgia was all over me. But instead of sulking I decided to celebrate this Diwali in my own hostel like the old days. So a day before Diwali, I went to market, purchased some candles, some fruits, and some sweets and when it all happened in my room, the aura was back. This felt exactly like home. It felt good, really good.

Holy in a Hostel

This was the 4^th Holi in a row when I was not with my family. I have  celebrated  (or spent?) my last 4 Holi in different hostels of Indian school of mines, Dhanbad. Each festival has got a whole set of memories for you and as the festivals come nearer and nearer these memories intensify. Those sweet little incidents start flashing before your eyes and your cravings to be at home with your family and friends increase exponentially. That’s what has been happening with me at every Holi and Deewali for last 4 years. So this was one of those days when I was missing my home badly. But thanks to the friends and inmates of hostel the situations did not get worse and I saw a very different type of Holi.

Hostel is like a fruit shop where you get different type of fruits of different qualities. The good ones, the rotten ones, the smaller, the bigger, the sweet, the sour each kind of fruits you can see at single place. In a similar way in a hostel (especially in an engineering hostel) one will find different types of persons and personalities. People from south, people from north, the white, the black, the one with high scholastic achievement and the one with high sports achievement, the topper, the average and the looser, the 9 pointers, the 8 pointers, the 7 pointers and below 7 pointers, the smokers and the non-smokers, the drinkers and the teetotalers, the highly loquacious and one with sealed mouth: each kind of creatures live under a single roof. Holi is the day when all these difference and all these boundaries fade away.

Holi gives the inmate a license to bang anyone’s door without thinking about its ramifications on their future relations. Everyone’s room is banged at least once (no pun intended).Some lucky one receives banging twice or thrice. I still remember last year when the inmates were hitting my door and I refused to open the door they threw a bucket full of coloured water in my room through the ventilator. All my books and bed got coloured. Thank god this year the hostel rooms don’t have a ventilator in their front. Nevertheless at 7 am in the morning on the day of Holy I heard a bunch of monkeys jumping around my door. The hitting continued and for the first 30 second I was reminded of my first year days when seniors used to bang our rooms on a daily basis and drag us out of our rooms to the ragging court. Soon I realized the present situations and the fact that I was in final years gave me power to shout back. But the rapscallions did not budge off. The social convention in hostels in these conditions says “you gotta come out of your room, show them your ass and then only they will move”.

When the coloured faces roam around the corridors of the hostel wings you get a feeling that they are planning for a bank robbery and they don’t need mask for that because their faces are unidentifiable. Some people take more than usual to answer the nature’s call on this particular day. They go to bathroom, toilets and stay there for more than one hour to avoid this “riot”.

In the colours of holi some of the inmates are trying to forget their abysmal life at this sodding place, some of them trying to avoid missing their families and seeking happiness amongst their friends and for some of them friends are all they have got. But all of them share a common feeling to enjoy their last few days left at this place and create unforgettable memories. Because 10 or 15 years down the line these memories are all they will have. These are the moments they are never going to live again and they all know this.

A legend has retired

The void will remain unoccupied.The wall has gone and No one can replace it.There is never going to be a 2nd Rahul Dravid.You have given us a whole set of memories to cherish with friends and families.You were a gentleman on the field as well as off the field.Thank you for being on the ground for 16 years.You might have retired but our hearts will always remember u.

Respect Women

You have not only been the great mothers,sisters,wives and daughters,you have also been the great engineers,doctors,scientists and politicians and above all you have that big heart.You have been raising this humanity generation by generation.The world is incomplete without you.On the eve of womens day this world salutes you.


Here is a Hindi poem dedicated to all the mothers.(not my original work;credit goes to whoever composed it)


आज यूही बैठे बैठे आंखे भर आई हैं
कहीं से मां की याद दिल को छूने चली आई हैं
वो आंचल से उसका मुंह पोछना और भाग कर गोदी मे उठाना
रसोई से आती खुशबु आज फिर मुंह मी पानी ले आई है
बसा लिया है अपना एक नया संसार 
बन गई हूं मैं खुद एक का अवतार 
फिर भी न जाने क्यों आज मन उछल रहा है
बन जाऊं मै फिर से नादान्
सोचती हूं, है वो मीलों दूर बुनती कढाई अपने कमरे मे
नाक से फिसलती ऍनक की परवाह किये बिना
पर जब सुनेगी कि रो रही है उसकी बेटी
फट से कहेगी उठकर,"बस कर रोना अब तो हो गई है बडी"
फिर प्यार से ले लेगी अपनी बाहों मे मुझको
एक एह्सास दिला देगी खुदाई का इस दुनियां मे.
जाडे की नर्म धूप की तरह आगोश मे ले लिया उसने
इस ख्याल से ही रुक गये आंसू  
और खिल उठी मुस्कान मेरे होठों पर

Passer Domesticus

My primary school was hardly 1000 meters far from my home. The 15 minute short journey from my home to school brought agony to me every single day. Every morning my mamma had to see my grumpy face and my unique excuses showing my reluctance to go to school. But no matter how much I tried I had to take that marathon route daily. Certain things made this detachment from my home too difficult and due to that the school seemed to me no better than Mandalay jail. The sight of house sparrows waving around my house when I left for school roamed around my mind for whole day at school. These sparrows used to tease me every time I left for school. I was envy of them for their good fate.

Remember those cheeky, little, chunky house sparrows. You might have seen them passing through your house ventilators, roaming on the floor, dancing on the roof or sitting on the electric wires. I am sure they have had played a very important role in your childhood. For me, my tryst with these sparrows has generated some sweet indelible memories. I had a very good bonding and attachment to them when I was a kid. Apart from the teasing (which obviously they never meant) they were my best companion to spend time with .During summer vacations, morning sessions of school and on Saturday and Sunday I had plenty of time to goof around. Whenever I sat on the wooden cot in my house verandah I could hear their pleasant, mellifluous chirping. Eyes automatically rolled towards them and followed their activities. The mamma sparrow would bring food grains, insects in her beak from some remote areas and would feed her babies. Those small liitle red beaks would open with a shrieking sound whenever there was a food arrival.

                                                                House Sparrow

Sometimes during a hot sunny day in the month of June when everyone was sleeping to avoid the deadly loo and I was the only one awake in that deserted area, I would come outside my room slowly without making any noise and sat in the verandah. In that silence and rumbling sound of wind the only companion I could find were these little sparrows. Their chirping in that silence seemed so pleasant and I would forget everything while observing their pranks.

On an extreme harsh and humid day these sparrows would find a way to entertain themselves. They would brush their peak and their body with hot, loose sand grains scattered on the ground. The elders would interpret this as a sign of raining. This scene brought happiness to everyone’s face. Sometimes when my verandah was beaming with presence of my family members and fellow friends from nearby houses these sparrows cuddled themselves like they were enjoying this social gathering too and made their presence felt in their own way.

The house sparrows had some privileges too. The descendants of Draco Malfoy who were roaming around the village with their catapult to kill all sweet birds were strictly prohibited not to touch these little sparrows. They enjoyed their immunity from these hooligans. But during the time of Dussehra these sparrows had to face a different kind of problem from their own community. A new type of bird Indian Roller locally called as Khirlich or Neelkanth would become the cynosure of all eyes and sparrows found themselves neglected. They found themselves ugly compared to the Neelkanths and would stop roaming around in that dejection. But as soon as Dussehra passes and these Neelkanths are gone the village is once again filled with these  sparrows.

                                                            Indian Roller (NeelKanth)

Now when I visit my house I hardly see any sparrows these days. It seems like all the good things in this world they have also decided to shun this place and have gone to some unknown places. The ornithologists have done a lot of research and have found certain factors responsible for this trend. The heavy use of insecticides, pesticides in farming, the increasing pollution, the use of leaded petrol, the absence of suitable places(like ventilators, dark and swampy corners) in new built houses, use of packed food grains( which reduces the chances of scattering of food grains) have made a very bad impact on these sparrows. This is a very shameful situation for whole humanity. I don’t want to add these birds in the list of “thing-that-have-disappeared”.

On 20th March, the World House Sparrow Day let’s take a pledge to preserve this beautiful creature. The use of organic farming, reduced use of pesticides and insecticides, increasing use of bio fertilizers, using unleaded petroleum, donating some food grains on your own roof, ceiling for these birds, reducing pollution in whatever way you can are some of the steps you can take to revive those golden days when the environment was full with the chirping of these sparrow. These are not the birds you want to shoo. Welcome them and let them be a part in the life of our children.

The Story of a Mess Worker

Hi my name is Raju. I am 22 years old. I belong to a small village “sonahula” in Darbhanga district of Bihar. I work in S-4 mess of Sapphire Hostel of Indian School of Mines,Dhanbad. I have been working here for last 7 years. My family consists of my old parents, two brothers and three sisters. I am the only breadwinner for my family.

My workplace Indian School of Mines(ISM),Dhanbad is an engineering college where best of minds(as they say) selected through prestigious IITJEE are trained for 4 years to convert them in perfect engineers. This is what the world thinks of this place. But in actuality this place produces the best smokers, drinkers and “some” good engineers. I am one of the chosen ones to serve food to this weird group of people.

My day begins at 5 am in the morning every single day. My team prepares the morning breakfast according to the particular day’s menu. The breakfast is served to students and by 10 am this breakfast session is over. Next crucial session is lunch session which starts at 12pm and runs till 2:30 pm. The timing is not so rigid and I have to attend some post 2:30 pm arrivals also. By 3-3:30 pm I am free for a short period of time only to come back to work at 6 pm or 7 pm depending on the complexity and variation of food to be served. The evening session begins at 8:00 pm and runs till 10:00 pm. Again the timing is not so rigid and I attend some post 10pm arrivals also. I have to play this test match-all the three sessions every day with no exception. There is no Saturday, no Sunday for me. Holy,Diwali and other vacations also does not exist for me. I am off the work sometimes but that is not official. My masters expect me to be at the dining table each session every day and I am too kind to disappoint them.

I work at a place where aliens are discussed. I do not know the vocabulary my masters used to communicate with each others. TOM, MOS, Bessel and Fourier seems extraterrestrial materials (or persons or place whatever they are) to me. They keep popping in from nowhere and I like a bewildered child wonder who they are, what they do and why they are so important for our masters. I can only guess that these are the terminologies my masters have to speak for the rest of their life to be called engineers.

 I have seen my masters in varying emotional situations: laughter, happiness, depression, frustration, rejection, selection and so on. I have been witness to all the emotional shifting they undergo in their day to day life. Some of my masters are not so loquacious. They keep it most of the times to themselves. They come, take their food and go without uttering a single word if  they are working on some top secret CIA project and opening their mouth will do unprecedented damage to their project: hence that behavior. Some of my masters keep chirping all the time like there is nothing else for them to do at this place. I have to make sure that my presence does not affect the way they live their little time in mess.

Hostel mess is a place where all the professors are brought under the knife and butchered multiple times by their “beloved” students. I am sure if professor Saxena or  Dr. Mitra has to sue a student for making  nasty and derogatory assessment of their teaching style and their personality assassination I will be their best evidence. I wonder why my masters ever got sad. If I am given a laptop and a cozy quilt and if I have nothing to worry about the fooding and lodging I will be the happiest creature on this planet. Anyway that’s a dream and I know I am never going to reach there in this life.

Working at this place is in itself a unique experience. It brings different type of emotions to me depending upon the treatment I receive from my masters. Sometimes I am happy, sometimes I feel sad. Every place in this universe has some psycho, some good persons and some bad persons and this place is not exception to it. Sometimes there is a delay in delivery system or salt concentration in the food is not in the proportion they desire (wow am I talking “their” language), I get a good bashing and humiliating chiding. Sometimes more than 2 masters call my name at the same time and I fall into dilemma to decide which one to attend without offending the other ones. All this I have to do only for 2000 rupees a month.

Each time there is a theft in the hostel, I and my fellow colleagues are the first one to be suspected. Our integrity is questioned. Despite all our excellent service record to this place for so many years, our sincere loyalty and our commitment to this work we are suspected, questioned and disgusted. I want to cry, I want to complain but I know my limitations and so I forget all the folly words I have  heard, all the unfair treatment I have received and keep doing my work  unquestioned continuously without any complaint for I am the chosen one to serve these “best” minds. This is me Raju and this is my story.

Live Those Tiny Moments.

You will get bump, you will get lump. You will die. Your parents will die. Your friends will die. Everything around is perishable. But you never care. You forget the simple amusements of this live and run after a ghost to achieve happiness, money, success etc. In that process you always end up being tensed, frustrated and then life seems so boring and dull that u start complaining about it and don’t want to be happy. This is not what life is. Your life is limited. So make sure you enjoy every nanosecond of it.

Most of the people are always concerned about the result of a particular process and miss the fun part in going through that process. They forget that it is not the success but the road to success (which by the way is always under construction) is the most enjoyable part. You always fix an aim and think that life will be easy, perfectly alright after that. The truth is that there is not such any point. You reach a destination and then you are ready for the next one. This journey is endless. So why to wait for the journey to end and till then keep sulking. Forget the success and start enjoying the journey to success. The right moment to do that is right now.

Life is a very precious gift given to us by the Almighty. It is interesting, entertaining and worth living. At the same time it can be complex, complicated and frustrating. It depends on you which format of life you want to choose. Make sure you choose the former one. Because you are only going to get one single life and in that single life you are going to face a lot of challenging and difficult situations. By choosing the second form of life you will only aggravate the situation. The first format will ease you even in difficult situation and you will sail through them very easily.

Don’t seek happiness in big achievement. (Does not mean that you don’t strive for the same).The happiness lies in those small, tiny moments of life which you encounter every day. Your life provides infinite no of these moments. Don’t miss those moments. This is a basic human tendency to miss a particular moment/object/person when they are gone. We never realize the power of those tiny moments at that very same time and realize only when they are gone. And when we realize we can only heave a sigh. Your aim of life should be to live those tiny moments and make them count.

I have seen a lot of these tiny moments in my life. Catching butterflies in evening, stealing mangoes from others garden, going with mamma in that small rickshaw, sleeping on the roof under an star-studded sky, fighting with the big brother, grumping while going school every morning, watching Sunday cinema with friends, the 3 AM running in the hope of becoming a military man and many more. Each moment has its own value for me. These are the most valuable assets of my life for one simple reason that I cannot live those moments again. Every person has his own set of these tiny moments which only he can value and evaluate how important and precious they are for him.

So from now onwards stop sulking, stop complaining and start living each and every moment of your life before they become memory and u start missing them. At the end of your life these memories will flash before your eyes. Make sure you have lived through each one of them.

Don't Leave Me,Please!

Each morning I wake up half dead only to be converted in a full corpse by the end of the day. Tired & frustrated I return to home and find you there waiting for me. All of a sudden my grumpy face becomes normal by seeing you there. You embrace me and bring me back to life. You have always been there for me, never missed a single day. You suck the boredom out of me. Fourier series is so boring and so is Bessel function. You make me realize that there are things apart from functions and series. Lying flat on bed I can feel you all over my body. Your sound seems so pleasing and reminds me the cacophony of this place going on all over the day. For this is time for me and you to feel the silence and leave the world to do whatever it wants to do. I see you each day. You seem unchanged. You have seen me in various conditions, various situations, changing emotions-crying, laughing, smiling, missing, silent, sleeping, rejection, selection, success, failure but you still look the way u looked 4 years back. The world has changed, the college has changed, I have changed but O my dear you are the only constant thing in this ever-changing world. I never realized how essential you were for my survival at this sulking and sodding place. Now you are upset, gone, not responding to me and then I realize how important you are. Please come back to life for I cannot survive without you. I need you.

It was then when I heard a knock at my door.

“Who is it” I asked.

“Mechanic sir, your fan is not working”. And I took the sigh of relief for she is going to be back in my life.

7 Days in Solitary Confinement

Continuing from A night In Africa...........

My body was full of blisters. I had no idea what the hell was going on inside my body? Whatever it was it made me feel retarded, slow; it made me feel the fastness of the world around me. Everything except me was moving so fast. I like a looser was so calm and slow that I did not bother to get down from the upper berth for nearly 10 hours. Sleeping on that berth I kept observing the people around me and their activities. The traditional Indian railway aura was on its full swing. The chai walah ( the tea boy),the jhalmudi (snacks)vendors, the paper soap boy made frequent visit to our compartment with their own unique slogans. I remained silent. The bhangada was going on all over my body and the blisters kept popping on. I was crying from inside. I wished my family were there. These are the situations when I miss my mother so much. It was a bad day. I wished this train could convert itself into a Shinkansen and reach Dhanbad station as soon as possible.

It was 2:35 am in the morning when I deboarded the train at platform no 5 at Dhanbad station. Since I was late by 10 days for this session, I was the only ISMite on that train. The platform looked deserted. Apart from one or two coolies (the luggage carrier) there was no human presence.

In 5 minutes I was at the entrance gate of Dhanbad railway station. With face half covered with the hood of my pullover I started moving when a bunch of rickshaw pullers and the cabbies approached me with lucrative fares.I preferred a rickshaw. The 20 minute journey from Dhanbad station to ISM Dhanbad in a dark,cold,silent night was so pleasing. The city was sleeping. It never looked me so beautiful than it seemed to me at this moment of time. I hate my college when I am on the campus. But when I am off the campus this hatred gets diluted. After each vacations I join the college with new determinations, plans, and strategies only to see them shattering from the very next day onwards. It’s not the college fault that I don’t like it. It’s my fault. I know I am going to miss this place so much. No matter how much I try today to hate this place it is not going to affect my love for this place tomorrow.

I was at the mirror in Amber Hostel wing A to observe my bruised face. I was avoiding any human interaction. A south Indian friend came to wash his face at 3 am in the morning. Strange! He saw my face in the mirror, shot the question” Hey what happened to your face, it seems to me like a chicken pox”. Thanks God, the moron has got a name.

Next morning I was in the health centre. The doctor observed me and suggested me to go back to my home. Holy crap! I came here so far only to go back! How could I go back. I just came 10 days late. I had not registered for this semester yet, not to mention I’d have a lot of syllabus to cover. Going back was out of the question. I asked any other option. The Doctor sent me in a solitary confinement for seven days. I was isolated.

For those 7 days I was all alone in a 45x20 room with 5-6 beds all lying vacant ready for the potential candidates. Well I was the king of that small place. The king used to cry on his fate. First two days were like two millennia. I could not go outside. I had not my laptop with me. My mobile was not working. God, how do prisoners survive in this condition? I realized the sufferings Mr Papillon had to undergo when he was sent in solitary confinement for two years. After 2 days I was a bit adapted to the situation. It was then when I realized the fancy lives, the perks and powers we had in our hostels .Anyway those 7 days passed and I was back in the crowd after an 18 days delay.

A Night In Africa

Calm............Calm……………………

It was all calm. Lying flat I counted the stars in the sky.1, 2, 3...7. The moon was shining the same way it does in my village. I turned my head by 87⁰. My eyes travelled hundred of meters but registered nothing of interest. It was all deserted. I looked on the other side, but the result remained the same. No one was there, no one. Nothing …….. I was all alone.

I tried to move but my legs were no more mine. I could not feel my legs. I tried, tried and again tried but the result was zero. Damn it, how the hell I ended up here.  Finally I gave up and let my body ease. I saw the moon again. I felt light. I consoled myself buddy you are not all alone. Whenever I find myself at a new place and feel lonely I see moon in the sky and say to myself this is the same moon your parents and friends back home would be seeing and thus I connect myself to my family through this moon. Moon has always worked liked a connector for me. I send a signal through neurons to my fingers. They responded. Thank God the hands were not accompanying the legs. Disasters could have happened. I touched the sand. It felt so cold. The wind was making the condition harsher for me.

My eyes recorded some decibels of sound. It kept increasing. I thought who the hell was out of his mind travelling through this hell at midnight. The sound kept increasing. And soon I saw a gigantic hound. The bastard was making that cruel some sound and I, like a roasted chicken was lying there waiting for the attacker to come. God you could have given me the opportunity to have a death of dignity, not like this. So this was me Sumit Kumar Rai, born in gopalganj, in a remote area in Bihar, was going to die in Africa. All the sweet memories of my life, those golden days with friends in garden flashed before my eyes. They will never know what the hell happened with me. I had never imagined myself in such a condition, dying like this. My story deserved a better ending. But the destiny had something else stored in for me. I made the last attempt to save myself. But what I could do was to detach my back from the surface to see a much better view of my death. My eyes meet with that of hound. I could sense the feeling “your ass belongs to me" in his eyes.

I was ready to leave the world. The hound started the journey, took the final steps, made that cruel noise and took a long jump. I closed my eyes to embrace the death...........

The bypassing train made the shrieking noise. I opened my eyes and gathered all my senses. S1, 35, Upper berth, Maurya express, 10:30 am,Jan 17^th,2010,I boarded at Siwan station. It was 3:40 pm the train was somewhere between Sonpur and Hajipur. In just 5 hours I had happened to travel thousands of kilometers all the way to Sahara in Africa and had made a return journey too. I thought now I was perfectly alright, but it was not so at all. I was endangered when the eyes were closed. I was still facing trouble when the eyes were open………………….. (to be continued)