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.