A sour fruit

"chal changa fir" I said to shashi who had come to drop me at railway station. It was 4'o clock in the morning. My train was to leave at 4:15. It was quite pleasant breeze blowing at that time, though days are quite hotter in pune in the month of May, the pre-monsoon month. I had booked tatkal ticket in sleeper class. I knew it would feel scorching hot in a non-AC coach after being used to conditioned air for past three years. Entered the station premises with the usual unceasing crowing of the people around. Suddenly stirred up the fears that time had done well to dispel. I remember when I was in train the last time.

I was in mumbai many times for my interviews in b-schools just after the 26/11 carnage. I had to travel by mumbai local train. Things were not the same for me after that traumatic expreience. Though most of us watched it on television, it left wounded everyone. My eyes fixating on the washroom doors at CST as I quailed at the thought of seeing some kasabs popping out, flauting their AK-47s and slaughtering all of us indiscriminately. I scurried across the platforms to board my train. U never know when any of the choked up coaches would be in flames with the explosives. I was mulling over it throughout my journeys in the local trains. I was very vigil what was happening around. My body sprangled with big beads of perspiration, but I still had to fulfill my obligations as a citizen. Making sure no suspicious baggage is left beneath me or my fellow passengers. I wonder if this was my cowardice to apprehend like this or my job to police. But both ways, I knew who was suffering.

I felt very unfortunate for us to be traumatized like this. We have no peace of mind while travelling in these cities. Absolutely no security in our own den. Fortunately my interviews were over and I was back in pune, only metro city not victimized yet. Then I pondered over the reason behind the attacks. All were enraged against pakistan for its wicked acts. I know how we were ready for a decisive war against pakistan after 26/11, though it would be fatal for both sides. Calling the shots were the fundamentalists in pakistan and a handful of pak leaders. When it came to censuring, the whole pakistan became synonymous with those people and in fact the whole religion. The decision from muslim community not to bury the terrorists in mumbai was encouraging but couldn't mollify the execration of non muslims. Their religion, innately having some evils many think, has earned a bad name in the past decades and it's getting worse than ever. Religion , supposed to be a very personal affair, has become the basis for the wars of our time.

There came my train, 20 minutes late. Lalu's profit making wagon had arrived. Thank God he has been sunk in the last general elections. I got one of the newest of the seats in the coach, the newly added berth between side upper and side lower berths, the most inconvenient one. Anybody will make profit with such preposterous innovations. I chained my bag with the security hook beneath the lowest berth. Others in my compartment were already snoring. One doesn't have the luxury of bedding in sleeper class. I dusted the grimy berth with my hands. And laid prostrate.

"Allah-hu-Akbar, Allah-hu-Akbar" I , bit drowsy, heard something like this. I wondered where it came from. I woke up to saw. It was around 5'o clock. It was two Muslims standing erect in a peculiar direction. They were practicing their first namaaz of the day. I heard somewhere that it was their religious duty to do it 5 times a day. One of the two wore a black turban and other one a white muslim cap. Both wore white kurta-pyazama. Both had full grown beard. I conjured the repeatedly shown footage of similarly dressed up talibans with weapons in their hands. The image has been ossified as one of a terrorist by the media. The supplication was over and the two people moved away. Before I could sense it was over, there came another pair dressed in the same fashion and started their namaaz as well. I then noticed they were around 7-8 in that compartment. All came in pairs and performed their namaaz standing on the same sheet and in the same direction. I was trying to sleep but couldn't. The rummy site put me into swithers for some time. I guessed it may be their last namaaz before they executed some heinous act. I noticed whatever they did and slept after all of them were lying on their berths.

The mornings in trains are always indolent rendering u catch ur breath; not allowing u to chase ur destiny; putting off ur perpetual comeptition with the peers; avoiding ur spanking ur soul to meet deadlines; not intimidating as ur boss in the meetings. My eyes suddenly went to the same compartment. There were 8 of those. All in kurta pyazamas. The kurtas were with shortened sleeves and pyazamas with short lengths. All looked squalid at first sight from their dirty clothes and unpleasant countenances. One wearning the black turban was reading aloud a religious book written in a language greek to me. He was reading aloud the content and elucidating it to the 7 others who were keenly listening, sometimes even raising queries. It looked like they are from a madrassa as all were too much into the religion. Then came the time for second namaaz. Same process repeated. But the direction was different this time. I later found that they stand in the direction of Qibla, the holy Ka'bah, which is situated in Makkah. The train veered sharply towards right while the namaaz was going on. The direction of Qibla, so I realized, was just a faith. My body shranked again to make sitting space for another one of the many hucksters queueing up in our compartment; waiting for the standing duo to finish their proceedings; grumbling about the occlusion for obvious reasons. Hunting for the way were a few passengers; some young n some old. The ire on their faces was more than palpable. Their wrath of course had some stimulus from their animosity towards the religion. I suddenly imagined a peckish hindu man storming in, unable to brook the hindrance, started mistreating those pious aliens and incited something undesirable.

The day passed taking note of the exotic things some of us witnessed. They did it five times that day. And rest of time they tried to get closer to almighty's eden reading its texts. A third thing they did that day was to eat rice. They ate only rice in all their meals and I wonder if poor people gobble their food keeping their tongues from tasting it. I thought, for a moment, how better we are to afford the pricey chicken biryanis. How hard their life may be, I could see through their dedication; allegiance to their writings. I question myself how they can afford time to think of any malevolence out of their busy schedule of namaaz and more they also needed time to earn their share of rice.

As I flaked out I grew sympathetic towards them not only because of the wretched condition they were in but the onerous disgrace they, along with their religion, carried. How it happened that I couldn't think of them as orthodox mortals, my instincts could determine everyone of them as terrorist, why their beard boded something calamitous, why their piousness reassured the evil. How the hatred sourced from the psyche of some brutal leaders like hitlers, jinnahs, saddams and bushes of course spreads quickly and petrifies in our heads. How we can't see victims as mere humans and terrorists as mere devils rather than identifying them with their religion. I unknowigly have been making the rivulet more acidulous. So been u. And so ve been they all. It's now upto us to sweeten it. It will take a long time I know but only this can counter those few satanic leaders putting hatred in our minds to emote us into doing what is utterly baseless. We may have shelved veds, granths, qurans or bibles in our dwellings but our religion for this world is humanity. Let's try it once, break the veil of hatred, look around with unconditional and unending love, and fill the rivulet with everlasting sweetness. So that the tree of world it leads to yields something sweet that till now has been shelling out nothing but a sour fruit.

The Ignominy

Yet another fine night and everybody was in their bed by 1130. I was waiting for the midnight, the time for verdict, the time that can veer the course of life, the time that can fulfill the dreams. I typed the message with my name, CAT reg no. & DOB in it at exactly 0000 hrs. It replied the service would be activated on 9th Jan 2009. But date was already changed to 9th though a minute before. I tried as many times as I could before I doped off but got the same reply again and again. There was excitement in the air. I was hoping it to be more than 99%ile as calculated by all the coaching centers. I also knew I had messed my DI section big time. Whoever came on the way of my journey of CAT had praised my DI skills. But I don’t know what put me on the wrong side that day in the DI. Still not all IIMs look for high sectional percentiles. People even above 98 get calls from IIMs. And mine would approach 99.

Eyes opened in the morning with apprehensions all around. Tension was palpable. It was not a fresh start to the day unlike every day. I sent the message and got reply immediately. Heartbeat was conspicuously higher. I scrolled down the message box to see the overall percentile. 98.85. Oh missed 99. DI was just above 90. English 97 and Maths 98.5. Who would believe I am really strong in DI and weaker in English than shown by these scores. I sometimes think how these scores match the actual talent. Still let's c which IIMs I would get call from. I switched on my PC and opened the CAT website. Put my number. The same numbers flashed on the monitor. Amrit (my roommate) congratulated me. Being a CAT aspirant in the past he knew what it takes to get such scores. Meanwhile I checked out other links on the site. I didn't find any link telling about which IIM calls one has got. I called up Avinash, my ideal for preperations. We had prepared together for the test. As expected he got close to 100 percentile and got 5 IIM calls. But he also didn't know where to look for IIM calls. His friend had seen his result. Still enthralled by the result I started getting ready for the day. In the reading room (our Toilet where newspapers are read every morning) it suddenly came to my mind that IIM calls list might be displayed on the result page itself. I couldn't see anything maybe because I didn't get any. It was huge tension. I still hoped as it was not confirmed. But when I reached office and explored on net, I got confirmation of no IIM calls.

People congratulated me on my score but one verdict of no IIM calls was spoiling the party of such a high score. People told me I would still get into one of the best colleges in the country. So the next step was GD PI preparations. I called up Avinash again. He had talked to a trainer who trained only IIM call getters. It would not be like IMS, TIME and others where there is mess of crowd. Only IIM call getters would make a good bunch that will sail through. It was the first time I felt very low. Still I called up the trainer, Mr Kiran Joshi. And asked him if I could also come. I told him that I would still have calls from best of non IIM institutes. He said no problem and so I thought no issues "I will still get something among the best". So it was the first class. People were very enthusiastic about their IIM calls. So I was like sitting in a corner listening to them as I had no IIM call to brag about. Suddenly Kiran sir came. He asked everybody to introduce themselves. In the introduction, he said, tell name, doing what and how many (IIM) calls. I was thinking of what to say about the third part. I was the last one to speak. All other including Avinash had told their number of calls. Most of them had 4 or 5; one girl with 7 as well; some with 1 or 2. But it was the man with the last turn. Jasjit singh, working with C-DAC, "NO IIM CALLS". I said this with confidence though it felt from inside the ignominy. The ignominy of not getting an IIM call. It haunted me there in every class. It was there when Kiran sir said to othes "IIM mein jana hai ki nahi, sahi se discuss karo". When people joked with each other "tu to A (IIM ahmedabad) mein jayega". When some people told me they had not filled any form other than IIMs. When they emphasized there is no point in going to non IIM colleges. There is no match to IIMs. Every moment was ignominious but also useful as I learnt a lot with some brilliant guys there. I also didn't get that attention from the trainers as they were somewhat biased towards the IIM call getters. Anyhow I’m writing this after converting MDI gurgaon, my best call, one of the top ten b-schools in India. People are surprised even if I enquire about the college. They say don't ask anything, just join it. IMS center manager told "laate marenge log tujhe agar tune MDI chhoda to, MDI kaun Chhodta hai". But the ignominy had already spurred something inside me, had already told me that it would be an IIM or ... I would make probably the boldest step in my life to leave MDI and invest (or waste) plenty of time preparing for CAT yet again. I know this could be the most foolish decision of my life but I can't take along the ignominy that I earned in the few previous months. I will try to bury this ignominy the next time.