Main Aur Meri Kameez

Swarnim Tarika

Galati Kiski

One little Incident!

This is the narration of an incident which happened en route the KP trek. Initially, I was planning to write a travelog about the KP trek. But, thinking that at least one of the other eight guys who were part of the KP trek would be thinking the same way and would already have acted in more prompt manner than I have, I have quit this idea in order to avoid the redundant work. Any one among us who choose to write about the trek would write about the same things and in the same sequences. And, if I happen to write about the trek, it would give me a feeling of my work being infringed by others (Dude!! is iRunway eating too much into me? :P) and that would not be very right kind of feeling, I suppose. Anyway, visit my piccasa album for awesome pics of KP trek.

Link: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/ferroprat/DropBox#

But, this incident was witnessed by only four (Pandey, Sankalp, Paritosh, and me), as the group initially got divided into two because we could not get a single bus to Kukke Subramanya. I am sure that no body other than me is contemplating writing about the incident. So, I begin feeling very safe, secure and authentic.

This is roughly true for all IITians. They are great at execution but not very adept in planning. We had this trip in our mind for about a month. Members got finalized about 15 days before the trek, but the bus tickets were booked only 4 days before.

Result? We did not get reservation in a single bus to Kukke Subramanya. Buses were ordinary KSRTC type. And on top of every thing, we got the last row seats. Jain, Lahoti, Mudit, Rahul Tewary and Mittal boarded the bus which was to leave at 9PM and we (Pandey, Sankalp, Paritosh, and me) chose to go by 9:15 PM bus.

Implications? Last row seats in KSRTC buses meant our adventure started much before it was to start. We were robbed of much needed sleep before a very hard trek. Some other trivialities of government bus like over crowdedness, stiff wooden seats, cramped foot space, rattling noise of windows, doors and what not, made our life further miserable. With every small jerk, we were airborne; with every brake, we tried hard to save our skulls from bumping into front seats; and with every turn, we swayed and hit our fellow passenger’s shoulders. The last row was six seater. Once, we all got our bumps arranged, our packing factor tended to almost one. If I stretched my body and leaned against the back seat, it meant fellow passengers to my left and right would be leaning forward without any back support. If my neighbor stretched his leg, it robbed me of my leg space and I would be left crouching on my seat. The tacit feeling of brotherhood was so much evident in the little ecosystem formed in the bus. No one spoke to nobody. In between, Pandey and I shared our miseries in low tone which always got lost in the rattling of bus body. Nobody seemed to have any problem so we too kept our problems with ourselves and kept counting the time. But, the time seemed to have stagnated.

In the bus, Pandey and I were sitting in the last row, while Sankalp and Paritosh were at the front most seats. They were sitting facing the driver. While driving, driver had his own share of adventure and this pretty much kept them awake. The driving skill displayed by him while he munched on gram grains sent periodic shivers of fear through their body.

We knew before hand that the length of this journey would be around 8 to 8.5 hrs. Time was very hard to pass by. We wanted some sleep but we could not. I kept imagining about the trek. I tried to keep my mind busy and hoped time would automatically catch some speed. But futile, I was exasperated and probably so was Pandey.

Out of the six seats, ours were the middle two seats. Pandey and I kept exchanging our seats to get a posture change. On out right side was seated an elderly man. Like all he was too very silent through out the journey. In front of our seat on the right side, there were two elderly ladies and two girl children. Both the ladies seemed to be in their late thirties. As the bus started, they all had lemon rice in their dinner, which they shared with the man sitting to our right, who probably was husband of one of the ladies’. Both the children were elated at getting something to eat and made their joy known to all by speaking, laughing and running in the bus passageway. After the dinner, one of the ladies occupied a seat in the two-seater side of the bus. Beside her, at the window seat was a gentleman. He seemed to be in his late twenties. As the bus came out of the city, passengers seemed to have settled down. Even the body and mind got used to the miseries. The driver switched off the lights. The conductor too dozed off on a wooden box which he adjusted in the little space just before the last row. There were some frowned noses at this but nobody spoke anything. Everything pretty much settled. Things got utmost boring. There was nothing to look at. There were just silence and darkness. Time crawled. There were a few bus stoppages but, each time the bus started, things came to the equilibrium pretty fast.

It was around 4:00 AM in the morning. The bus had reached the hilly region and we were now almost like pendulum, swaying left and right with equal frequency. There was darkness and everyone was dozing. There was complete lull. And suddenly, the lady sitting with the guy started screaming and hitting the man sitting at the window. She uttered a lot of undecipherable words in Kannada and kept on slapping the guy. In between she spoke only two English sentences: “I know how to defend myself. (Followed by a slapJ)” and “I have been tolerating you for long”. It seemed the man did something to her in darkness which she felt was grossly inappropriate.

The whole bus was awake. The conductor rose and did not dare to go near the lady and ask the matter. He stood aghast in the passageway. After, sometimes, driver switched on the lights and there we saw the lady fuming with anger. As the light was turned on, she could easily see the guy’s face and this further fueled her anger. Unrelenting, she kept on slapping and hitting the guy wherever she could and kept shouting things in Kannada. The man was just trying to defend himself from her thrashing. Later, the other lady went to her, consoled her and cooled her down. She called the man who was sitting right to Pandey. This man was probably husband of the molested lady. He very meekly rose from his seat, went to the place of the event and didn’t say anything. The other lady almost dragged her to her previous seat. Her husband occupied the seat next to the trashed guy. Later, we came to know the guy had a wife and a child traveling with him. They were sitting somewhere else. His wife did not choose to participate in the quarrel and did not even rise from her seat.

This all happened in very time and almost woke up everybody in the bus. Kukke Subramanya was still 30 minutes away. Sleep was still miles away. Driver turned off the lights. The conductor stood near the door poping his head out of the bus. The next 30 minutes, I kept thinking about the incident. I did not know what happened between the lady and the guy. But, the courage with which she tried taking things in her control was worth some pride for Indian womanhood. She cried but her tears were not the product of her meek submission to man's aggression but of courage and boldness with which she tried defending her modesty and gave a tough reply.

But, there were some questions which my mind could not find answers to. Why her husband did not try to intervene and join her in his trashing? Why the guy’s wife did not did not come to his rescue? I was thinking about this, when the brake screaked and we all were jolted forward. The conductor shrieked ‘Subramanya’. My chain of thoughts was broken. I boarded down the bus looking around. It was just before the dawn. The natural beauty around slowly started to fill in me the thrill of the trek ahead.

That Dream..

It was not the first time I saw such a mixed-up dream, as I call it; dreams where there are people, living and dead, from different places at a single place at the same time; a single place in the dreams having characteristics of many places; different ideas, notions, feelings which had been gone through or thought of or talked about or discussed at different points of time having their presence at the same time in the dream. These dreams always leave me baffled after I wake up and as soon as I engage myself in worldly activities, I tend to forget such dreams very quickly. Even this amazes me a lot. Any thing in real life which astonishes/surprises/frights/delights you, you tend to remember it for long. This is not true for dreams, at least not true for my dreams. I have, many a times, woken up feeling extremely happy or sad but fail to remember what exactly I was going through in my dreams.

The dream I was having in the morning was an entirely mixed-up dream. I don’t know where from it started. This is true almost for all my dreams. I never remember exactly from where a dream started. As I feel it, dreams never start abruptly at any point of time. For example, it does not make much sense to me that you are sleeping till 2:30am peacefully without any dream and all of a sudden at 2:31am you start having a dream about your girlfriend kissing you. There must be some kind of grooming happening in the brain before a dream starts and we start feeling the dream. Whatever, got carried away. I am neither willing to nor am qualified enough to dive into the psychology of dreams. But, as I will be writing about different things in the dream, I will try to co-relate it to my life, my feelings…

It was morning time. I was in the IITK cricket ground. The ground was lush green, as it’s always is after the raining season. The team was to be decided for a match against some local team.

>> I have spent 4 years of my under-graduate life on this field. I have played many matches against local teams of Kanpur. But, after I left Campus, I have played almost no cricket (have played some phatta with tennis ball, but it can not be called cricket anyways). I miss playing cricket a lot. I desperately want to be in a big grassy cricket field practicing or playing matches. This part relates to my extreme desire to play professional cricket.

Well, the captain of my team was Gauri.. :)

>> To introduce Gauri, it would be sufficient to say that he is truely a cricket fanatic. He enjoys Cricket to the fullest. He was one of the most humble cricketers and a very good team player. In off training seasons, if there is no one around and you have a strong urge to play. Call Gauri, whatever he is into, he will leave everything to accompany you in the field. Well, recently, I was going through a post (about 15 days ago) on orkut cricket community and learned that he has captained a few matched for IITK cricket team. I never felt he was a good captain material. But, I think the kind of experience he has and the amount of respect he gains from the team members would have eased his job a lot. I remember I had spent a little time thinking about him after I had read that post.

The team probably did not have a specialist opener. I demanded vehemently to be sent as an opener. Gauri conceded and I was very happy.

>> I was never considered a good batman in my team. I got very little chance to bat in match situations where I could have made an impact. I always believed I could be a good middle order/opener batsman. It is also true that given some chances here and there, I had never proved my batting skills good enough to be promoted up the order. I always had a strong desire to open the innings for my team.

We were fielding first in the match. I asked Gauri where I should field. He replied, “Pick any region except for the Western Australia Desert.” :)

>> Hilarious!! Isn’t it. Last night, just before going to sleep, Pandey, an IITKGP guy and my roommate, had asked me to name the desert in Australia. I couldn’t. And, then we were looking into Australian Map and found out it was ‘Western Australian Desert’.

I chose the point region to field at. And, instead of being inside the 30 yard boundary, I was standing long beyond the inside boundary, trying to do a Jonty.

>> Point is my favorite place to field at. Jonty is my favorite fielder. I like the way Jonty started from the inside circle edge and as the bowler approached the crease to deliver, he used to charge almost 10 meters. I, in past, have tried imitating that but have found speed charging extremely difficult. It may help you in your side movements/dives a lot but guessing the speed of ball and turn/cut of ball at point region are difficult when you yourself are in motion.

Pandey was also in the Team. There was no one to open the bowling for our team. Announcing that he is going to bowl, Pandey took the ball and hurriedly rushed to the bowling mark. He took 5 odd steps and without intimating umpire about his bowling arm and bowling side, he came hopping (very much similar to Balaji :) ) to the bowling crease and bowled a short ball. The batman slashed it over point (over my head) for a one tip boundary. Umpires signaled a no-ball.

>> I have seen Pandey bowling spin couple of times. Last IPL, I was very much surprised by Balaji’s bowling. After, his return from the injury, He has cut down on pace a bit but has gained an appreciable control on his swing. To reduce stress on his knees, he has totally changed his run-up. He approaches his crease from a very short run-up and almost hopping on the ground before delivering. I don’t remember, after IPL, I ever thought about or discussed Balaji with anyone.

The next ball was a half volley on off side and batman mistimed his inside-out shot. The ball just missed the cover fielder's (I don't remember who was the fielder) hand and went for another boundary. Next ball was a similar ball and a similar shot was executed. But, this time it went directly into the hands of diving cover fielder. Next batsmen arrived and he had a short discussion with the dismissed batman about his shot. He told him,” Tumhare pichhle shot ko dekh kar ke lag gaya tha ki tum jyada der nahi khene wale ho. You should have waited a little more”.

>> Well, this is typical comment a batman, especially an opener, gets after playing a rash shot very early in his innings and getting out. This was very much customary event in my team. Every time, a batman opted to accelerate and got out in the process, he was given this shit. I have always believed that in short cricket games (20-25 overs game), one opener should always be on the rampage from the word go and the other one should look to rotate strike. But this has never been the team's feeling. For all four years, I saw captains and coaches instructing openers to hold their crease for first few overs. This often resulted in test-match situations where batmen were looking more to save their wickets, rather than attack and give a good start.

As I waited impatiently for my bowling turn, I saw Swarnim sitting in the pavilion and watching the game. I am not very sure she was enjoying the game, as she sat very quietly and did not even cared to throw back a smile when we saw each other.

>> Both, Cricket and Swarnim, are inseparable from me. In past, I have had good company of both but not at the same time. In my IITK life, I always had this secret desire that Swarnim should come to watch me playing. That was never to happen and it never happened. By the way, Swarnim does not like Cricket at all. In fact, she hates it so much that if she ends up watching a Cricket live telecast for 30 minutes, she would go on nourshing her headache for next 3 hrs. Her gloomy face in the dream is very much justified.

I saw Jain and HER sitting on the stairs too.

>> Last night, I had a chat with Jain regarding his feelings for HER. I was very moved by his story and his feelings for HER. I went to sleep thinking about them. I wanted them to be together once again.

Meanwhile Pandey continued his bowling and bowled the fifth ball of the over. I don’t remember what happened on that ball. I remember I was very excited and was gearing up for the second over. I wanted Pandey to quickly finish his over so that I could have my turn.

>> I always opened bowling for my team as the second strike bowler.

The wait was almost over when Pandey started his stride for the last ball of the first over. I, at the point, charged imitating Jonty. Suddenly, it was all over. Pandey woke me up saying it’s 8:30, get ready for the office. When I woke up, I was so terrible pissed off with him. At first, he kept me waiting to have that heavenly touch of leather after so long a time and when I was almost to have the ball in my hand and was to do what I am craving for more than a year, he woke me up and shattered all my hopes! I hate you, Pandey!!

India's New Foreign Secretary

Nirupama Rao took over as India Foreign Secretary. She is 1973-batch Indian Foreign Services officer. She succeeded Shiv Shankar Menon.

Ms. Rao is a Fellow of the Centre for International Affairs (now the Weatherhead Centre) of Harvard University from 1992-93.

Chokila Iyer was the first woman to serve as India's foreign secretary in 2001.

A piece of news from Hindu

Infosys became the first company to get CISF (Central Industrial Security Force) security. Earlier CISF provided security only to Indian Govt. industrial undertakings and other govt. establishments. But, after feb, 2009, private sectors can also get CISF security.

Infosys is paying 1 lakh/day to CISF for its services.

Infosys Director: T.V. Mohandas Pai

Present Director General of CISF: N. R. Das

Some Facts about CISF:

1. March 10, 1969: CISF was set up under an act of the Indian parliament on March 10, 1969 for the better protection and security of Industrial Undertakings.

2. June 15, 1983: CISF was made an armed force of the Union of India by another act of Parliament.

3. February 25, 2009: Bill was passed to extend CISF security to private and cooperative establishments.