The Others Part 1

Most of us remember getting bit by the "LOST" bug, yeah that oh so awesome ABC show about this plane crashing on some freaky island which had a smoke monster, time travel, a golden cave, dead people coming alive and a lot of other confusing issues but around 2 seasons into LOST , apart from the protagonists came a new set of people who although were not part of the original cast and whose stories were not highlighted as much, they did have a huge part to play in the entire series, THE OTHERS.

While school was filled with random madness by people in my group or something happened to em which was bloggable , there were a lot of other people blog worthy , who were on the periphery of our small circle of friends. STB was filled with roughly 300 freaks worth blogging about, I will try to keep it as minimal as possible.

The Ganguly.

Yes, that is a very common surname for a bengali but I am not talking about every bengali whose name is Ganguly but about a really special lad from my school. Abhishek Ganguly, most of my classmates will remember him quite well, tall, lanky fellow, who seemed to have a speech impairment only because his mouth was full of gutka or pan masala.

The guy slept through most classes ,teachers were of the belief that he was taking drugs and hence could not concentrate in class, they guy was a little off for sure, always picking on the people who no one cared about, this new kid had come in class 11 and Ganguly always picked on him but he was about to be put into place.

Math class was never fun, with a south indian mallu teacher who was super strict and was always solving sums in his mind and making freaky math gestures with his fingers ala beautiful mind I think, not sure, still Ganguly was sitting behind Guha [rest in peace] and while class was going on and everyone was busy doing sums, we hear this massive bang coming from the other side of the class.

We all turn to face that side and see the macho man Ganguly holding his face , Guha is freaking enraged, while our mallu math sir tries to understand what has happened he decides to try and rebuke Guha because he was the slapper and Ganguly was the slappie .

"Wat Hhappened Bhoys? Gu..Gu..Guha , wat did yu du men?"
While most of us would have apologized to a teacher and moved on , he says
"Sir Abhishek was kicking me from behind and that's why I slapped him"
Guha, was this huge fellow, always body building and was nearly 6 feet 5 inches, passed away in somewhat suspicious circumstances.

Ganguly not to be outdone retorts back
"Saar, aanui jaauu, hei , saaar, mumble jumble and all"

Sir has no idea of what to do and ends up having a discussion with the two guys after class. Ganguly for all his machoness was the opposite actually, I know I am a proper mother's boy but this guy would take the cake, even though we were in class 12 his mother would follow him around to all his tutions , no matter how far they were or how many he had in a day his mom was everywhere with him, almost every teacher complained about him dozing off or him taking some drugs or something but nothing fazed him or his mother.

As Ganguly projected himself to be a bully he tried hanging around with a few of em and everyone knows there is the one person who gets picked on always in a group and in the group of bullies it was Ganguly, while he was busy threatening the one person who would say he is an "East Bengal" supporter in our class, as soon as Ganguly would shout something in his un-understandable tone the bloke reverted to

"arrey bhai, Arsenal, Arsenal".
I saw a proper glimpse of how much he was accepted into the bully community, while we were coming back from a tution where his mother was not there with him. We were driving through an alley in my car, while Ganguly was chewing something at the back "relaxing" himself from a hard days tution, he suddenly pops up saying

"Oi, Aadeem[bengali like] ota Laal"
Sandeep Lal, one of the toughest s.o.b's ever to pass out from school, Ganguly seemed so excited seeing him, he popped his head out while we were reaching Laal and starting calling his name out in his weird accent.

I didn't want to get involved in all this so I did not look at their bonding of sorts, then I hear a thud, I look around and see Laal is laughing his ass off while Ganguly is holding his eye , the car is moving all the time, Ganguly got hit again by another person this time and while Ganguly pops his head out shouting expletives to Lal, even my driver for once could not resist a chuckle and spent the rest of the time trying to hide his massive grin everytime Ganguly tried to strike up a conversation.

This just shows that Ganguly was not the mean bully everyone thought he was, quite inconsiderate as well, we had a computer sir who was specially abled, that is the correct term to be used now, so while we were talking about what to expect during the exams and when Sir was about to come to class, Ganguly pops up saying
"Dhoot baara , he will take time to come, saala Lengra"

We, well Chintoo and a few others found it a little offensive to Sir, Ganguly's reasoning
"Langra ko langra nahin bolega toh kya bolega"

Yes, true that, The Aura of the bully went kaput by the end of the ISC year , the one person who he targeted for 2 years also opened a community [ like in orkut] just for abusing Ganguly and the likes, so much for the Bully staying the bully, he actually got owned by the guy who was targeted by every student in our class calling him
"Tumhara baap tujhe saree pehnakar kya karta hai"
every day he was asked that and his only response ever was
"wohi jo tumhara baap karta hai"

This went on everyday for 2 years, credit went to Adil for continuing it, the good old days.

The Conspiracy

I have always loved those conspiracy theories, the one about 9/11, Saddam etc etc etc, I know more than half of them are as real as the love a person has for their spouse of 50 years when they see a hot new play thing wanting to tag along with em but they always portrayed a completely different yet believable aspect of any real life incident.

Coming back, our major classes began this week with the brothers being separated, Wasim took finance as his major while I took marketing. Wasn't really a hard choice, I like adverts and all and I suck at anything related to mathematics, plus I suck at computer knowledge as well so IS was not my option either.

While our classes are not always from 10- 5 as it were in the first year, we do have a long distance to travel and often have to leave around noon to reach college by 1:30, on one such day our class was in the second half of the day. We meet at around 12:40 and are on the look out for a car pool to take us to college but we find a bus, as we are the "golden children" of our college or at least because Wasim is the college topper we jump on and sit.

During an amazing , warm, sweat filled journey Wasim has this moment of epiphany while looking at this huge garbage pile near Science City
Wasim: "Adeem, tera chance hai"
Me:"WTF are you talking about?"

Bear in mind, on a normal day Wasim would have retorted back with an abuse but since he was fasting during the month of Ramadan and I was not, cos of "issues" he decided to do the calm thing.

Wasim :"Arrey , you are in Marketing stream, most of the toppers are in Finance so you could do well and come in the top 10 of the marketing stream"

Me:"hahahahahahahahahah, chutia saala mera kaam nahin hai, sapna dekh"

Little did I know, this could have been my last conversation with one of my "best friends".

The bus ride ends and in between I have racked up more sins than a whore by abusing the shit out of a person fasting during the month of Ramadan while I am not even close to fasting myself, not only that, I make sure some crappy thought comes to his head but to protect himself from this vile creature he has learned one massive thing from me
"Your intentions [neeyat] must always be clean", I live by that rule and now so does he.
As we are getting off the bus I am supposed to follow the bugger across the road all because I decide to follow the correct manner to cross a street.
Look left, then right, then left and then cross the street, this has made me the joke of my class in college, which I don't mind one bit, crossing a street near my college is not easy though, cars, buses, autos, cycle rickshaws, tempos etc etc etc all can and will run over you.

So my friend tells me, as soon as I see him cross the street I should follow him, well this day I decide to do the same, while a state bus is like 30 meters away from us , a red santro is right next to the said bus, we have enough time to cross the road, since this is Calcutta , nothing is so easy and all off a sudden the bus decides to race the Santro, which would NOT BE PICKING UP ANY passengers , the Santro also wont back down and starts racing against the bus, Wasim somehow manages to slip in between the bus and the car with his bag barely scrapping through the gap.

Now its time for the fat one, I decide to jump back and let the things pass, but right behind me is this huge concrete divider , am stuck, am freaked out and am nervous like hell, the bus driver isn't trying to slow down as well, with a bit of luck I manage to use my left had to push myself and jump away from the bus which does stop a second later.

While the bus driver , Wasim and I spent 5 minutes rebuking each other and while I lay the blame completely on him, he just smoothly walks past saying "Its the bus driver's fault".

Then it hits me, when I was studying in Dubai, I was a straight A student in all subjects barring Hindi, hell I was a elocution champion for years at a stretch however as soon as I came back to Calcutta I started sucking at studies and well porn did corrupt me but so did football, this could have been the time [marketing 2nd year major] where I could have done something big and topped or something and just when Wasim blurts out what could happen, ie me doing well in the exams for once, I am almost killed by the same "friend" who said I can't cross a street by making me cross a street, woh dubla bach gaya, and I almost got ran over.

Two things come out from this
1:Wasim is a frenemy
2:The world does revolve around me.

A year gone but nothing has changed

July 13th 2010 , the day after the 2010 world cup in South Africa and a new chapter in my life started with me going to my MBA college ,Globsyn Business School.
This post is me joining back after one year, especially after the end of the tumultuous and pathetic excuse of a summer internship I had, which did give me a lot of free time but certainly made me slog around like a whore trying to pay up to her pimp and I made more people upset than a man touching himself in front of a religious building.

Now everyone has completed their internship and its a norm to present what was done during this said 2 month job, companies are allotted randomly and people are treated like slaves to get shit work done. The first day of college starts and we get a nice lecture about how important the internship is and how much our presentation and word report counts as it could help us land some job.

Someone should have told me this before and then maybe I would have worked hard, anyways the day starts with more than half the students not coming to class, the few that did come got scared with a rumor floating about that presentations were to start today, hearing this a few more ran away, while I was safe in the knowledge that presentations cannot start today as we were not given a proper list of who is to present and when. Our presentations were to be completed a week back but still people have not even started their presentations.

While we are all laughing about what we did during our internship, our class door opens and 3 teachers walk in and while 2 of em were quite easy to deal with the 3rd one was "Ghajini" [read my earlier post about Ghajini]. The Sadist who knows more english than all the English combined was back and was he back with a vengeance. People were asked to volunteer and as usual no one would raise their hand, they did not want to get slaughtered on the first day of the 2nd year, while some people eventually did volunteer, I was forced to join along and I was supposed to be the 3rd presenter.

Ghajini was on a tear , asking people for their analysis reports of their work, he did not want the crap about the company profile and all. I had no analysis, hell I was made to work like a normal sales guy, no analysis at all. The Lord has funny ways to prove he is there, while all my friends know I could be in deep shit, just before I step up to present, ghajini leaves class and doesn't come back until after I am done.

After my presentation one of the teachers asked me
"What was your learning from this whole internship experience?"
I replied
"Ma'am, Office Politics and how to deal with em"
People laugh

Sir asks me
"Suppose Karim, you got selected in the company for a full time job....."
before he could complete his question I replied
"But Sir, we already told em we are not interested in the company or the job"
Laugh bitches laugh hard, I never lost the touch even after I was away for 3 months.

While my presentations went well enough, people got raped, proper rape, raped so hard like they show in those CSI shows where the person changes and probably will never be the same again, unable to express their feelings or talk to people for a few weeks or months, it was that bad during some presentations. I was snickering away like an arse not caring much for the sadistic rape that was occurring in front of my eyes, people were backing out of the presentations like asking for volunteers to work in Afghanistan.

Another thing apart from the internship is the presence of the new first years, cannon fodder in most colleges, ragging has completely been outlawed and rightly so, so now its called interaction sessions so that we get to know the kids better, while a few of my pals have come into the college as juniors, I don't have much time or scope to meet em up. So on the first day I am searching like a retard for my friend, going from class to class in search of him, I finally did find the junior section where my friend is studying, unfortunately he was not there. While I am leaving in a hurry to catch him at the canteen , a Sir calls me in from another class where presentations were on

"Karim, can you come here a second" , Sir says, in a hush hush tone
"Yes, sir?"
"Don't do anything", he tells me in a stern quite tone.
I laugh and tell him "Don't worry Sir, I am not ragging anyone, just searching for a friend"

The friend of mine who has joined is probably the biggest maagibaaz I know and the first thing he tells me is how he is friends with the hottest chick in the new batch who just happens to be muslim. Finally, I think, "Finally a hot chick who is muslim, maybe something good can come from this", so I meet with the friend outside the college and wouldn't you know it he introduces me to her, While we both exchanged Hello's , I was more focused on her "stats" while she didn't know what was going on, I didn't even get a good look at her face, dang it ,I could not come to a conclusion of her hotness but who cares, these interactions with females always end up like the skin on the faces of teenagers, not smooth at all.

Not smooth at all.

Art Attack

I was very fortunate back in 1999, when my parents decided to go on a trip to Europe, London and Paris were the destinations, while I loved Disneyland Paris, my father was adamant that while we were there we had to go and see one of the greatest art museums every, The Lourve.

All I remember form the place is that beautiful glass ceiling , the Monalisa and getting to see the female form, aka boobies on the Venus Di Milo,I was freaking 10 years old, cut me some slack, but back to the point, art is something that everyone can relate to but they never have the same opinion about it, everything means something totally different to another person.

My first Art class was in Dubai, quite a simple task it was too, painting the Indian flag in all its glory, this was probably in class 1, making a simple flag, drawing the chakra and filling it with color, simple enough, my flag was stiff[ no sexual puns here] some were waving around [wavin flags] and all.

Over time as we grew we found out that some were good at drawing art, there was this guy in my class Nahim, made some amazing comics in his time, while there were other freaks in my class Roshan [ who had come from Hong Kong and had told our class 5 teacher not to "touch" him aka hitting the bugger in class] who was a brilliant artist and would be allowed to do anything in class and would always get an A. Hell the guy was once messing about drawing SRGay form Mohabbatein and the art sir gave him an A++, pissed me off that did, I always believed in conspiracies then as well and told a pal of mine, "He only got the A++ coz SRgay's glasses were the same as Sir's"

Now the Sir we had in Dubai was a class act, Dilip Kumar was his name, I am not kidding, and yes stuff like this does happen to me, he had this retard dress sense often coming in sharp colors, like reds and yellows with retarded ties and well a retarded hairstyle as well, plus em tinted glasses, the first time I had seen something like that.

Comical may that be, he had one massively annoying habit, he would say "ok" a crazy number of times , his vocab was fine, it was just that a sentence of say 10 words had like 5 "ok"s in it. In fact once in class me and a pal Sumit, decided to count the number of "ok"s he would say, while we were counting in that 30 minute period, Sumit got caught and was rebuked by Sir, I was lucky to get away, official count give or take 10 was 300 Ok's in 30 minutes, congratulations a new world record.

In class 5 or 6 , he wanted to teach us "abstract art", which meant no more smooth lines but rather more graphic designs of simple objects, we were asked to draw and apple and Sumit managed to make an apple look like an ass.

Moving forward a few years and ending up in Calcutta, I was not blessed with an art class but rather an SUPW class, I still have no idea what it means. The class was basically an arts and crafts class mixed with a bit of sports, yes for 4 classes we had to write down the rules and regulations of cricket, basketball and football. It was a waste of time in a school where most of the students did not give a fuck to studying, rather they would have been interested in beating their class mate during that period.

While some days we had this hard ass Sports Sir to deal with , during the latter years we had to deal with Pinky, no not a lady but a guy teacher who had the balls the size of soy beans, the unruly bastards in class would do what they want, abuse him, make fun of him and by abuse I mean abuse the parents or a proper STB gaali. This same bugger was also chosen as the umpire in games which Chintoo lee played, the inter house cricket tournament where the bugger would change his decision based on which gunda was threatening him. Also his day job was that of being a traffic job, I mean how the fuck could he ever hold a post of authority?
He could not deal with students, let alone the pissed off drivers of Calcutta.

All I learned in this class ws how to make some stupid stick puppet and sock puppet, while the douche stole all the things we had made for our ICSE exams, yes we had to submit a "project" for the ICSE exams and then later we found out, nearly 6 months later that our "things" were being sold in the school fete.

While I never became an art lover or understood art, be it modern or classical, the only 2 things which seem relevant to me in art are
1:The Monalisa , seems everyone wanks about it, even if it could be Leonardo in drag
2:Nudity, if your art does not make sense or stand out, just paint or sculpt some nudity, always works and people call me a perv.

East, South and now West.

India is a huge country, the seventh largest in size and with 1.2 billion people living in it. It's not new to hear about the cultural diversity and all that spans all across the nation, while most of us go for holidays for a few days to certain parts, living in different regions of the country does help you appreciate the place even more, this post is not about me , its about my best friend Chintoo Lee Aka Rohit Sarkar.

Now Chintoo had been living in Calcutta all his life and when he came second in our school in the ISC and as usual doing well in all em crazy entrance exams, he was hell bound to leave the city, he was not going to spend another 4 years studying in Calcutta, he wanted to see other places, get away from it all as it were. So one of the best colleges , recently the bugger came and showed me an online site which rated his college as a top 10 college for engineering, NITK Suratkal is where he applied and got through as well.

Now this is a foreign land for him, I believe it is in Karnataka, pardon me but its just mallu land for me, so Chintoo got a new name for the next 4 years, "Mallu", even saved his contact info as Rohit Mallu. As usual he tried to explain how Suratkal is nowhere near Kerala and all but as usual it was in vain and all of the close bunch of friends would call him mallu. Don't go calling me all racist and all but he would get so affected by being in south India it was untrue, he would start and end every sentence with "dude" but this dude was not a normal dude but one spoken with a southie accent, I have nothing against it, used to but not now, but that was never his normal speaking tone and the first few days of him coming for his holidays in calcutta were spent trying to get that southerness out of him and returning him into a bong.

Suratkal as a place was always nice as he showed his endless pictures, the private beach and all but it was in the middle of nowhere and to reach town it would take a hour or two hour bus ride either to Bangalore or Mangalore. Again in the campus there would be no non veg items available barring egg, so Mallu would have to travel to the city in the weekend to get a taste of chicken, mutton etc, the bong that he is , he must have missed his fried fish and prawn/shrimp curry, bengali style.

Being away from the family does have its perks though, not much in chintoo's case, doesn't do drugs, doesn't drink [a lot ], does not smoke, but he did explore a lot of other avenues, became a kick ass musician, picked up a new language, would not bathe for classes, the good old hostel life. While coming back to Calcutta was something he always looked forward to and meeting up with us, he would not be upset about going back to college as he had a kick ass time.

College is also about getting chicks, now Chintoo was never that crazy assed maagibaaz that float around everywhere they go, but he did get his girl in college, the true hallmark of being a grown up and getting into college, while all this was fine, the new language and people played havoc with this bloke and now with the "dude" and southie accent , he now also abuses, yes I know everyone would be saying
"That is typical for a STB student"
While we would say, Chutia, Randi, Harami, etc etc etc, he says "Bitch"
"Shut up Bitch", "Lose some weight Bitch", "Exercise Bitch", guess he has been watching those BDSM videos I keep in my HD.

His other "thing" was coming for a holiday during the puja every year and telling us all "I doubt If I can make it next year, will probably stay back and do some stuff for extra credit". He said this, but never meant it, he would be back no matter what every year during the Puja, the lure of the bangalee is strong I guess.

4 years down the line, he gets a job, with Reliance, he did something in metallurgy, never was good at remembering anything related to education, so he now shifts from south India to Gujarat, from south to west, although originally from the east the state is called West Bengal, though it is in the east.

He was supposed to be at a place called Baruch, Babla made it sound like some random place where criminals are overflowing and shouting out the name "BAROOOOOOOOOCH" in a loud crazy tone. The place is located like 60 kms from Ahmedabad, and the train was to stop at that station for 60 seconds only, we told Chintoo to practice getting off the station as he had around 2 bags, a suitcase and his guitar to carry.

So off he goes for another adventure, he calls me a few days after reaching the phone and is absolutely pissed, he is now staying in a place called "Dahej", which means Dowry in english, while I crack the normal dowry related jokes that everyone would, he tells me the entire place is deserted, only dogs and cows roam about, its a "friggin village". The city is located quite a bit away although he does get to eat chicken there, one good thing, oh I told him to tell people he is not staying in Dahej but rather The Hague,Switzerland, as long as people don't know the difference it wont hurt them.

Before chintoo left we made sure he learned a lot of Gujju words so as to make communication easier, so it meant that every hindi phrase was to end with "che", simple and easy for him, he says he will work there for at least a year and then see what he will do, apart from going to multiplexes which were showing "Harry Potter aur Mauth ka saugadar", yes all movies are dubbed in hindi or gujurati.

I know the next time I meet him in Jan he will have a new Gujju accent, just will try to make sure he does not forget his south Indian heritage, or the bengali one.

The start of it all

While most of my best friends know the tale of the creation of the greatest tagline in the history of STB , "Jeet ke aaoge!". Most of the others are completely oblivious about the great rich history that surrounds it, so for those people who have no idea, I will tell you a tale , one which does not allow you to fail.

It all started way back 15 summers ago, a small kid in an unknown land ,searching for who he could be, what he could do in a foreign land. The only solace he had was coming back from from the torment of school in the afternoon. While he did get used to the freaky timings and all, his parents being Indian were never quite happy enough with just school, off he would be sent to music school as well in the morning, he would eventually become a sort of show and tell where relatives would ask him to play something, this did not make him happy at all.

While his plan was just to survive school and the heat of the foreign land, his parents wanted him to grow and learn things hence when they got the news of "elocution's" being held in school,the poor boy was asked to join that as well. People forget that this kid was one of the best students in class and always got a certificate of merit for doing extremely well in studies, but as usual for Indian parents that was never enough.

So off the kid went for elocution trails and wouldn't you know it, he always got through, hell , became elocution champ in the school for a good 6 years, so yeah he was good. His mom was always the pillar who supported the freak of nature no matter what and to give him a boost and to try and calm him down she would always let him know it didn't matter if he won or lost," Do you best aur jeetne ka koshish karo, koi fark nahin parta, you just enjoy", those were her words always.

Fast forward to now, while the kid has grown up a bit, only physically, he has stopped going to crap assed competitions although a lotta credit does go to the earlier competitions for making him the freak he has now become, so one day a pal of his goes for some music competition and for good luck the kid blurts out
"dude, you must win, you can win, JEET KE AAOGE!", that was the start of the crazy one liner which the kid brings into every time he does talk to anyone.

Jeet ke aaoge now is a lifestyle, which means no matter what you are doing, eating food, sleeping, going for a walk, going to the loo, wanking(especially wanking), playing football, making notes, waking up in the morning, you get the picture now, that is why the best way to wish a person or even say good bye is by saying "Jeet ke aaoge!". Always gives them that warm fuzzy feeling which people like and is not gay in anyway.

Dreams , nightmares and the shining light from Above

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