How, Where It All Begun!

Sandeep Madhogarhia
Nov 3 · 10 min read

“….but after the Diwali break we would pace up. We generally go slow during the initial months. We come from different parts of India, accustomed to different style of learning. Most of us are living away from home and family for the first time. The management understands we need time to settle, time to overcome home sickness….”. Most of the faculties at Bansal Classes Pvt. Ltd., Kota had the habit of saying things as ‘Hum kal exercise 1 khatam kar ke layengen (We would solve all problems in exercise 1 before class tomorrow)’ as if they were students. PP Sir was no different.

The pamphlet from Bansal Classes on Time Management

Solving all problems in Exercise 1 before tomorrow was not the thing bothering me. I would solve them. Getting correct answers back then was so much fun in Kota. Finding a better, more elegant approach to solve it was just ecstatic. What bothered me was: I wasn’t home sick. Was I supposed to be home sick? I too was living away from home and family for the first time at the age of 16 in 2006. Is it a good thing that I didn’t miss home or am I soulless, emotionless person who doesn’t care about his family? Maybe I am not so bad — I was super excited about being back to home for Diwali in a week’s time. My thoughts had drifted for a while but soon I was back to solving problems. It wouldn’t be another 8 years till I am home sick during the winters of 2014 in Taiwan. [Story for some other time]

Diwali vacation was over. I was back at Kota. Studies did attain a lot more pace. More topics were being covered. More problems were being solved. Studies became more challenging and more fun. The schedule may have been monotonous but everything else was not. Every minute there was a new concept to grasp, a new problem to solve, a better approach to admire. Every Wednesday evening, when our mess (canteen) would be closed, a bunch of us would load ourselves in Auto Rickshaw and go to Amar Punjabi Dhaba (APD, we called it). After stuffing in butter-soaked naan, variety of curries and special lassi of course, a stop would be made at ‘Pan Shop’ on the way back. We would sing a bunch of songs which almost always included ‘Sutta’, ‘Danda’ and ‘Purani Jeans aur Guitar’. Every night, for two years without fail, me and my roommate, Abhay, would get missed call from Vivek, our common friend in Howrah. It was Vivek’s way of saying goodnight before he slept. Abhay, being super-talented, hard-working, top ranker and very good friend, would teach me lateral approach to solving problems faster without a paper or a pen. ‘Hawa mein solve karne (Solving problems in the air)’ is what we called it. My life was a happy routine at the age of 17 at Kota — but not for long.

At some point, I started losing the will to do anything. I was never an exceptional student, never at school back home, never at Kota. I had gradually improved at academics by sheer hard-work. I moved up a few batches at Bansal Classes, had my first little crush and moved to the next academic year. Things went smooth for some time during my second year at Kota and suddenly I find myself in a depressed and demotivated state. Visits to cybercafe and movie places became more frequent. During all the previous internal exams, I had either stayed put or moved up to higher batches but then I slipped a batch down. I don’t know why but I gave up on revising topics after the last internal exam in which I had performed quite well. A little later, after the CBSE boards exams and a few days before IIT-JEE 2008, life at Kota ended, just like that. I so much wanted to visit Kota again. I had once crossed the Kota Railway Station, but it has been 11 years since I stepped onto that city — the city which made a huge impact on my life. I left Kota with infinite sweet memories, a lot of academic knowledge and a lingering sense of not having done as much as I could have.

Once crossed Kota Junction in 2017 while Gopal was sleeping inside the train; I got him coffee (he didn’t drink)

I still think about it at times — why did I lose my grip towards the end? Sometimes I feel it was because of the humiliation I had faced in one of SR Sir’s inorganic classes wherein I failed to answer a question (Sir had this habit of making mean comments — it was his way of motivating students through negative re-enforcement). Or was it the insecurities I had about not being as good at academics. Or perhaps the feeling that nobody really cares: most parents in India are too deeply involved in the child’s academics (which, I believe, is a bad thing); some parents provide good support and have a balanced involvement — like it was in case of Abhay (wherein his mom stayed with us a few months before the exams to take care of all our needs besides academics); my parents had zero involvement/interest in knowing how I was fairing in studies — or so I thought. I still don’t really know why things got darker towards the end at Kota. All I know is: if it weren’t for Abhay and Vivek, things would have been a lot much worse — it is difficult to explain the positive effect of being in good company (how much ever insecure you get by their success) or the power of regular miss calls.

L to R: Rahul, Me, Vivek (aka Miss Call Guy), Abhay (aka Chachu) [Dec, 2004]

Well, now it doesn’t matter that last few months at Kota wasn’t as good. Thanks to Kota, I was able to get into the oldest IIT. Had it not been for the poor AIR (all India rank) or feeling of under-achieving, I would never have attempted a Dep-C. (Department Change, KGP lingo.)

On few occasions, at distant places and near, in good humor and rebuke, by close ones and strangers, I have been asked — How did you get here? What did you do? Where did it all began? And I would have said Kharagpur to strangers, perhaps Kota to dear ones but did it begin there? I am not sure. Perhaps, it started when a dear friend got me the admission forms to Bansal Classes. Or perhaps when a little earlier Sir Ram Vilas (my tuition teacher through 8th to 10th standard) told me I should go to Kota. Or perhaps when I saw and met a dark-skinned, seemingly mal-nourished student at my school’s back-field before the morning assembly — the same guy who would get me the forms and be my roommate for 2 years. Or perhaps way before when a rich so-called relative in Howrah — an uncle made a snide remark about a 11-year-old kid’s father. Or perhaps when the 11-year-old kid could see for himself, how people around treated his father when he turned bankrupt — How the level of rudeness or politeness is governed less by the nature of a person or his past inter-personal relationship and more by what his current financial worth. Or perhaps the always lingering feeling of having a huge loan to repay — a feeling that never goes out of one’s head. I don’t really know how and where it all begun. I could just guess. I could introspection and contemplate and re-think and think all over again, but I would perhaps never really know. Perhaps the question could only be answered in ‘perhaps’.

The End.

The rest is some memories:

Memories of Kota — of friends, faculties & food

We had formed our little circle of guys from Howrah/Kolkata who used to celebrate events together. ‘Birthday Bumps’ was a new concept to me. We used to create an ugly smelling mix of dirt, fruit peels, old toothpaste, expired body products, rotten milk and curd, oil from pickles and all the unimaginable things to give the birthday boy a bath. Call it lack imagination or stupidity or whatever, boys would get packs of condoms or maxi-pads as gifts on each-others 18th birthday. During one such birthday celebration, someone tore another’s inner vest and suddenly a room of 8 young boys were running about, defending themselves and tearing apart each other pieces of clothing. It is so damn embarrassing thinking about how stupid or childish we were! (Some of us still are !!!) Most of us stayed as paying guest. The house-owners would be usually our local guardians. Their absence from the town would be time for us to engage in all sorts of late-night activities that would otherwise be impossible to do. We may have been nerds, but we had our fair share of fun too.

The faculties were inspiring and had the best aura about them, all of them. “Khoob mehnat karna hai, khub aage jaana hai, kam se kam first aana hai, first nahi aaye to maano fail ho gaye (We have to work really hard, we have to excel, at the very least secure a first rank else it is as good as failing)”, MSC Sir would say. NA Sir (Sodium Sir, we called him) was ‘highly reactive’ and would make fun about the decreasing hair coverage on SR Sir’s head. PJ Sir would sing to us “Ruk jana nahi kahi tu haarke, kaato pe chalke milengen saye bahar ke (Don’t stop, don’t get disheartened, it is through extreme toil that you would achieve success)”. The life story of VKB Sir on wheel-chair was inspiring and his use of the word ‘chutiatic’ would always bring laughter. “These are my girlfriends”, he would say to the girls in his classes, protecting them, warning all boys to stay clear of any girl. “Boss is always right”, is one of his teaching beyond mathematics and science. VG sir would constantly keep rubbing the rings on his fingers while solving the most difficult differential equations and performing the toughest integration. AG Sir, with his condescending attitude towards girls, would spend less time teaching physics and more time telling stories of his IIT days and how he would have to travel miles to a different city to watch the movie series — Matrix. AH Sir would say, “Din ki shuruaat DPP se (let’s start the day discussing DPP)”. DPP (or Daily Practice Problems) was a common part of the lingo back then.

L to R: Ninja Sir, VKJ Sir, VG Sir, MSC Sir, PJ Sir, NA Sir, NKS Sir
Top (L to R): AH Sir, AG Sir, NA Sir, Bottom (L to R) VKB Sir, Bissa Sir, SR Sir

Oh, I miss the food from Kota. It may be because of the pathetic food I got for the next 5 years at Kharagpur or the struggle to find variety of Indian vegetarian food easily elsewhere while travelling. There has been a couple of periods of few days, weeks or months when good food was easily available but it either lacked variety or consistency. In retrospection, Kota was a heaven for me from a food perspective. My father had ‘enrolled’ Abhay, our roommate — Bhim and me at Nannu mess for lunch and dinner. A couple of months later, we shifted to Rasoi mess. They served freshly-home-cooked style variety of dishes every day. The same dish would be repeated at least a week later if not two. Bhim or I would make the morning tea and night Bournvita-Milk. There used to be an awesome sandwich stall just 5 mins walk from our home at Talwandi sector-C. The burger at ‘Food-on-Wheels’ is still one of the best burgers I have had. The uncle at the stall would put a lot of grated cheese in a container, put a veggie patty on top and grate more cheese on it. Then he would microwave to melt the cheese and put the container in cold water to cool it. The result would be a cold exterior, warm inside thick cheese layers with hot veggie stuffing at the center. Cheese Ball Burger, it was called. Late evening kesariya dudh (saffron-milk) at BMB, early morning Poha-Jalebi at Talwani Circle, Treat, Eatos, APD, patties, mango shake, faluda — there was so much of variety, so much of mouth-watering stuff. Kota deserves a week-long trip just to have all these food from all these places once more. I wonder if they would still available. I hope they are.

There is so much more about the days at Kota — friends, pranks, incidents and events; so many other faculties — touched upon Ninja Sir and Bissa Sir briefly [link], NKS Sir, Subroto Sir, SPS Sir, VKJ Sir and many others; more food, lonely early morning cycle rides, Dusherra mela, my bhua (father’s cousin sis) and her family, distributing pamphlets against reservation in educational institute, those late night planning about doing something for the society, the summer heat and monsoon rains, those crushes, the school that was seldom visited, OM cineplex, IL and Gaurav Towers and the Dakaniya Talav railway station and Aerodrome Circle and the distant chimneys across the river that I always wanted to see from closer up….

This time it ends.
<Pics from Google Images, Wikipedia>

Sandeep Madhogarhia

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Noob at blogging | Traveler | Intentions Matter

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