If you had met the the 11 year old me and posed me the question as to what you wanted to be in life without a blink of an eye I would have said an I.P.S officer*. In my teenage years when everyone around me was obsessing over Medical and Engineering I was finalising my optional for the UPSC civil services exam. Understandably I had no clue of medical/engineering. At that point of time I was too naïve to even think that once you cleared the entrance exam you are already a doctor or an engineer. But if you woke me up in the middle of the night I could explain to you in detail the 3 stages of one of the toughest competitive exams of the country the pattern, your strategy, your optionals and what not. That was the kind of single minded focus that I had on something that was really close to my heart.
I.P.S-Indian Police Service
For those of you who have been reading my blog posts regularly would notice that I have extensively written about every stage of my life be it my childhood in Gwalior, my school/Engineering college days in Trivandrum and even about my work life to a certain extent. But there is one part of my life I have never even briefly touched upon and that would be my stint in Delhi. My housemates in Delhi quite often have asked me as to why I don’t write about my time with them. The prime reason being it was too emotional to even recollect the said time period. My point being I had invested a lot physically mentally as well as emotionally and at the end of it I couldn't deliver results.
For starters I was called “Benno” back then, it was my father’s pet name which I had adopted for only that period of my life. Many summers ago I moved from the humidity of Chennai to the sauna of Delhi. Right at the onset I was ecstatic to be back to the northern part of the country after more than a decade.My first stop was at Dr Mukherjee nagar not very far from the Delhi University North campus. This place thrived from the income of the IAS aspirants from the length and breadth of the country who thronged the coaching centers in that area . I was put up in a house for a month which I ditched because of not so great housemates and an equally crappy landlady. As an answer to my prayers Eric makes an entry to the scene and we together start to look for a place to live.
We finally zeroed down on a quaint little 2 BHK house where me and Eric shared a room on the first floor of a house. There was a hall and also a kitchen which was shared. We slowly set up the house with basic things, primarily a table and chair. We just brought 2 mattresses and would sleep on the floor with a mat thrown in. The days were very hectic because I had classes for both our optionals Geography and Public administration. My day started early in the morning at 6 AM with a jog at a nearby park.
This was also when we ran into “The Mathai'' who would subsequently be our future house mate. Rohan from Bombay was another housemate who lived in the adjacent wing of the same floor. Quite often in the nights we would all congregate in the gali(bylane) in front of the house because the weather was pregnant with heat .
On sundays early in the morning I used to make my way through Nirankari* colony to attend the Sunday service. A walk of about 30 minutes right through where they would be having their own congregation . After the service we used to hang around the church premises and chit chat with a bunch of friends which included Benita from Delhi and Marymol from Thrissur . This was one of the most anticipated passages of time of the week that even Mathai and Eric also started to come to church for this rendezvous. After about 4 months it was time to bid adieu to Dr Mukherjee nagar. During the last week we planned for a farewell sort of a event at the Blues joint in Connaught Place. It was a good place with a live band For the record this was the first social event for all of us in the entire 4 month stint in Delhi.
*The Sant Nirankari Mission (also known as a mission of Universal Brotherhood) is a spiritual organisation based out of Delhi, India(source: wikipedia).
Our next stop was Karol Bagh the reason being a good number of us had to join the iconic Vajiram and Ravi* for our General studies classes. The new house was a 3 bhk, located at Rajendra Place at a walking distance from the coaching institute. Sambhu and Elvin classmates of Mathai in National Institute of Technology, Calicut were my housemates along with Eric. Now this period of time was much more eventful than the former period at Dr Mukherjee nagar. Since it had been a while since 3 of us were together there was a bonding and mutual understanding between Mathai, Eric and myself. Sambhu and Elvin also assimilated easily because of their familiarity with Mathai. Staying together was quite a unique experience, the reason being all five of us were as different as chalk and cheese. For instance I am a guy who is early to bed and early to rise. Moreover I had classes at Vajiram at 8 am in the morning. On the other hand the rest of the group were nocturnal beings who would be up late into the night sometimes even up till dawn and would sleep well into the next day. Around midnight I was awakened by a commotion in the hall when I rushed out. To my discomfiture I found out that it was only the blokes having an animated discussion on the flawed reservation system of our country in the backdrop of the Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan. After telling them to tone it down a bit I went back to sleep.
*Vajiram and Ravi-One of the most popular IAS coaching centers in the country
One fine day it so happened that everyone except me had to appear for the CAT* exam. The previous night as usual everyone was up until late .Before leaving for church I had to literally kick everyone out from their deep slumber swearing at everyone so that they don’t miss the exam. Thankfully everyone had left by the time I was back and no one missed the exam what is even more, everyone scored a 97+ percentile in the exam. It still beats me as to how they did it.
CAT-Common Admission Test the entrance test in India to get into the top MBA colleges of the country
Sambhu and Elvin were a bit hungover from their previous lives of working professionals and were taking a bit more time to settle down. Quite often after the classes they would come along with a group of friends back to our place and would be gossiping for sometime into the night. The decibel levels would be on the higher side because of a couple of girls in the group. This was severely hampering the others who were trying to focus on their studies. That is when me and Mathai the de facto patriarch and matriarch of the house took control and brought out a rule that this will not be allowed in the house after 8 PM. If you wanted to extend your sessions please feel free use to the bylanes in front of the house. Grudgingly both of them were sporting enough to accept our diktat.
The Christmas in the winter of 2008 would be forever etched in my memory. For starters I was on a 25 day fast from Dec 1 which effectively meant that I was a vegetarian during that time period. During this period the juvenile Eric used to taunt me with cuss words to test my resolve but I was steadfast throughout. On Christmas eve all of us went for the midnight mass even though the weather was chilling cold.
But the real fun started when we were back home. Mathai had procured a bottle of wine only for me so that I could also take part in the revelry(I had given up drinking at that time because of the notion that alcohol affected my memory). The moment I was back while biting into my kebabs to break the fast I directed a barrage of expletives to Eric to kickstart the proceedings. The night was still young and we had a problem at our hands because we didn’t know how to uncork the wine we tried every trick in the book, even watched youtube videos but to no avail. Finally we managed to knock the cork into the bottle. We spent the entire night drinking until dawn, for the record that was my first night out. The next day I missed my Economics classes again another first. I was deeply touched by the gesture of Mathai who got me wine.
This was also the time when the girlfriends were getting married. One person in the group would get wind of it and inform the entire group, in the evening we would celebrate like crazy. In midst of the pandemonium when no one is watching the guest of honour would dab his eyes with a tissue and that was the end of it, you live to fight another day. As our preliminary exams were approaching everyone was getting stressed and to break the monotony we used to play cricket inside the house with a sponge ball. It was also during that time I screwed up my neck because of spending too much time hunched over a book. The pain was so bad that I had to wear a cervical collar for sometime to get over it. One night when I was writhing in pain in my bed I will never forget Eric coming to my rescue by applying a hot towel on my neck to ease my pain. If there is one thing that I have learned from my Delhi sojourn is that quite often we only focus on the destination but ignore the journey which is equally important. Though I failed in achieving my dream I will cherish these memories for the rest of my lifetime.
(to be continued)
Superb.. well written and expressed
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