Philosophy: been there, done that, what next!!!
It was the first time we were assigned groups, after we were assigned groups the first time, well technically at least, the day was 10th of may, I remember having a watery yet hot pongal at ram’s shimla canteen on the Great Lakes “roof garden”,
I heard someone shout “the new groups lists are out…the new group lists are out”, there was a wired buzz around, like the results of CAT being announced. I quit eating rest of the liquidy stuff in my plate and rushed to the lobby (waiting room- but it sounds like a hospital, so I like lobby better) on the first floor.
As I got down to the lobby, the junta were “ooh and aah” ing about who their group mates were, while I was trying hard not to get crushed trying to read the names of my groupies…. I got a sms… me.. A sms ….. Here…who. Why…how, while trying to figure out these extremely complicated questions, I checked my phone only to see a message from some babe whose number I had taken just yesterday, it said “ wre n th sme grp” .
I was walking away from the fighting mob, trying to figure out who this person I had met, who was my groupie and yet whose face I could not remember… anyway I looked up and saw this tall, lanky brunette standing near the stairs and smiling at me, my boyish instincts got to me, wanting to strike a conversation with her before some other clown with the same instincts got there first, in the process almost knocking down Prof. Rakesh Singh, who was passing by.
i…..sorry sir.
You..have…to…be..more..careful…
i..was…in a hurry …..excuse me…. sir
heyyyyyyy, long time, what’s up, how u doing? –> cheesy dialogue
she gave me a steely smile, yes all I could see were the steely braces.. and said “wre n th sme grp”, must be speaking Chinese I thought.
to continue the small talk I said “that’s neat isi’nt it.. who else is part of the group?”
She said” Sathish- that tall boy who’s super brainy, latha-she was sitting next to me yesterday, adithya-don’t know who he is, but his name sounds cool, Girish- don’t know who, but everybody says he smart, Gopal- that boy brain from NASA and you” poetic I thought yet, I still did not know her name and did not want to embarrass myself asking her what it was, especially after she knew mine. Sheesh…..how do these CEO’s remember names, is there some trick in the book I was missing?
We called our group the 4th dimension, no one except Satish knows why, he suggested the name, but it sounded cool so we kept it. All the super high aspirations I had with my group were washed away in the first few weeks, as I wipe my tears and say that the other groups did much better than we did…. As it happened all the pep talks Satish and Girish used to give us benefited the other groups more than it benefited us... sob..sniff..sniff
The first assignment as I remember had a deadline of a month….yet we all started work only the night before…. Devon street- a road where a bunch of Indians have set up shop in Chicago, my kid brother can do this I thought…..confidently went to Google and typed Devon Street, there were more hits there than the sand particles in the Sahara dessert, I was starting to blame myself for having such a heavy dinner at sangeethas , I was feeling a little drowsy.... mummy, this is going to be a loooooong night…..
Just as I was googling myself to sleep Gopal waltzed in, from his usual disappearing act, (we all felt he was up to something, later on only did we find out that he was trying to get the ITC’s annual turnover up, at least 10 times a day)
It was 2:00 AM Sathish was head banging on his laptop, trying a new yogasana called sit sleeping, somewhere in the twilight between consciousness and sleep, Girish was lying in a coma in the corner, latha and prarthana were starting to look like aliens from another planet, adi was looking at his computer….his face was lifeless. Suddenly Gopal walks in and asked me
“saale.. kuch kiya?” ,
it woke everyone up from the trance, but I was looking for a something sharp to stab in his stomach.
Finally our PPT man … had just chosen after hours of intense deliberation a very sexy loud background for our slides...this has always been 4th dimensions strategy, visually bombard the lecturer with highly colorful backgrounds and images so that hopefully the data in the slides is ignored…it’s our core competency…
8:00 in the morning, the only company I had was the cleaner, everyone else had left, for a short nap I thought, I got out of there lest I fall asleep in the chair,
After a long night out, there is nothing more alluring than hitting the pillow, but we all had to be there for the presentation, along with submitting a 5 page report.
By the time I got back to class…..
The girls were still in utter shock and disbelief looking at what we had achieved during the night ……
5 guys X 12 hours = 60 man hours = 5 pages of report…
there seems to be something inherently wrong with the equation….
Latha who also was the group captain, was looking to us …shaking her head in disbelief…like one of those trauma patients whose lost the ability to speak after witnessing a shocking, gruesome occurrence…in this case our shoddy report.
Sathish was hyper …… simultaneously working on the ppt and shouting loudly
“Arre bachao...bachao koi meri madat karoo”...
Aditya I believe was in an irreversible coma somewhere… no sign of him.
After skipping our turn as many times as possible we gave the presentation, during my time of the presentation in front of the rowdy mob of
I shook like a reed in a desert storm, My legs wobbled like an untrained belly dancer, my voice was pitched like a soprano, my memory stabbed me like a deceitful friend...due to my sheer nervousness I collapsed, I had to be carried out in a stretcher (and that’s the last time, I did ever present), but hey we are the 4th dimension.
Its strange how the human psyche works when there is numbing demands, true we were not on time, but the fact is we did present considering the overwhelming odds against us…and that’s the saga of our group ……We were like six brave sailors in a terrible storm left to tide the mighty dark ocean... …we nearly capsized, but who cares once the boat kisses the shore…and we stand victorious. All in all the work we had put in was never boo’d at, it was a damn freaking good job if I must say.
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