MY BREATH stopped, my heart raced, sweat trickled down my forehead and I finally said, “Sir, I’m Nandagopal Rajan from Calicut in Kerala.” Life can be hard for a 20-year-old, who stutters and stammers his way through all sentences.
“So, Nandagopal, where will you go? What about Ranchi,” the senior editor from The Hindustan Times asked. This was my dream job, but a debut in Bihar was not exactly what I’d dreamt of. I glanced back with my best you-know-why look and blurted out: “Sir, send me anywhere…except Bihar.”
Contrary to my fears, there was a knowing smile on the editor’s face. “Well then, go to Chandigarh,” he said, jotting the city on my CV. My campus selection was over.
Less than a month later, I found myself staring at the designer, who’d come from Delhi for the launch, trying my best to explain why I’d given a headline which went ‘Let me die here’ in 50 pt size on a dummy page. I tried to reason that this was exactly what I felt about my job—die working on the desk, like my grandfather. But all they could do was laugh at this wiry young trainee staff-writer. (Well, I was wiry then.)
Many webs of newsprint have been inked since that sultry summer afternoon seven years ago. After six years in Punjab--where I courted my first crush (journalism), then fell in love and got married to a girl who too loved this job--I finally managed to jump out of the frying pan into the fire of the Capital’s news scene. After all, this was where I was headed when I left home with the telegram from IIMC, Dhenkanal.
My second job in The Indian Express promised much, a foothold in Delhi--the place where all news is made--an opportunity to be amidst the real action and the chance to interact with the stalwarts in the field. I was sure I’d done all I could in City Beautiful, it was time to move on.
I was finally subbing copies of reporters who’ve worked more years than me and had bid farewell to my staple of “Two die in road mishap,” and “Paramour kills husband” stories.
The parents were happy too. Finally, their son was where he ought to have been. “After all what was he doing in Chandigarh?” To quote a journalist friend from my hometown, “Maybe, in your rush to reach Delhi, you slipped and ended up in Punjab.”
A girlfriend with six wheels
Nandagopal Rajan
“Who is this Sindhu?” there was a puzzled look on my mother’s face as she underlined some entries in my personal diary with her fingers. I couldn’t help laughing though I was angry that she had read my “personal log”; anyway there was nothing interesting there except records of bunked classes and seen movies.
I’m sure my initial smirk made Amma think she’d finally found the reason for my long telephonic conversations. But she was mistaken. The rather feminine sounding Sindhu was anything but the focus of my college love life, if at all one could have anything like that in a boys-only college, then aptly called “marubhumi” (desert) for this very reason.
“That’s our college bus, Amma,” I explained. But she was unimpressed. Not her fault, as almost all dates on my diary started with a reference to this girl (in this case with six wheels).
An ideal day for most of us Sindhu-goers started a little bit earlier than the others. We took the longer route to reach college. Though guys like me could catch a bus to Medical College just five minutes down the road, those ugly green beasts didn’t have the charm of this girl, after all she belonged just to us, just to the boys of Devagiri.
I for instance used to travel three kilometers the other way to the City Stand beside Mananchira to begin our “direct flight” to college. Those days there was just one other bus that had a direct service to the college gates, but that used to be stuffed to the rafters from Feroke.
At City Stand we’d all have our eyes peeled for the first sight of our darling, the first ones to spot it always got the head start. They’d be the first to know where the driver would stop that day, and would be the first to slam-dunk their bags on the free seats. But that didn’t mean we could put our bags wherever we wanted. The first few seats were reserved for chechis from MA and the senior chettans. We were free to fight it out for the rest of the seats. But things changed with time, by my first year BA – my third year in the bus – I was promoted to the third row, a seat I kept with my best friend Sai Manohar till the end of my degree course.
Once settled, the next step would be to make sure that the “non-student class” got to know that this was a Devagiri special, we did our best to make it a “students only” though much to the chagrin of the conductor who’d be left with just 40-paise student passes during the 8.15 trip.
Then the fun began. This was no ordinary trip, it was the time to catch up with the latest news, discuss the latest movies and songs, take notes and even dissect those theories that you failed to understand in the last lecture.
For me however it was the time to hone my PJ skills. My “unbearables” would start as soon as the bus crossed Coronation, much to the delight of some and the irritation of the others. By my final year, most of the regulars were used to my style of humour and some had even started their own schools.
But above all, this was the time when the friendships were nurtured and foundations of new ones laid. Most of my best friends were Sindhu boys too. I still keep in touch with others who I first talked to aboard that darling bus of ours.
Sindhu gave me one of the most memorable times of my college life. Something I could bank on every morning, unless if there was a bandh or bus strike. No wonder I shed a tear when made my last trip to college in that friend of five years a morning in mid 1999.
No wonder when I went to college a couple of years ago to meet my beloved teachers in the economics section I chose to wait for Sindhu. But she’d changed by then, more girls than boys, almost blasphemous for an authentic Devagirian like me who believed this was among the last standing bastions of male suzerainty. But some things never change, like the twinkle in the eyes of the teenagers that tell you they have their sights set on the world.
Nandagopal Rajan
I was returning to the skies after 15 long years, almost a lifetime as far as Indian aviation is considered. The last time I flew was much before the bright-tied Damania tried his bit to bring the Indian skies to the middle-class below. Then flying was anything but low cost, the reason why my grandfather decided that the best way to give me a trip of the airways was by taking a flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Bangalore. The flight was so short that by the time I'd overcome the bitterness of the welcome drink, we were circling over the Garden City.
But, things have changed this millennium, mainly because of Air Deccan – the very carrier I opted for to break my rather long interlude from the skies. I was flying Kolkata-New Delhi, all of two hours.
The first few hurdles, right from getting the boarding pass to the security clearance–yes, I too had to get my wallet x-rayed–passed without a glitch. Hmm, the Deccan experience wasn't as bad I thought it would be.
"Be the first off the bus and first on the plane to get the best seats," we'd been warned by frequent fliers, reminding of the daily jostling for seats on the college bus. I was hoping to be greeted by the colour-coded saris of the airhostesses, but was instead ushered in T-shirt clad contemporaries touting the latest deals on offer.
The flight soon filled up and we were in air within a few minutes, just five minutes late…this was getting better. Soon, it was time for snacks and coffee. Our eyes lit up on seeing the Café Coffee Day on the paper cups, time for an early morning cappuccino, I thought. A couple of minutes and Rs 25 later, I got to know that it was going to be a make your-own-coffee experience at 25,000 ft. The rest of the coffee break isn't much to write about.
Hovering over Delhi I tried to locate my colony, saw the Qutub Minar and spotted our office building nearby, and yes it was much better than Google Earth. I glanced at my watch as soon as we landed. 8 am: we were dot on time. No wait for the luggage either. We were on the road by 8.25. I had made up my mind, Deccan it will be from now on, after all it costs just a few hundred rupees more that the regular AC III-tier.
But the euphoria lasted only till I reached home and opened my suitcase to find the LCD of my digital camera smashed. Maybe Deccan did some cost cutting with the baggage handlers. A week on I'm waiting for a reply from the company. The repairs will ensure that my trip to Kolkata is billed first class…so much for low cost.
| The one under the stone is an Oscar. He's dead though. The two silver dollars are also no more. The jewel fish now enjoy their retirement in a cement tank. | |
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