1997.... RANDOM MEMORIES....

Important disclaimer:
The post below is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person alive or dead, or to any place existing in Nagaland, or to any school named KV Dimapur, is just coincidental.

Second half of 1997 and a quarter of 1998, or rather my class 11 as I remember it, is one of the most memorable periods of my life. Memorable because, I did a lot many first times, had few of my most unconventionally enjoyable times, made a few friends which made a huge difference in my life and for a lot many more reasons. Below are some of them which I remember... (though the order is random).

1. This was the year, when for the first time in my life, I seriously had a crush on someone (I had one more crush prior to this, I will talk about it later), though the crush and the relationship materialized a couple of years later. This is one of the most important relationships I had (yes had) outside my family. Some of you might be aware of it, and since I haven't mentioned the name, request you to abstain from doing the same.
2. This is the period, when I coined (for myself), the phrase, "I am always Right". Tough it was only a few years later during my college, that Ayn Rand made me realize the real meaning of the phrase. I still believe in it, but this time it has a meaning attached to it, rather than just a means of satisfying my ego.
3. The period which got me hooked to cricket. Probably, as the preceding year 1996, was a WC year.
4. The year which saw my best performance in a cricket match, batting. It was, after some miscreants of my class had sent a greeting card to a girl in the same class proposing her, under my name, from my side. The poor girl according to her understanding had blasted me off, which shot my temper till Neptune and the runs in the match after this incident were the returning back of my ‘temper shuttle’. This was probably because I saw the ball as something I could take my revenge on, or for some other stupid reason. In the same match I also broke the nose of a kid of class 5, and then scolded him for playing near to the grounds where we were playing.
5. This was the year which started of with our class getting suspended for half of the day, ya, on the first day. We were made to stand outside the class in the badminton court. No I won't let your imaginations give you that wicked pleasure. We were not kneeling, just standing.
6. This was the year when we broke at least three sides of the walls of our class, obviously not at the same time, but in different incidents when the effect of the earlier incident used to die down. For this we were suspended for a few days in two of the cases and for just 1 week in one of the cases. Let me also mention that the teachers had a tough time catching us, as I was the class monitor and their first action would be to ask me, who did this; also as I and my other close friends (our group) used to be the initiators in such incidents and we also somehow happened to be good in studies.
7. This was the year when I and my friends had ragged a student for the first time in life. Though it was not a typical ragging but more of a bit of 'pareshan karna'. Let me mention one incident related to this. There was this lining of 'bora' (jute sacks) between the roof of our class and the actual class room. The lining was torn at one corner of the room and we used to throw broken pieces of desk or benches on top through that opening. The broken pieces were obviously used by us to play cricket in the class before they were rendered beyond use and were thrown there. Now the place where these things landed was just on top of the table of the teacher in the class. The day when we sort of ragged the new guy in our class, my class teacher called the class monitor, that’s me, and asked in his unique style, 'Rohit, ye aaj kal class mein kya ho raha hai?' I was confused as to what’s happening that the class teacher is asking about and what are the things that I can afford to say to the teacher. Finally I decided to tell about the ragging, thinking at the back of my mind to give that new comer a good lesson in obedience if he had complained. But shockingly the teacher replied, 'Main kuch aur pooch raha hoon', which got me even more perplexed. Finally he vented out saying, 'Mujhe pata chala hai ki tum log teachers ke khilaaf saazish kar rahe ho, woh teacher table ke upar tum log pathar phekte ho jaise woh hamare upar gire.' Somehow I convinced that those were not stones but pieces of wood which some people used for playing cricket in the class, also assuring that I will tell the names of those miscreants who do that, in future, if I got to know something about it.
8. This was the year when I and a few of my friends broke into the examination room of our school in broad day light, when the school was running. This was also the room where our examination in charge used to sit. This guy was a Hindi teacher and was a lot too serious about his belief on Gandhiji. He was also proud of the fact that he like Gandhiji had four children. Now we had broken in the examination room to make some changes in the answer paper of the kid brother of one of our friends. Unfortunately, the in charge came over there the very moment we were getting out of the room after completing our 'mission'. At this point Gandhiji came to our rescue. Being a Gandhi bhakth, he decided of not punishing us directly, but asked us to get our parents to the school the next day, which we obviously didn't do. Nothing happened after that as he had already seen a lot more of us during the earlier year, i.e. class 10, when we had hardly attended 50-60% of his Hindi classes. In the remaining 40-50% of his classes we used to play cricket while he used to take his class with remaining students. Once in class 10 we were a few minutes late in entering his class as we were returning after playing cricket. He scolded us and asked us to go and play the 'Angrezon ka khel', and rather than asking sorry we left and started playing again. After this whenever he caught us doing anything wrong he just used to scold us or ask to bring our parents and did nothing else when we gave no response.
9. This was the year when I got divorced from my once favorite subject, Mathematics. I was good in mathematics and contrary to my expectations in the class 10 board exams where I was expecting to score the highest marks in the class after the exams; I got pretty bad marks, 67 if I remember correctly. After this I never had any affinity left towards maths.
10. This was the year, when I last saw and met the first crush of my life. There was nothing serious about it, I guess so ;) . It was more like, she was a friend of mine in my earlier school and after I changed my school, I realized that she is gone now, I won't be meeting her everyday and now I have a crush on her. But that was the year I last met her.

Disclaimer (again):

:)

The above post is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person alive or dead, or to any place existing in Nagaland, or to any school named KV Dimapur, is just coincidental.

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"I DID IT TOMORROW"

I know what you might be thinking. No the grammatical error was put there on purpose. It does happen that you feel that I did it tomorrow. It happens when there is no clear distinction between what someone did yesterday, is doing today or will tomorrow. It makes no clearly identifiable difference between yesterday, today or tomorrow or the day after. I guess that is what is called life. You cannot define your life based on a single trip to Goa or Hawaii. Life is defined by what you do everyday. Life is about continuity. But does that also means that life also is about repeatedness or stagnation. Doesn't seem like that to me.

Anyways, coming to the point, I am not here to discuss about life, its too big to do that. I am also not talking about a whole set of people with all their variations. My focus here is the kind of life normally exhibited by the people in the IT sector. Yes I mean programmers, testers and the whole gamut of people doing 'that' IT work. I think you are getting my point.

I chose this industry for two reasons, first I am in the IT industry, second, being in India in this era, if I can think of talking about one specific industry, that would be IT for me. Now, in IT I am talking about the people involved and the way they take their life or in other words, as I perceive the life to be. Before I go ahead, let me talk about the people. Today if you are graduating as an engineer or have a science background and/or happen to be at any of the big cities in IndiaIndia and other offshore locations is considered as a part of the non core activities of the companies outsourcing their work. It does not mean that there is no development happening at all. In fact a lot of innovation and development is happening but the percentage is quite low. So coming back to our new entrant, out of these people, most are here not because, if given a free thinking opportunity, they would want to be doing this. But, because it is easier getting into and probably not very tough dragging it the entire life. Now what happens is a scenario where the person stops enjoying the work he is doing or in some cases what he is expected to do. what does he do next? Stop thinking. Yes that is what he does. Stop thinking. Not the thinking, like which bus to board or how to get to Goa or what to do this weekend. But I am talking about the thinking where you think about your future probably, or something which does not pertain to the daily or recurring activities. Out of millions of people working in the IT industry, how many people will reach that level where the yesterday, today and tomorrow will be different, or will be exciting. A few thousands may be. What will the rest do? Nothing much, just go to the office, code, debug etc. come back sleep, accumulate some money, get married, accumulate some more money, buy a house, a car, have children, accumulate more money, go for vacations, accumulate more money and at the end retire. That is when you say, I did this tomorrow. with an IT setup presence, your most obvious goal will be to get into IT industry. Reasons I would say, fast growing industry, good bucks, no particular specific industry knowledge required initially, except for some programming knowledge. You ask a fresher about what he wants to do in IT, I believe, the most obvious answer will be development. Reasons: he believes development is the core of IT services, as is normally perceived. But there is a surprise. Most of the new entrants in the IT industry find development no where linked to their job profile. Reason: IT services as it exists in

Now if you ask me what’s the solution to this problem, if at all you think this is a problem, as I do. I would say, the cycle of life we (particularly the middle class) is stuck into. The life cycle of an IT guy I mentioned earlier is the same. In our society, when a kid is born he is supposed to study well through school to get into a good college, so that he can get into a good job, so that he can live a decent life (magnitude of decent life, obviously varies on personal perceptions), can support a family, his children and then can retire and die peacefully. The cycle continues generation over generation, though the factors change, like a couple of generations earlier it was to graduate and get a government job, now it is to study well and get a well earning job. The flaw is in the preconceived notion of life which gives no freedom of developing individualistic skills. Result is an IT professional. Education or rather the basis of education, is no doubt again based on this faulty notion of the way of life.

I do not know, what will it take or how much time will it take to start changing this notion. I guess one of the ways visible to me is in 'Paddhai'. Till that time we would have to say, 'I did it tomorrow'.