Excuse me sir, would you take your soup now or later? asked the 3 tier AC attendant in Rajdhani Express. yeah the service in Rajdhani express was good... And trust me when i say good.. it was awesome.. Well it was 2004 and i had just appeared for my class 10th board exams. Lying on the top berth in the 3 tier AC compartment en route to new Delhi i was scribbling in my diary. Well i called it my "Personal Diary" and i actually had a disclaimer in the first page citing my ownership and questioning the sense of rectitude of whoever opens it other than me. Though i did not write regularly but i always had these weird ideas of the series of events that will take place in case i die. Well irony is that i still have those notions at times. I always thought that if i die then i guess someone will for sure go through this diary at some point and they will actually come to know what kind of person i really am. And may be they can tell others how important they were to my life. I know its too weird!!
My father had decided that i will be attending a boarding school in Pilani , Rajasthan for 2 years. The biggest incentive was that if u happen to be in the top 10 students among the three schools run by Birla Education Trust in Pilani after the 12th boards, then you can get directly into the MSc Integrated course at BITS, Pilani, one of the finest private technical colleges of India. Being from a middle class background, my father also knew that it will cost him a fortune to get me into one of the finest boarding schools of India. But i was good at studies and for sure my Dad or Baba as i call him had high hopes for me. We lived in Cuttack, the old capital of Odisha, back then it was called Orissa.... Baba is a banker in State Bank Of India and my Mama is a primary school teacher at Kendriya Vidyalaya. My father's native place was a small village named Arei in the Kendrapada district of Odisha. We were a farmers family back then. I remember my Baba saying that he used to cycle a long way to get to the college and back. We had a relatively large joint family in the village. My grandfather and both of his younger brothers and their family were living together. Coming from such a background and being a banker, and having a house at Cuttack was really a very big deal. Whenever me and my brother used to got to my village during the summer vacation for some days, i always could felt that everyone kind of respected my father very much. At the time when his contemporaries were still looking after the farm or wasting their time, he was the one who had the guts to move out of that village, get a job and make it big in the city. And along with that as my Baba says, the most prized catch was my Mama :P , a person who was entirely brought up in cuttack, had a MA in History in the biggest university of Odisha and had a job. But it was not a love story... :P
Well i will certainly write the story of my Mama and Baba at one point... but now is not the time. So lying on that top berth of Rajdhani express, i was going through a completely different thought process. I was 14 , but it was not the pressure of being alone and taking care of myself in a boarding school. It was my decision to study away from home. And yeah i was quite surprised when Baba actually supported my decision, rather he was quite excited. I guess he was happy as i was quite serious about my career. But was i? Why did i make that decision? I was good at studies and extra curricular activities, i was popular, i had friends... close friends and we always used to think about the college life together. But then why i did i took that decision of going about 2000 kms away from home and starting everything all over again? Why did i take such a leap? Was it worth it??
My father had decided that i will be attending a boarding school in Pilani , Rajasthan for 2 years. The biggest incentive was that if u happen to be in the top 10 students among the three schools run by Birla Education Trust in Pilani after the 12th boards, then you can get directly into the MSc Integrated course at BITS, Pilani, one of the finest private technical colleges of India. Being from a middle class background, my father also knew that it will cost him a fortune to get me into one of the finest boarding schools of India. But i was good at studies and for sure my Dad or Baba as i call him had high hopes for me. We lived in Cuttack, the old capital of Odisha, back then it was called Orissa.... Baba is a banker in State Bank Of India and my Mama is a primary school teacher at Kendriya Vidyalaya. My father's native place was a small village named Arei in the Kendrapada district of Odisha. We were a farmers family back then. I remember my Baba saying that he used to cycle a long way to get to the college and back. We had a relatively large joint family in the village. My grandfather and both of his younger brothers and their family were living together. Coming from such a background and being a banker, and having a house at Cuttack was really a very big deal. Whenever me and my brother used to got to my village during the summer vacation for some days, i always could felt that everyone kind of respected my father very much. At the time when his contemporaries were still looking after the farm or wasting their time, he was the one who had the guts to move out of that village, get a job and make it big in the city. And along with that as my Baba says, the most prized catch was my Mama :P , a person who was entirely brought up in cuttack, had a MA in History in the biggest university of Odisha and had a job. But it was not a love story... :P
Well i will certainly write the story of my Mama and Baba at one point... but now is not the time. So lying on that top berth of Rajdhani express, i was going through a completely different thought process. I was 14 , but it was not the pressure of being alone and taking care of myself in a boarding school. It was my decision to study away from home. And yeah i was quite surprised when Baba actually supported my decision, rather he was quite excited. I guess he was happy as i was quite serious about my career. But was i? Why did i make that decision? I was good at studies and extra curricular activities, i was popular, i had friends... close friends and we always used to think about the college life together. But then why i did i took that decision of going about 2000 kms away from home and starting everything all over again? Why did i take such a leap? Was it worth it??
