Article Category: Junta Fundaes

It is true that the whole country is still waiting for achhe din. Now, you can either passively wait for the achhe din to arrive or do something which will force achhe din to visit your quarters. The aam aadmi may or may not be in a position to bring home achhe din for himself, but the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership is surely full of capable guys who can do something about it if they make up their mind. And made up their mind they have. The Delhi State MLAs have unanimously decided that “enough is not enough” and have taken the matters into their hands.

AAP leaders are humans like you and me and they feel, like all of us, that their salaries and perks need a revision (upward, obviously). Well, honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. Show me anyone who doesn’t feel that he/she is (grossly) underpaid, right from the Class IV employees to the Cabinet Secretary to the Government of India in the babu-land and from trainees on shop-floor to the (professional) Managing Directors in private sector. But not all of us are lucky enough to get our way. Even the mighty Cabinet Secretary has to wait for the Pay Commission to recommend revision of pay, something which happens once in ten long years. He may make his suggestions regarding the revisions that he would like to see, but finally he has to accept whatever decisions are taken.

MLAs of the Delhi Assembly have, by an overwhelming majority, decided to rectify their penurious status and given themselves a raise which shall hopefully pull them above the poverty line.

But all this is only for the billions of mere mortals like you and me. The Chosen Ones (ironically, they are chosen by mere mortals like you and me) choose to tread a different path. No Pay Commissions for them and no ungainly haggling over rate of inflation and Dearness Allowance for them! Just appoint some “independent committee” headed by a retired bureaucrat who knows which side of the slice of baked dough has a thick layer of golden yellow fat applied to it and who is only too happy to echo his masters’ voices.

MLAs of the Delhi Assembly have, by an overwhelming majority, decided to rectify their penurious status and given themselves a raise which shall hopefully pull them above the poverty line. The MLAs will henceforth get Rs 2.35 lakh per month instead of the paltry Rs 88,000 they were getting earlier and, thereby, maybe just keep the wolf off their doorsteps. Phew! Thank God!

Looks like the BJP guys themselves don’t believe that achhe din aane waale hai.

AAP, which enjoys a strength of 67 in a house of 70, was expecting that the bill ratifying the proposed amendments to their pay-packets would sail through without any opposition. But the spoilsport BJP MLAs (numbering two) tried to oppose the bill and had to be shouted down. Looks like the BJP guys themselves don’t believe that achhe din aane waale hai.

My friend, Guy Wise, says that all this gives a different twist to the classic Lucknowi tale of two nawabs missing their train in their time-honored protocol, “Pehle aap” ,”Pehle aap”. Here we have a bunch of modern-day nawabs clamouring “Pehle AAP”, “Pehle AAP” as they all jump onto the gravy train.

Here we bring you a selection of  three pieces that are woven around the joys (and travails) of  giving, whether in cash or kind. Tailgate Jaideep as he climbs the snow-clad peaks of the Himalayas in a single-minded endeavour to bring light to remote villages in Ladakh. Or, read Ashima’s heart-warming story about volunteering at a children’s centre in Luanda. In a different vein, join Dr. Behruz N. Sethna as he raises a contentious point about fundraising: should one who has the gold make the rules?

When I joined P&G after graduating from IIT, the first two years of job life just went by doing nothing but office work. The day began with office and ended with office. I realised that I wasn’t really adding any value to myself beyond office work. That’s when I met some brilliant individuals like Sir Robert Swan (first person to walk to the North and South Poles), the Cycle for Water team (these guys took a sabbatical from KPMG and cycled for two years from the North Pole to the South Pole to raise awareness for drinking water) and Paras, perhaps the first person I met to go to Antarctica and who left his job to start the Global Himalayan Expedition (it is the first of its kind social impact initiative in India, which combines development initiatives including setup of sustainable infrastructures with a focus on providing clean energy, education and leadership, while leveraging adventure tourism as means to create positive social impact communities).

I am an adventure seeker, and my love for mountains made me get involved with Paras on the Global Himalayan Expedition as a team leader. Our team has two things in common – a love for the snow-clad peaks of the Himalayas and a desire to give back to communities in the remotest parts of India. These communities do not have access to basic needs such as electricity and education. What makes it difficult is the geographic disconnect of these communities from the rest of the world.

Our team has two things in common – a love for the snow-clad peaks of the Himalayas and a desire to give back to communities in the remotest parts of India.

So in August 2013, we started our intervention on the education field and established the Third Pole Education Base (E-Base) in Leh, Ladakh at 12,000ft. It is a 100% solar-powered digital education facility, made up of sustainable building materials such as rock, clay, paper and husk, and hosts a mini library, tablets, internet and various other experiential learning tools.

I am very happy to see that now 500 students of Leh are using the E-Base as part of their curriculum, focusing on sustainable solutions around clean energy, waste management, water conservation, biodiversity and local Ladakhi culture and traditions. We have a very strong Third Pole Fellowship program where we get a Fellow for 3 months located at the E-Base, working on developing a standard curriculum. The E-Base is also being used to facilitate cross-geographic learning by exchanging ideas on climate change with Ashley School, UK (winner of 2009 Ashden Sustainability Award). As part of our interventions, we did a career counselling workshop for all students to provide them direction on career options to explore.

We have also set up the first ever robotics lab and a solar lab in Leh, to further enhance the learning of the students. The idea is to provide education very specific to the needs of the local community. These students come from remote villages without electricity, so they can come to the E-Base and learn in the solar lab, how to practically convert sunlight into electricity. This  knowledge would empower the students to build their own solar grids one day and bring their villages out of  darkness. The possibilities are endless.

Their spontaneous joy and dance made for a truly magical moment. The villagers started dancing and singing Ladakhi songs and had tears of happiness in their eyes. That night we slept with the lights on; the villagers just refused to switch off the lights.

Carrying forward the focus of our interventions, in August 2014 we went a step further having set our eyes on the electrification of a remote village located at 14,000ft in Zanskar Valley (Ladakh). Sumda Chenmo, a 1000 year old village, never had access to electricity. The village households have been surviving on kerosene fuel for decades to fulfil their lighting and energy needs.

We trekked for 3 days carrying solar panels, batteries and wire bundles to reach the village. On the way to the village, we scaled the Himalayas—crossing over passes at 16,000 feet, narrow trails, and river streams. At night, we slept in the wilderness under the Milky Way; it was a magical experience.

Upon reaching the village, the team wired up all the houses in the village, dug holes in the ground to plant electric poles, fixed 121 LED bulbs, a DC LED TV and installed 3 sets of 320W Solar DC micro-grids. We setup the grid in a single day, illuminating an ancient heritage with the latest in technology. This was the first such installation by a group in the Himalayas and the first for the villagers to witness electricity, which they have been devoid of since decades.

Something so basic to us – you enter a room, you flick on a switch, and the light comes on–had never been experienced by these villagers. Their spontaneous joy and dance made for a truly magical moment. The villagers started dancing and singing Ladakhi songs and had tears of happiness in their eyes. That night we slept with the lights on; the villagers just refused to switch off the lights.

This April, when we went back to the village of Sumda Chenmo, we could see the following benefits of the work our team had done:

• An increase in income generation through home stay (with participation of 80% households) of Rs 200,000 per annum for all the 10 households of the village
• Reduction in CO2 emissions from 1600 litres of kerosene
• Eliminating almost 4000 kg of CO2 emissions from the village
• Extending the work hours for village artisans by 4 hours/day by using electricity post dusk
• Updates through DC LED television provided at village community centre
• Improved weaver and artisan community
• Increase in homestay promoted by clean and hygienic houses in the village

I have taken a sabbatical for 3 months from P&G and we are electrifying 10 villages in the Ladakh region and 2 in Nepal that were affected by the earthquake. As I write this, we have electrified one remote village in Ladakh, and the villagers could not believe what they saw. It was a very heart-touching moment when we switched on the light. They covered the batteries in yak wool, like they do for their kids, and put a khatak (traditional cloth used to greet people) on the switchboard.

There is a Tibetan saying that goes something like this: the highest art is the art of living an ordinary life in an extraordinary manner. Living in a world of luxuries, our key takeaway was to move a step closer to self-realisation, learning from the remote communities who manage to stay happy even without the basic amenities.

For me, the tears of happiness on the face of the oldest villager when she saw her house lit up in the darkness for the first time in her life was a moment that continues to inspire me to put in all the extra effort.

Today, it’s exactly 18 months since I first landed in Luanda. It’s almost like yesterday. How excited and anxious I was! This was the first time that I was moving to a country of which I had no clue. In my “we shall cross the bridge when it comes” attitude, I hadn’t even read much about living in Angola or what I could do in Angola. I was just excited to be in Africa.

It took about a month to get a place and get a basic set-up going in terms of a home. After that, whoever I met, I asked if they knew some place I could volunteer in. I knew that if I wanted to call Angola home (even if it was just for 3 years), I would have to go out and be a part of it. It was easy to get comfortable in the warm and welcoming expat circles, which I am grateful for, but working with children is what I love and I had to find a way.

In the following February, I started volunteering with a local non-profit- ‘Fundacao arte e cultura’. They have a lot of projects, but I primarily volunteer in the children’s centre. I love spending time with the kids, designing and taking new sessions and just being there for them. The last 16 months have been beautiful, with their fair share of ups and downs. This has been my longest, continuous, full-time volunteering project till date. There is so much that I have learnt, particularly while volunteering in Luanda.

I came across so many creative people – artists, musicians, writers and dancers. With them, I explored the city and its culture. Volunteering helped me be more me than just an expat wife.

Language was the first thing that I was hesitant about, before coming to Angola. I knew just about five basic phrases when I started volunteering with children. It’s amazing how much one can converse simply by gestures and body language. But more than that it was amazing how quick I was able to learn the language with them. They were not shy of laughing at me when I spoke something that was grammatically incorrect. Moreover, they weren’t shy of correcting me. Most adults would try and understand what I was trying to say and didn’t feel the need to correct. Thank God children are not spoiled by our false sense of etiquettes!

I followed my husband to Angola. As soon as we reached, we immediately had a circle of engineers (and their families) working in the same field. Angola is portrayed as a very unsafe place and so avenues of meeting people outside of his field were limited. But when I started volunteering, I saw a whole new side of Luanda and Angola. I came across so many creative people – artists, musicians, writers and dancers. With them, I explored the city and its culture. Volunteering helped me be more me than just an expat wife. With them, I found inspiration to create something myself.

I met local heroes in small communities outside the city who were running schools in their backyards. I also met musicians teaching music to children on the streets. And I found new purpose for my skills.

Image has been sourced from <https://unsplash.com/>

Volunteering allows for a lot of freedom. It allowed me to work on my schedule and do activities that I liked. However, more than that, I knew that I had an avenue in the organization that I was volunteering with to try different ideas. When I arrived, the children’s centre did really have a lot going on. Therefore, I was told that I have all the freedom to bring new sessions. But with freedom also came the responsibility of the children. I loved that responsibility. It motivated me to try harder, to not give up if one way of teaching didn’t work. And to see the children slowly blossoming has been the biggest reward.

Teaching is a two-way street! And I am not just talking of the children teaching me the language. In order to teach them, I would look up newer activities and practice and learn before teaching them. The one thing that really concerned me was the lack of recycling and, instead of complaining about it, I decided to do more recycling activities with the children. My strongest belief is that if a message has to go out into the society, the children of the society have to be the ones taking it there. If they understand that things that seem like an apparent waste can be turned into beautiful objects, they are less likely to throw it into the garbage or let their elders do so. I never thought I would ever know how to weave a basket with newspapers or how to create a wall mosaic with toilet paper rolls. We are all learning together here.

On the outside, Luanda currently looks like a picture of development. There are the latest models of everything and high rises are coming up everywhere in the town. But the country went through a civil war that lasted thirty years and that ended just twelve years ago. Thirty years is more than one generation. A very small section of higher middle class and upper class Angolans were able to escape at that time and come back later to claim all the big jobs. Because of my volunteering, I work with and meet people who witnessed and lived the war. I met a girl who was taken in as a slave when she was a child and it was only after eight years that she could escape. I met another who lived in a forest for almost a year when her family fled the war. I feel that I got a better sense of the societal fabric because of a better understanding of where it came from. And that gave me a sense of belonging.

The one thing that really concerned me was the lack of recycling and, instead of complaining about it, I decided to do more recycling activities with the children.

But it is not all rosy. There are days when I suffer from bouts of helplessness, frustration and losing hope…When I started building a database of all the children who came to the center, I saw that, in a month, more than a hundred different children came to the center, but not one of them came regularly. A child who came today, may come the day after, the week after, the month after; or may not come at all. I try to understand, but still, at times, it is difficult to accept that a ten year old has to stay back at home because she/he needs to cook food for the family; or because her mom has gone for work and she has to look after the baby or it because it rained so hard the day before that they have to spend the entire day removing water from their home, one bucket after another.

IVD celebrations in Angola

Sometimes there are kids that have been abandoned by their families. A priest who runs an orphanage of abandoned children told me how the children go through a completely different trauma because they know they have their parents and still can’t see them or be with them.

Sometimes they do an artwork that leaves you bewildered. One child painted a high heel sandal stamping on a heart, with blood coming out of the heart, and a crying rose. What was it all about? She never came back and we could not find her home!

Volunteering has been a mixed bag of emotions for me. I have experienced happiness, love, pride, joy, disappointment, fear, hope, faith and freedom. And it is these experiences that have helped me to integrate myself into the everyday life of Angola. It is these experiences that help me be more me. Everyday that I volunteer, everyday that I go out and serve, I learn something new about the city and its soul. And I feel like I am no outsider.

Image has been sourced from <https://unsplash.com/>

It’s been over forty years since I graduated B.Tech. (Met) from IIT Bombay in 1974. I still remember cycling on the old rickety hand-me-down cycle from H7 to the cycle stand near Y-Point, locking the bike (as though anyone would like to steal it) and then coming out to wait for the ever-elusive bus to Vikhroli station.

IIT was located in the second biggest metropolis and the commercial capital of our country, but in our campus we may as well have been in Timbuktu considering the facilities, connectivity, and interaction with the city. We had a pay-phone in our hostel which would at best work for about ten days in the month, and those ten days there was a queue to make the rare call with a one rupee coin. And that also was the privilege of the selected few who had family or friend in Bombay, as outstation calls were not possible.

Yet IIT Bombay produced innumerable super-achievers who went on to win laurels, contribute in many ways to the world, country and society. They often overtook their counterparts from the prestigious Harvard, Stanford and MIT (Massachusetts, not Manipal) and made inroads into fields as diverse as administration, banking, marketing, HR, etc., and of course some in technology too.

I do not recollect very many classmates being from Mumbai, or even from the entire Maharashtra state. We had a healthy mix of students from every part of the country, and of course some very interesting ones from countries like Jordan and Tonga. It was a melting pot of sorts, and so was the teaching staff – from Russians to Bengalis, South Indians (‘Madrasis’ to all of us) to Punjabis, they were all there. And it made no difference to us what caste or creed they belonged to. Similarly, I do not recollect any employee of IIT who was from Powai or its vicinity. The entire area outside the gates was as rustic as it probably was before IIT stepped in – one small Udipi restaurant ‘Ramakrishna Refreshments’ (RK in our lingo), a couple of cycle and puncture repair shops, not even a shelter for our two bus stops at main gate and Y Point.

It was a melting pot of sorts, and so was the teaching staff – from Russians to Bengalis, South Indians (‘Madrasis’ to all of us) to Punjabis, they were all there.

Karnataka has been allotted an IIT, and politicians are falling over each other trying to get it into their constituency, as though all youngsters in their region will become IITians, or that hundreds of their poor will get employed. Considering the above factors, I wonder why there is so much debate about which part of Karnataka the latest IIT should be located.

To set at rest the vigorous lobbying, let us get a few facts straight. An IIT, regardless of where it is located, admits students on an all-India basis. Hence ideally the new IIT should be located away from all major cities, preferably in a calm and serene location, connected by a good road to a railhead which is less than an hour or two away. There is no need for the institution to be near an international airport. It will help if the area has some tourist interest though.

When the land is allotted, there should be a 10-12 year plan before undergraduate classes start. Tree planting and water harvesting schemes should first begin. An artificial lake should be created and fed through rainwater. Road to the nearest station should be improved and a regular bus service should be started.

An IIT, regardless of where it is located, admits students on an all-India basis.

If 25 to 50 acres could be acquired opposite the campus, the government could set up a tourist holiday resort, which can also act as a guest house for the institution. If an ITI or polytechnic can be established, it will be a feeder for the technicians who will be required in the coming years, and degree students will get an exposure to the practical side.

The next step would be to start building small but comfortable and picturesque bungalows for the teaching and non-teaching staff. A Kendriya Vidyalaya can be established, initially admitting all students from the vicinity, and gradually moving on to providing education on priority to children of IIT staff.

At this stage one hostel could be constructed, and periodic workshops and short-term training programs could begin, with professors being invited to come with family and stay in the resort. An exclusive air-conditioned shuttle service could connect participants to the railway or bus station nearby. Taking things forward at this stage, a few shops selling basic essentials, some sports facilities, summer camps for students from any part of the country, and trekking activities could commence.

Source: Frits Ahlefeldt

During this phase, more than airport connections, the campus should have excellent wi-fi connectivity and good maintenance of all hardware. An industrial estate can also be set up nearby to cater to the needs of the institution and also give direct exposure to students who could do internships in the small industries. Please note that investment in all the above can be recovered in a few years since they will be generating their own revenue.

There is much talk about industry-interface, and that the institute should be located at a place where IT companies, MNCs, etc. are located. I beg to differ. Students will have ample time to interact with industry if they graduate with a good foundation. What they need is interaction with the common man, the rural sector. If they can be encouraged to go out to neighbouring villages on weekends, they will learn a great deal about life, and their attitude will be much more positive. In our days there was hardly any industry interface, and no campus recruitment, but I don’t believe we were any poorer because of that.

Also, IITs should not be reduced to IIITs (i.e. Indian Institutes of Information Technology), and they should encourage all branches of engineering which may in fact grow and become more popular in the years to come.

A long term plan could be to have a small runway or helipad so that when the institute starts generating sufficient funds, a small aircraft or helicopter can connect residents to the nearest airport.

All the above can become reality only if we understand that IITs are primarily meant for good fundamental education in all areas of technology, and that industry-interface or incubation of start-ups is only secondary, which a student can go to the city and acquire after getting a strong and relevant education. Also, IITs should not be reduced to IIITs (i.e. Indian Institutes of Information Technology), and they should encourage all branches of engineering which may in fact grow and become more popular in the years to come. Many branches of engineering have seen their ups and downs in demand, whereas an IIT should cater to the needs of the nation for at least half a century or more.

If there is no distraction of city life, both teachers and students will spend all their time in the campus, interact closely, build better relationships, participate in meaningful extra-curricular activities, and go back into the urban world having not only learnt their subject, but also having become mature, balanced and focused human beings.

Ok! We start with an apology. We are sorry at our corny attempt to rhyme the title with Fresh Lime Juice. We will not fake typos, we will not claim speech impairment due to a cold. But let us also claim that there is a reason behind the title. (aren’t we all reasonable at Fundamatics?) The only thing common to every single student and alumnus of IITB is that they all come in fresh. At different times, they’ve been called freshy, fresher and freshman. And another body of homo-sapiens referred to as “seniors” are known to act fresh with these freshies, some going far enough to try and devour them like a glass of fresh lime juice.

Acting fresh is an art that has morphed over the years. Started off as a moderately permissible-to the point of being almost legit-act. Is now a strict no-no, punishable offence. Strictly by accident and most certainly not by design, this issue of Fundamatics features quite a few “then” and “now” scenarios. The ragging rage in the 70s and 80s has been covered elaborately in H4’s Madhouse book and we reproduce a few stories (juicier than fresh lime juice) here with permission from the authors. We also feature two “selfie” stories.The first one is by current day Sahil Vaidya Thakkar who would definitely have escaped ragging in the 70s/80s due to his superior knowledge of some “coloured” films and their stars. The other selfie story is by Devang Thakkar who along with his friends land into a soup of their own making.

For those who are still despairing at our outrageous title, let us tell you that we are running personal accounts of a fresh life we all choose.

Hey Freshy!
  (Excerpted from Madhouse)

Among the many myths that prevailed about IIT, the biggest were about the intensity of ragging a fresher was subjected to. This induced a lot of anxiety in parents, and it took a lot of convincing to tell them that far from being fierce, ragging in IIT was actually fun. To start with, there was no physical ragging. Every freshy was told in no uncertain terms that he did not have to submit to physical ragging, and that if it ever got out of hand, he should report it to the hostel council immediately. It helped that there were some antiragging crusaders like Gautam Barua (currently Director, IIT Guwahati) and Abhiram Ranade (currently Head of Dept, CSE, IITBombay) who kept an eye on things and did not allow anything to get out of hand.

The way I see it, ragging was actually an aid to acclimation and assimilation. It helped build bonds among hostel inmates in the fastest possible manner. It also served to detoxify a fresher of ideas of his own greatness. Understandably, a new entrant into IIT came with the preconceived notion that he was God’s gift to mankind. After all, he had surely excelled in school, he was one of just two thousand chosen from among 150,000 applicants, and during the party his proud father would have thrown to celebrate his son’s entry into IIT, many guests would have convinced Mr. Fresh that he was the answer to India’s technological problems, if not the entire world’s. Someone had to tell him that he was at best mediocre in this pool of the most brilliant minds from all over the country. Cutting down an arrogant proud being by a few notches and instilling confidence and survival instincts into a shy introverted one were the purported objectives of ragging exercises. Barring a few deviations, ragging usually did meet with its self-declared objectives. This form of ragging was, in a way, legitimized by events like freshies night and Pagal Gymkhana.

It would be no exaggeration to say that ragging changed many lives forever for better or worse, mainly better. The most visible change was that names were altered forever. Many nicknames, originally designed to last the length of an IIT sojourn, have stuck permanently. Kenneth Stuart Robertson’s name was found to be too pseudo and was changed first to Pandurang Dagduram Gaitondeson and it went through some natural transformations from Gaitonde to settle finally at G. Any email G signs as Kenneth today is instantly met with a puzzled response of “who is Kenneth?”

Then there’s a totally unknown Jayant Sheth, which is the real name of a very well known Ghatkopar. On his arrival at IIT his heavily Gujju accented English induced the question “hey freshy! Are you from vernacular?” His reply, “no Sir! I am from Ghatkopar” explains his name.

Ragging was of both a personal and of a general nature, and was usually conducted in our small dingy rooms measuring a pathetic six feet by eight feet. There was a two foot deep niche on one side that held a writing table and another two foot deep niche near the door in which was a cupboard. The cupboard hung on the wall with a two foot space at the top with the ostensible purpose of storing suitcases but was the home of pigeons who roosted there. A two foot space at the bottom of the cupboard was designed to store footwear but was home to some educational reading and viewing material. The upstairs pigeon home was called Kashmir and the downstairs shoe space was called Kanyakumari. An erring freshy was often made to travel to Kashmir from where he derived a bird’s eye view of the proceedings and when the punishment was stronger, he got a rat’s eye view from Kanyakumari.

When the seniors saw the new crop of freshies every year, they asked each other, “So this is the cream of the crop? These are the best minds of the country? We can beat them with half our brains tied behind our backs — can’t we? “ It was a subtext of ragging, seniors proving to themselves that they were smarter.

Some nuggets encountered by all and remembered by some were as follows:

~ This was generally used on anyone who came from an elite school, fancied himself as witty and was a potential member of the “pseud” gang.

“Hey freshy! Are you good with riddles?” “Yes Sir! I am.” “So tell us, what is black and white and red all over?”

“Sir! That is very easy. It is a newspaper,” he replies with a triumphant smile. “You ^&$@#! You think we’d ask you kindergarten riddles? Anyway, how is a newspaper red all over?” Slow-on-the-uptake freshy smiles triumphantly again.”Sir! Newspaper is read all over. Read as in R-E-A-D” “You %^&$@#ing son of a ^&%$@#, I said red, R-E-D. Why do you assume I said R-E-A-D?” “Come on Sir! How can anything be black and white and also red?” “If I tell you, will you stop speaking in English for a whole day and if anyone asks you your name, you will say your name is Dick?” Freshy reluctantly agrees. So he is told, “It’s a blushing zebra, you idiot.”

~ This one was reserved for those who claimed good all-India ranks and fancied themselves good at science.

“Hey freshy! Do you know what ’g’ is?” “Yes Sir! It is acceleration due to gravity and is 9.8 meters per second squared.” “No one asked you the value of g. In fact, I am asking you how you would measure g with an electron microscope.” “It is not possible Sir. How can a microscope measure gravity?” “Bastard! How did a &^%@#$# like you get admitted to IIT? Want to know how it is done?” “Yes Sir! I still think it can’t be done.” “I’ll tell you. You take an electron microscope to the terrace of a building and throw it down while measuring the time of fall with a stop watch.” “Oh OK. That is funny Sir. But we will need to know the height of the building in order to calculate g.” “Oboy. What a smartass. Just get a U tube manometer and measure the height of the building.” “Sir. How can you measure the height with a U-tube manometer?” “Freshy, you are dumb and I don’t know how you cracked the JEE (Joint Entrance Exam). Just tie a string to the manometer, lower it from the terrace and when it lands on the ground, cut the string and measure its length.”

Understandably, these exchanges did deflate a few oversized egos.

It was 1982 when I met a very scared freshy, Dhananjay Patankar. I was surprised by his terror, because he had arrived at IITB from the Bhosala Military School. The worst ragging in IITB should have been like Montessori lessons for him. But the fact was, this Dhanajay, who, by the way, had a military school-defying cherubic face, was really very very scared.

Within a few days, however, this cherubic Dhananjay was walking around looking way too cheerful for a UG (Undergraduate) freshy. As I had expected, he was now relishing the ragging. As a senior PG (Post Graduate) who seemed to have some rapport with the UGs, I soon gained Dhananjay’s confidence. I asked him about his initial reaction to ragging. He laughed happily and told me, “I thought that all this talk about taking my ass was for real just like at my earlier school!”

– Abhay Patil, ’81-‘83

It is just as well that some H4 residents were temporary, and not really H4ites at all. In the summer of 82, all the laggards in IIT were doing a summer course. They would tell their parents at home that they were doing an extra course during the summer vacation instead of holidaying like their less serious friends. Parents would be impressed and boast to other parents about the prodigy that their son was. Technically, these folks were right. They were doing an extra course. It was only a technicality that it was a repeat course. There were guys in all hostels but were few in number and everyone there knew their fellow summerians. Some hostels also played host to students from other IITs who came to Mumbai to do practical training courses. There was a Surd from IIT Kharagpur who came to IIT B to do such a course and stayed at H4. Technically he was a Surd only in technicality because he had cut his hair short and was known as a cut-surd like others of his ilk. The fact that he stayed in H4 was also a technicality since he spent more time absconding from H4 than not. He had to abscond because he was a glib talker who effortlessly took small loans of ten rupees from various guys and defaulted majorly in paying back.For instance, he would come knocking on your door and ask if you had ten rupees to spare for a few minutes. His cab was waiting outside and he had to pay up ten quickly and he would later go to his room in far off NWSF (North Wing Second Floor) and get the money and pay back. At least that’s what he told his unsuspecting prey. Those who believed him paid and waited endlessly for the Surd to travel to and from NWSF, only to find later that the Surd was nowhere in H4. That was because he would shift to H5 and do his number there and disappear to some other hostel. Eventually, when circumstances forced him to return to H4, he would pay back a part of the money to a few of the guys and create a false impression that his huge consignment of money that his dad had sent him and which was lying locked in the bank was now clearing up since the error in transfer code was resolved.

One day, Surd, with a woman, came to H4 in a cab. He went to his room with the woman while the cab waited. Within five minutes, surd and woman came back and drove away. Late at night, Surd returned in the same cab and went to his room. After waiting for more than twenty minutes, the cabbie raised a ruckus and finally, the security guard took him to G Sec Shenoy’s room and woke him up. The cabbie said the surd had hired the cab at Colaba, driven to H4 with the woman, driven back to Colaba where he dropped her off, and then returned to IIT. The total fare was Rs. 180 and the Surd had bolted. He was nowhere to be found.

The next day, one of the taxi unions called IIT and told the authorities that they would stop plying cabs within IIT unless someone paid up. After two days, the surd turned up, unfazed by whatever he had precipitated earlier. Warden Ram Mohan Rao and Shenoy had a meeting with him in the warden’s office. Surd was very cool. According to him, he picked up a girl in Colaba and brought her to H4 but the girl didn’t like the room without an air-conditioner. So he agreed to drop her back in Colaba and when he returned to IIT, he realized he had no money. So he decided to give the cabbie the slip. He reached this point when Shenoy exploded. “Look here Mr. Singh! I talked to the cab driver at length. You have not given him a slip of any sort. If you had, we would have paid him and taken the money from you later.” Anyway, Surd told the warden that he could take whatever action he wanted. He said that the Police Commissioner Rajadhyaksha’s son was his friend and that he would get out of trouble even if the warden put him into it. Warden spent a harrowing week trying to locate someone with a connection to the Commissioner so that he could pre-empt Surd’s manoeuvres. Finally, warden realized that the Commissioner was Ribeiro and not Rajadhyaksha. By this time, the surd had fled Mumbai.

And, more importantly, had left H4 for good.

Freshies were very young, and so freshy facial hair was sparse at best. This was a good area for adding insult to injury. Senior asks freshy, “do you like Hitler?” And the freshy does some quick thinking and answers ”yes”, trying some reverse logic. The senior then gives freshy a scathing lecture on the most despicable man in the history of the world and further informs him, “you are going to pay for this for a long time.” Freshy is taken to the bathroom to shave off the sides of his moustache to leave behind the famous Nazi look. He is told, “you will go to classes and labs looking like this for the whole month”. Now the senior turns to the second freshy who has been lurking, attempting to remain unseen. “And you, do you like Hitler?” The shaken freshy blurts out “no” with a sinking feeling that this answer is not going to help either.

Sure enough — he is asked to shave off the middle of the moustache leaving the sides intact.

So for the next few weeks, these two could not decide whether it was less humiliating going to classes together or separately.

Walking into a classroom of over a hundred freshies generally offered this hilarious sight. Some guys with half their moustache shaved off, say the left half. Some with their right half shaved off. And of course, there was a set of Hitler and anti-Hitler moustaches too. Sometimes there were attempts at shaving in an S shape, but given that freshies had just started sprouting facial hair and were not yet adept at shaving, this look was mostly unsuccessful.

From this crazy mix of funny faces, it was easy to identify which hostel a freshy belonged to. Each hostel’s seniors sent freshies to classrooms with their hostel’s particular shave pattern, which was decided by the seniors’ popular vote. In 1977, H6 guys had their left sides shaved off while H4 guys were Hitlers or anti-Hitlers. And to their horror, two bearded freshies, Christopher Fernandes and Edgar Dias were made to shave off half of each other’s beards.

Among these freshy victims falling left and right, there was one Chopra. Someone thought the most appropriate assignment for that smartie was to send him to the Ladies’ Hostel to beg, borrow or steal an undergarment from them. Chopra laid on considerable drama, but, he did turn up with an item.

– Ashvin (Ghoda) Sanghvi, ’76-‘81

Days and weeks went by, everyone moved on to other freshies and other pranks. One day, one of the girls said to me, “you should stop it now, and let the poor guy be.” I looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Every day this poor kid is at our hostel, with a new story on how you are making his life hell.” “What poor kid?” I asked her. And she said, “Chopra, who else? Did you guys not send him for an undergarment?” “Yes,” I said sheepishly, “but we have not ragged him since then, in fact we were wondering what became of him.”

So, while we thought our little prank was so clever, our Chopra had been milking the situation for weeks on end, bringing out motherly instincts in the girls by making up tales of tremendous atrocities by seniors.

We realized we had met much more than our match. He was out of our league — he was in a higher one.

–Ghoda

It was a week or two after our Freshies night, the freshies were now part of us and we were glad we had some fun recruits. Our thoughts had moved on to other things. Panda and I went to get a sandwich at the canteen to find that they had closed for the day. We decided to go to the neighbouring hostel to see if we could find something there.

Hostel 5 was famous for its rock star musicians. Our friend Mogre in H5 was quite a drummer. So it was not a surprise that the place was rocking and reverberating as we walked down the path towards the lounge. But as we get closer, we saw that it was a special occasion. There was a crowd of guys around the tables, clapping with the beat and having a great time. It was dark, with a few coloured spot lights pointing to the table tops. And this is where Panda and I took a step back. There was actually a good looking chick, made up pretty well, doing a very sexy dance on the tables. The high heels were kicking up, showing a flash of thigh and she seemed happy with the cat calls and hoots as she suggestively pulled the blouse over her bare shoulder.

We were disoriented. Can this be true? Could this hostel be more fun than ours? How did they even pull this off? Now the girl dancer on the table turned toward us. My jaw dropped. The girl doing this sexy jig was no other than Shona. Same curly hair, same smile, same flashing teeth, same eyes. Shona was in my class and over time I had got to know her pretty well. She was no starched pants — but this? How could this be happening? As I collected my jaw from the floor, I saw that Panda was as perplexed as I was. The girl was waving a scarf. And as the boys egged her on, she straddled the scarf with its corners in her hands, moving her body and the scarf with the beat. The crowd was wild. This is where I got my final confirmation. This was the same scarf Shona wore the previous Mood Indigo, the cultural festival. I was definitely rattled.

And then I noticed a whole similarly dressed line-up waiting their turn to be humiliated. And I realized — this was their freshy night and the “girl” was Shona’s kid brother in her borrowed clothes.

– Ghoda

For those who have forgotten Rupen Anklekar, he was a poor unfortunate soul who was ragged right through his stay at IIT, at least up until when I saw him last in ‘82.

Like a few others, there was something about him that made him vulnerable to ragging. He always spoke in the present continuous tense — “I am not knowing” instead of “I don’t know”.

Pinakin Patel had got hold of a hideous, scary monster mask. One night, he went from room to room and momentarily freaked people out. The initially scared victim then joined him to go to the next door and scare someone else, and there was a lot of laughter after the initial scare. By the time Pinakin got to Anklekar’s room, there was a sizeable crowd of ex-victims accompanying him, wanting to see how Anklekar would react. When Anklekar opened his door to Pinakin’s knock and saw the monster, he jumped a few feet in the air and shouted “hoo-hoo-hoo” loud enough to be heard in H5, and then he ran out of his room and started howling in the footer (football) field between south and central wings. For a while, it appeared that Anklekar had lost it and turned insane.

All this happened around 10pm, but there were enough hostelites enraged by Anklekar’s insane howling who woke up Warden Lakkad and insisted he come to the hostel and pull up the miscreants. Warden Lakkad wanted to see the offensive mask in order to understand why this was such a big deal. The mask was declared as missing.

I said to Warden Lakkad, ”sir, the mask is missing, but if you call Ashwin Hattangadi (Hats), you’ll understand what the mask looks like.” Hats was sore with me for an entire week after that. He even stopped bumming fags from me. Almost 30 years later, I am making it up to Hats by referring to our grand project as H4 HATS.

– Bakul

Ragging freshies was something all of us sometimes did – just as we sometimes took baths, had breakfast, went for lectures and spent hours faating (talking about nothing important, aka cacking) in the corridors. After a number of years of this regular ritual, the urge to do it waned considerably. One evening I came across a bunch of 2nd year guys whose enthusiasm for their new-found power was still alive. They had themselves a freshy victim, I think his name was Poddar. I watched as they tried out the routines played on them the previous year — describe your girlfriend’s assets, be a cuckoo clock, compare the measurement of your penis praying to God vs. Zeenat Aman, and so on. This guy Poddar perhaps — stood there stony faced, hands folded across chest, eyes firmly directed at ground. He did not respond to anything. He didn’t utter a word or move a muscle, no expression altered his face —not embarrassment, rage, disgust, nothing. Classical detachment, the personification of Leibniz’s Monad. Almost a half hour of persistent effort yielded naught. It was interesting to watch the faces of his tormentors change from excited to outraged to puzzled to outraged to dejected to outraged to bored to outraged and finally to defeated and reconciled to their failure. If the freshy had even smiled his raggers would have thought their job done. This was a truly Gandhian counter to ragging, more effective than any subterfuge I had seen generations of freshies use over the years.

And then there was Chitnis. I remember this non-incident because it ended my enthusiasm for ragging freshies once and for all. One evening, Blondie Mittal and I were sitting in the corridor by the stairs in NWSF (North Wing Second Floor). There was a gloomy, listless rain falling. This meant no volleyball, no boating, no cricket and nothing exciting to do. Mittal spotted Chitnis, then freshy, and thought, here is one way of making our time interesting. Chitnis looked like a fawn in the headlights. The usual ragging routine followed. Chitnis answered everything, responded to every probing question, every ribald joke about him, each lewd comment about his girlfriends. But his every answer was mundane and monochromatic. About the only thing that livened up the moment was a Beatles song he sang, and that was vaguely interesting not because he sang it well, simply because it was a Beatles song. The event couldn’t have been better designed to bore even Mittal to death, not an easy thing to do. If we were gloomy before we ragged Chitnis, we were ready to jump off the ledge from the second floor after.

–Satkya

An interesting ragging incident involved one Sonawane who would have graduated in ’83. I say “would have” for a reason. Sonawane was a sneaky guy who kept away from the hostel during his entire first year in order to avoid getting ragged. But in his second year, he became a new-born lion who not only stayed in the hostel, he would actually rag folks from the ‘84 batch.

During a Pagal Gymkhana in the hostel the few C’84 (graduating Class of ’84)folks that we had regaled us with some fun and games by playing three-legged and five-legged race and hop-jump-squish in the mud and stuff like that. I also remember that Subodh Mhaisalkar was the star performer on that day. Sonawane was very much present and was enjoying himself seeing his juniors suffer in a way that he was smart enough to avoid. Toward the end of the event, some signals were exchanged. Nobody is sure what exactly went down, but I know that Sood was one of the guys who gave a signal to the C84 guys. Quick as a flash, all these freshies suddenly converged upon Sonawane. Sonawane, at first too stunned to react, recovered fast enough and sprinted like his life depended on running away fast enough. He did precisely that. He ran out of the hostel and kept running. The freshies gave up the chase near the gymkhana but Sonawane continued running till he was out of the main gate.

During dinnertime that same evening, Warden Lakkad came to the hostel with the Deputy Diro to inquire about the ‘Sonawane episode’. This was already classified as an episode and had a senior level delegation out on a fact finding mission. Deputy Diro asked me, “who was responsible?” I tried telling him that the freshies chased Sonawane because they were told to do so by the seniors and were certainly not responsible, and, before I could explain further, junta began to run down Sonawane vociferously. To our pleasant surprise, Lakkad too opined that it was better that people like Sonawane don’t come back and spoil the atmosphere. So that was Sonawane, who would have graduated in ’83. He did not ever return, that day when he left the gate, he ran away into permanent oblivion.

– Bakul

The inter-hostel drama competition was a good time to add some extra-curricular drama to the lives of the hostelites. We were staging the play ‘The Bet’. One of the props required for the play was a door. Memon, Giri, and company thought it would be a bright idea to borrow the Convo door for this purpose. The main door and other doors at the architecturally aesthetic Convocation Hall were heavy duty doors carved in solid wood and very impressive looking. They also thought it would be a good idea to assign this project to the freshies under their guidance. Sandeep Bhise, Kicks, Duddy, Kripalani, and a few others were the chosen ones for this important mission. These chosen ones expressed their concern about what would happen to them if they were caught. Their guides informed them that they would be kicked out of the institute. But ever the logical minds of IIT, they also pointed out that if unable to perform this simple task, they were not fit to be there anyway.

For the next ten days, the freshies practiced unscrewing and screwing doors. They had a plan. Duties were assigned: Duddy would turn off the Convo lights. The practiced unscrewers would unscrew. Others would stand watch, and raise the alarm in case of danger.

The day arrived. Memon led the would-be borrowers of the Convo door to the hall. He instructed the guards to yell “Run You Bastards” in case there was need to do so. He instructed that the bastards, on hearing the alarm, should then run in different directions, and stay away for a couple of hours.

As soon as Duddy turned off the lights, they all heard the call, “Run You Bastards!” Run they did, all the way to Powai Lake. After their return two hours later, and for the rest of the two years that Memon and Giri had left at IIT, the gang were the objects of derision. They were the useless ones who could not carry out a simple mission. Two years later when Memon was leaving the institute on his graduation, he explained to the suitably vilified and much insulted group that not only was it not possible to remove the Convo door without getting caught, it was not possible to remove the door at all.

– told by Sandeep Bhise, ’72-’77 to Pradeep (Blondie) Mittal, ’72-‘7

“Abey, ditch yaar” muttered a languid Mukund. Despite his nonchalant expressions, I tried hard to convince him. We desperately needed one more team member. Mukund Mehta was three rooms away from me, and his roommate Sameer and I were pretty excited about this treasure hunt. Sounded fun, amidst all of the chemistry and maths and mugging. Mukund had ditched us because we couldn’t find a fourth member.

But now we had found someone special. Anna was the most erratic guy in our whole wing and probably in the entire universe. He NEVER got things right. Never at all. And watching him screw up was one of the biggest delights mankind would ever know. So once we managed to trick him into joining us, Mukund decided to give it a shot too.

In the evening, we had seniors coming over to give us “tips”. Nothing interesting, they just kept asking us not to help people from other hostels, or even better, misguide them. We were repeatedly explained why it was important for H-3 to win it, and how crucial it was to bring glory to the Vitruvians. Some even blabbered about their heroics in the previous years, which were made up of course.

At 8.30 pm, we finally reached the SAC – Students’ Activity Center. This is the place where all the fun stuff at IIT happened. The four of us anxiously stood outside the gates, up for the challenge and praying for our brains to work like they had during JEE. At this point, for the first time, we learnt the timing convention at IITB. 8.30 pm actually meant 10 pm. Till then, 500 freshies simply kept shouting at the top of their lungs. I joined in at intervals but stopped and wondered how it just didn’t make sense.

In the evening, we had seniors coming over to give us “tips”. Nothing interesting, they just kept asking us not to help people from other hostels, or even better, misguide them.

The hunt commenced shortly. As soon as we got the clues, we realised how dumb we were. Time seemed to flow faster than it did in exams as I relentlessly struggled with the most onerous clue of the lot. We were one of the lucky teams to have a cycle at our disposal. Before I could demur, Anna said that he wanted me to ride pillion. To this day, I feel sorry for my butt.

Our first task was to name 5 porn stars. Apparently the senior was trying to troll us as he had been asking names of Hollywood actors to the other teams. I made my team proud by naming 10 in a jiffy. Astonished, he then asked me to name a male porn star. Amidst intense cheering and hooting, I blurted out two names. I had never felt more confident in life. Even though my moment of glory didn’t last long, I fondly remember those stupefied expressions. We proudly marched away with the next clue as he whispered away to another senior “Abe isko to mere se bhi zyada pata hai”. We left the lecture hall, and BOOM. Within 10 seconds it was raining. It took the campus a few minutes to turn into a storm zone. Everyone was drenched, confused, and in a race against time. And Anna’s cycling was something extra that only I had to deal with. As the dilapidated cycle plunged downhill, I could envision both of us getting into a brutal accident very soon. I took control of the situation and jumped off, managing to avoid a very bad fall. Recovering from the shock, I gasped heavily and looked up, only to be greeted with Anna’s mindless gawking and road safety tips.

The four of us anxiously stood outside the gates, up for the challenge and praying for our brains to work like they had during JEE.

Somehow we assembled at Hostel 6 and went in for our next task. With an evil gleam in his eye, a burly senior asked us to eat some chillies. We just threw them away when he was busy deriving sadistic pleasure from watching others burn and run around for water. The next task involved climbing Hostel 11’s wall, doing some push-ups and climbing back to the other side. While coming back, I happened to ignore a huge gutter. It was HUGE – more than my height in depth, and five of me in width. Jumping off the wall, I wondered why it was taking so long for my feet to touch the ground. In a fraction of a second I fell head first into it as others watched water splash in all directions.

We were one of the lucky teams to have a cycle at our disposal. Before I could demur, Anna said that he wanted me to ride pillion. To this day, I feel sorry for my butt.

If it hadn’t rained, I wouldn’t have been here writing this stupid diary. People stared blankly as I got up and tried to stand straight. Crawling out of the gutter, I felt dizzy and collapsed. But my teammates didn’t run away. They helped me get back on my feet and carried me for some distance. As they say, the “enthu” was still there and I managed to run till SAC in order to finish the wretched hunt. So in the end, we won nothing, got injured, drenched and I lost my phone. But for some weird reason, I kept feeling that I took away something from the whole expedition. Got to know how a team works. And that watching porn helps. At least sometimes.

Image sourced from www.unsplash.com

In the internetlessness of the pre-80s era, where the only commonly available means of entertainment were either the part time mono-channeled black & white Doordarshan or shellac discs spinning at 78 RPM on something called a turn-table to belt out “kajra mohabbat wala…”, the Convocation Hall at IIT was a life saviour. People got convocat- ed once a year in its precincts, but they got entertained by feature films once every week. Friday evening to be precise. Same movie played on Saturdays too, but that was for the campus residents. Students saw the movie on Friday evenings before scurrying home for the weekend, mainly to get clothes washed and eat some decent food.

Watching movies on Fridays made a lot of sense for several reasons. For one, you paid Rs. 2 per month rather than Rs. per movie in theatres. You could see Helen gyrating to RD Burman’s drums in full 35 mm glory rather than the 8 mm and 16 mm jobs that one hired during hostel functions. You could walk into the Convo in shorts, in lungis, and even in towels, place your legs on the table, recline and whistle away like some cine goers did in the front benches of theatres, i.e. non-balcony, non-stall. If you liked a cabaret number, you could shout “once more” in unison with your friends and the song would be rewound and replayed. You did not have to stand in attention after the movie, because the national anthem did not need to be played. Back then, movies were made only in huge glitzy studios and one never ever thought of making a movie. There were no VCRs, no video cams. Yes, a few stinking rich folks did own a portable 8 mm movie camera and a home projector that was used to film weddings and kiddy birthday parties. Of course, they were silent jobs since soundtrack was expensive. No one was intrepid enough to think of making a feature film in 8 mm, save a group of crazy guys from H4 and H7, who made a movie back in 1982 as a part of their EP/PAF event.

H4’s Madhouse book is replete with references to the Friday evening movie outings in the Convo and also carries the story of the attempt at filming a masala movie on the banks of Powai and Vihar lakes. With permission from the authors, we reproduce 2 short snippets about the Convo movies as well as the longer story about the film making attempt.

It took another thirty years for technology to advance in the Indian Institute of Technology; for digital inventions to replace celluloid technology. In those days, there was a Film Club and a Film Society. The Film Society was the one which screened movies in the Convocation. The Film Club was the arty type and screened movies on Thursday evenings in the Lecture Theatre. Then, it was for people rich enough to cough up ₹ 2 every month to watch a movie. Now, the club is for those who want to MAKE a movie which hopefully others will watch. One can now film a movie on the go – while walking, while chewing gum, while hanging clothes out to dry. Cameras fit into a pocket now and special effects, sounds, cinematography, scrolling titles… these can all be accessed and applied with a few punches on the keyboard and a few mouse clicks. But again, this easiness creates a level playing field for all competitors who have to therefore stand out by virtue of their creativity and imagination. Siddharth Babbar the Film and Media Secretary of Silverscreen, the club for the movie lovers of IIT Bombay, tells us the story about his maiden film produced some 30 years after the H4/H7 venture i.e. 30 years after Raj Babbar’s time. Despite advancement in technology, film making is still full of trials and tribulations. You have to master casting, scripting, editing, acting, filming, production, and sound. You now do not use good old fashioned tomato ketchup for faking blood. You now use Gulaal as Sid did in his comedy horror film. That’s the extent of detailing now. Sensitivity to ketchup blood vs. Gulaal blood.

Read on to travel a 3-decade journey of film making in IIT. It’s a story of the motion of the picture. Not a picture of the motion, that’s in Piku.

Wax pass? Or Faux Pas?

Excerpted from Madhouse

IIT showed us four movies in a month with four Fridays and five in some months. The monthly pass came at a princely Rs. 2,which was sheer highway robbery as far as some scientific minds were concerned. If Necessity is the Mother of Invention, IIT was her maternity ward. The necessity of spreading this Rs. 2 expense over ten people led to an invention called ‘coat the pass with wax’. Once the pass was ticked with a pen, or so thought the usher who actually ticked on wax, the successful entrant into the covo (convocation hall where the movies were screened) rubbed the tick away and slipped the pass out through a grill for the second man to attempt entry. In IIT guys asked each other for the usual match, lighter, cigarette of course. But sometimes they asked if anyone had a candle to spare. If you carried a candle in your pocket, you were respected as an individual with foresight.

Liability of Aas-ets

Excerpted from Madhouse

We were provided passive entertainment every Friday night, in the form of the Friday Night Movies in the Convo. These contributed significantly to many pleasant memories of IIT. Over half the hostel would empty, because the locals – those with homes in the city – went home. The campus descended into a soothing end-of-week tranquillity. The silly Hindi movies enhanced this experience. H4 junta had their regular seating area, a spot on the front right of the Convo entrance. The movies were entertaining, but not always in the way they were intended.

Some seniors before our time had a kind of a bet that one of them would go up and kiss the heroine on the screen while the movie was on. Let’s assume that the heroine was Zeenat Aman. In order to help this intrepid hero, a few guys walked up to the screen with him, formed a human pyramid like we used to during Krishna Janmashtami celebrations, allowed him to climb up on the shoulders of three layers of guys to reach Zeenie’s lips. But by the time he reached the top, the scene changed and our hero was rewarded with Pran’s lips when the kiss materialized.

Some seniors before our time had a kind of a bet that one of them would go up and kiss the heroine on the screen while the movie was on.

One of the Friday movies had maniben Asha Parekh in the lead and Garam Dharam was the hero. The scene shows Asha Parekh in a temple talking to God with a small wish in her mind ”Bhagwan! Meri ek chhoti si aas hai…” The entire convo erupted with peals of laughter at this request, and some cried out that Asha was extremely ungrateful. Everyone remembers how well stacked Asha was there, and yet she had the cheek to call it “chhoti si aas.”

1982: Not a Love Story

Excerpted from Madhouse

Bakul’s crazy ideas, which, by his own admission had severely dented Fish’s sense of discernment, had not always
failed. We had achieved our elephant on campus, thanks to one of them. One of these came at the end of his time in IIT. With contributions from many of the stars, Bakul tells the story of his last EP (entertainment program) contribution.

In 1982, H4 was paired with H7 for the EP competition. It was early August and I was to bid adieu to IIT soon, but remained enthused enough to offer some “parting advice” to my juniors, most of whom had become my good friends. As it happened with all previous EPs, most of the initial ideas came over some lazy off-the-cuff remarks made in jest during tiffin time, when the organizers supposedly congregated for a serious brainstorming session. I had reasoned that our 1980 Hitler’s motor- cade and the elephant had been sensational hits and H4 should carry on the tradition. I said we should rent a helicopter during Friday evening Convo movie time and throw confetti on the guys walking to the Convo. As usual, this was greeted with jests and barbs and a “let’s see you try to pull this off”.

The elephant-renting success made me believe I could whistle “chopper” and the rotored version would soon be hovering overhead. Soc-sec Sameer Vijaykar sanctioned a budget of Rs. 500. The chopper company guy (I think company was Pawan Hans) asked me lots of questions about why IIT needed a chopper and why they need to throw confetti from the air rather than from the ground and if there was “nothing fishy” in the deal and whether we would get the Police Commissioner’s permission “at our cost”. After answering his questions satisfactorily, he quoted a figure of Rs. 6000. Fortunately, this was on the phone, so he could not see my eyebrows aiming for the sky and neither did he catch my “oh shit”. I decided to at least compensate myself for the princely 50p I had paid for this call. I asked him if he had paratroopers to land near the Convo. I asked him if his aircraft could skywrite H4. I asked if he was willing to negotiate his figure “a bit”. Sure he was. How much was the bit? Could he look at Rs. 500 all told including the confetti? He was incredulous. Surely, I meant five thousand and not five hundred, right? “Wrong”, I told him. It was five hundred I wanted to pay him. The answer was the click of him hanging up. Clearly, he was not a Bawa. I was half hoping that he was, so that I could reply to his inevitable swear words with what I had learned from my friends Sharookh and Irani.

One evening and one more tiffin later, amid guffawing and more jests and barbs, I was selling my new idea of the day. Instead of showing the customary slides that we generally did during the intermission of the Friday movie, why don’t we film a ten minute trailer and run it during the intermission? In those days when video cameras were not even heard of, thinking of renting a movie camera and a projector was more ambitious that getting a helicopter. I waited for the next series of barbs.

I said we should rent a helicopter during Friday evening Convo movie time and throw confetti on the guys walking to the Convo.

Surprisingly, there were serious and silent faces all over the table. Jetu spoke up finally. “Why should we spend money and make a trailer for publicity? Why don’t we make a movie and run it as a feature in the main EP?” Ideas started flowing soon after this and it took us another evening and another tiffin to start discussing specifics with Photography & Fine Arts sec Sheshgiri Rao aka Shesh from H7. Shesh could and would borrow an 8 mm movie cam from his friend. A ten minute reel would cost us Rs. 350 and another Rs.150 if we wanted it with soundtrack. Brilliant IIT minds decided that they would beat the soundtrack system by dubbing the vocals on a cassette which would be played synchronously with the movie and we would spend the saved Rs. 150 on beer to celebrate what looked like a clear cut box-office silver jubilee hit the moment Shesh said yes.

I left for Hyderabad soon after but returned within barely one week when an excited Sood and an equally excited Vijaykar called me in Hyderabad to say that the movie deal was through and that we were going to film it on so and so day. I got to H4 early on that so and so day. Vijaykar ran the oral script by me hurriedly. It was going to be Bollywood masala all the way. Two lost brothers. Villains with dens, goons and molls. Car chase. Comedians. Dubbed songs. I was to play a guest role. I was to drive the mobike with the hero in tow to rescue the heroine from the villain’s clutches. But before that, I was to milk a cow when the hero comes running to me asking me for help and I was to stop the milking and jump on the nearest mobike to take the hero on the chase.

Vijayakar had already talked with head sweeper Kalidas who was going to loan his favourite milch cow for the scene. Kalidas had assured Vijaykar and team, “Saheb! I will give you such a cow, fountains of milk will spring forth from her teats.” And the rascals had conspired to get me to be the comedian discovering these fountains. I had to make a hurried and secret trip to Kalidas’s dwelling just north of the north wing (which also housed The Dhoban). Kalidas was washing and scrubbing the cow while his family members babbled excitedly at the big day in their cow’s life, little realizing that I was about to play spoiler. I reasoned with Kalidas that I was appearing in the fillum too with my cow i.e. my mobike, and I had carried an ironed pair of my favourite striped shirt and cream trousers for this momentous shoot, and would he please leave his cow where it belonged and would he please tell Vijaykar that she had taken suddenly ill? Kalidas apparently remembered a few lucrative deals with me in the past, including a bounty of my discarded clothes which I shamelessly made a big deal about, and dejectedly agreed to send his cow to graze in pastures of faceless anonymity. There would be no fountains of milk, as Vijaykar would discover later in the day.

Instead of showing the customary slides that we generally did during the intermission of the Friday movie, why don’t we film a ten minute trailer and run it during the intermission?

Shoot started sharply at noon at Powai lake. It was decided then that the script would be developed as we went along and improvised at will. Two heroes, Shinde and Pa came from H7, while Radhika and Priti came from H10. This was a coup scored by Jetu, Sood, Khosla and gang. Rather than getting guys dressed up as women, they managed to get “the real thing” as Jetu said. It was quickly decided that Radhika would be the heroine and Priti would be the gangster’s moll. Shinde was decidedly more handsome than Pa and also owned and wore a denim jacket and “non-slippers” and was selected unanimously. Pa had started a week ago with “I don’t mind being the hero” to “I’d like to be the hero” to finally “Please make me the hero”. Though ousted, he was sporting enough to break the coconut he had bought from Y Point to mark the token start, and he also did a mock muhurat clap shot.

Shinde and Radhika sat in a boat whose ropes were held by Alexander while Shinde pretended to row the boat and Radhika pretended to sing a number from the film Tere Mere Sapne. Lyrics were “Jeevan ki bagiya behekegi, mehekegi”. During dubbing however, the song was changed to “yeh jeevan hai” and nobody gave a thought to how the lip-synching would look on D-Day. Shinde and Radhika then stepped out of the boat hand in hand while the short cute athlete Bhinge playing the comedian got up from the boat (where by implication, he was hiding) and jumped into the lake. The new found film makers in us decided to mimic the veterans to the extreme. We now shifted our action to Vihar lake in the same manner that a lead pair starts singing a song at the Eiffel tower and finishes it at Qutb Minar. We needed Powai for the boats, but Vihar was more photogenic and gave us access to the pipeline where we had the car chase scene.

Image credit: Image is sourced from https://unsplash.com/

While the cameraman Shesh and a few others drove in Chintya’s black Fiat to Vihar and other trudged their way there, we realized that my bike would carry me and Shinde while Chintya’s car would carry the villain and the kidnapped heroine Radhika and Shesh would need another vehicle to film the car chase scene. That’s when we hit upon the idea of roping in DOSA Isaac, ostensibly to play a guest role, but in reality, to provide his scooter for the cameraman. Jiten and I rode to Isaac’s cute bungalow A-11 by the lakeside. Isaac was not thrilled to see that “Bak Bak” was back on campus after promising to stay away. The aftermath of the recent scandal “Campus Call Girl” was still fresh in everyone’s mind and Isaac was already frowning hard and loud on seeing me. I had to go down on my knees twice, I said his non compliance would cost our “crew”, thousands in damages. Jiten laughed his trademark loud Ha Ha every time I made a fresh attempt at melting Isaac, who finally relented when he knew I would not leave without him. He did ask what role he was to play in the movie, I told him truthfully I didn’t know (except for the scooter part). “The director will decide”, I said. He was unconvinced, but came to Vihar all the same. At Vihar, after a hurried discussion, we gave him a pair of binoculars and asked him to look toward the lake and snap his fingers to summon an imaginary sidey. In the film, he would look through these field glasses at Vihar and espy Shinde and Radhika alight from a boat in Powai, and his snapping fingers were deleted and rather a Boss, he was transformed into a sidey who tells his Boss, “bass! Panchi aa gaya hai.” Bass was the tall, mean looking Meshram from H7 who had shaved his head for the role. Boss was seen sitting on the banks of Vihar with his moll Priti (not our Boss Patil and his real life Priti), telling her how they would escape with the “sona” after abducting Radhika. The Shinde-Radhika duo who had alighted at Powai was now walking, same hand in same hand, except that it was at Vihar now. They were still singing the “yeh jeevan hai” to the lip movements of “jeevan ki bagiya” while Meshram quickly moved behind them and grabbed Radhika’s hand and ran off with her.

Shesh was on the camera, there was nobody to direct as such and improvisation was the decided order of the day. Radhika brought in a new dimension to the script by running fast along with villain Meshy while screaming a sing song “bachao.” Shinde was quick to run in the opposite direction looking for his lost Radhika who was still in the frame while Shinde ran away. Shinde ran to a Charsi “sadhu” sitting under a tree and replied to his question of where Radhika was, “gone man! Solid gone.”

– Rohan

Shinde then turned towards the pipeline and saw me sitting on my stationary mobike while singing, “Musafir hoon yaaron. Na ghar hai na thikana.” Vijaykar was seen scratching his bald head wondering why Kalidas’s cow had acted up. Shinde jumped on my mobike and I started it and raced off towards the direction of Meshy’s getaway car. Eventually, I caught up with the car and then saw Shesh sitting backwards on Isaac’s pillion, ahead of the car, filming the scene with a heavy wobbly camera resting on his unsteady hands moving up and down due to Isaac’s bad shock absorbers. Later, we could see that when he zoomed into the car to catch a shot of Meshy and Radhika, they were seen laughing while Radhika was still shouting “bachao”. A damsel in lesser distress was never seen before. An excited Shinde decided to catch the car by its window when we got there and almost got us killed by getting my mobike pulled close to the car. I started hitting Shinde’s hand to detach it from the car. It was captured on film.

The light was fading and Isaac had to go out and we decided to pack up shooting and continue next day at Kol Dongri sanctuary at the edge of Powai. Kol Dongri was an ideal setting for the villain’s den as it had some old crumbling walls which would crumble when a hero threw a villain’s sidekick into them. Before shooting on next day, we had an interesting and an animated discussion about how to film a scene where a hero dodges twelve armed villains by jumping backwards from the “ground level” to a landing or a floor or a wall top that could be classified as “upstairs”. The motion had to be smooth and fluid and nonchalant as in the real thing seen in not so real movies. Again, many intelligent engineering minds stepped in and offered solutions including filming a guy jumping down and then pasting each frame in reverse order.

Fortunately, a few idle minds concluded that holding a camera upside down would also do the trick. The scene shot at the villain’s den was the best , in my opinion. The villain’s lackeys were bare-chested and went down one by one in double slow motion to Shinde’s dishum dishum. One degree of motion was due to Shesh filming in slow motion. The other degree was the guys themselves falling down in slow motion, unaware that Shesh’s borrowed cam would do it too. When the last sidey was hit, he was made to collide against the wall and sure enough, as expected, it came crumbling down. Finally, Shinde and Meshy decide to fight it out solo. Meshy said, “Main woh toofan hoon jis se takrakar, ped hil jaate hain.” Shinde struck a match on Meshy’s bald head and said as he lit his cigarette, “Main who Chattan hoon jis se takrakar toofan ruk jaata hai.” More fisticuffs. A pendant comes out of Meshy’s shirt. And suddenly, there is recognition and a finally heart rending “Sohan” and “Mohan” kind of reunion between lost siblings. While the duo gets united, Radhika decides to run away with comedian Bhinge into a scene which shows “The End”.

During screening the projector began to vibrate and made Isaac vibrate to the tune of “yeh jeevan hai.” Shesh stopped the projector but Kohli did not stop the cassette player. Sound travelled at the speed of sound while light travelled at the speed of a faulty projector and we could hear “Sohan and Mohan” from the Charsi Sadhu who intended to say, “gone man! Solid Gone.”

All in all, the audience got a gist of what we attempted and as a concept, we got a lot of points for novelty. Jetu touted it as a multidimensional project which involved three hostels, faculty and alumni. Isaac was faculty and I was already an alumnus. While leaving the Convo, Isaac was heard remarking, “These chaps made me look like a fool. I hope that Bak bak has left for good.” I left IIT and H4, but certainly not for good.

Being a filmmaker isn’t easy. You have to combine genres ranging from writing, scripting, acting, camera skills, fine arts, and finally filmmaking itself. So much so that Michael J. Fox, actor from the iconic “Back to The Future” movie series, said, “Pain is temporary, Film is forever”. Going through all those pains and problems, spending hours and hours on end and getting that one great film, this is a film maker’s dream. Be it Tarantino or Kashyap, or Spielberg or Rohit Shetty, or your little known and struggling film maker, all of them aim for that one great final product, that one film to rule them all.

In my three years as a student film maker, I had many interesting experiences. Some were good, some were bad, but it was the end product that mattered. A good film makes the making worth living through, as every film maker would second me. I have had experiences in making my own films, helping others make theirs and being guided by more experienced seniors in a few cases. I met interesting people, had funny takes and retakes, had real night-outs sleeping at 10 am, had few minor accidents and what not…it is all a part of the learning experiences.

Being a filmmaker isn’t easy. You have to combine genres ranging from writing, scripting, acting, camera skills, fine arts, and finally filmmaking itself.

Well it is said that you can’t forget your first love. Well, I can’t forget my first film either. Even though the finished product wasn’t very good, it is close to my heart. This film was made during our very own inter-hostel freshman competition or “Freshiezza”. Although I had made an ad-film 2 weeks before, this was the first real short film I made. The experience can hardly be penned down, but I will try my best to describe it as vividly as I can. Please forgive me for the use of any technical film-related terms, I promise I won’t use them unless absolutely necessary. Here it goes:

After being declared the winners of the Ad-making competition 2 weeks ago, my friend (and teammate) Paresh came to me with an idea. He wanted to make a horror film. He had the complete story in mind and was very confident about it. I was enthused by the idea, but wasn’t very confident about it.

The previous evening, someone had taught me how to replicate the ghost flying effect. I saw this as a great opportunity to test it out and agreed to the film wholeheartedly. Eventually though, I ended up using all the meagre film making skills I had acquired by then, and the broth that I ended up making wasn’t all that bad!

Once we had the story, the next step was to look for actors. As had been told by our seniors and we had found by the previous experience, this was perhaps the toughest step. But not for us…we had the complete hostel at our disposal. We rounded up a few wing-mates, or “wingies” for short, and forced them into roles that we thought would befit them. We needed two main characters, the ghost and a puny little guy to be tormented by the ghost. Well that is what we kept the eligibility as, the shortest, thinnest guy became the haunted guy, and the biggest bulliest looking guy became the ghost. Although he has still not forgiven me, the ghost was happy with the role back then. Adding a few supporting roles, the cast was complete.

Making this film was one of the best experiences I had. I learnt a few things on how to make a film, but I learnt hundreds of things not to do while making one.

Now came the shooting. A fact that might be worth considering is that this movie was made in 24 hours from conception. And to get that eerie effect, we wanted to shoot at night, unaware that shooting in bad light is not good for the film. And the 24 hour thing meant that we had just 1 night to complete the shoot. So at 8 pm, out comes the camera and the cameraman (that’s me). The camera was a puny little 8MP digicam, found in almost every household…nothing sophisticated. And we set out to shoot. First road block: the ghost doesn’t look like a ghost. He needs make up! Now who here has a girlfriend so we can borrow her make-up box? Sadly none of us had one. So my innovative friend Paresh takes inspiration from the Dark Knight and makes his own make-up for the ghost. Simple items from an art enthusiast’s cupboard (another one of my wingies) like white chalk powder and graphite black from a pencil does the trick. Lo and behold, we have our own custom-made ghost ready.

Now for the first scene. The soon to be haunted guy is sleeping peacefully in his bed. We imagined the movie to open with a shot of his face zooming into his closed eye, which suddenly opens up. Imagining is easy, but god knows how those filmmakers do it! Well this is how we did it. Imagine the poor little guy sleeping on his bed (my bed, in this case, for the lack of funds). Now, I am standing over him with my camera in one hand, and the other hand clinging on for dear life. And where is the camera? Well, it’s pushed into his face so that we have his eye in focus and his face in the frame. And now when Paresh says action, I have to zoom in by moving the camera closer to his face and shouting out to open his eyes at the right moment. Now you know why movies are dubbed. A few retakes did the trick and we were really pleased with the product.

Moving on, we encountered problems after problems but we handled them somehow and went on. There was one scene where we needed flickering lights. Being the editor of the film, I wasn’t convinced that I will be able to do it in the editing. So we ended up actually turning the light on/off to get that shot! Luckily, the tube light responded well and did not give those extra flickers it gives at the start. Another scene was when the protagonist runs away from the ghost and into the camera kept on the floor. Cinematography wise bad idea. But who cares? Anyways, he is running into the camera. Wait, who prevents the camera from flying away, being kicked by the actor? Happy realization! I ended up scolding the actor to be extremely careful close to the cam and I was behind it ready to catch it if anything goes wrong. Nothing did.

After shooting various scenes, we needed some blood. Sauce? No man, too obvious. Well somebody produced a packet of gulaal from somewhere and voila! Here’s the blood ready. You will see some good uses of this blood if you actually see the film. A Batman Begins inspired spray can (hallucinogen) made an entry too somewhere but that was brief.

Soon we realized, we needed a tantrik. Enter Girdhar, winner of the best freshman actor. Being a tantrik he deserves a dramatic entry and he got one, I made sure of it in the editing. The exorcism is carried out, the dying of the ghost is shown, he haunts them for one last time (my dear flying ghost effect!!) and everyone goes home happily. Oh wait, my horror film has turned out to be a comedy one. Why? Because the ghost dies way too dramatically, a heart attack which came after he wasn’t allowed to answer nature’s call. Don’t blame me for that, not my idea. And by the way did I mention that the ghost’s name is Sandaska bhoot and he haunts toilets? We soon realized that it would be a good idea to declare this as a comedy movie and it was received well by the audience as that. Although we ended up adding more twists and turns including a detective (played by Paresh himself), a scam by the tantrik, and what not, we did complete the shoot on time.

Next whole day went in the editing, sound mixing (yeah, we mixed lots of tracks) and finishing the product. I applied all I knew and left no scene untouched. Bad idea, but didn’t know it back then. After this crunching schedule and 2 sleepless nights, we had our film ready. Not very good, but was good enough to win the competition, among allegations of too much sound mixing and copied scenes.

Making this film was one of the best experiences I had. I learnt a few things on how to make a film, but I learnt hundreds of things not to do while making one. Made new friends, many of them are still good friends, including the poor ghost. I also developed an interest in this field and went on to learn a lot and soon enough, even teach aspiring film makers. Paresh went on to become the hostel Film secretary and the next year, the cultural councilor of Hostel 7. Most of the others never made a film again. But they helped me raise an interest in it.

I have purposefully left out the editing end of this experience. Apart from being too technical, it will be quite boring for most of the readers. Hope you liked the story, and I assure you, all the characters, events and names are real. You can even go and watch the film, “The Last Laugh” on YouTube: or just Google “The Last Laugh iitb” and you’ll find it. Although most of the readers would find it really difficult, I would encourage you to at least once try to make a film, or get involved in one. It’s an exhilarating experience.

[For those who are not interested in googling out the movie, here’s the YouTube movie link.]

I was in Jakarta for two nights and even though meeting two Afghani men and listening to their tale of human trafficking was a riveting one and watching a Korean film with Indonesian subtitles was a moving experience, I was still eager to leave the city. I wanted cheer, more human contact, some foliage and less concrete.

Jogja (officially but rarely called Yogyakarta) is a major tourist destination in Indonesia. It is the capital city of the province of Yogyakarta Special Region, which is in the southern part of the Central Java province. It was a recommendation that was being echoed by lot fellow travellers. The reasons, however, had more to do with its geography and history than its cheer and foliage. It has many wonders – an active volcano, Borobudur, Sultan’s palace, and its food – but for me the biggest draw to the place was Omah Jogek.

Omah Jogek is a jungle homestay or something like that in Jogja. An Indonesian couple, Ina and Bandizt, who have zero business sense and use all the proceeds for rescuing animals, runs it. Besides the wild, their other passions are punk rock and mucking about with friends.

I stumbled upon it after dedicating fervent hours on the internet while smoking a cigarette and sipping tea in my dimly neon-lit hotel room. Though I didn’t know what I was looking for, but knew there was a pa
ng in me that was strangely being addressed by what I was reading on Omah Jogek.

This is what Ina’s description on Air BnB read:

“It’s in the woods, with lots of wooden parts.

The name’s in Javanese, literally means Barking Home. I guess you can sense now where that will lead you. Yes, a must-love-dogs home, well, must-love-cats, too. We built the house after borrowing money from my dad (and we still owe him a lot). I hope he would always have other much more important stuffs to think about than my debt. There were no cats so we didn’t name it a Meow Home, but we keep getting discarded and abandoned kittens around. There is no option available but to look after them. We cannot eat them, of course, because we’re vegans.

Some of the cats are up for adoption”.

I’m a shameless cat lover and had been missing mine from back home. I saw the pictures of Omah Jogek and there was nowhere I wanted to be more than that place. There was one little problem though. No, money was not it as it was pretty affordable. It was the booking that had to be done online exclusively through Air BnB website. Unfortunately, my credit card is linked to my Indian cell number and as I roamed around Southeast Asia on local numbers, I couldn’t use the card for any online transactions.

The good thing was that one could correspond with Ina over Air BnB’s messaging system. However, in order to ensure that the booking is done only through the website and not directly through the owner, Air BnB restricts exchange of any emails or phone numbers. No matter how innovative you get (interspersing numbers in text or reversing the digits), they can catch you and remove all traces of it from the message – very clever of them. Both Ina and I tried them all and failed. But then I was lucky to have Ina on the other side who agreed to let me stay without paying for the room in advance.

The next morning I was there before the break of dawn after eight hours of train ride from Jakarta. I don’t remember much of the way from the station because as soon as I transferred the direction given to me by Ina to the taxi driver, I promptly dozed off on the back seat of the car. The driver woke me up as we reached the guesthouse. I looked around and suddenly I was in the  middle of a jungle. It was swell.The dogs were barking and Bandizt came out, took my bags and showed me to my room. I was too bleary to notice much but the bed reminded me of my bed in that tiny room while growing up in Dehradun. As soon as I hit the pillow I dropped off into deep, undisturbed slumber.

It was the gentle purring of two cats – one curled next to my cheek and the other at my feet that finally awoke me after who knows how many hours. It was a good sleep and I was hungry. I looked around and found the room to be done in a simple, understated, elegant and utterly comfortable manner. It had open red brick walls, Oakwood, unpainted furniture, and a beautiful original canvas art of a Dutch painter who lived in the neighborhood. There was a small window with curtain that overlooked a creek below.

“This life’s journey has been so puzzling at times that my desire to find out more at those times has never been completely quenched”.

I was already feeling cheerful and there was more to come. I went outside the room and was welcomed by chirpy hellos from Georgia and Alessandro who were sitting on stone benches next to the river with their coffee, bread, and cigarettes. Perfect, just perfect! I rushed inside the kitchen to get some for myself and quickly joined them at the bench.

Georgia, a comedienne/pub singer/art student is a wild stream from Tasmania with bushy armpits that she rebels to shave. She had the brightest voice and most chatty eyes. The kind of person, you would want to bring home and have tea with and talk and talk. She had come to Indonesia with very little money on a sponsored art project in North Sumatra that fell apart. But like me, she was so taken by Omah Jogek that she decided to use all her saving to spend indefinite time at the homestay. Alessandro, the sweet, gentle, utterly attractive Italian bald was a recovering cracked-heart who lived in London. He worked for an NGO doing some completely forgettable social work and was touring Singapore on work. He had some holidays left and decided to come to Omah Jogek. Whatever the reason, I was just glad to be there at the time they were there.

This life’s journey has been so puzzling at times that my desire to find out more at those times has never been completely quenched. But sitting next to Georgia and Alessandro, I felt a calm surrender inside of me. At the time, nothing seemed to matter. Was it the loud barks and constant miaows? Was it the rustle of leaves from the tall trees? Was it the gurgle of the flowing creek? Was it the simple organic bread and jam breakfast? Was it the active ashtray with several burnt butts? I really don’t know. I had hardly exchanged a few pleasant words with both of them, but was already in love and ready for Jogja.
Of course I saw most of the sites that had to be seen in Jogja. I went to the Sultan’s palace, climbed all the tall stairs of Borobudur. Woke up in the dark of the morning to climb a mountain and see the sunrise from behind the volcano. Drove up to the volcano on motorbikes ridden by young Javanese kids. Saw the remains of an actual house believed to be of a mythical king of Mount Merapi. The saintly man who kept the faith and continued praying while the volcano erupted and village evacuated. We made impromptu music directed by Georgia on the Gamalan (Indonesian percussion instrument) and some other broken instruments kept in the king’s desolate house. Each and every moment spent was so happy that it seemed like I was living a dream while awake.

We wandered aimlessly around the streets of Jogja, talking to strangers, eating Nasi-something and smoking some more. There were post dinner beers in the front patio of Ina’s house under starry skies. All sat around playing the guitar and singing out of tune while stealing lyrics from our iPhones. We cooked and ate together and fed ourselves something much more than food.

Here’s an ode to these strangers from that jungle in Jogja. It’s an ode to Ina, Bandizt, Elly, Fandi, Alessandro, Georgia, Leo and Bindi and Buster and Pumpkin and Hansen and Chichi.

Omah Jogek is

A home that houses animals

And it’s not the just the four-legged ones that

seek refuge for a refuge they needed to seek for long

It’s a place that calms your nerves

Agitates those molecules and

Dissolves them too

It barks and miaows

It lets you have a voice and

Muffles the city noise

It cooks and jams and stirs up a storm

Every moment unique.

Each one too special

And living it up is the norm

Time stands on a vertical plane and passes in a blink

It’s sullied and curried and stewed and soaked

It’ll make you think, un-think till the chink goes to the brink

As for me, if I begin to recount what all I miss of Omah Jogek

The days will run short and ink will run dry and I will still not be able to put a lock

On the stock

Of the sweetest barrel

I have some memories in pictures but the best ones are in my head

And I have a feeling they’ll keep churning out through the said and unsaid.

Getting around Jogja

Barring a singular slim attempt at learning how to ride a bicycle, I saw most of Jogja as a pillion rider on motorbikes behind Leo, Alessandro or Georgia. I also used the cycle rickshaw or becak (pronounced beh-chak) or simply walked. Hiring a becak is ridiculously cheap and you don’t even need to bargain. I was there between mid to end March and it was too, too sunny. I returned with an almost burnt skin and an intense tan. So smother yourself with a good dose of sunscreen.

Jogja lies in one of the most seismically active parts of Java and has been repeatedly struck by earthquakes and volcano eruptions. The worst in recent times was the earthquake in 2006, which killed over 6,000 people and flattened over 300,000 houses. In October 2010, the nearby volcano of Mount Merapi erupted, spewing lava over nearby villages and killing 353 people. Going by the past record, it’ll be another 2-3 years until the next small eruption and 10-15 years until the next big one. So pay a visit while you still can!

“I’m a shameless cat lover and had been missing mine from back home. I saw the pictures of Omah Jogek and there was nowhere I wanted to be more than that place”.

The three of us drove with Leo to the foot of the volcano and then hired three loud motorbikes driven by three spirited Javanese kids – 15, 14 and 16 years old Fatima, Abu and Murtaza. Sitting behind them, scaling Mount Merapi was an experience that became special because of their stories. We stopped in between to soak it all and saw some sites that had to be seen. The three of them showed us their homes that were frightfully close to the volcano and spoke about the recent eruptions with impressive matter of fact-ness. Without a single suggestion of being overwhelmed, for them, it was just a mountain that spewed lava once every 3-4 years and destroyed parts of or the whole village. Once it was done with, the villagers went about putting their houses together and getting on with their lives. That was that.

Being one of the oldest cities in Indonesia, Jogja also has many heritage buildings and monuments. Borobudur is one of world’s truly great ancient monuments, the single largest Buddhist structure anywhere on earth, and few who visit fail to be taken by both the scale of place, and the remarkable attention to detail that went into the construction.

History tells that Borobudur lay abandoned and hidden for centuries under layers of volcanic ash and thick jungle growth. Nobody knows for sure why it was abandoned, although the popular theories are that the local population just became uninterested when there were mass conversions to Islam in the 15th century, or they were simply driven away by large volcanic eruptions. It was never forgotten entirely though, with local folklore ensuring that stories of the great monument lived on.

Today it is a major tourist attraction. Alessandro and I climbed to the top and admired the views. A curious observation was seeing the chopped off heads of Buddha as a result of Islamisation of the country, especially Java. It was initially believed that Islam penetrated Indonesian society in a largely peaceful manner and was brought in by traders from Gujarat, India in the eleventh century. So to imagine these peaceful Muslim raiders chopping off the heads, as they had to be chopped and keeping intact the glory of the monument does demonstrate a level of religious tolerance. A fair amount of the temple is restored but I was glad that they did not try to place the heads back as it reminds you of two distinct periods in history.

Another place that should be visited is the Sultan’s palace. If one has seen the forts and palaces in India, this one is a fairly ordinary one. But what it lacks in majesty, it makes up for what it stands for. The Sultan, a Muslim, observed both Ramadan (Islam’s religious observance) and Dusshera (a major Hindu festival) with equal fervour. Being a Hindu myself and coming from a country that is steeped in religious diversities, it was extremely interesting to observe a sort of a mish-mash of Hindu, Islamic and Buddhist traditions in the palace museum. There were no clear demarcations and all religions were merged into one quite easily.

How to reach Jogja

I arrived by train from Jakarta and the ticket cost me USD 9. To get to it from India, check out cheap air connections from Air Asia. Try to be flexible with time and catch cheap deals on the airline. Before buying your ticket, always consult Skyscanner or Kayak once. It tracks all the best deals.

“It was the gentle purring of two cats – one curled next to my cheek and the other at my feet that finally awoke me after who knows how many hours”.

Accommodation

I stayed at Omah Jogek.  To book from Air BnB, it just costs USD 20, which if you ask me is a very small price for what you get. Though I have not done it myself, it is worth a try to connect with them through their Facebook page for a booking enquiry. But if you’re not a cat/dog person, another good option is ViaViaJogja. A bit more expensive but a good option if you’re excitedly looking for things to do and places to go. Hostels usually cost around USD 12 per night for a shared room and USD 24 for a double private. Prices will be up to half the price outside of the major cities. Most hotels begin at USD 27 per night for a double room.

Food

Food is cheap. You can save a lot by sticking to street food. You can pick up tasty local fare for around USD 50 cents! Street side snacks, soups, and noodles will keep your wallet fat! Markets are your best bet for finding seriously cheap food. Western food is more expensive but is still affordable at around USD 9 for a meal and drink.

Visa

Indonesian visa is available on arrival for Indian passport holders and cheaper than getting a visa from India. It costs: US$50. There are hardly any queues so I don’t know why would anyone go through the trouble of getting the visa stamped from before.