It's still raining....

XYZ is a normal iitian ,the following is a conversation which took place sometime in April 2008.
XYZ:- hey soham , intern kahan laga ?
me:- TATA Steel me ..
XYZ:- WHAT!!! jamshedpur me ???
me :- haan ...
XYZ:- Baap re.. koi naa .. me going to .....(some damn country)
me:- good for u ..
XYZ:- Good luck ( in a taunting manner)..
This is a good example of the situation I faced before going to jamshedpur. I had no expectations. My to-do list had only studies and music in it.I accepted my fate and went to jamshedpur(jam). As I told earlier it gave a essence of jodhpur(sun city) , it was very sunny , humid and fresh when I arrived. We( IIT bombay people) were the second batch as interns, IIT kgp and BIT mesra people have already arrived and their one week was already over. IT BHU and IIT kanpur people also joined us in second batch.We all used to live in a hostel named SNTI GT Hostel-4. Till then no girls were present in any batch but I didn't care, it was not in my to-do list(:P). First week we had lectures regarding safety in SNTI ( shavak nanavati technical institute),which was being delivered by Y.RAMAKOTY and we used to say " Whyyy ramakoty?? ", we couldn't hear what he used to speak but who cared, by this time we were becoming quite comfortable in hostel - AC TV room , Games room, Mess ( seriously man it's tough to find such a good food ), and of course new friends, from iit Bombay ( Pawan , Kushal , Pratyush , Ramakant, Ashlesh(lota) , Abhinav , Abhishek ) , kgp ( Sanat Pandey( hum :P ), priyanshu , reddy ) , bhu ( Dharmendra , Anuj ) and Kanpur (Rakesh, Anuj seth , nanavati , shashikant). We started playing cricket (me after 3 years) , football and most frequently Table Tennis. Finally after the end of first week we were alloted our projects, I was allotted in CRM( cold rolling mill).Few kgp people were already working in that place, Siddharth Ajith , Bhaskar Rakshit , Sanat pandey , Gyanendra. Bhaskar was working on the same project which was allotted to me, only such case in the whole intern batch. So I was lucky , two brains would be working on my project. Initially I found them very focused in their projects so I was sincere enough too, but as time passed we became good friends. Then it was like we came to the plant only to enjoy and CRM was the ideal place for it. It had a cafeteria, only department to have such a nice one. Gyanendra has asked out a girl who was a management trainee in CRM and they used to go to CCD . Hmmm CCD , we will come to that later( lot of memories!!).

OFFICE:-
My project was on a welding machine in a continuous galvanizing line #2 (CGL#2) under Mr. V.K.Nirala (V.K.N)(Mech) , as the name suggests he was really nirala in nature. My sub-guide was Mrityunjay (M.J.)( Elec) who was young and has joined the company just two years ago. He was also a peace character , so life was very peaceful there , I used to go in his office ,listen to music ( that too metallica , iron maiden , arch enemy!! ) , drink coffee and relax in AC. We were called paid VTs( vocational trainees) and the people who have joined TATA Steel one year before us were called GTs( Graduate trainees) , apart from this there used to be Non-paid VTs also. The first meeting with one GT was in MJ’s office , her name was Vani Vatsya (Elec, BIT mesra), she was also working on the welding machine but it didn’t seem so, she was more busy with gmail and mobile rather than work . But she was cool too and used to enjoy the songs played on the comp. Later , I met three more GTs -Rahul , Pradipto and Prakhar. Rahul was the one closest to us and used to advice us why not to join TATA Steel , whether to go to IIM or not , the administrative structure of TATA Steel and what not. It was a regular routine talk of about one hour in cafeteria before actually going to the main office to work (music and relax :P). We came so close to him (we are not gay!! ) that he decided to treat us in some restaurant. Gaining the confidence from this, I also asked Vani to give a treat but she said “First the boys then me.. ”. Initially I and Bhaskar used to work in different offices , he was taking help from Ms. Shweta Sharma(Mech) as he was a mechanical guy but soon his den shifted to MJ’s office with me which led to increased interaction and I came to know more about him.

GT HOSTELs - 4 and 1 :-
The hostel was the most happening place especially due to IPL ( Indian premier league) , our daily routine consisted of only two things – preparing to watch IPL and watching IPL. IPL had a big hand in bringing the people together , the TV room used to be full all the time with clapping , shouting , booing and all stuffs. I was supporting KKR( Kolkata Knight Riders) who had a great start but couldn’t maintain the rhythm but the last match against Kings XI Punjab was worth seeing , 71 runs in last 5 overs and Ganguly & Umar gul did it. The hostel had everything – AC TV room , Mess , Games room( TT and Carrom) , Badminton court , Gym , reading room etc. Mess food was amazing – so tasty and worth the money unlike the food in IIT hostels. Seeing the TT table , I went back in time to my first year in IIT when I first took the TT bat in my hands but I haven’t played since then so I was down in form but with regular practice my form returned , similar thing happened with cricket , I was bowled in the first delivery I faced ,little did the people knew that it woke up a sleeping tiger (:D). Soon cricket became a regular routine which further resulted in bonding of the people. The best thing was that we all wanted to enjoy and no kill-joy character existed. During birthdays , we used to gather and give full-fledged bumps to the victim or as the kgp people said GPL ( G*** pe lath). Then we used to sit together and sing songs till late night ,that too with my guitar – most of the people used to be drunk which added to the fun ( three cheers to lota !! who would entertain the public with his innovative shayari). By the end of two weeks third batch has already arrived which was from NIT jamshedpur, IIT madras and IIT roorkee but they had hard time adjusting to the environment especially roorkee people , one character in roorkee batch was Rahul bahuguna whom we named PITA ( pain in the *** ), reason will come up as we move on. IIT madras and NIT jamshedpur people were cool – Tarun , Amarnath , Pranit , Morahari became close friends in due course of time. The most striking thing that happened with arrival of new batch was arrival of girls in our batch.Two each from roorkee , madras and NIT jam but least I cared as I told before. They stayed in nearby hostels GT 1 and GT 3 . We used to play cricket in GT 1 which had a nice enough ground and also access net from the hostel’s comp room. GT 3(fully girls hostel) was not far but we didn’t care much about that hostel except few people ( ramakant , reddy , pranit , morahari :P) who cared. The fun we used to have in hostel cannot be described in words here , it can only be experienced. After a long time I actually laughed from my heart and not for the sake of it.

BUS:-
We all went to the plant in a bus which was scheduled to arrive at 8:00 am at our hostel gate but never arrived at that time. Initially there was only one bus for us as the third batch didn’t arrived till then. The driver of the bus was Pandeyji , who used to wear sunglasses all the time and also had a girl-friend inspite of being married (:P). He used to keep different phones for home and girl-friend. He used to play standard hindi filmy songs which was irritating in the beginning but later we all enjoyed. Sometimes Non-paid VTs also used to come in our bus, that too girls, so people had their evil eyes on them. First one to go and talk to one of them(Frida) was our own Ramakant ( he was also with me in CRM)( playboy as we called him later or Maha love guru) . With so many eyes on them , we started teasing the two by singing songs which suited the situation ( Do dil mil rahe hain from pardes , pehla nasha pehla pyaar , hum kale hain to kya hua dilwale hain :P etc). When the new batch arrived , a second bus was also allotted to us but we didn’t want to leave pandeyji’s bus so went in that bus only. But soon the scene changed as Mr. Y.Ramakoty came and changed the route of the buses and to my despair my bus was changed , I was devastated , no masti , no music . But since we CRM people were together so we adjusted and my mobile became the source of the music in bus. Most of the girls were in our bus , but Frida was not due to which ramakant started bunking CRM and went to coke plant where she used to go. The main problem we faced in our bus was PITA( Rahul bahuguna ) who was the group leader of the third batch .He was a character in itself , he acted as if he had all the important work and was sincere, it was because of him that we hated the roorkee batch . He wanted the bus to arrive in time , the people to arrive in time , no lengthy stoppages ufff , he was becoming second ramakoty until one day we all burst on him which resulted in more bitterness between us and roorkee people.
Apart from all this , we enjoyed like kids in bus – singing , shouting , teasing girls( :P ) , listening to each other’s story ,history etc. Some boys had crush on some girls so they used to tell me to sing a song and dedicate it to that girl, first one to do that was dharmendra who had a crush on a girl named Neha sachdeva from NIT jam , so I sang the song “ Ajab si -OSO” . I used to give my mobile to them for this purpose and plug in my Ipod myself .The journey through the plant took around 45 mins which seemed nothing in such masti situation.

FEMININE SPECIES:-
Most of the engineering college guys have a common question :- “ where are girls??” , Wherever they may roam they ask this same question. So this brings us to the most interesting part of the journey. One of my friends used to say : “ ladki ka chakkar baap re baap”. I was totally in favor of this saying. Well our first feminine character came along in bus – Frida , a Non-paid VT , who hailed from rourkela. There were more non-paid VTs too but used to go directly to plant and rarely in bus. Anyways the boys had already started their fight on each one of them in their own department , unfortunately CRM had none. With the arrival of the second batch , female population had a jump. As I mentioned earlier 6 girls had arrived . Neha Sachdeva , Swati from NIT jamshedpur - Pranava boyidapu ( hehehe.. :P) and don’t know her name from IIT M , Aprajita sant and Pooja tripati from IIT R. None of them was worth talking except Pranava who had a lesser attitude problem than others. Pranit and morahari were her good friends. So I told others that she is the girl who is worth fighting for but nobody listened then and instead teased me with her name. I didn’t cared much about them but Bhaskar and sid specially went to GT 1 for bird watching and getting info about them.
Well Bhaskar and Sid were very much successful until everything reached anti-climax.
Jamshedpur also fulfilled one of my dreams of acting in a short film with me being the hero. Yes , we had the caliber and time to make a video out of the experience . There was a hero, heroine , villain , climax, anti-climax, fight scene ,date scene and what not , well till now the story has just half begun..
The title of the post may seem weird now but will be clear after my next post ..