Ravi – Lost and Found...

From 2005, on demand by Dindu:

(Undecipherable noise… Many men talking at the same time…) ‘Excuse me friends! It is not making any sense. I must insist that we all stop talking together and speak one by one. That way we can express our individual views with more clarity and in the end whatever time remains we can comment on others’ views. (Noise continues…) (Shouting Angrily…) HERE YOU IDIOTS! (Sudden Silence…) You hear what I am saying or I will KICK the SHIT out of you all one by one!!! (Silence in the room…) Yeah, that’s better. Now listen! We have been given a topic to discuss here and we are supposed to express our views within this limited time frame. If all of us start talking at the same time nobody will be there listening. What we are supposed to do is, bring out an agreement on the subject given to us. Let me start by expressing my views and then clockwise we can continue expressing our views. Is that fine will your all? (Silence…) Mr. Assamese! Is that fine? (Assamese nods with a shiver…cooler voice…) Fine! I take that as acceptance. Let me begin then. (Pause…Lets out breath…) Gentlemen! My view is military training should be made mandatory for all the young people of India, who are physically capable of going through its rigors. This will bring discipline in their lives; they will be strong to face the real life and will take up their social responsibilities well. A sense of national responsibility can arise in today’s youth, only when one goes through the troubles of such trainings and serves his country for at least a small period of five years. And as our friend from Assam has earlier pointed out, it will make the world better. I have discussed it with Mr. President and he has given his warm acceptance to this idea. Facts, gentlemen, Facts!!! These are the facts I am telling you and there is no better solution than this to make our nation better…’ (Claps…Darkness…)

(Light… Interview panel… an interview going on…)
‘Mr. Ravi! Welcome to Rurakee campus. Tell us something about yourself…’

‘Thank you first of all. Well I am a complicated person. Till now even I am not able to understand myself. I am a person who lives on some basic terms and principles. The punch line which guides my life is “I don’t know where I am going, but I know where I have been. I don’t know what my vision is, but I know what I have seen…” Though I belong to a very modest background yet my ambitions are high and my instincts strong. I want to bring a positive change in the outlook of this world by taking up a work which can bring smiles to many faces.’

‘And what that work would be, Mr. Ravi?’

‘Well, I want to be my own master. I will start a food chain, with branches all over India or perhaps even world. I tell you gentlemen, there is nothing more satisfying than satisfying hungry people with good food.’

‘But I suppose you are currently working in an IT industry. How then you think you will go about it?’

‘Frankly speaking, joining IT was a big mistake. But as I have already said, I know where I have been. I learn from my mistakes and I learnt from this mistake. IT was not my cup of tea. I don’t say it is a problem in IT. There are people who enjoy that work too. But I didn’t fit there.’

‘What made you feel you were different from those people?’

‘Well, there is a lot of complacence there. Dreams are rarely seen. I found out that there isn’t greatness in being a buffalo-with-a-dream in a large buffalo herd. The owner will tell eat, you eat; he will tell drink, you drink; he will beat with stick and twice a day he will take away milk. And all you can do is just keep shitting around yourself. I can’t live like that. I want to be free… At my own… That’s my dream… To live free… To bring that desire to be free in everyone around me… Yes, I have been strayed. And I will start afresh. For that I am looking for an opportunity and I am sure you will consider my passion.’

(Healthy silence in the room…After a pause…) ‘Very Impressive! Congratulations Mr. Ravi! We offer you a seat at our institute if you are ready to take it up…’

In a fit of excitement Ravi jumped from the seat and fell on the table…

‘O Mr. Ravi! Please get up… get up… get up… get up…
(Darkness…)

(Light… Engine noise… People shouting “GET UP!!! GET UP!!!…)

When Ravi opened his slumberous eyes he was lying on the alleyway between the seats of the bus and passengers were shouting “GET UP! GET UP!” Bus was zooming at the speed of 70 mph and driver hadn’t bothered the speed breaker on the road. As the fast moving vehicle slid past the speed breaker, it flew into the air for a while and came down thumping, teaching a lesson on Newton’s first law of inertia to all the passengers inside. Ravi had fallen down from his seat unaware of the Newtonian force responsible for the fall. He was dreaming, and it took him a while to come out of his reverie and smell the humus. Had Sigmund Freud been given the task of interpreting Ravi’s dream, he would have jumped with joy, because this dream was totally in accordance with his wish fulfillment theory. Two different dreams joined together to indicate an unfulfilled wish. And the last moments of the reverie he would have attributed to the external stimuli responsible for the images produced in dream. But ironically, not for Freud, in reality everything which happened in dream had gone exactly the other way round.

Ravi was returning to Delhi after going through his GD/PI (Group Discussion and Personal Interview) at Rurakee College of Business Studies. After boarding the bus, he had taken a nap while the bus strolled slowly through the crowded city roads. But as soon as it had entered the open country highway, the driver unleashed the entire throttle which ultimately brought Ravi back from the world of dreams. It took him a little while to realize how fast the undulating sugarcane fields were running past him. Just half a day past his life was in the hands of interview panel, and now it depended on the right foot of the driver, who was showing no mercy on decaying frame of the bus. The bus crossed another three speed breakers at the same furious speed, and each time Ravi jumped so high from his seat that his hair remained just an inch below the roof of the bus. He called the conductor and said: “Bhaiyya! Driver KO thoDa acchhe se chalane KO boliye Na!” The conductor looked at him with surprise. Expression on his face was like that of a commuter of Mumbai locals to whom some new Mumbaite had asked not to push his way into the local. “Yahan bus aise hi chalti hai bhai sahab!” was all, that conductor could manage say to hide his surprise.

Under his shallow breath Ravi prayed to God for safe journey till Delhi. He kept his bag at one side and tried to return to his reverie which refused now to come back to his memory. That dream now became a sweet nostalgia, and for a moment Ravi wished if he could have really lived that dream. After all, he had nothing to lose. His waking consciousness was back and he started thinking about his future, his present and the deep dark valley in between. He wanted to do an MBA. These two years of IT life had sucked like hell. As a fresh graduate from a good engineering college he had dreamt many a dreams when he joined a prestigious IT firm. But as he got into the rabbit hole of IT reality, he found out that he is getting lost in some desert. In the beginning of career he worked during nights. Worked like a typist. He got so pissed off with his job that he could have done anything to get out of this. But the company had taken away that chance by making all fresher employees sign an agreement to work for at least two years. In case of breaking this agreement employee had to pay two lakh rupees. Well that was a big sum and two years were at stake. Amidst this dilemma of choices, ultimately he found himself trapped in a sort of cage where, neither he could like what he got nor he could get what he liked.

There were dreams of course. There were dreams of better life, challenging work and urge to do something important, something different. But during the last days of college, when the entire herd was running after big paychecks and big names, he was also taken over by the placement pandemonium. When someone starts running after something, at the same time he starts running away from something. Ravi realized he had been running away from himself all these months. And now time had come to stop running towards something which never existed for him. Time had come to revisit his foundations and realize his forsaken dreams. Time had come to ask himself the inevitable questions – “What do I want? How will I achieve it?” for which only he could find the answers. It was not late and he had lost only two years. He could start fresh, there was hope. He had come far from where he wanted to be, but he wasn’t lost.

Amidst the flying stunts of Uttaranchal Road Transport bus, he was thinking all this when suddenly driver slowed down the bus for a pleasant change. Ultimately he stopped the bus in front of a small dhaba. Driver and conductor got down. Ravi also thought of relieving himself from the pressing thoughts by paying off the nature’s call. The place was smaller than a small village. There were just a few shops standing parallel to the main road where vehicles were zooming past intermittently. Beside the shops there were sugarcane fields. The air was filled with the smell of sugar factories. If one inhaled too much of that air, he could even have caught diabetes. Ravi kept his bag on the seat, took his knapsack along with him in which he carried his certificates and got down from the bus. After traveling at almost quarter a mach (one fourth of the speed of sound) getting on the inertial frame of reference was a relief in itself. He felt that he had grown heavy. He stretched his body and headed toward the sugarcane field to micturate.

‘Why can’t I just run into these fields and get lost? Damn! This world is a big septic tank and I am a small piece of shit in it! Why can’t I live it my way? Why can’t I run away to a place where I breathe fresh air, eat healthy food and work something sufficient to satisfy my needs? I can live on chewing this sugarcane rather than eating over-oily tasteless curries in the city. Ah! Money! I need money! I need a lot of money to have financial freedom! Then I can think of such adventures. How will I get the money? Oh! I need to do an MBA for that! I need to do an MBA. But will that bring me money? Oh man! It sucks…’ He peed and wished these thoughts could also go out from his body along with the urine. Mind felt a little relieved now and he returned to the stop to get back on the bus.

The thin stream of thoughts still kept dripping on his mind as he returned. ‘Man! Everything sucks up here… Now this crazy driver… He is driving the shit out of… HOLY SHIT!!! WHAT THE HECK!!! WHERE IS THE BUS???’ The bus was gone, as gone as the proverbial horns on a donkey’s head, and for a moment he stood petrified, feeling his feet getting cold like Himalayan ice. He wished this too was some dream and soon it will get over with someone shaking him on a soft warm bed. But nobody came to wake him up from his dream and it turned out to be a living nightmare. The event of the whole day went flashing out of his eyes. How he was getting nervous before his GD, screwing up of GD, how he wished to punch that Assamese guy, the interview panel, their crazy questions, his crazy answers, finally that wicked smile on their face when they asked him to leave. And now he was standing like a frozen statue in a small village with his bag in the bus which had left him forlorn in this barren land. He rushed to one of the shopkeepers and asked where the bus was. Shopkeeper said as indifferently as it was desperate for Ravi: ‘Bus to chali gayee Saab.’

Ravi had to decide and decide fast what to do. So he rushed toward the middle of the road and like a mad man started making gestures, asking for a lift from almost every passing vehicle, sparing only the bicycle riders. Vehicles zipped past him, some with an indifferent horn, some shouting back the abuses ‘MADAR CH*#!!! MAREGA KYA!!!’ Time was running wild, and the bus would have gone at least 10 miles by now. He didn’t know the bus number but he knew that his new dress, new shoes which he had bought specially for the occasion were in the bag, which was also about 10 miles away from him. While keeping the major part of his waking conscience busy making gestures for lift from the vehicles, he roughly calculated his loss that came to around six thousand rupees.

Eventually a middle aged person stopped by him who was on a Bajaj Chetak. Thinking that it is better to have a kerchief of a running thief Ravi decided to chase the bus on the Humara Bajaj legendary stead. In a single breath Ravi explained his plight to this person, and pleaded him for the lift. The generous man agreed and Ravi started following the 70 mph bus on a 30 mph Bajaj Chetak. Ravi calculated that if he followed the bus like this for an hour then bus will move further 40 miles away from him. Neither dare he ask the person to driver fast nor could he keep himself from thinking about the Lee Cooper shoes which were continuously rolling away from him at 40 mph. ‘What if he asks me to get down right away? It’s already evening and after a couple of hours night will arrive. No! Let me win the race the turtle way’ he thought. Meanwhile he kept explaining to this person about what had happened. Those forty five minutes on scooter seemed like a whole era passing through his eyes. ‘Bus will be around 30 miles away from me now or even more’ he thought ‘but it might even be 75 miles away given we are moving away from each other!!!’ Preparation for MBA had made his math sharp and given him a habit of thinking about all possibilities. ‘SHIT!!! I NEVER ASKED THIS MAN THAT I WANT TO GO TO DELHI!!! WHAT THE HELL!!! AM I GOING BACK TO RURAKEE???’ But he didn’t ask the person because making mad gestures, asking for lift nowhere in the middle of the highway was the last thing he wanted to do.

After a few minutes, when they reached a busy traffic signal where many vehicles were stopping, the man spoke pointing towards a bus ‘Bhai Sahab! I will not be going to Delhi, but this bus will take you there…’ Ravi jumped out of the scooter and rushed into the bus without even thanking his savior. Later he realized he owed gratitude for the scooter rider and to some extent for Bajaj Auto Ltd as well. He explained the whole story to the conductor of the bus and the conductor told that he could get his bag back given he knew which depot the bus belonged to or the bus number. Ravi knew neither of them and there remained only a bleak hope in his eyes for reuniting with his bag. By repeating his story to all the passengers aboard, he had aroused sympathy for himself among the passengers along with praise for the intelligence of keeping his certificates with him. One auntyji sitting next to his seat kept drawling time and again ‘BETA! Bhagwan kare aapko aapka bag mil jaye!’

Meanwhile Ravi was thinking what was more disturbing – losing or being lost? Was he worried because he had lost his bag and other valuables with it or was he worried because he was lost? If he had nothing with him at the moment he found his bus missing, would he have tried to stop every vehicle like a mad man? If he was all alone, wouldn’t he have ventured into the sugarcane field seeking an adventure? A person who has nothing to lose cannot be lost. A person who knows where he is heading cannot be lost. Well, it is possible that he can get out of his original track for a while but that doesn’t mean he is lost. Maximum a man can lose is his will to try again, to try one more time.

Amidst these thoughts he alighted in Noida and boarded another bus from there to ISBT. To give a final try, he looked for the bus which had forsaken him in a barren village. He asked the people at ISBT about where the buses coming from Rurakee stop. After a few directions he finally found the conductor and the driver, the bus and eventually his bag. There was no point in arguing with the two caretakers of the bus now and so he left them behind and started his journey ahead. And for the first time he heard something repeating within himself. The same lines which he had unknowingly spoken while giving interview in his dream:

“I don’t know where I am going, but I know where I have been;
I don’t know what my vision is, but I know what I have seen…”