Neon: Chapter 2

It wasn’t a particularly handsome day. It was a day in July. Such days in Bangalore had a weird tendency to cry, or almost cry and then just shed a tear at the end of the day! There would be various shades in the sky and it would seem that perhaps just a pinprick on one of those fat clouds would be enough to make them rain. Those old trees in Bangalore would prepare for battle against the winds and swish their manes in challenge. Dhrupad would stand at the window and take on the wind full blast on his face and pretend he is on a speeding ship. He still had a few childish “imagine” games left in his head. He still loved to pretend weird things sometimes. Chilli would be sitting on the bed with a cigarette held between his lips, trying to tune the guitar. He would have bunked classes again that day and so would have Dhrupad. Dhrupad’s attendance would invariably be lower than Chilli’s but he never would think twice about bunking classes with Chilli. After watching Dhrupad stand like a lonesome romantic near the window for around 15 minutes, Chilli would quietly get up and plant a solid kick on the Dhrupad’s posterior. It would already be pouring by then. Dhrupad would turn and give Chilli “the look”. After pretending for a while that Dhrupad did not exist, Chilli would come up with a novel (and horribly oft repeated) idea of heading off to the nearest booze hangout.

“Hey Saap!” he would say.

“Yeah what?” Saap would reply nonchalantly, still immersed in the beauty of the pouring rain and the almost faint daytime light struggling desperately against the bulk of the rain clouds.

“VB!” Chilli would say checking his watch, which he wore at all times of the day except perhaps when he was dumping his toxic waste on the surface of the earth. The time said 11 AM. Next thing that one would see, and least expect would be Chilli and Dhrupad stomping down to Vijay Bar, holding up their jeans and getting thoroughly wet. There would be some fierce calculations regarding the logistics of the payment plan and the funds thereof and finally there would be a holler, “Manja!! Yerad quarter old monk kudi. Bega”(Manja! Get two quarters of old monk. Quick). Manja would come running to the table with the two bottles. He would give his characteristic wide-angle smile, place the two bottles on the table and ask airily whether the young sirs would like to have something to wet their throats with, now that they are here. Chilli and Saap would look out of the window and see the absolutely pouring rain, look back at each other and instantaneously decide to stay back till the rain went down a little bit, very conveniently forgetting that they were already soaking wet and there was nothing dry left on them for the rain to wet except perhaps their throats!! And the throats they would wet by grandly ordering two large pegs of rum or whiskey and happily stretch back on those simple Vijay Bar chairs, with their young faces glowing in the dim bar lights and a cigarette dangling precariously at a corner of their lips. The bottles would be packed up so that they could be suitably honored in their hostel room. Such were the rains in Bangalore!

Dhrupad off course was doing none of that at the moment. He was merely holding a toothbrush in his mouth looking sleepily at the sky, which had again taken up that familiar watery tinge. He kept moving his right hand to and fro while his left hand rested on the 2nd floor common washbasin. There was a mirror infront of him happily twisting his face into weird contortions. This was the same mirror where he had styled his hair a hundred times with some borrowed hair gel before going off to meet his girlfriend. The heavy pregnant sky did not depress him in any way. He never got depressed with rain. He never got depressed with the cloudy skies. He simply disliked the heat and every other aspect of rain or pre-rain delighted him. And right now he was letting the rainy breeze slowly wake him up. For some reason he was desperately trying not to wake up, almost in an attempt to test the mettle of the rainy breezes. He didn’t want to wake up, yet he wanted someone or something to take the trouble on his behalf and wake him up for him. The occasional jolt of the rain gusts wet his face. A junior walking by hollered at him and asked him if he had done Chapter 2 of Digital Signal Processing. That was the exam tomorrow. Dhrupad was appearing for it with his juniors in hostel for the second time. None of his batch mates were around. All of them had headed home now that their final year exams were over. There would all troop back to Bangalore once their company joining dates start closing in. Dhrupad was left behind. He was left far behind. He had given his final year exams too but he had to stay back to finish his leftover papers from his earlier years in engineering. Three of them to be precise. Electrical Machine Design, Advanced Control Systems and Digital Signal Processing. His recruitment in one of the most prestigious Indian software companies stood almost cancelled. He had however managed to email the HR people in that company and get his joining date postponed till November. That would give sufficient time for the late results to come out. So Dhrupad basically had to stay alone for a few days more, sit for exams with his juniors, somehow clear them and then head home till the results came out.

Dhrupad was never really academically brilliant. All his teachers and professors told him he “had it in him” to make it big. They told him that he should put in enough hard work to actually “prove” it. Because in India there is only one sure shot way of proving one’s mettle and that was to get spectacular degrees with spectacular grades. Those who didn’t have them were pretty much doomed. They had lost the battle. They belonged to a lower strata of humans and their birth was basically a mistake! That’s what Dhrupad had come to know from childhood and that’s what he had quietly rebelled against since then. Dhrupad was never academically brilliant because...well there was no because. He didn't like it. For some stuck up and unexplainable reason he could never get himself to “study” for an exam. It was his weakness. He could never make a conscious and concentrated effort to round up the things that he had learned and then sit for 3 hours and puke it out on the answer sheet. He would be far happier trying to make a circuit or welding or maybe carving out something on the lathe. This was a great weakness he had and kept trying to justify that by telling himself that engineering is all about application and not just exams. He spent his last three years faring badly in his exams, bunking classes rampantly because he was bored and tired of the way he was being taught in college. He did not like one bit of it. His time in class was a long numb period from which there was no escape. It was a nightmare for him, filled with professors squawking loudly, telling the students about what questions were important for the exams or which part of the syllabus could be skipped or those endless sessions of reproducing word to word from the textbook or a bunch of old, museum-yellow notes. Such were his classes. He simply couldn’t get himself to conform to all this although he knew that he would be doomed if he didn’t. Then again he was too lazy to at least try to conform. Instead, he tried to justify his dismal performance. What he didn’t realize was that he was too idealistic to actually make any difference. All his tall talk about engineering not being just a series of exams wasn’t getting him anywhere. He was stuck there, depressed, angry, lonely and helpless. He was stuck there with the ignominy of having to appear for his old exams with his juniors. He was stuck there with a bruised ego.