My neighbors and their attitude

Last Friday, my parents and all the neighbors in our apartment were anxious and worried. They did not know what to do. Reason - the couple living in apartment 1 where returning back from US and everyone was worried that they might have the virus and would pass it on to them. They were trying to come up with a way to deal with them knowing well how the couple (S and K) would behave.

The couple finally arrived. They knew that there would be a long queue at the Chennai airport. In order to not waste time waiting in a long queue, they both asked for wheel chair assistance. They showed the medical certification from some local doctor in the US and then got out of the airport very fast after going through the basic screening.

Seriously, if this is how the government works, then no one can save this country. How did they allow two individuals who are physically fit, to get a wheel chair assistance. And what good is the self assessment that they don't have fever. As if they are going to confirm that they have infection.

As soon as the couple arrived home, the fun started - they immediately started visiting other neighbors to tell about their story. If they had common sense, they would have stayed at home for the next 10 days, not visiting anyone, asking people not to come home until they were sure they were not infected. But no, not them. They were just super excited as if they had won the Olympic gold medal.

The other neighbors have been trying to put some some distance between them as a precaution and were too polite to not tell them to back off.

And then just as we had predicted, uncle S walks in to our house this morning not even caring whether we liked it or not. He said he wanted to meet me and then handed over the chocolates saying it was for me. As if Iam going to believe it. Letz see - this is the second trip they are making. In the last few years, their sons had made several trips between US and India. Never did they buy something for us in all these years. All of a sudden, they grew fond of us and wanted to give us chocolates.

He goes on to joke that he didn't get many since they are not as good as Indian chocolates. Oh, come on, you must be kidding. All you got us was three packets of mini M&M chocolate candies. 😈😡. 

How a nice message made me smile

It surprises me on how things change so fast in your life. You never know what would happen in the next minute.

Only a few hours back, I was feeling emotional about something. I was so angry, hurt and was on the verge of tears. 

I wrapped up my work and then started reading a romantic novel to just get away from all the emotions that were going on inside me.

And then suddenly a colleague who is also one of the few best friends I happened to have in my life, messaged me about how he presented his idea to the executive leadership last week. 

Just like that, all those emotions just faded away. His enthusiasm was contagious and in a few minutes I was smiling.

I read the congratulatory mail that he forwarded and wished him success.

Quite surprising on what life throws at you every minute. Just one message from someone and you go from feeling hurt to feeling joy.

Memories of going to the IIT entrance coaching classes in high school

When we had the reunion last weekend, they were talking about how a few guyz in our batch had landed in IIT. That was news to me and I was surprised. I really didn't know that 3 people had landed up in IIT. They even told me about someone who had got into BITS, Pilani. That was also news to me.

I didn't think much about it at that time. Today, when I messaged a friend from those coaching classes, I remembered how desperate I was to land in one of the top engineering colleges when I was in 12th grade. I was always the studious type, who concentrated more on studies than any other extra curricular activities. One of the other reason being, I was shy and studies was the only thing I figured I could just be myself.

When I reached 11th grade, my parents put me into the IIT entrance coaching classes. The coaching classes I went to, was famous because of the physics professor. He was fondly called Balu sir. Getting an admission to their classes was very difficult and they only hand picked the top students who scored well in the 10th grade. You had to enroll or apply many months prior and then go to meet him with your 10th mark sheet. And then go separately to the other two professors who taught Maths and Chemistry and get their approval as well.

The classes were held on weekends in a school that they had rented out for this reason. On the weekends, that school compound would look like there was a festival happening in there. Parents used to come to drop their kids or pick them up. There were many batches and kids used to finish one subject and move on to the other one, while the next batch came in. The watchman of the school was the most important person during the weekends.

The classes started in the early mornings and went up to late nights. Some parents used to wait near the trees holding food and other stuff for their kids.

I felt so lonely since the day I started going to these classes. There were some students who had come in groups from other schools. I was the only one who had enrolled that year from our school. They were all bright students who were very intelligent. They only talked about the maths or physics problems, solutions and all that. I never made any friends there.

I remember there was just one girl who was like me the only one from her school. We were together for a few classes and tried to make small talk. Aside from her, I did not talk to anyone else.

The professors used to conduct tests regularly. Balu sir's tests were supposed to be very tough. If you scored more than 10%, then you were considered brilliant. I hardly got 2 or 3 out of 50 or 100. The first few weekends were very hard for me. I had school work on the week days. And then early morning to late night classes on weekends. I did not get time to do anything else. The best part of it was it helped me to score high marks in my school exams since they would cover all those in the coaching classes many months in advance.

The worst nightmare was trying to score high marks in their tests in the first year. Only if we got good marks, we would be given a seat to join the coaching classes for the second year. I was not able to get the seat for Balu sir's classes in 12th. But got seat in the Maths and Chemistry classes.

Although I did not make any friends with the other kids, my parents became fast friends with the other parents. They formed a group and my dad had other parents to give him company while he waited for me to finish my classes. In fact, they stayed in touch for a few years, discussing about the various education options for their kids and the progress they made.

I just remember one senior in my school who I met during one of those classes. We just talked for a few minutes and he advised me to study hard.

Days went by very quickly. I finally did not end up getting through the IIT entrance exams. I did not even get a seat in BITS. In fact, I did not do engineering at all.

I was disappointed that year. When I look back now, Iam glad I did not get through these colleges/universities. I don't think I would have survived my engineering years in these places. In fact, am not sure I would have liked engineering to begin with.

If I had known all this at that time, I wouldn't have even enrolled in those coaching classes. In fact, I would have probably taken commerce or literature or history. I would have loved reading stories of countries, civilizations, or probably done some bachelor course and then taken up MBA in HR.
Unfortunately, at that time, decisions were not made based on personal interests.

Still, they were good memories - memories of hard work, the sacrifices the whole family had to make, the anticipation of what the future would hold, the hope.