Hey You Rock Buoy, Stop Talks!

By Sharang Sasan

Children are the most important beneficiaries of a good education, yet the ones with the least power to shape it.
Remember what growing up was all about? - Thoughts/events/ the small things that have made up our past? Well this book is Jai’s journey through the 90's - a young boy living in suburban Delhi who starts his life in an elite public school and lands up at the doorstep of Delhi University.
‘DU’ as it is commonly referred to is an amalgamation and a melting pot of so many different cultures. It changes, challenges and totally befuddles the young unsuspecting minds taking their first initial steps into its hallowed corridors.
The confusion, the trials and tribulations experienced by Jai, having seen one world in his school days and a completely different one in Delhi University, is our story.
Follow Jai on his journey of discovery, learning, growing up as he breaks the myth surrounding Delhi University. Peppered with humorous anecdotes, observations and insights, Jai draws you into his world as he goes about trying to understand this mystery called Life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Jun 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9789388930543

Sharang Sasan

The author of this book isn’t a New York Times best selling author yet, let’s hope he makes it before newspapers as we know it completely disappear!He is as confused as the main character in his debut novel, but he found an interesting way to tackle his confusion by writing the book you hold in your hands.To confuse matters more, Sharang is also a musician and songwriter and has recorded two albums with his band The Identity Crisis. The band has performed concerts across the major metros in India and you can find their music on ITunes and Spotify. Their videos are on YouTube and have been featured on MTV and VH1.You could visit them at www.theidentitycrisis.net should you wish to know more.Sharang has also written a book of poems which is currently lurking about in the shadows and which he hopes to publish soon. Currently pursuing his Masters in London, he says the second book is writing itself.For all updates you can follow the author on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramTwitter: Sharangsince91Instagram: sharangsasan

Book preview

Introduction

If you’ve picked up this book, you’re probably wondering what the hell does this title mean? To save you the trouble, the title of the book captures verbatim words my English teacher in college said to me. Fascinating isn’t it? Unfortunately for him, I didn’t shut my mouth and decided to write a book about my Delhi University experience.

Still with me? Great! Come along and let me give you this mandatory introduction that every book must have.

Life, just like this book, is full of chapters. You never know where each chapter takes you, but you read on just to see how the story is going to pan out.

The author of this book, that’s me if you’re wondering, was an average student who had no interest in studying; yet I now find myself having written a book on the challenges of the Indian education system, but also have the audacity to suggest how we can improve the system as well. The sheer cheek!

The above confidence could be attributed to numerous setbacks that I faced early on in life and the many life lessons I accumulated along the way, one of those lessons being that when you’re given a dream, you’re also given the power to make it true. How else do you think this book came to fruition?

Now that you know my life lessons’ work, you won’t mind scrolling down and reading the rest of the fine material I have prepared for you.

This particular story not only sheds light on India’s education system but is also a coming of age story. Our protagonist, Jai who grew up in the 90’s an era where fancy gadgets consisted of the Walkman and Walky Talkies, where having no Internet meant playing 3D Pinball on your PC or playing your handheld brick game.

The most memorable thing about the weekend was the title song of the TV show ‘Mahabharat’ or Duck Tales.

A school era defined by a Natraj/Camel compass box, Milton water bottles along with white Bata canvas shoes, which had to remain white all day long.

The magic of this time was that he had one foot in the future and one foot in the past.

The future in terms of his education wasn’t going to be an easy one.

One of Albert Einstein quotes sums up Jai’s Delhi University experience quite perfectly, ‘Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.’

Follow Jai’s journey as he breaks the illusory facade of Delhi University and shows you that getting admission there is like winning a poker game on the Titanic. You were doomed from the start.

Chapter 1

Awakening

Right of the bat, let me make a few things clear. To get the most out of this book, you need to understand three things. First of all this is a story of a boy. Being a male in an Indian society is a big thing for some reason. It’s equivalent to somebody winning a Grammy or an Oscar. It’s a big deal people. You’ve basically won half the battle.

The mother gets a pat on the back for a job well done and more importantly, the elders in the family are satisfied. These are the people you have to watch out for in our society. They’re almost like Dons, they run this joint. They will poke their nose where it doesn’t belong and refuse to take a hint. You have got to appease them to get them off your back. But the sad truth is even then they never really get out of your hair.

Secondly your future will be defined by one word...Settled!

Has your child settled down and made something of himself or herself? An inquisitive aunt’s preferred question, which she asks at a drop of a hat.

It’s not just about working or having a career and having a clear path in life. Being settled is much more than that. It’s about getting married and giving your parents grandchildren as soon as possible. Even if you’re financially incapable of taking care of the child, it doesn’t matter. A child is necessary for one to be truly settled in life.

FYI, according to Indian standards one should settle down by the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine if you’re a guy and twenty-five to twenty six if you’re a woman. If you’re not settled by then you’re pretty much screwed in the eyes of the elderly.

Lastly and most importantly is a word everyone is all too familiar with and that is ‘Opinion’. Like an ass everyone is going to have one of these. Everyone in an Indian family is going to have an opinion on anything that you do or should do. They will even try and force their opinion on you in some shape or form. From what sort of hairstyle you should have, to who you date, to when you’re supposed to get married, who you’re supposed to marry, how many kids you should have, what profession you should pursue, etc.

Even if they’re not trying to sway you, Indian families will let you know what they think regardless of whether you asked them for their opinion or not.

It’s a very hands-on approach and privacy as a concept has not yet been understood by our most distinguished elders. Now Jai our hero in this book wasn’t born the sexy beast that he is today. No he had a rough start. His life began with the words, ‘Is he ours?’ A question asked by of all people, his mother! You know its bad when you have a face that even a mother couldn’t love.

But things got better and soon he was as cute if not cuter than the other babies in the hospital. Now with parity being restored the now heir to the Vashistha throne went to his new home in Mumbai.

8th December would go into the history books as the day a certified genius was born. Yes I am talking about Jim Morrison! Lets fast-forward a couple of years and on the same date in 1990 a new genius was on the block and his name was Jai.

His whole family was happy to see him. Even his mom, who had now grown to love her firstborn son since his features had gotten better. We as a society are so obsessed with vanity!

Jai’s time in Mumbai could only be related to a struggling actor’s career, it didn’t last long! He was out of there in two months and had made his way to the capital, Delhi. He was going to be living with his maternal grandmother and aunt.

Delhi! India’s capital with its tree lined avenues and wide roads, the envy of all on the one hand, and the chaos brought about by a surging population on the other. The city, which is spreading in all directions, growing so fast with no apparent plan despite three municipal bodies and having got statehood status! But as they say, Delhi is Delhi!

About two years later he welcomed his little brother Naman to the family. While his parents were busy taking care of the ‘little one’, he spent a considerable amount of time with his aunt and grandmother.

Jai loved riding in auto rickshaws or ‘autos’ in local parlance and he loved his Pepsi. He’d pester his grandmother and aunt all the time, which would sometimes infuriate his mother.

In about 1995 the family moved again, this time to a place called Gurgaon, which on a good day is about half an hour away from South Delhi and on a bad day could take you a couple of hours. At that time though, it was just a jungle with houses, but it would grow as the years went by. It would be his home for the coming twelve years.

Gurgaon! Where a building pops up as if it were a McDonalds outlet. One day it could be vacant plot, the next day there’s a construction crew erecting these overpriced apartments and offices. The people of Gurgaon now live in a concrete jungle.

A sad tale of what might have been... The authorities could have made it anything they want, another Singapore perhaps, but what did they do? Diddley squat! With no real farsighted development policy they let it grow in an unplanned and ad hoc manner and although it’s now the power and nerve centre of Corporate India, it’s sitting on a time bomb. Since it doesn’t have a functioning citywide sewer or drainage system, roads buckle like an old man’s arthritic knee and the level of air pollution and dust is so high that it is a nightmare for long distance runners and asthmatics.

However back then it was just starting to grow and being viewed as the next big thing though the infrastructure at the time belied that hope. Gurgaon was certainly not known for providing electricity, or water for that matter. The two most essential components needed for modern day civilization were missing on the civic amenities list if you will.

You had to have an inverter or a generator to survive there. Generators were loud and annoying, just as most of the neighbours were, but the electricity used to be out for so long, that even the generators and inverters used to fail. One either slept outside on the lawns or on the terrace during the summer months. The view of the night sky was great, but having mosquitoes hover around wasn’t. The constant buzzing in the ears was very annoying. When one called the ‘electricity guy’ as they were known, their standard answer was that the power would be back in an hour except according to them an hour consisted of three hundred minutes, because the power used to take at least four to five hours to come back on.

It used to be very hot and since there was no power, one had to take four to five showers in a day to remain cool. In fact people even slept in their cars with the AC on. That’s how bad it was. People were certainly roughing it out in this so called ‘millennium city’ which had no water or electricity.

At least having no power brought the neighbours close, you could see most of them out on the road at night, ambling around, interacting with each other, bonding over their mutual misery. Since the power went mostly at night, it used to be a good excuse to not go to school the next day. That only worked a handful of times though.

The moment the power came back on, people used to scramble back into their homes and switch on the air conditioner. They wanted to have at least one cool room before the power went again. People used to have coolers then, but they couldn’t spare any water in order for them to work, so most of them had bought air conditioners.

The other annoying factor at night were the security guards who would blow their whistles every hour to signify that they were awake and were on alert.

As if trying to sleep without electricity wasn’t hard enough, you had to contend with a loud whistle being blown every hour.

The afternoon nap was affected by the scrap dealers riding their cycles in the street screaming, "kabaadiwaleeeya.’’

A water tanker was not a rare site in this city, even though it had spilled half the water on the road by the time it got to the house.

People used to fill their buckets with water at night because there used to be no power for an hour in the morning, and without power you couldn’t pump the water into the water tank. Such was the never-ending daily cycle of existence in modern India. Things are a little better now, as I understand it.

Jai started going to play school when he was two and a half or so and it was the first time he locked horns with the untamed beast known as education.

His first day of school was a memorable one indeed. The school used to start at nine in the morning and end at twelve noon. The timings were perfect because Speed Racer the cartoon TV serial used to air at twelve at the time, and which self-respecting kid didn’t like Speed Racer?

Anyway back to his first day of school. Jai like most kids didn’t really want to go to school, but he couldn’t weasel out of this situation.

His father was dropping him off and as they approached the big blue gates of his new school his father told him to step inside and promised he would wait in the school for him and not go anywhere. Jai, like a young juvenile gullible kid believed anything his parents told him and entered the gate.

He looked back just to make sure his father was there, and he was reassured to see him standing there looking at him.

He turned back and saw a jungle gym up ahead and climbed it and started prancing around on it. Just as he was having the time of his life, he looked back to check on his dad but his father had left, which left him teary eyed on top of a silly jungle gym. Welcome to school, Mr. Jai!

As a few months went by, he adjusted to life in school. Just as a man who goes to work gets used to a well accustomed routine of nine to five, Jai was used to a slightly lighter schedule of nine to twelve, which was followed by lunch and Speed Racer and all the Hanna Barbara cartoons that followed on television. Yes just like people working in offices come back and have a TV dinner; he used to have a TV lunch.

One of his school days didn’t start in the most conventional of ways. He and his friend were waiting at the bus stop, which was right in front of his house, and were just playing there. They had been waiting for the school bus to arrive. Their mothers were calling the school to find out where the school bus was. The boys kept waiting and didn’t realize how much time they had spent at the bus stop.

They were so blissfully unaware of what was happening, and so lost in their child like realm, that they did not realize that it was close to nine o’ clock.

All of a sudden, they saw a figure approaching on a scooter. The scooter stopped right in front of the bus stop and both Jai and his friend were stupefied to see it was one of their schoolteachers. She explained that the buses weren’t working today so she had been appointed as many of the teachers were, to pick up the students. Who wouldn’t want to be part of this school? So Jai and his friend got on the scooter and to them it was like a joy ride. Sitting on your teacher’s scooter and going to school! How ridiculous can life get? The only thing going through Jai’s mind at the time was that he would have only two hours of school and then he could go back and be lost in the magical world of his beloved cartoons.

As you can see, his school life was an adventure, but life at home was great. Life at that time revolved around the different board games he had. He spent all day playing games like Guess Who?, Mechanix, Snakes and Ladders, Hungry Hippos, Chess, Ludo, Chinese Checkers, Lego and whatever board game Funskool could think of. What he enjoyed playing with most though were his GI Joe’s. Storm Shadow, Hawk and Snake Eyes were his favorites.

The ultimate thrill for kids in those times used to be to find a Tazo at the end or in the middle of a chips packet. Sometimes Jai would buy the chips just for the Tazos. Such simple times one lived in.

Kids at the time, didn’t need a lot of things to be happy. They would be perfectly happy with a YO-YO which one used to get free with a Kit Kat. Jai had a red coloured one with the words Kit Kat written on it in white. It was one of the greatest pastimes a kid could ask for.

Jai had a lot of friends in the neighbourhood or colony as it was referred to and their biggest challenge at the time was to gather people to play everyday. Back then, they didn’t have fancy cell phones to get everybody together. They had to go to each person’s house and get everyone to go to the park. Such tedious tasks they had! It was fun nonetheless, since most of the times at least one of his friend’s mom would offer them all a treat. How can a kid say no to that?

The best part about his little gang was that all of them were interested in the same thing, cartoons and wrestling. They would sit down and discuss their favorite wrestler, act out some matches and get into arguments about who was better. They even spent many hours playing the wrestling trump cards.

The game was fairly simple. Players were given a certain number of cards, you were to select the strongest attribute of your wrestler and battle it out with your opponents. You had various attributes to choose from. Rank, Height, Weight, Chest, Number of fights, etc.

One can remember the term ‘clash’ coming up whenever they played this game. Clash usually signified that two people had a similar feature on their card. For example a wrestler could have the same height or same rank. That’s when the players shouted the term ‘clash’ and hoped to defeat their opponent in the next hand. Whoever had the most amount of cards in the end would have won the game.

This game was one of the greatest pastimes in the 90’s and early 2000’s.

Whenever there was a WWE pay per view showcase, all of them would assemble at a friend’s house and watch it together, on a warm Sunday afternoon betting on each match as it went along. Triple H and The Rock did win Jai a lot of candy though. He got paid with a Mango Bite or a Coffy Bite. (Two of the greatest candy’s in the world)

They would not only watch the pay per views and cartoons on TV, they would go down to the local video store and rent VHS Tapes. (Remember those?)

They became tape traders, of both their favorite cartoons and wrestling which once again was so archaic.

Chapter 2

The Golden Age

Of The Nineties

Let’s start at the beginning people. You have to know the era in which Jai grew up in. You just can’t skip ahead to the sex scenes, mainly because there aren’t any. Anyway lets get back to the point at hand.

Jai’s teachers described him as an introvert. He was emotional, shy, well-mannered, sensitive, empathetic, very easily attached and likes to play the fool. He was always in a world of his own and though he enjoyed playing sports he never excelled at them. The territory of sporting prowess was not his to encroach. He really liked football but the sport wasn’t as big at the time in India. The majority of the kids at that time liked cricket, so he would join them and their little game.

The other outdoor games that he and his friends played were hide and seek, capture the flag, oonch neech, hopscotch (that game primarily depended on whether a person had a chalk or a red brick was around) and a game that they invented called ‘Tree to Tree’. This game was played in a park and the park that Jai and his friends played in was huge. It was a big square with trees surrounding it. The rules of the game were such that there was one ‘denner’ and he had to catch the rest of the participants. The other people in the game had to keep one hand on the tree and move from one tree to the next without the ‘denner’ touching them. The denner could not catch the other players as long as they were holding on to the tree. But the players themselves could not hold onto to the tree for more than 30 seconds. If the ‘denner’ tagged you then you were out of the game. The first person to touch every tree in that square won. (Try it)

Another game that Jai and his brother loved to play was the infamous balloon game. Whenever they got a balloon, they would make a game out of it. The game was fairly simple. You just had to keep the balloon in the air. Even though the rules would suggest that it was a fairly simple game, that balloon always found its way on the ground for some reason. Wonder if gravity had anything to do with it.

It was Jai’s creative urges that really fueled him. He really liked to write short stories and create all these characters, which provided him with a false sense of power since he was able to control these characters and their lives. Jai really liked to draw and sketch as well and lived in his own world most of the time. He loved reading comic books, X-men, Batman, Spiderman and Archie’s being his favorites and built up quite a collection over the years. Sheldon Cooper wouldn’t like the fact that Archie and Batman comics have been clubbed together in a sentence but this is what living life on the edge is all about.

Jai’s mother tried to get him to read a ‘real’ book. When friendly suggestions and cajoling didn’t work, Jai was literally forced to read an abridged version of Alice in Wonderland, which became the first real book that he ever read. He then graduated onto the Secret Seven classics and, after that life was good. Thanks Enid Blyton.

It was also during this time that he became a huge fan of Batman. Val Kilmer’s performance as Batman in Batman Forever had really made him a fan, and the animated series really helped cement him as a true fan of the caped crusader. Jai was a huge fan of Jackie Chan as well. He had seen almost all of his movies by the time he was eleven or twelve. Rumble in the Bronx, Dragons Forever, Armor Of God and Rush Hour were his favorite Jackie Chan movies. He used to go to video stores (remember those?) and rent VHS tapes.

Luckily for Jai, he and his friends liked the same cartoons and television shows. All of them loved Speed Racer, Centurions, Swat Kats, Top Cat, Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Laboratory, Tom and Jerry, Jetsons, Flintstones and Scooby Doo. HE–Man was another big cartoon at the time. His action figure was in big demand in the late nineties.

The TV shows at the time were really creative. There was a show called Legends Of The Hidden Temple, which was very popular with Jai and his friends. The team names used to be so catchy. The Red Jaguars, Blue Barracudas, Orange Iguanas, Silver Snakes etc. Another show they really loved was a show called Global Guts. The show was about young athletes from all over the world competing in various athletic events. Jai always fantasized about competing in these events. But that dream sadly never came to fruition.

Jai used to watch all these shows after