The Jungle Diary...

Again I’d begin this piece with a question.Which animal do you like?..Dog, Lion, Gorilla or Monkey??

This entry is not an outcome of a visit to the Nehru zoological park or an Animal Care center but a result of the last 15 months spent in a jungle. They call it a village but I am more content at heart calling it a jungle. You would ask Why? Well, how often do you wake up to find a chameleon sharing the bed with you…Hey don’t laugh, I actually meant a ominous looking younger brother of an alligator and a cousin of our house mate lizard. I did sleep with it a couple of times. And spent another few days living with a mouse in my room, bathed in a shower accompanied by a species of frog that could climb the wall, and shared reading the newspaper while sitting on the pot with another frog. For some reason I have had a testing time with them, not to mention that I am a great lover of dogs and want to co-direct a documentary on the dog habits in a b-school which a close friend is working on. Again I am referring only to dogs – as in the four legged ones…

Spiders often come out of my trouser pockets which were left hanging by the hook in the cupboard and an odd visit by a dragon fly or a cockroach is enough to send me running for my slippers. I am saving the Economics Times for my placements, otherwise what better purpose could it have served. To top it all I say the morning greetings to atleast a million centipedes and crickets while on way to the academics block every morning. I had the pleasure of sighting a kingfisher, a raven and some wild hens some days back while going to the nearby shack restaurant “Sardarji da dhaba”. And the last time there was a powercut and I was walking on the highway, I could spot some glowing flies too. Some of us friends had a jolly time chasing a mole in the hostel corridor for two hours past mid-night last semester, it was an awesome break considering I had a Economics exam the next morning. One of the female batch mates had a baby monkey sitting in her balcony which was enough make her go bananas. Buffaloes, Goats and Cows are a common sight anywhere in India so I’d discount them from detail.

After all this I wonder that living in a city that boasts of India’s largest Cobra (snake) population I seem to have come far from just being a management graduate…maybe they could do with introducing an extra elective on Zoology or even veterinary science. We have a vet doc and lotsa zoology grads here who can oblige with a few lectures. I can’t say much about going to a zoo but atleast I save time from spending on the Reptiles show on Discovery…. I must confess that this place is not much exciting for ornithologists as it has been time since I looked at a pigeon or a house sparrow.

I guess I saw something scampering across the rough patch near the drain, guess it is a goosebump…while I shut off my doors ‘cos I sure don’t wanna sleep with this one, you make sure your pockets have only what you have put in and not something which may have crawled in....ha ha ha

My first day......at IBS Hyderabad

Following is what I wrote last year after spending my first day at IBS...a lot has changed and a lot will never change....I relentlessly pursue my destiny and as they say its written "Makhtub" ...

Having given up all desires to pursue a corporate life without a management degree, abdicating from the royal throne of a research analyst in the world finest consultancy firm, my walk to Hyderabad began….more so only to discover it as a modest Dontanpally village. The rubric sands determining the campus could only make me feel more docile, having been separated from all familiar civilization. Standing on the giant doorway to the IBS campus, far from appreciating the beauty and silence of the surroundings, I went about probing myself if I had been too much an optimist. My senses came back with the loud appearance of the taxi driver who asked if I wanted to left inside to the hostel, I mumbled the obvious answer while keeping an eye on the gigantic suitcases that undermined my herculean powers. The campus looked like a morose construction site, years after having buried the desire to be an architect I felt as if I was here for it. Realizing my qualification as a B.Sc., I shrugged cursing the factors of judgment in life. I had wanted to be a Bus conductor collecting cash, a pilot soaring skies, an armyman and the more realistic engineer. None became of the above choices when I ceded to fate and pursued statistics in degree. My mind went back to the board that I read in the cantonment while on way “ There are no better judges in the world than guns”, I felt I could have made far better decisions had a brigadier installed a 0.33 mm bore rifle fully loaded on my temple.

Signing heaps of sheets of instructions that provided me against destroying any minutest detail of this hostel, I walked towards my room pondering over such possibilities but the strong smell of the veneer coating constricted my nose and thoughts. My parents always said that often our pleasure is derieved from the most insignificant of things in life; I could feel overjoyed noticing the paint color in the hostel room was the same as at home, probably it sparked a nostalgia that made me feel humble. The room had a metal chair, study table and a cot and the USP of the hostel “a balcony”, surprisingly all 2000 rooms had one. Didn’t I tell my father there were great prospects for an architect! but he felt that the initial struggle as a draftsman wasn’t worth it. I felt lethargic and dizzy having spent 26 hours in a sleeper compartment of the train and 2 hours in the rickety autorickshaw, except for a couple of hours of suburban viewings more the time was spent watching the rural India – diversity at its best. Not to forget the road to Dontanpally, which took me back to physics class learning the crests and troughs in a frequency curve, the subtle relation was crazy as there could be no way Thompson or Hertz could have designed the contours of this village. Unbundling the mattress drained of all possible glycogen storage and I retired to sleep dreaming of consuming Idli, Vada and Rasam all square meals but the thought made me feel overdosed. For an evening walk I decided to explore a cent of the 100 acre, over to the academic block where the only population could be found in the IT room trying to find the opportunity to connect with friends and family. I went over the “White House” (No goras no Bush only phone connections and cold drinks) to purchase a local sim finding a gecko on the mango tree gazing at me..I sped away to my room now to find a couple of crickets bordering and guarding my balcony, I muttered and squashed the mortals under the seemingly divine powers of my new rubber slippers. I was reminded of a cousin who had a nightmare of a cockroach crawling up his nose, bah!!

A day was over …but the journey had just begun and this time it was to be for a huge 700 days. I had read a hindi novel “Jungle me who do din” and much did I want to christen the memoirs of my stay in IBS on the same lines, I felt the difference was a little too much. My discoveries were to progress with knowledge expansion, I was here to be an MBA those words did sound big and going by the reputation IBS enjoyed I felt much greater. With many plans, dreams, desires and visions the fairy godmother put me to sleep till dusk….