Memories make life beautiful

This beautiful morning, with the sky so clear and birds chirping, I believe is a perfect time to pen down my experience of visiting Kota few months back. Most of you might wonder what is so special about this city, but I am sure, who so ever have made this beautiful a part of their success story would love this place and understand my nostalgia more than anyone.

I was so small, just sixteen when I was exonerated by my friends to move to Kota, the education capital of India to prepare of something called IIT-JEE. The word IIT-JEE, was so alien to me that i understood it as any other chemistry jargon which I had been hearing for long time. After a deep deliberation and strong persuasion by one of my friend Mr. Satyarth Sharma I finally decided to go for coaching. However, there was a big catch, I could not clear any of those entrance exams held by coaching institutions during those days. I had no dreams, a boy from village and a lower middle class family was highly confused if he should follow other’s dream and gamble with hard earned money of parents for preparation of something which was not known to any of us in family. I am indecisive, good by heart and make good friends, I was carried away by emotions and decided to go with friends.

I landed up in kota, was offered admission any how in the last batch of one of the reputed coaching institutes. I tried to find out goal of life and learnt that the goal of life is be to achieve the  immediate next goal. Thanks to the magical environment of Kota and my friends, my the next immediate aim was to clear IIT-JEE. Because stakes were high, I worked hard and came out victorious. A city that gave me goal, success and learning is a city too close to my heart.

One fine day my sister called me and she asked to come along with her to Kota. I had been thinking of going to this place since long but could not find a radical reason to justify my parents for visiting this place. That day I got one and I was so happy, why not, my million-dollar dream was about to realize. I wanted to relive the memories.

The train reached kota and I could feel the aura of this magical city. I became restless and excited to touch every nook and corner of this place. A child in me went naughty and my sister was so surprised to see this. I was trying to reconnect this city with my memory but could hardly do so because this place has under gone a complete make over in last 11 years, over bridges, tall buildings, wide roads and many more, everything has changed. Most of us, even I say that India is not progressing, but after this scene, my perception about progressing India has changed. Yes, we are growing leap and bounds. I had to stay for just one day but could manage to see visit Vigyan Nagar (the place where I stayed), those lanes, alley, hostel, P.C.O.(the one which I use to make home calls), Bansal classes (2-KA-17)( I owe my present to this hall of glory), Brijwasi sweets, Sangam mess and what not, I was so excited that that I tried to touch every point walking under scorching sun in that one hour available to me. There is shop named Sonu cold drink, a hangout place for student, a shop like none other. I never paid for patties i bought here. I was reminded of all the childhood pranks we did. I could never lose the opportunity to have patties at this place and so I did, but this time in a different style, I paid for it. I even confessed to the shop owner about our mischief which left both of us laughing. This  city is adorned by students, no doubt about it and I could find one every now and then. I could see a dream in their eyes to capture this world and immense energy to make their dreams a reality, I saw my past in these students. I was reminded of the happiness I used to derive out of solving that one difficult problem of mathematics. I swear nothing in this universe can give me that happiness. It’s evening now and i had to board the train to Mumbai, but wait the story I not over yet, the task of relishing palpable food at Amar Punjabi Dhaba is still unchecked. It is one of the important milestone for whosoever one visits this city and so I did. I ordered a lot, ate a lot and enjoyed a lot to finally big good-bye to this heaven with a hope that I would visit this city again, very soon.

Thank you Kota, thank you for forming me, teaching me lessons of life and for life. 

Proudly a Miner

I just want to ask a question before putting my thoughts into words. Do we ever pay our reverence to a soldier who guards our nation round the clock, a laborer who builds our abode in spite of building one for himself, a farmer who gives his sweat and blood to feed the nation but dies of hunger, a coal miner who energizes this nation but himself lives in dark ? I know most of you might be grinning by seeing this contemporary question and would definitely answer ‘yes’. But if I ask how frequently, you might go dumb or take a long pause before answering. This is something that disturbs me the most, something which is against humanity, something that can be called highly eccentric and obviously unsustainable.

Friends, let me introduce myself, I did my Engineering from IIT (BHU), Varanasi after which I worked four years in an underground coal mine located in Wasseypur ( Dhanbad ). Presently I have left job and the pursuing MBA. Though I have left mining, I still feel so connected to this industry. It pinches me the most when I find that people don’t recognize coal miners as drivers of nation. As most of my coal workers are illiterate and cannot pen down their thoughts, I took the responsibility to speak their heart out, make their hardship public so that people pay obeisance to these workers and they take pride in their job.

In order to give you a feel of how difficult their life is let me tell you how a typical miner spends his day. He comes to the workplace, wears personal protective equipment and cap lamp (total weight around 7kg.), walks 4km down the ground to reach a working point. There is extreme scarcity of fresh air, high humidity, high temperature, inflammable gases such as methane continuously oozes out of strata. There is high risk of water inundation and caving, in short the nature is always ready to crackdown. He digs coal, inhales huge amount of coal dust despite knowing that it will ultimately kill him. Finally, once the shift ends he again walks for 4 km along a steep gradient to come back to surface. Once back from workplace he consumes liquor (he knows that it will kill him) because its recommended by doctors ( it cleans your lungs and blood), sleeps and again comes back to work the next day.

Now that you know the hardship of a coal miner, I ask u a question, Can the wages ever compensate for his substandard and hazardous lifestyle!! Never, they deserve even more.  One way to dole out our support is lend them a salute, a respect, a special status, but it’s very disheartening to say that very few of us do so. Most of us have a stereotype that they are a sub grade heavily paid worker who does a menial job. This calls for a complete overhaul, so I urge people to be the part of change.

Revere them, respect them, so that they pour more blood into the vein of our economy, our nation becomes more healthy and so do we.

Flash Mob at Mahamandi

Sharing my Experience

Sharing my Experience

The 'Mahamndi' Tale

Once upon a time a student went to an MBA college where he was being induced for MBA life ahead. He was very confused and was feeling bored then came a day when a an intriguing entity came for introducing Business communication to him, a short man carrying innovative products, wearing Gandi Topi and announcing an event called MAHAMANDI.

That student was none other than me and that entity was none other than our Business communication professor Dr. T Prasad. As days went on, I came to know all the natty gritty of this event. It is a one day socio-marketing celebration in which students from across the nation make their hands dirty to sell educational toys on the streets of Mumbai and the profit goes to NGO which work for education of poor children. I was highly impressed by its overall framework and on the very first day I decided that I would be also be a part of it.

Then came the Mahamadi day,8^th august 2015. I remember the day was not like any other day for me, I woke up at 7:00 (too early for MBA’s) out of excitement, packed my outing kit along with my two other team members.  At around 10:00 am the event was flagged off by a famous Bollywood celebrity and thousands of students thronged into the streets for selling. To make the challenge more challenging we decided to go to Juhu Beach, Mumbai were the target customers would be not so educated and selling would be difficult. Once we reached there we were very disgruntled seeing that there were already 7 teams present over there and also customers were very few. We were disheartened and became very apprehensive, whether we would be able to sell even a single product. And yes, so it happened, not a single product could be in first three hours. We felt dejected and realised how difficult is the job of sales person whose entire livelihood depends on selling the product. We did some soul searching only to become more confused, if it is product that is not up to the mark or venue is wrong or whether we need to improve our perusing skills. We changed venues, changed our approach to pitch in to the customers and tried everything that we could do. Then came our first sale and a stream of happiness and confidence ran down my spines and I could find a ray of hope. And then came 2^nd, 3^rd and it went on counting. I remember how we were trying to spot out the potential customers by reading their faces, engaging with them around and changing the USP of our product as per the customer’s need, I say it was extreme fun. It was around 6:00pm when we thought of experimenting with our selling style. We spread out newspapers on the beach, put all the products on display and played some good songs on portable speakers (Thanks to my JBL Flip). Soon we could find that people we riddled by our so called store and in a fraction of minutes we could find 100’s of people surrounding us and we were completely engaged in explaining them our product. It was just like a flash sale for us, we went out of stock in a fraction of seconds.  A sense of victory gushed into us and we were celebrating.

I believe that our education system needs a complete overhaul. Instead of mugging the concepts, we should promote students to do practical, gain hands on experience. Form my experience of four years working a coal mines I can say very confidently that there is a major gap between theories and practical and it is events like MAHAMANDI which can bridge up this gap by teaching the intricacies and making the learning complete. 

सुना हो बिहार क लल्ला...

बेचे के महा मंडी में आप सबी के स्वागत बा, आप  आऐं और आपन हुनर उजागर  करी !